The analysis of regional development and the formation of regional policy have experienced an increasing importance in Europe and in Sweden during the last decades. There is a widespread assumption that the increasing significance of regions is due to the diminishing role of the nationstate in the era of globalization. This essay suggests that there is a hegemonic discourse, heavily relying on the assumptions of New Regionalism, when addressing regional building. Sometimes described as an ideology, New Regionalism, which is derived from research of successful regions, is based on the assumption that regional competitiveness and autonomy creates economic growth. The Committee on Public Sector Responsibilities (Ansvarskommittén) suggests that Sweden requires new regional structure, due to the increasing expenditures facing the welfare state.

The aim of this diploma work was to obtain a review of the appeal process in Sweden under the Planning and Building Act and the possibilities of appeal in the planning and building permit process. The work was intended to identify potential problems surrounding the appeal process and possible efficiency measures. The goal was to form a report that provides a satisfactory overview of the appeal process in theory and practical application as well as provide relevant concrete proposals on how the appeal process can be streamlined.Background and facts surrounding the work were taken from different types of literature and through several interviews with representatives in government, industry and Politicians.The main problems related to the appeal process are in the long processing times and the high number of appeals. There is a great interest to streamline the appeals process and the government is going to launch studies in which possible future actions will be investigated.It is possible to appeal for up to two instances before you need a so called ?leave to appeal? in order for your complaint to be passed on to the next instance.

A politician on the peak of his career suddenly sees himself in the middle of not one or two, but five different crisis, that demand a fitting response and a well planned crisis management strategy. While focusing on ethos and its development, the following paper analyses the communicative strategies used by Germany's ex-minister of defense, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. Within his one and a half year tenure he had to handle continuing accusations against policy and character. Guttenberg, who in many eyes was seen as Germany's most popular politician and whose ethos, therefore, prior to the first crisis could be described as strong, is loosing his trustworthiness among the military and other Politicians the longer each crisis continues.The purpose of this study is to identify the communicative pattern of Mr. Guttenberg, which in the end lead to his resignation, while his popularity continues to be strong.

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.

This Master's thesis examines segregation between Swedes and immigrants in school, and more specifically segregation between the two elementary schools Vikingaskolan and Tunaskolan in Lund. This case provides a particularly interesting puzzle, since Lund doesn?t have any pronounced immigrant districts, and was also recognized nationally as best municipality for its schools (2004). In this thesis we try to understand the segregation between the two schools in Lund as an implementation dilemma.The theoretical framework applies a model designed by Lennart Lundquist, which includes three potential causes for implementation problems: the implementer doesn?t understand the decision, the implementer can?t apply the decision, the implementer doesn?t want to carry out the decision.

Author: Gabriella Agné and Helena LarssonTitle: Disability policy program ? a case study of a municipals implementation of UNs Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.Supervisor: Marianne Westring-NordhAssessor: Ulf DruggeThis study aims to examine how a small municipal in southern Sweden works with the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and examine the assistant officers knowledge about this work and user organizations inclusion and user involvement.The study operates from a qualitative approach based on the results of nine semi-structured interviews with local Politicians, assistance officers and representatives from three different user organizations.The results show that the municipal has chosen to work with the implementation of the convention by creating policy programs for their departments through dialogue with user organizations, and by mapping the accessibility to public places. The results also show that the assistant officers have been given no information regarding the convention or the policy programs from their employers and instead operate from national legislations and prepositions. The user organizations feel that they were initially included in the process, but that their impact has later been removed due to structural reorganization..

A qualitative study is presented concerning children?s participation in the local decisionmaking in Swedish municipalities. The study also aims at finding out what are considered to be successful factors and obstacles connected to the implementation of children?s participation in local decision-making. The study contains a summary of the convention on the rights of the child, focusing on article 12, as well as previous research findings concerning children?s participation and factors enabling respectively hindering participation.

The purpose of this master thesis is to find out if library activities in civil society may be seen as a complement to public activities. The incitement lies in a discussion in the research activities of social sciences and among Politicians, where the opinion is that civil society may function as a complement to governmental policy. The NGO-library Föreningen Miljöbiblioteket i Lund and the municipality of Malmö stad where chosen as units for examination. The common feature of the two units is the global task introduced by the UN, to create a sustainable development. The material used is exclusively concerning domestic information activities.

Coordinator of public health has recently become a new profession in the field of Health Promotion. During the last few years the pedagogic perspective has been increasingly important for the coordinators as a way of adapting their work methods to the circumstances. The conditions for coordinators of public health differ between municipalities and thus their tasks and responsibilities may vary with the local structure. According to the literature there are several ways to conduct Health Promotion and it is in the hands of the coordinator to adjust the methods to fit local conditions. The purpose of the study was to examine what influences the coordinators of public health and how that affects their work methods.

In the beginning of the nineties there was a change in how the voluntary sector was perceived, and the significance of their work became reevaluated and more acknowledged. As a result, this sector gained a new and higher interest. The changes and downsizing in the welfare state with economic crises, due to political cutback, made the Politicians look fore new solutions. One solution is to encourage cooperation between the public sector and the voluntary sector in order to handle the different needs of individuals.Uppsala community and the voluntary sector are working closely together within a project called ?God Livsmiljö?.

The question of direct citizen participation in politics and administration is a contestable one. Its proponents claim that it has positive consequences even for the more "traditional", representative democracy, since participation leads to an increased political knowledge and increased political interest, and thus creates a revitalised democracy. Critical voices have however been raised to the validity of this claim. Critics have also pointed out direct participation as problematic, because it leads to problems of political inequality: a difference of political influence between ? on the one hand, the citizens participating directly and those that restrict their political participation to voting, and ? on the one the other hand ? between the institutions, for example schools, that employ, and don?t employ this method of direct citizen influence.In this essay, these two points of criticisms are tested in the context of user-boards in elementary and secondary schools.

The aim of this study was to understand how evaluations are implemented and used in procured nursing homes for elderly. Our methodological approach consisted of a single-case study research. The case in this study was Växjö municipality. Three procured nursing homes for elderly were chosen in the municipality as examples of implementation and use of evaluation. The method for retrieving empirical data and the analyzing of it was based on triangulation.

Bruno K. Öijer is one of Sweden's well known poets. He belongs to a poetic avant-garde and made his debut in 1973. Many literature researchers and reviewers have focused on Öijer as person and poet. I will discuss Öijer's authorship in relation to literary traditions, such as orphic tradition, avant-garde and modernsim, surrealism and the outsider definition.

This essay analyses the European Food Safety Authority's (EFSA) legitimacy. Theories on input- and output legitimacy are used in the examination. After analysing stakeholder representation, forum for deliberation, transparency, independence, and information sharing, input legitimacy in EFSA is assessed to be high. Output legitimacy was examined through the authority's outcome effectiveness, which was divided into compliance and effectiveness. Since food safety is an immense area, two important parts were chosen for the analysis of output legitimacy; transmissible/bovine spongiform encephalopathy (TSE/BSE) and genetically modified organisms (GMO).

This study is mainly critical-theoretic and explores the theoretic jungle of the concept of intersectionality with the use of Post-colonial and Feminist theories. The purpose of the thesis is also to investigate the concept of intersectionality further by looking upon its practical use as theoretic tool. This is performed in a discourse analysis of two programs developed by Swedish Liberal Party autumn of 2005. Another purpose is to discuss the multiculturalist dilemma as well as the phenomenon of a hegemonic western Feminism. One conclusion of this thesis is that the use of intersectionality is not unproblematic.