Officially, the EU gender policy since 2000 has been guided by the strategy of Gender Mainstreaming. This strategy aims to promote gender equality and is informed by a feminist ontology which stipulates that women are structurally subordinated.In this essay, I examine whether the European Commission has adequately adhered to this gender policy in its free trade negotiations with the ACP (African, Caribbean, and Pacific) countries as part of the Cotonou Agreement. As a result of my text analysis of documents related to the negotiations, opinion pieces by interested actors and policy papers of the EU, I find that the Commission does not act in accordance to its stated gender policy.To explain this discrepancy between policy intent and actions, I employ postliberal feminist theory and Robert Putnam's Two-Level Game Theory Model. By analyzing statistics and published research, I explore how gender issues are being represented politically on a domestic and international level.My findings show that a key cause of this discrepancy lies in the low levels of female participation in the political institutions of the EU and ACP; a lack of participation that is especially pronounced in the area of international economics. In explaining the constraints on female participation and the prospects of full implementation of the EU's gender policy in the international political economy, I emphasize the role of culturally and historically gendered institutions..

Analysmaterialet i denna uppsats består av en rad riksdagsdokument behandlandes den svenska riksdagens cannabisdiskurs. Detta analysmaterial som behandlas är under perioden 1990 till 2007. Vi har även studerat hur policydebatten har förts i ett historiskt perspektiv under perioden 1968 fram till mitten av 1990-talet.Frågor utifrån en Foucaultinspirerad diskursanalys behandlar en rad ämnen inom diskursen och vid närmare analys beskrivs den svenska riksdagsanalysen som synnerligen ensidig.Nyckelord: Foucault, cannabis, diskursanalys.

This thesis aims to investigate if peer-groups based on industry classification perform as well as, or better than, peer-groups based on other measures that represent factors affecting the price-to-earnings multiple. In contrast with previous empirical studies, a solid theoretical approach is used in defining which factors, according to valuation theory, affect the P/E-ratio. The factors identified as explanatory are accounting measures, risk and growth. Furthermore, we have recognized several measures that represent these factors. These measures are tested for accuracy of prediction in terms of the P/E-ratio for peer-groups based on these measures relative to an industry classified peer-group.

The purpose of this study is to present populism as a political phenomenon and to impose focus on the rightwing populist parties that are active in Scandinavia. This essay begins with a presentation of the three rightwing political parties in Scandinavia. The rightwing populist parties have successfully developed their rhetoric and effectively influenced the political establishment in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The parties that the essay focuses on are theSwedish democrats (SD), the Norwegian Progress party (FRP) and the Danish People`s party (DF). These parties are interesting in the sense that they share many opinions and are active in comparable political atmospheres, but also that they use approximately the same rightwing populist rhetoric as a way of exerting leverage on political policy.The theoretical segment is constructed on a descriptive historical background of populisms three different phases.

This report describes a comparative study of the change in grading system in the year of 1995 and the coming year of 2012. The objective is to analyze and compare the political debate from two Swedish parties, the Social democrats and the Moderates, from a number of the parties political periodicals. Futher the objective is to show, from the periodicals debate, what approach to knowledge the parties are presenting. The theoretical base of this study is rooted in the political background of grading system and in literature defining different theories about knowledge and approach to knowledge. The investigation is qualitative and the main research method is text analysis.The conclusions is that the parties overall stood their ground and kept their opinions throughout the two debates and the change in grade systems.

Despite the fast growing development of IP-telephony services, only a small number of people in Sweden use them. Of the total amount of fixed telephony subscriptions, maximally five percent are based on IP-technology. Through an exploratory study, the main purpose with this thesis is to identify factors that influence the use of IP-telephony on the consumer market, and the factors? internal relationships. The thesis also has two sub-purposes: firstly, chart the supply of IP-telephony services and secondly, discuss what IP-telephony services that are requested by today?s customers in the future.

Despite the fast growing development of IP-telephony services, only a small number of people in Sweden use them. Of the total amount of fixed telephony subscriptions, maximally five percent are based on IP-technology. Through an exploratory study, the main purpose with this thesis is to identify factors that influence the use of IP-telephony on the consumer market, and the factors? internal relationships. The thesis also has two sub-purposes: firstly, chart the supply of IP-telephony services and secondly, discuss what IP-telephony services that are requested by today?s customers in the future.

Multiple sclerosis is a disease whose course is capricious and unprediactable and the exact cause of the disease is still unclear. The purpose of this literature review was to describe factors that can effect quality of life of people with diagnosis multiple sclerosis. The results shows ten different factors that effect quality of life of people with MS: fatigue, activities in daily life, position of dependence, limits of the functional abilities, sense of guilt and shame, comunicationdifficulty, social network, emootional factors, depression and degree of difficulty of the symtomes. Work has been shown to bee a major factor that can make people with MS feel worthy and experience quality of life. Nurs is an important keystone in care of people with diagnosis multiple sclerosis..

This study analyzes how civil society contributes to the democratic development in a Nicaragua governed by the sandinist party FSLN. The empirical focus lays at the relationship between state and the civil society. By using a conceptual framework outlined by Caroline Boussard, the civil society is being analyzed as an actor with a democracy-building potential that is supported or constrained by a political context.The civil society is divided between traditional social movement and more newly borned NGOs. Social movements tend to approach the government comparatively to NGOs, which adopt a highly critical attitude. In contrast to NGOs, the traditional social movements are improving their democratic functions as a counterpart while NGOs confine its democratic potential to an agenda setter drawing attention to democratic deficits.

The aim is first to identify concept of citizenship and the dimensions of the same, in the political science theory, which can be crucial, to that a citizenship may be found available for people who have a cognitive delay. Thereafter examine the prevalence and significance of these, in policy documents from two different organizational forms, through an analysis, in the form of a discussion, on the basis of political science theories in the field. The study's aim in a reflective way, highlighting key requirements for an accessible citizenship for the target audience, and thereby clarify the priorities in daily activities that can support an emancipatory citizenship process for people who have a cognitive delay..

How stakeholders can influence EU in global environmental politics and what consequences and risks this brings are heavily debated. Some scholars argue that civil society are being disenfranchised from the global political arena while others seem to find them having influence in areas where they normally shouldn´t have any influence. In this this paper I will compare the Europan Union policy on GMOs with the process in producing the Water Framework Directive using an analytical framework to study the level of stakeholder influence. Following the framework I will use two types of data namely NGO participation and Goal attainment. The data once summarized will be analyzed by using the methods of process-tracing and counterfactual analysis.My conclusions regarding both cases are that stakeholders, most notably, were able to influence policymaking in EU by using the internal revisions and by networking in smaller partnerships.

I have studied how human networks can affect decision-making and different constellations. The primary purpose is to clarify the possibility to affect the decision to move the infrastructure investments from Region Skåne to Region Västra Götaland. The study starts at the EU-level and continues to the Government and on to the region. Region Skåne is studied especially since it was from there the infrastructure investments were moved.The conclusion is that there is no specific representation in the government that represents regional topics, in spite of the fact that almost 30% of the members of the Parliament come from these regions. There is no discussion between the members that could be considered a networking-activity beneficial for the regions.

This study focuses on the politics around ecological sustainable development in Sweden today, with emphasis on urban development, building and living. The starting-point for this study is the environmental adapted city district of Stockholm, Hammarby Sjöstad. The primary focus of the study is to investigate what means of control the environmental investment in Hammarby Sjöstad is expressing, and to elucidate their ideological, political and social implications. The empirical material is primarily based up on the local Hammarby Sjöstad environmental program along with qualitative in-depth interviews with citizens of this district. The study is based on critical discourse analysis The result of this study is that the ecological investment in Hammarby Sjöstad partly constitutes a hidden exercise of power, taking shape as built-in physical measures in the dwellings and the neighbouring surroundings.

A current debate is going on in Sweden about the health-care organization, how it is structured today and how it should be structured in the future. Despite major changes in the county council structures, they still got problems with for instance economy and the providing of staff. As an answer to these problems new solutions are being developed.In this thesis I examine such a solution consisting of cooperation between county councils. The aim of the thesis is to examine how and why the county councils in Sörmland and Västmanland have made a decision regarding cooperation over the administrative border.My contribution is to construct a model over change and decision processes that can be used in other cases as well. The conclusion is partly that the decision to cooperate is built on changing structural factors, such as economy, demography and medical development.

This thesis studies how the Swedish government articulates social exclusion within the spring budget of 2007. Through a discourse theoretical approach, inspired by Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the empirical findings are reconstructed through the nodal point of labour and two chains of equivalence, based upon the duality between employment and unemployment. By viewing social exclusion as a phenomenon concerning discourse, identity and politics, this duality forms the basis of a deconstructive and hegemonic analysis.I argue that the term social exclusion is a powerful and flexible political concept in that it obscures ideological assumptions and objectives as well as draws attention away from alternative social concepts. Throughout the thesis social exclusion is stressed as a social category constituting the relation between individual and society. Hence I argue that it is of vital importance that the values underlying its usage are made explicit and that social exclusion as a floating signifier is made an object of academic analysis..