The aim of this essay is to study the decision making process and implementation of the principle of political participation and influence for Roma minority in Sweden. The results regarding the decision making process is structured through a discourse influenced policy analyses. Problem picture and recommended measures in the political documents representing the decision making process are analysed through theories of minority rights and equality. The implementation is seen through, by the author given minority discourse and the work in the roma council and analysed by the same theories already mentioned.The results show that regarding the decision process the aim of art.15 in the framework convention is based on the idea of equality while the Swedish documents relates more to an idea of the right to speak for the group. Regarding recommended measures, the framework convention gives several recommendations on specific measures for political participation while the Swedish documents focuses on the general politics of the state.

This master thesis is an analysis of how the amount of health centers per inhabitant has changed since the Swedish government implemented a new health care reform in 2010. The reform implies a free choice of health centers in the Swedish regions and opens up the market for private firms. The purpose of the thesis is to study the effects of the different financing systems toward the health centers in the regions. The models are based on theories of the need of health care. Two of the independent variables which are studied are income and age.

In the beginning of this century United Nations expressed their concern about the lack of female participation in politics through a number of resolutions and conventions. To ensure sustainable development and democracy, United Nations argued the importance of women?s participation in every level of politics within a state.Burma is a country that is in the middle of an ongoing democratization process and women are not considered to participate in this process. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to analyze the experience of politically involved Burmese women in their political participation progress.This study has been realized through semi-structured interviews with nine Burmese women, in both Thailand and Burma. The questions that have been asked are about what societal and cultural barriers women meet when they are, or want to be, political involved, both from the society and within their own political organizations.

The Swedish public inquiries and most of the political science advocate reforms in the spirit of participatory democracy to strengthen the democracy. Although it is striking how limited and narrow the scientific documentation is in analysing the effects of participatory democratic reforms. Still, many of the local governments in Sweden are reshaping their organisations according to the participatory democracy model. Is it a trend and a symbolic action or a veritable action of good-will of the politicians?The paper argues that the idea of participatory democracy has become popular and widely spread.

Eutrophication of the Baltic Sea and Swedish lakes remains a major problem despite many years of effort to reduce the emissions of nutrients. One major source is waste water systems, especially private sewage systems. These sewages accounts for a very large share of nutrients per capita in comparison with citizens connected to larger sewage treatment plants. Norrtälje community has the greatest number of private sewage systems in Sweden. Discharges of nutrients, especially phosphorus, to the Baltic Sea from these sewage systems are significant.

Drain water heat recovery is an uncommon measure in multi-unit residential buildings. There istechnology available for the purpose but the knowing and experience of the heat recovery systems islittle. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the future potential of drain water heat recovery inmulti-unit residential buildings.A major part of the multi-unit residential buildings in Sweden were built during modernismen andrekordåren (1940?1975). Many of the buildings have worn out drain and water supply systems andmany are in need of a general refurbishment.

Wastewater treatment is increasingly controlled by the Swedish environmental quality objectives, adopted by the Swedish parliament. There is a need for a sewage system that can fulfill stringent requirements concerning the environment, recycling and resource use and hygiene. Additional environmental aspects in recent years are the impact of climate change, new knowledge about the effects of pharmaceuticals in water, the need for improved wastewater treatment and increased recycling of nutrients to agriculture. This report has, from a future scenario of the year 2050, analyzed seven different systems for wastewater treatment and treatment of compostable biowaste from households in Eskilstuna. A future scenario was chosen based on that within a forty year period new challenges may arise which can result in higher demands on sewage treatment than those we see today. Another reason why the future scenario was established is that changes in wastewater treatment systems are slow to establish. The analysis is mainly focused on the economical aspects but environmental aspects such as emissions to receiving waters and potential recycling of plant nutrients has also been evaluated briefly.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the Swedish model with attention to core values over time, as well as, explain recent changes. It examines changes of the social insurance system, with focus on political reforms in the unemployment insurance, health insurance and family policy, during the last two decades. The thesis is empirical but although a discourse amount political theories and normative conceptions.Conclusions are that the normative basis in the Swedish model contains general equally and uni-versally designed rights and consensus on growth and development as well as a strict focus on an employment oriented society. Important values have also been dialogue between actors as well as accountability, even if these facts appear to have declined in recent years.Relating to three leading theories in political philosophy - utilitarianism, Rawlsian communitarian-ism - explores the directions in later year political reforms. The results show that later years changes seem to go in relative strongly utilitarian direction.

This paper concerns the divide between secularist and anti-secularist groups in Turkey, which is related to a greater antagonism between a Kemalist and an Islamic political discourse, dominant in Turkish politics since the 1980s. The main aim of the paper is to analyse the causes of the conflict using the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe. The second aim is to analyse the contents of each discourse and identify the main points of conflict between them. The empirical material used in the study consists exclusively of secondary sources treating the topic, and these are analysed using the theory of identity conflicts, which is part of Laclau and Mouffe's theory. It will be argued that the attempts of Kemalism to impose strict secularism by hegemonising the concepts of ?modernity? and ?Islam? led to the creation of an alternative political discourse based on political Islam.

 The purpose of this essay is to study the republican and socialist Northern Ireland political party Sinn Féin and to examine its legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens of Northern Ireland. Is it possible to have a political agenda that includes violence and still maintain legitimacy? The Irish Republican Army?s (IRA) military struggle was for a long time a part of the party?s political agenda. This strategy has been described as to have a ballot paper in one hand and an Armalite in the other, and successfully made Sinn Féin one of the province?s largest political parties.

AbstractEssay in Political Science, autumn 2010. ?ALBA ? A regional integration project with good conditions?? Autor: Anna Sjögren. Course: Political Science, C-level, Tutor: Sten Berglund An essential part of the political science research on regional integration has been about why states join economic unions and what forces drive the process of integration. This essay is a case study on the Latin American regional integration project called ALBA.

This thesis aims to investigate SAAB AB´s possibilities to use synthetic instruments in their test systems. The reason for this is reducing costs and the risk of obsolescence which is common when test systems operate for several decades.The market around synthetic instruments has been explored in the search for suitable hardware and software. Software has been developed in LabVIEW and synthetic instruments have been created with the help of IVI-drivers. The hardware consisted of PXI-instruments (Waveform generator and Digitizer), connected to a computer using a fiber optic link and PXI-chassi. The created instruments was then compared to common instruments used today, and the comparison turned out well.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the satellite states of the former Communist bloc immediately departed on a journey towards democracy and market capitalism. Among the many tasks of the newly elected governments, one was to transform the paternalist Communist welfare state into a social system that would decrease the oversized role of the state, at the same time as protecting the citizens from the hardships ensued from the transition.I have studied the evolution of new welfare systems in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, three countries generally agreed as the most similar and most successfull transition countries of the Eastern bloc. Gøsta Esping-Andersen's prominent typology of welfare regimes, consisting of the liberal, corporatist and social democratic regime-types, has constituted the theoretical basis of the analysis. Simultaneously, applying new cases to the typology implies an element of theory testing.The study shows that 40 years of Communism and partial isolation from the West has not prevented these three countries from developing welfare states fully compatible with those of Western Europe and the Anglo-Saxon nations and that all three of them in fact fall within the scope of the corporatist regime-type..

Title: Images of Sweden in ItalyNumber of pages: 5252 (589 including enclosures)Author: Oskar GustafssonTutor: Martin NilssonCourse: Political Science C level ? Bachelor?s ThesisPeriod: Spring term 2010University: School of Social SciencesLinnaeus UniversityPurpose/Aim: The purpose of my research study is to, through the use of political science theories on soft power and marketing theories about nation branding and in comparison to previous studies on the image of Sweden in Italy, gains a better understanding of the image of Sweden in Italy, with special focus on national political institutions and young Italians.Method: The method of analysis is a combination of qualitative methods: interviews where information about the image of Sweden amongst national political institutions were gathered and a survey where information was gathered about the image of Sweden amongst young Italians.Main results: On the basis of the results I have gained it can be concluded that a positive and well informed image of Sweden emerges when it comes to cultural and social factors but a more restricted and somewhat negative image come to light when asking national political institutions and young citizens in Italy about their views and knowledge on Swedish domestic and international politics and economics.Keywords: Soft power, Public Diplomacy, Nation Branding, Images of Sweden, Italy..

As the numbers of immigrants to Sweden and the EU are ever increasing even the right-wing populist parties grow faster in number. Sweden, Germany and France are three European countries that receive 90 percent of all asylum seekers and should therefore have a well-established and talked about immigration policy one can think. Yet the political parties in Sweden do not mention much about the immigration policy apart from the political party Sweden Democrats. This study aims to analyze eight different political parties in the Swedish parliament through a textual analysis to see what kind of immigration policy they share. Carl Dahlström has a theory to determine what type of policy a certain party has and whether they want to assimilate or integrate immigrants.