For centuries Islam and Muslims have been subject to islamophobic attitudes in the west. The purpose with this study was to see into the making of open and closed attitudes against Islam and Muslims from a conflict in southern Thailand, and also to so see if Muslims are portrayed as more violent than the Buddhist groups in the conflict. The aim of the study is also to see if Muslims fall into a violent stereotype. This was studied by looking at five Swedish newspapers coverage of the conflict, during a given time. To be able to look into this, two theories will be used, the first one is the Runnymede Trust theory, which is about open and closed attitudes against Islam and Muslims.

This essay examines how three big Swedish newspapers depicts e-sports and computer gaming and how the depiction change during 2000-2013. The study will also examine whether e-sports is being portrayed as competitive sport. The purpose is to investigate which attitudes that can be identified towards computer gaming and its culture in major newspapers such as Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet and how these attitudes eventually changed over time. The sources that will be used in both the quantitative and qualitative analysis are based on web articles, mainly because the paper editions does not provide much, if any, information about computer gaming and e-sports and also because of the convenience of being able to quickly find articles to study. Results indicate that computer gaming is being depicted in a clear negative fashion during 2000-2006, and that the depiction of e-sports is somewhat positive but not as glorifying as for the years 2007-2013. During this period, there is a apparent tendency of e-sports being introduced to readers who are unfamiliar with the gaming culture. As for the attitudes towards computer gaming, the depiction is still somewhat negative, mainly because the debate about computer games and violence was revived because of several acts of violence in shape of school massacres and mass murder.

When it comes to political representation, all over the world women almost always make up a minority of representatives in the legislative bodies. The Scandinavian countries in general and Sweden in particular have though been exceptions to this rule with, when compared to other countries, a rather high percentage of women in elected positions. This development took off in the seventies: during that decade the unit percentage of women in the Swedish Riksdag rose by double!The aim for this thesis is to analyse what underlying ideas influenced this advance. The focus is on three different female party federations, who are believed to have had a great impact on this increase of women politicians through their influence in their own mother parties. The federations analysed are the ones connected to the Social Democratic Party, the Centre Party and the Liberal party.

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).

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to illustrate Serbia?s democratic development on the basis of consolidate democratic perspective. Linz & Stepan´s five arenas (political, civil, economic, legal and bureaucratic) are required for the possibility to become a consolidate democracy. In order to fulfil the aim, I have chosen to focus on the political and civil arenas that are most central in the study of consolidate democracy.The purpose of this study is to process how far Serbia has come towards a consolidate democracy and which obstacles still remain in the transition.The questions in this study are:? What problems has Serbia faced since the democratic transition in the beginning of 1990?? What possibilities are there for Serbia to consolidate the democracy, with focus on the two key arenas of consolidation?By applying the theoretical framework to the data, I have been able to present answers and build up an analysis.

Following essay discusses the possibilities of using a gender perspective when studying local governance within a Swedish context. Governance is an international concept used to describe a more lose, informal and network based way of doing politics The main purpose for conducting this essay is that traditional theoretical frameworks used in the study of local politics are not enough to fully conceptualize the complexity of our changing political environment.After a broad summing up of what had been done in the recent decades within Swedish political science on the topic of local politics and gender I came to the conclusion that so far nothing had been written on governance. The next step was therefore to conduct a pilot study to cover the subject matter of governance and gender. The study was based upon interviews with five female politicians in Malmoe city.Results showed that governance, in terms of informal networks did exist, and had influence over the local politics. Some of the networks were male dominated.

Japan's foreign and security policy has seen some substantial changes as a result of events like the first Gulf war and 9/11th. This has been taken as proof, by some, that Japan is abandoning its antimilitaristic stance and pursuing a more traditional hard power role through military means. This essay aims to explore if these shifts have coincided with any substantial shifts away from antimilitarism, which has had a strong influence on the country's security policy since the end of WW2.To do this I use constructivist theory, specifically regarding the impact of norms and identities on states security policy and briefly look into the problem of actor designation. The thematic focus is on security policy, from a narrow perspective, and thus I examine areas like the input and output to the Japanese military and the actual applications of this force. State identity is used to explore the prevalence of nationalistic sentiments and support for anti militarism in the public opinion and the political elite.The result of this study points to the further relevance of constructivist theory and especially the application of norms and identity.

This thesis intends to examine the role of the city, Dublin, in the Irish economic growth during the 1990s. It is a case study where Dublin is compared with current theories on post modern cities as growth machines and increasingly prominent actors in the global context. The study has an interdisciplinary approach but focuses on political science issues such as power distribution, global-local governance and local political organisation. It is a theory driven study that also intends to add aspects to the understanding of the cities of our time. I argue that Dublin has faced a lot of changes during the last decades in accordance with the post modern city.

Bakgrund: Det är ungefär 10 % av barnen som bor i Sverige som bevittnar våld mot mamman i hemmet. Våldet försiggår i olika familjesammansättningar, inom olika socioekonomiska samt psykosociala typer av familjer. Att bevittna våld kan leda till att barnen får svårt att klara sin skolgång och kan även ge både psykiska och fysiska symtom. Skolsköterskan är en person som alla barn på en skola träffar någon gång under sina skolår och har därför en viktig stödjande roll.Syfte: Syftet med studien var att beskriva skolsköterskors erfarenheter av att arbeta med barn som bevittnar våld mot mamman i hemmet.Metod: I denna studie användes en induktiv ansats där datamaterialet analyserades med kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Datamaterialet bygger på intervjuer som genomfördes med sex skolsköterskor.Resultat: Ur analysen av datamaterialet framträdde två kategorier: identifiera utsatt barn samt tar emot och bekräftar barnets berättelse.Konklusion: Skolsköterskorna försöker skapa en relation mellan sig själv och barnet så att barnet skall uppleva att de har en personlig relation till skolsköterskan och på så sätt ha lättare för att söka stöd hos denne och berätta om sina erfarenheter..

Sammanfattning: Mäns våld mot kvinnor är ett stort socialt problem. Vårt syfte med denna uppsats var att undersöka vilken hjälp det finns för män som har problem med våldsamt beteende i dagens samhälle. Vi undersökte om hjälp finns och vad för behandlingsmetoder som är relevanta för dessa individer. Dessutom har vi studerat hur våldsamt beteende förklaras i litteraturen. Vi försökte ge en bild av hur männen själva talar om sitt våldsamma beteende i olika diskussionsforum.

The objective of this thesis was to investigate factors that influence local government implementation. The study is a comparative case study between two local governments in Sweden; Hässleholm and Landskrona. Primarily the thesis aimed to look at the conditions faced by those implementing a new government directive aimed at supporting women who face violence, and their children who bear witness, by focusing on three key aspects for successful implementation: Implementers level of understanding, knowledge and will to implement decisions. Material in the form of documents and 14 interviews with key actors in the two authorities constitute the empirical foundation of the analysis. According to the results, are the two local governments pretty equal in achieving their projectgoal but the local government of Hässleholm had better policy-making, policy-design and policy process.

Uppsatsen behandlar lagstiftningen som skyddar offentligt anställdas yttrande- och meddelarfrihet. Med grunden i Lennart Lundquists ?offentliga etos? är den utformad som en fallstudie där tre fall granskas för att kartlägga hur dagens lagstiftning fungerar i praktiken.Uppsatsen jämför även med en normativ ansats två olika förslag till förändrade förutsättningar som är ämnade att bättre trygga en fullgod yttrande- och meddelarfrihet för verksamma inom det offentliga..

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..

The North-American sociologist Michael Lipsky has characterized social workers as street-level bureaucrats with a substantial discretion in the relationship between the welfare state and its citizens. Within Lipsky´s theoretical framework social workers appear as a powerful group that socializes the citizens to uphold certain expectations towards the welfare state and its (re)distributional programs. From this point of view, it is important to learn more about social workers and the attitudes they express towards the welfare state. The aim of this study is to analyze how the welfare-political attitudes of future social workers are affected by their social background (e.g. class background and ancestral homeland).

AbstractWith this c-composition, I am trying to give a view over what has happened in the political area and the issues that concerns environmental aid. My analyze starts in the 60-ies when the environmental debate took of. It continues trough the 70-ies, 80-ies and ends in 1994 with the report that considers the UN-conference in Rio de Janeiro 1992, ?Sustainable Aid? and what the results of the more and more important issue ?sustainable development? has offered the Swedish government ant there work with environmental aid.The question issue is: At what time in history, did the Swedisch government start to addrsess environmental aid? How did the environmental aid come to be addressed and developed in the political area from the Brundtlandreport ?Our common future? from 1987 to the UN-conference in Rio de Janeiro 1992?The result is that the environment is getting more and more important in the political arena as the knowledge about the escalating crises with the environmental problems are being taken more seriously. The problems with the environment has to be considered together with the rest of the aid- and developing questions like economy and the struggle to reduce poverty in the world.