In May 2004 the European Union enlarged from 15 to 25 member states and it was the biggest enlargement since the foundation. Two years earlier Poland, as one of the new member states, finished four years of accession negotiations with the EU.This study focus on the case of Poland and how the accession negotiations with EU were conducted. According to the theoretical framework of asymmetric negotiations Poland was said to be a weak party and the EU was considered a strong party in the enlargement negotiations.The aim of the thesis is to examine Poland's negotiation performance and determine what Polish failure and success in the accession negotiations depends on. The research contains a illustration of the motives for enlargement, the negotiation process and structure, attitudes and behaviour and finally results of negotiations in specific areas.The study concludes that Poland's negotiation performance was influenced by the Polish negotiation team's unpleasant attitude, confused organizational structure, lack of coalition partners and the strong will to become a member state, in both positive and negative ways. Finally, Poland was most successful in negotiations that concerned specific issues which were of great importance for Poland but less prioritized by the EU..

Today equal representation between the genders in parliament is something to be desired. One way to reach the goal of equal representation is by using quotas. The purpose of the study is to research the lack of equality in elected institutions by using a perspective on qoutas.  The study also seeks to find answers to if using quotas is a good method according to gender studies. A text analysis is being used to find reasonable solutions to the study´s presented complivations.  By analyzing different texts about quotas some of the more common arguments in the discussion about using quotas in parliaments were highlighted. Some of the more frequent arguments to implement quotas are that it would be more just but also that women and men may have different interests, experiences and therefore equal representation would be a question of resources.

In industry applications, such as power supply plants, the issue of interaction between fluid and structure is always presented. More precisely, the fluid flow affects the structure by applying force(s) on it and vice versa. As a result, the structure can move (vibrate) or deform. A good understanding of this problem can help to design the system in term of safety, stability and efficiency.This project aims to optimize and test the Unicorn FSI solver from the FEniCS project [1] to simulate the interaction of fluid and structure in an experiment, which was carried out at Vattenfall Research and Development. The target is to improve the Unicorn FSI solver to cope with a real industrial problem.

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.

AbstractThe recruiting of lay judges to the district courts is managed by the political parties. Despite repeated efforts the parties do not succeed in recruiting lay judges that reflect the structure of the inhabitants. Why not? This is the fundamental issue of this essay.This study is a multiple case study of two parties with different success in their recruiting work. The purpose is to study the process of nomination regarding lay judges at the district courts, at the latest election (2006).

During the past year it has been made possible to buy back a company?s outstanding stock. This is done in order to change the capital structure towards a situation with less equity. A change in capital structure means a change in the cost of capital for a company and by that a change in the value for the stockholder. This Master Thesis studies the relation between capital structure and business risk.

ABSTRACT Essay in political science, C-level by Chris Baldebo spring semester 2010. Tutor: Arne Larsson. ?Women?s conditions in municipal politics in the municipality of Karlstad - Six politicians tell?.  The purpose of this paper is to explore women?s conditions in the municipal political work in the municipality of Karlstad.

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine what political, social and ideological reasons that were the base for the establishment of the Swedish temperance movement. Which judgements within this movement that resulted in the decision to establish publishing firms, how these publishing businesses were organised and what function they had in the literary circuit. The questions are: What principal political, social, economical and ideological reasons were the bases for the establishment of the Swedish temperance movement? How has their need for publishing firms arisen? Which were the publishing firms and who were the publishers? What ideas, purposes, experiences, values and judgements led to the establishment of publishing firms? In the first part of the theory I have used the historical materialism of Karl Marx; in the second part the theory of middle class publicity by Jürgen Habermas; and in the third part I have made a presentation of the literary circuit and how it works according to Marx and Habermas. The method used is an analysis of ideas and ideologies in literature and documents.

Religious congregations and social work have long been a neglected field of research. Although the number of studies have increased during the last twenty years. With a starting point in the situation in this field of research and in the current public debate in Sweden the focus of this study will be on how Christian and Muslim congregations view cooperating with the municipalities, organizations, the religious community to whom which the congregation belongs and how the congregations view cooperating with other religious communities. Qualitative method of research was used. Representatives of four religious congregations was interviewed; a deacon in a congregation in the Swedish Lutheran Church, a pastor in a congregation belonging to the Mission Covenent Church of Sweden, the chairman in a the board of a Muslim congregation and volunteerleader in another Muslim congregation.

The idea that I put forward in this thesis concerns the democratic system and the threat from discoursive impact on its core values. I focus my normative analysis on three of these democratic values: transparency, accountability and influence ? and what democratic problems the discoursive impact causes in conflict with them. I have used a critical discourse theory to define discourse and discoursive impact, by focusing on the process of discourse, rather than its nature. I deal with the political structure where I claim that the essential relation between citizen and politician is disrupted, due to lack of information and the imminent problems of the existing network society.

The purpose of this essay is to study causes for the lack of political trust in Europe and especially in Sweden. The essay starts with a presentation of two theories about the reasons for low political trust. Robert D. Putnam among others presents a theory that gives social capital an important role when viewing the low political trust. As Putnam sees it a person that participates in any kind of organization, political or not, develop trust for other human beings that in the long run affects political trust.

This essay has the ambition to examine and compare Croatia?s and Bosnia and Herzegovina?s development towards a consolidated democracy. By applying Linz & Stepen?s theory on how to consolidate a democracy and put focus on political society, behavioral patterns, attitude and constitutional structure the purpose is to find similarities and differences between Bosnia and Croatia within this field.The focus of this study is to compare two similar countries that have developed in very different ways. By applying the theory and a comparative method the purpose is to examine why two so similar countries with so much in common have developed in so different ways?In order to better answer the question there are two part questions and these are:What difficulties, concerning consolidation of democracy, have Croatia and Bosnia faced since the democratic transition in the beginning of the 1990s?What similarities and differences in the area of democratic consolidation (with focus on political society, behavioral patterns, attitude and constitutional structure) are there between the two countries?As the analysis shows, the main reason why these two countries differ so much is that Bosnia is a divided country with different nationalities and each nationality only wants to realize its own interest and does not care about what is best for the country as an entity.

The objective of this thesis is to examine the capital structure of Swedish small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Accounting data from Swedish game developers, combined with the result from a survey, is used to examine their financial conditions and capital structure decisions. We find that non-debt tax shield, firm size, growth opportunities and age are, to various extents, the determinants of capital structure in the game industry, while effective tax rate and asset structure have marginal effects. Our study also implicates that most of the existing capital structure theories can explain SMEs leverage decisions to some extent; however, some adaptation is needed to fit these theories into the SME context. Additionally, we find the existence of a financial gap in the game industry which might need efforts from both demand side and supply side to eliminate..

The relational database model was defined in the 1970?s and is the dominating database type today.  The main difference between data from a relational database and a hierarchical data structure is that the relational database stores records in tables. The records have no particular order, but can include links in terms of relationships with other records. A hierarchical structure organizes data in the form of a tree structure  and  can for an example be found in organizational structures in which different levels involves different responsibilities. If the data stored in a relational database is to be presented in a hierarchically, a conversion of the data structure is required. The intention of this paper is to describe how such a conversion can be performed.  To investigate the conversion methods, case studies has been conducted on the basis of a specific organization?s hierarchical structure.

Citizenship is fundamental for participation in a democracy. It gives us rights but also responsibilities in the state that we are citizens of. Citizenship provides us with the opportunity to vote in order to influence who should govern us. However, not all living in a state are citizens. Some individuals are not included in the political life of the state.In recent years, there has been a rise of nationalist political parties in Europe.