C-essay in political science by Dennis Callejas Gidlund, ht-14. Supervisor: FreddyKjellström.?Great minds think alike. An comparativa study of the Social Democrats and theModerates parties programme 1990-2013.?The purpose with the essay is to examine if the Social Democrats and the Moderates havegotten closer within labor market policies, education policies and also within the view ofmigration and integration.

This thesis uses critical discourse analysis to examine how the English-speaking press in Hong Kong constructs the conflict between the political movement Occupy Central and the Chinese central government. The empirical material consists of ten articles from the region?s two largest English-speaking newspapers, Hong Kong?s oldest newspaper, the South China Morning Post, and China?s only national English-speaking newspaper, the China Daily. Building on the works of Teun van Dijk, Norman Fairclough, Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson it examines what political ideologies that are favoured by the press and what attitude the press shows for democratic development.

This essay deals with development in Latin America. We have picked out some factors that the theories in development theory emphasize on. The first section of the study consists of a statistical analysis, were the main purposes are to study the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent and to choose which two countries we should focus on in the next section. The countries we decided to study were Costa Rica and Nicaragua, because these countries have shown very different levels of development. From this study we have concluded that political stability, economical investements and human investments are the most important factors when creating development..

This thesis has aimed to study steering process and institutionalization in the context of educational policy work. This has been conducted by using empirical material from the political decision-making process that preceded the implementation of a new national program on how principals should be educated and certified. By using an aggregated theoretical point of view containing new institutionalism and traditional Swedish curriculum theory, the process was analyzed from different perspectives. The results depict a process that contained several actors who tried to shape the principal education program differently. From the theoretical perspectives, the decision-making process could be understood as an act of both self-interest as well as trust in their own beliefs and cultural values.

The aim of this thesis is to describe the rise of the Tea Party movement in the United States. By using a known theory within social movement studies, the political process theory, this thesis look into the factors that could have played a role in the rise and fast mobilization of the Tea Party movement. The political process theory consists of three parts and hence looks into both the political structure of, in this case, the United States, how mobilizing structures have been used and into the cultural framing used by the Tea Party to create their identity. In order to bring structure to the thesis, the three theory parts have been transformed into analysis models. These give a very good idea of all the factors that could have played a part and therefore also a good way to describe the rise of the Tea Party movement.The research confirm what the political process theory says, that the Tea Party movements rise came at a time when there were a mix of factors at play, both structural and cultural, creating an opportunity that the Tea Party took.

The worsening of psychical health issues among young people has widely been discussed over the last few years. Research shows for example that 9% of girls at the age of 16-24 reported anxiety problems in 1989 while 16 years later, in 2005, the same number was 30%. The purpose of this essay was to study and analyze psychiatrists', psychologists' and counselors' view on the resilience and risk factors for youth depression (age 16-24). Beside this, our aim was to study their view on the influence of family environment on treatment and recovery. Data were collected with qualitative interviews with eight informants within the psychiatric care.

The aim of this paper is to map out the purposes of the United Nations Peacekeeping Operations. This is done in order to see if humanitarian tendencies have been an increasingly cause for the UN to initiate an intervention with military means. This paper uses the time period from the end of the cold war until today, since that historic occurrence increased the U.N.?s involvement in peacekeeping. By using this time span it enables the survey to indicate changes in the mapping of humanitarian interventions.

The view on which kind of fiction that should be mediated to the public through the Swedish public library system has since the late 60´s been dominated by what in this Master?s thesis is called: ´the discourse on quality of literary fiction´. The aim of this thesis is to examine to which extent this discourse still plays an active role in the Swedish public library system or if that discourse has been replaced by a more market-led, demand responsive view, where the features of ´quality´ and ´culture´ have been downplayed and replaced by a ´customer?s service view´ on how and why fiction should be mediated to the public. The methodological and theoretical perspective in this thesis is led by the understanding of the discourse analysis in Michel Foucault?s ´The Archaeology of Knowledge´.

In this essay I discuss and analyse if we can witness any signs on regional dimension due to regional representation from our elected representatives in the five constituencies Malmö, Blekinge, Norrbotten, Uppsala and Stockholm. Two seperate terms of office between 1991-94 and 1998-2002 has been compared. In political science there has been much debate about the relationship between voters and their elected. By measuring each and everyone elected representatives in the work of produce introduced bills towards their own constitiency during both terms I have tried to see if there is an occurence of a regional dimension.The theory that´s been applied is based on geographical representation where one might aspect that central metropolitan areas and peripheral regions is somewhat over-represented in legislatures. By using a method of comparison between the five chosen constituencies and theirs elected representatives I have come the the conclusion that there is a weak tendency that this might be the case seen to a regional dimension perspective..

After the tsunami disaster in December 2004 many arguments were heared that one oft the major reasons behind the poor Swedish effort connected to the evacuation and health care of the Swedish citizens in Thailand right after the incident is the Swedish model with independent government authorities. By comparing the constitution, the political decision making tradition by the ministers and the handling of the catastrophe in the tree Scandinavian countries Denmark, Norway and Finland, plus analysing the behaviour of the Swedish foreign and prime minister from a rational choose inspired individual decision making theory the research shows that there is no proof that a constitutional change in Sweden into the traditional model with government authorities controlled by the ministers alone would led to a more effective crisis handling by the government due to crises concerning Swedish citizens out states. Although the research shows that the constitution and the tradition of decision making in the government provides the basic condition of the ministers individual rational decision making.

This thesis has aimed to study steering process and institutionalization in the context of educational policy work. This has been conducted by using empirical material from the political decision-making process that preceded the implementation of a new national program on how principals should be educated and certified. By using an aggregated theoretical point of view containing new institutionalism and traditional Swedish curriculum theory, the process was analyzed from different perspectives. The results depict a process that contained several actors who tried to shape the principal education program differently. From the theoretical perspectives, the decision-making process could be understood as an act of both self-interest as well as trust in their own beliefs and cultural values.

Uppsatsen granskar systemet för utjämning mellan kommunerna ur political economy- och tillväxtperspektiv. Political economy-analysen undersöker i vilken utsträckning systemets utformning möjliggör politiskt motiverad taktisk omfördelning. Av denna analys framgår att det rådande statsbidrags- och utjämningssystemet ger ett mycket begränsat utrymme för diskretionära bidrag. Den övergripande slutsatsen av political economy-analysen är att det finns en påtaglig kontrast mellan ansatserna i de akademiska studierna och de offentliga utredningarna. Analysen ur tillväxtperspektiv granskar vilka effekter långtgående kommunutjämning kan tänkas ha på arbetskraftsrörligheten, samt vilka konsekvenser detta kan tänkas ha för den långsiktiga ekonomiska tillväxten.

 The 2008 U.S. Presidential Elections were in many ways special, where the USA got its first president of Afro-American origin, Barack Obama. The elections will also be historical since the great use of social medias - as the community Facebook, the video sharing site YouTube and web based diaries, blogs - broke through during the campaigns. This study's purpose was to examine how a few members of the Swedish parliament described the result of the Presidential Elections in their blogs. The main question - how the election results were described in the blogs - was divided into three themes, created on the basis of the blog's content.

The purpose of the study is to examine eight individuals? experiences and conceptions of political consumerism. Main notions in the study are concepts like reshaping of the politics, morality and individualization. The method of choice is qualitative interview and grounded theory. Theories that deal with consumer society, subpolitics and individualization constitute the theoretical framework.

This thesis aimed to describe how the ideological dividing line concerning the welfare state has changed between the two largest governmental parties in Sweden, the Social Democrats and the Moderaterna, during 1990 to 2010. The scientist Mark Blyth points out that ideas are important instruments for structural and institutional change by identifying ideas as weapons, blueprints and cognitive locks, which were being used in the theoretical framework. The empirical data was made by a qualitative analysis of the parliamentary speeches and debates from both parties held every year. The results shows that the budgetary law passed in 1997 became a new institutional blueprint, which changed the political conditions for the Social Democrats. Furthermore, the results point to a change in the Moderaterna?s rhetoric concerning the welfare state to a more pragmatic view. .