The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze why or why not Swedish municipalities implement the gender equality policy ? ?right to work fulltime?. In order to understand this institutional change, the analysis is based on a theoretical framework consisting of two fields: political representation and feminist institutionalism. The study is divided into two empirical inquiries. The first part is based on a quantitative survey that describes the casual relationship between two independent variables; women´s political representation and party ideology, and the dependent variable; political decision about ?right to work fulltime?.

The increasing significance of social economy as a concept is linked to general global processes such as the crisis of the welfare state, neoliberal globalization, anti-bureaucracy tendencies and decentralization, but also to a growing political interest in human rights and social development. In Sweden the idea of the social economy generates wide support within civil society as well as within the government and across party political boundaries. Furthermore, what is problematic in this context is the fact that the discussions on the subject tend to be relatively uncritical and often it seems as if though the expansion itself is the main objective. The emphasis on cooperation and the third sector in terms of welfare production implies a set of risks in relation to state responsibility, democracy and the autonomy of civil society. This paper aims to explore those risks and how they can be dealt with within the Swedish context..

AbstractTitle: 2008- the year of the mobile-TV-markets expansion? (2008- ett år för mobil-tv-marknadens utbredning? Drivkrafter hinder och aktörer).Number of pages: 50Author: Hilda EngstrandTutor: Lowe HedmanCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: Fall Semester 2007University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University.Purpose/Aim: The aim of this research paper is to identify the main operators on the mobile-tv-market and to map out the main forces behind its growth. What are the driving forces that creates a new disribution-market? Also to study how political media-regulation effect and urge the mobile-tv- market.Material/Method: Interviews with people from the mobile-tv-market. To read public-documents, press releases and reports from the government, media-companies and organisations has also been a method used to gain information.Main results: That the mobile-tv-markets growth is a result of several driving forces.

Written declarations in the European Parliament have not been given muchattention in the field of political science. The scope of this Master's thesis is toexamine whether symbolic politics are present in written declarations and howthis may show. In this study, the aspects of symbolic politics of writtendeclarations of the sixth parliamentary term are examined using a taxonomy foridentifying symbolic politics developed by Peter Santesson-Wilson. Thetaxonomy is applied on 15 written declarations, all adopted by the EuropeanParliament, dealing with a variety of EU-related issues, ranging from July 2004 toJuly 2008.The main findings of the study show that symbolic politics is a presentphenomenon in nearly all written declarations (13 out of 15 cases) subject to thisstudy.In the final chapter of this study inter alia symbolic politics as a deliberateaction is discussed in the view of written declarations. Irrespective of this, onecould say that symbolic politics are institutionalised in the European Parliament,at least when it comes to written declarations..

On December 20, 2001, the Swedish citizen Mehdi Ghezali was captured on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ghezali spent the following 930 days in U.S. captivity, without being charged with any crime. My aim in this essay is to analyze how Ghezali was portrayed in three Swedish newspapers under and after his captivity, two nationwide and one local newspaper based in Ghezali's hometown. My purpose is to see whether Ghezali's identity is constructed differently in the three newspapers, as regards The Other, Stereotypization, etc.

Abstract The law in sexual crimeis one of the most important sections in law that we have for the legalsecurity in relation to the victims. It took many years before Sweden began toactively examine how our laws were designed in this area, but throughout the2000s, several reforms have taken place. These have in turn led to SOU 2010:71,the inquiry is for us to have a new sexual offenses law again January 1st 2012. The major reform took place in 2005,which would change the whole structure of Sexual Crimes Act by the new Chapter6. The goal here was to increase the protection of children victims of sexualabuse of any kind. Furthermore, they changed the term "sexualrelations" to "sexual conduct" throughout the entire chapter 6.The reason for this was that the former term is considered to be misinterpretedthat an assault could be seen as mutual.

The chosen task in this thesis is to compare two projects of importance on the impact on the approach to graffiti in Norrköping and Göteborg. My main source for empirical findings was interviews. I have examined the Norrköping project Canslit including legal graffiti walls and a graffiti school and the political process around it. This was compared to the Göteborg project kulturprojekt Röda Sten, which is a cultural center that happens to be covered in illegal graffiti. The conclusion was that due to the very detailed plans and well-functioning communications between actors in the Norrköping project, this has resulted in a creative, tolerant approach to graffiti still with low rate of illegal graffiti.

Within the political science research it is common to examine the effects on the national parliaments caused by European integration. In this Bachelor Thesis the aim is instead to show what involvement of the national parliaments in the European Union implicates to the European integration process.The object of examination is the introduction of the parliaments as supervisors of draft legislative acts, this is also known as ?the Early Warning Mechanism?, through the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. An analysis of answers from the national parliaments in the tests of three pilot cases, conducted by the COSAC, is made with help of Institutional theory and an Europeanization perspective.The main findings show that the mechanism of early warning probably will not become an obstacle for continued European integration, but it could slow down the process in some areas. Most probably though is that the mechanism forces the national parliaments to adapt and to be better equipped to react at events taking place at the European level.

This research addresses the issues of identity and culture in Latvia in the context of the upcoming European Union enlargement in 2004. Political self- determination of Latvia was historically indebted to culture. The phenomenon of cultural identity, so important 12 years ago when Latvian independence was regained, is largely ignored by politicians in the upcoming enlargement process. This is especially worth attention since the 8-th parliamentary elections took place in October 2002. The obvious lack of interest in cultural issues on the part of politicians is compensated by the apprehensions in the society (reflected in mass media) to loose Latvian specific culture and identity when joining the big European family.

This essay intends to investigate the view on freedom of speech in Sweden. The expanding of the hate crime law rises the question if there is a current changing view on freedom of speech. By comparing motions concerning an expanding of the hate crime law from different periods, I am able to conclude if and how the view on the term freedom of speech has taken place. This is done in a descriptive analysis of terms, where the different values and arguments for a change is compared. The material is taken from the period 1991-1993 and 2000-2001.

We have studied how power is portrayed in Swedish journals by analyzing eight portraits of Swedish persons with economic or political power. We have studied how they and their power are described by the journalist in text and picture. We wanted to see which picture the journalist shows of people with power, what properties they are given by the journalist and how this picture is shown by the texts and the pictures. We have also looked if there are any differences between people with political power and people with economic power. We have under our studies noticed that the persons with power are described as very successful and special and this picture are shown in a very clear and unproblematic way..

In this thesis I discuss and analyse the use of violence of Basque radical nationalists after the 11th of September 2001 and the bombing of Madrid the 11th of March 2004. The field study is performed in the Basque country with interviews both on the French and Spanish side of the border with representatives from the Basque Nationalist Liberation Movement (BNLM).After the 11th of September the Spanish government continued its struggle against the countries own terror - ETA. But as the research will show the new political context after the 11/9 made it possible for the state to intensify the labelling of groups from the BNLM as terrorist organisations and thereby putting its members and leaders in prison for terrorism. My research shows that this social change may lead to a mobilisation of activists inside ETA, which in turn might create a continuity of the group's use of violence. The scenario is though challenged by an other setting in which the political situation after the 11/9 have made use of violence by militant groups like ETA illegitimate and irrational as a consequence of the mental trauma among the people of the western world.

In this thesis I discuss about economical and political transition in countries that is consecutively being induced by influential external actors. Looking closer on the role of the EU as a dynamic transitional force, with the intention of examining to what extent the EU can pursuit its interest and modify the economical as well as the political structures of transition countries. With relations to four transition states on the Western Balkans, more precise Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia-Montenegro and Macedonia (FYROM), I have examined the influential position of the EU. Another feature that is discussed is the approach of the EU and the cause of it in respect to the Western Balkans. Since the end of the crises in Kosovo the EU was given the leading roll in stabilizing and reconstructing the Western Balkans.

The question of whether there is soft law in international law has been as much the subject of contemporary debate as whether or not there is private legal authority in the international society. The legal boundaries seem to be blurred by the process of globalisation and the recent shift in international law. The traditional definition of international law has been outdated as new forms of treaties has introduced new subject of law to the judicial arena. At the same time a supplementary map of law has been added to the cartography of international law, soft law. These correlating processes have comprehensive political and legal consequences at both the international and national levels.

This thesis takes as its starting-point the different stands on the ever ongoing growth of multinational corporations (MNCs) and its consequences. Two opposing branches of theories, arguing that the establishment of MNCs in developing countries is good respectively bad for these countries, are tested for the aspect of state capacity. A quantitative method is then used to test if there exists such a relationship at all and if so, which of the two notions that are right.The presence of MNCs is measured as FDI of GDP while state capacity is defined as a combined index for three of ICRG's Political risk indicators. The two variables are analysed, mainly by cross tabulation, using an extensive dataset of 130 developing countries measured for a period of 20 years.The outcome is though ambiguous: No solid correlation can be found, but countries with a higher rate of FDI of GDP tend to have a slight worse rate of state capacity throughout the analysis. Thus the result points in favour of the notion that MNCs are bad for developing countries? state capacity.