Regionalization has become a catchphrase in European countries during the last twenty years with the establishment of the European Union. An ideational development has occurred during time towards emphasing more politicially powerful regions with the idea of new regionalism. Sweden represents a deviant case study, where regions historically have been politically weak and where Sweden has been characterized as a strong unitary state. The aim of this paper is to analyze the political debate in the Swedish parliament concerning the implementation of a stronger regional level (storregioner) during 2007-2010 and to determine if the debate can be characterized as a case of depoliticalization. The theory of depoliticalization have been introduced by Richard Katz and Peter Mair to explain why political parties through external pressure from europeanisation and globalization tend to become more consensual with similar political agendas, leading to a diminished the lef-right scale.

In 2005 we made a research in a Swedish community board about their view on the political and ideological intentions of ?a school for all?. The results from that study were the background to this research.The aim with this research was to find out how principles in the same community were thinking about ? a school for all? and if they were leading a development towards ?a school for all?. In that context they were given the opportunity to explain their definition and reasoning about ?inclusion? and ?integration?.

Liberal theorists typically argue that state action should not favor any particular conception of the good or meaningful life. On this view the defining characteristic of the liberal state is neutrality among rivaling ideas of the good. This thesis argues that state neutrality is impossible to maintain in practice. Two different versions of state neutrality; neutral justification and neutral aims, are used to analyze a wide range of political issues. It is concluded that far from being neutral, the liberal state favors individualistic and market oriented conceptions of the good life.

The Swedish alcohol policy has by tradition a restrictive composition, with high taxes and the Swedish Alcohol Retailing Monopoly as important elements. The Moderate Party has been powerful critics of the alcohol policy and has advocated a reformation. However, today the Moderate Party seems to have changed the attitude towards the alcohol policy and it even supports the Swedish initiative to create cooperation about alcohol matters at the EU level.This thesis examines why the Moderate Party has changed its attitude towards the restrictive alcohol policy. Three aspects have been considered: the rise of a European public policy, strategic choice, and the influence of the political environment. The paper discusses the problem from a strategic perspective, which means that the political change is viewed as a result of strategic considerations.The party has indeed been affected by all of the three aspects, although to different extent.

Homework is and has always been a part of school work. It may take a lot of time from the pupils? leisure. Despite this, you cannot find anything written about homework in the curriculum. How can this be? Is homework necessary and what is its function?The purpose of this study is to find out how a few teachers in primary school reason about homework.  What are their attitudes towards homework and what functions do they see?To get an answer to this I studied literature and research reports, and did four qualitative interviews with teachers who teach grades 1-6.The results show that all the teachers give homework to their pupils, but their opinions about homework differ.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to compare the scheme structure of two national classifications system, namely the Swedish SAB system and the German ASB. It has been assumed that there are no major differences between the two models of classification systems or the main classes into which documents are placed. The classification theory and subject analysis, which form the basic theory on which my research is based, are taken from Dahlberg, Langridge and Rowley. A comparison of 30 monographs classified in the SAB system Sveriges allmänna biblioteksförening and in the German ASB system Allgemeine Systematik für öffentliche Bibliotheken showed that the classification structure was primarily responsible for determining where a particular document was placed. However, despite the fact that the subject in various documents may be similar, my research will demonstrate that the structure of the two codes also depends on different interpretations of the main subject in a document.

In 2005 we made a research in a Swedish community board about their view on the political and ideological intentions of ?a school for all?. The results from that study were the background to this research.The aim with this research was to find out how principles in the same community were thinking about ? a school for all? and if they were leading a development towards ?a school for all?. In that context they were given the opportunity to explain their definition and reasoning about ?inclusion? and ?integration?.

The consociational democracy model in Macedonia, which came out from a warcrisis and a peace agreement from 2001, in addition, putting an end to the violent conflict, actually admits the division of the society along the ethnic lines. Paradoxically, there is an attempt to bridge the ethnic gap with this model. As a result, the consociational democracy model holds solutions that can be abused if somebody misuses its power and desires to disintegrate the country. The future development depends therefore on the moderate attitude of the citizens, and first and foremost, on the political elites and their commitment to the values of democracy and human rights instead of their nationalistic goals. Furthermore, thepresent democratic consolidation in Macedonia is established on the execution of the peace agreement and the improved effectiveness of the institutions.

The word crisis is often used in everyday language, but according to political theory it actually refers to a crisis situation within a country where national interests suddenly are at stake demanding that important and complex decisions must be made within certain time constraints. These decisions can in turn lead up to most fatal consequences. USA, being one of the world's superpowers is most certainly involved in crisis situations directly or indirectly, frequently or more seldom. Amounts of people get suddenly involved and even more people can be drawn in by the decisions that are made thereby. Research has shown that the character of a leader affects decision-making.

AbstractThe aim of this thesis is to investigate how the Swedish political parties have been discussing gender politics since 1970 to nowadays, in order to see which problems and solutions that have been suggested by the parties to increase the representation of women and the equality between the sexes. The theoretical framework is constructed by theories of women´s representation, gender politics and women?s interest.To describe how the discussions about gender politics have been between the different parties, the methodological foundation consists of an ideology critical textual analysis of the political programs from the Swedish parties.The analysis confirms that the discussions about gender politics and the political representation of women increase over time. The most important issue of equality is the lack of women´s rights and possibilities in the labor market as a consequence of women´s responsibility of home and childcare. The analysis also shows that parties which discuss women as a category and the underrepresentation of women also point out the importance to increase equality between men and women..

This paper deals with a partly new development in the Swedish law system, somewhere in the boundary between political science and jurisprudence. A new instrument -artbrott- has successively become more popular among lawyers and politicians. The new instrument -here translated to classified crimes- signifies that the perpetrator is sentenced to prison even though the seriousness of the crime committed is not in itself serious enough for such a consequence. The reason for this policy stance is to create a prevention against crime of that specific character among the public. The use of this instrument has grown considerably both concerning types of crimes as well as in application.

The Sand Catcher                                                       The thesis project The Sand Catcher investigates the encounter between permanent structures and an ever-changing landscape. The migrating sand dune Råbjerg Mile in northern Denmark is 40 meters high and moves more than 15 meters every year. By introducing a solid structure on the site, the fast movement of the sand dune is emphasised and thereby our view of time and space.Through intuitively building models with varied openings and densities I investigated how architectural elements react with sand. From these experiments a series of spatial features and effects were found, generated from the meeting with the sand.The Sand Catcher is a solid and permanent structure. The sand is the liquid element that generates new spaces, circulations and experiences.

Often, the green is handled as an opposite to the built, but if it could be seen as a part of the built and the society, the planning will be easier to handle. The thesis work wants to create a method that treats villages in an analytic way in a context; with green, blur, grey and all the other colors that together are the completeness.This master's thesis is made to be used as foundation in detail plannng in the municipality of Örkelljunga. Target audience is on one hand those who work with planning and green matters in Örkelljunga municipality, but also other planners who work with landscape.Literature in the field of green city planning has been studied and 30 methods for analysis have been valued. The method for analysis that has been used in this work is a merging of ten different methods and has included literature studies, sketches, interviews and work on spot. The ten methods are consciously chosen to together make one comprehensive and true image of the village, as far as it is possible.

This study illuminates one part of the mathematic teaching in school, which is mathematical problem solving in groups. It examines teacher?s and student?s ideas about what conditions it takes to be able to learn in groups. Further on, it studies the importance of group structure when it comes to working with mathematical problem solving in groups from a process focused and/or a product focused learning. Through observations of student groups and interviews with the students and the mathematic teachers, the material has been compiled and analysed under three different headings: conditions for learning in a mathematical problem solving situation, importance of group structure in a mathematical problem solving situation and process versus product.

AbstractDue to the success of the Populist Party Sverigedemokraterna in the Swedish election of 2006, the daily paper Sydsvenska Dagbladet published a number of columns written by well-known academics, writers and debaters. Their aim was to address the question of why this happened in the election and what it is in the Swedish society today that brought forward these trends. The first and the last word was given to the writer Fredrik Ekelund, and therefore the debate was named Ekelunddebatten.The debaters are fighting to present their view of the world as the only option when categorizing different societal groups and appointing themselves as group representatives. My aim is to unravel these different conceptions of the world and to do this I use the Dicourse Analysis as a method. I discuss the results with Critical Discourse Theory as a theoretical base and also from the view of the current societal discourses: the working class discourse, the multicultural discourse and the discourse of political correctness.I mainly observe four different conceptions of the world with different posing of problems.