The current trend towards globalisation and democratisation has made the theories of politics in pluralistic societies, and how to make them work, of particular interest and concern. Lijphart's theory of consociational democracy is an important influence in this field. At the same time the importance of civil society in transition studies and democratisation processes has been reinforced over the last thirty years. However, the complex political situation that plural societies face, creates obstacles for a healthy civil society. This thesis is based on a case study of Lebanon, a country with deep ethnic divisions and a government that resembles a consociational democracy.

Att det idag finns flera metoder och modeller för att fatta beslut är inte konstigt då beslutsfattande sker varje dag och i vissa sammanhang kan ge ödesdigra konsekvenser om det blir fel. Denna kandidatuppsats kan ses som en förstudie för hur naturligt beslutsfattande skulle kunna stödjas genom en förbättrad utbildning till beslutsfattare. Uppsatsen ämnar behandla naturligt beslutsfattande och intuition hos experter inom räddningstjänsten, närmare bestämt om de använder intuition och i så fall vad som ligger till grund för denna intuition. Intervjuer utfördes på räddningstjänsten i Motala efter critical decision method som är framtagen för cognitive task analysis. Inom räddningstjänsten använder sig befälen av intuition när de tar det flesta av sina beslut i fält.

The purpose of this study is to highlight the existence ofpersonalization within Swedish political parties along withhow the parties work with this phenomena in order to achievemore voters.The method used is personal interviews with politiciansfrom four different government parties. As a complement, interviews with a political expert was also made. All parties use personalization in different ways as a strategy tocreate dialogues and relationships with both media and voters. We distinguished two sorts of personalization: individualization and privatization, and discovered that not all parties use both..

abstractThe aim of this essay is to try to convince the reader that relativism and postmodernism (the latter implying the former, but not the other way around) can be reasonable methods for the social sciences, rather than the irresponsible play of ?extremes? theories of this kind sometimes are made out to be.The intention is to do this by way of the later Wittgenstein, the philosophy of whom is the foundation for what is termed relativism and postmodernism in this essay (definitions of a kind that are here claimed to be missing from the discourse of the social sciences). The essay also contains an empirical presentation/analysis, displaying the Wittgensteinian theory through an aspect of the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and -60s..

Many companies today are investing in various computer-based tools to support their planning, decision making or communication processes. However, end users are often reluctant to accept the available information systems, which mean that these investments are extremely risky. Understanding why users choose to accept or reject an information system has proved to be one of the most challenging problems in this research area. Previous studies have focused on users' beliefs and attitudes regarding use intentions, but the results have, however, been both mixed and incomplete. In this study, I have used the Swedish youth? s use intention of mobile banking and a quantitative study was performed based on five different hypotheses derived from previous studies.

By using contemorary work-theory this thesis aim to show how Yarden. En bera?ttelse, puts into play the circumstances of precarian work, circumstances that have gender political as well as identity political overtones. It tries to show how the idea of ?class-jouney? is used as a conciliatory element.

This study is based on a qualitative study with 8 semi-structured interviews. The aim of thestudy was to describe how social workers in the individual- and family section in socialservices in two different municipalities in Sweden reason about reporting obligations and tounderstand what lex Sarah means in the decisions making to report incongruity or not. Weinterviewed social workers that work in the department of individual- and family section, amunicipality worker who works with state governance with all kinds people in the society.We asked the social workers altered questions about how they handle lex Sarah in their work.Three different topics were identified in our study and became the themes: Description,management and conflicting thoughts. Our analysis is based on two different theories, oneabout the choices a person make being in an organization, the other about how a professionalindividual have altered pressures to handle in their everyday work. By doing a semi-structuredstudy of the social workers opinions, we found out that the description of incongruity was notthe focus just in managing lex Sarah.

Introduction/Background: Economic evaluations help decision-makers to make informed decisions regarding resource allocation. Information generated from CEA can support evaluations of a new intervention with current praxis. The evaluations also provide information as to whether an intervention is cost-effective, both in economic terms and in health gains. Objective: The aim of this thesis is to investigate the use of economic evaluations in public health, with a focus on CEA. Use of economic evaluations is regarded as both a method for evaluation and as support for informed decisions.

The municipality of Falkenberg is a result of a unification of several smaller municipalities in 1971, each one with a small library. This left Falkenberg with an unusual large amount of smaller branch libraries. The object of this thesis is to describe and try to understand the political conflicts that have erupted during the period 1971-1994. Through a case study containing press clippings from the local newspaper, different reports, political meeting protocols, a historical background of the library and a study of library specific norms and regulations I can create an image of the heated debate. The participants in this debate can be divided into politicians and civil servants and the conflict circles round the fact that from an economical perspective, there is not enough budget to keep all the small, local libraries.

ABSTRACTBachelor essay in political science by Hanna Richter, spring 2006Supervisor: Mats LindbergTitle: A study of the phenomenon of micronationsThe purpose of this essay is to study the phenomenon of ?micronations?, to describe it to the reader and to discuss why this phenomenon is interesting to study in the field of political science. The questions this essay seeks to answer are:- What are micronations, and which variations are to be found within the phenomenon?- Why are micronations interesting to study in the field of political science?Bary Buzans theory of the nature of the state works as a frame of reference to this investigation of micro ?state-like? units. The phenomenon of micronations has not been investigated by the social sciences in any extent worth mentioning yet.

Vilja är avgörande för politiska beslut om väpnad insats och i Libyen efterfrågades på kort tid stridsflyg i en konflikt som fick ett starkt folkrättsligt mandat. Viljan till insats med stridsflyg, vilket inte använts internationellt sedan 1963, ställdes mot Sveriges tradition av att ställa upp när FN kallar.I uppsatsen analyseras viljan till insats i beslutsprocessen som föregick insatsen, stridsflygets förmåga och interaktionen däremellan.Uppsatsen har en kvalitativ ansats med förklarande ambition där intervjuer utgör en stor del av empirin. Den nationella beslutsprocessen har använts som teoretisk struktur för analysen.Sammanfattning:Resultatet visar att stridsflygets förmåga vid tillfället för beslutsprocessen var särskilt hög. Försvarsmakten uppvisade en stark vilja till insats genom hela beslutprocessen. Den politiska viljan var inledningsvis svag för en insats men växte sig stark inom delar av stridsflygets förmågebredd.Förmågan möjliggjorde tidiga och klara besked från Försvarsmakten vilka var avgörande för den politiska viljan.

This thesis analyses the 2005 UK presidency of the Council, and more particularly the negotiations on the future financing of the European Union. The purpose of the study is to discuss whether the holding of the presidency implies political influence for the member state. To analyse the power of the country holding the chair the thesis focuses on the presidency functions of brokering and leadership. The theory suggests that the influence of the presidency is derived from informational and procedural power resources, as well as some leadership resources, such as coercion and reward. A case study was used to analyse whether these power resources were used by the British presidency.

The political landscape is constantly changing and influenced by outside forces. The strong connection to the traditional media has evolved to include a new important part, social media. A good way for the politics to utilize social media is through their youth associations, whose main purpose is to engage young people and spark their interest in politics. Due to the increasing influence of social media, the politicians, parties and various actors have to adapt to its demands, to be able to gain visibility on these platforms. One way to adapt is to become more entertainment driven, because these platforms are a safespace where people find time to relax and have a good time. With a growing emphasis on simplified, engaging and more fun political massages, political communication has changed its form. This phenomenon is referred to as ?politainment? and encapsulates the merging of politics and entertainment. The purpose of this study is to examine and measure the frequency of politainment in Swedish political youth associations political communications.

Driveability analysis of terrain data offers an important technique for decision support for all kinds of movements in the terrain. The work described in this report uses a high resolution digital terrain model generated from the laser radar data and further processed by the Category Viewer program, and information from the Real Estate Map. Properties of features found in a filtering process are calculated and compared with a set of rules in a knowledge base to get a driveability cost. This cost is then visualized in a graphical user interface. An evaluation of what driveability is and what it is affected by is performed, and a general cost function is developed, which can be used even if not all relevant information is available.

This thesis describes the process of developing a reservation system for common resources through a TV-interface. The system is developed in cooperation with the company Dreampark and is built to work in their platform for TV, Dreamgallery. The main goal was to develop a reservation system and to make it work with Dreamgallery, to develop a demonstration version of the system. The thesis describes the approach for developing an easy-to-use and customisable program and interface for making reservations. How this is inserted into an existing program in a suitable way.