The purpose of this master?s thesis is to investigate children?s access to specific children?s activities at Swedish public libraries 2005. The thesis is based on literature studies and qualitative interviews with children?s librarians, library directors and local Politicians at two demographically different libraries in Gothenburg.The sub questions are: What measures exist to promote children?s access to public libraries and children?s activities when it comes to: law and other political statements: different efforts on the state level and different efforts on the municipal level in the direct activity with children at public libraries? What driving forces and needs justify activities for children at public libraries? How will the responsible persons judge that the efforts are sufficient? The result of the study shows that children?s access to library activity has increased in the last couple of years due to reorganization, economic savings with closing down of library affiliates and because libraries have given priority to other things, like IT and new media. Children?s librarians have got new assignments and less time for children?s activity.The conclusion of our investigation is that children?s librarians are ambitious in their work, but unfortunately don?t give children?s library activity adequate resources.

It has become popular for political scientists to discuss the transformation from government to governance and the networks? greater influence on public policymaking. However, this debate lacks methodological, empirical and theoretical research about the relationship between governance networks and representative democracy. The main objective of this essay is to understand the relationship between governance networks and representative democracy through a case study of the governance network Leader Linné. The theoretical framework includes four analysis models about the relationship between governance networks and representative democracy that are analysed by five factors connected to representative democracy.

Historically, men have always had a superior position over women, which has beenportrayed in all kinds of media representations. Visual communication is an importantpart of our daily life since the reality is reflected through images. The development ofthe Web has led to increased interaction opportunities, and new ways to communicate,mainly through pictures. Politicians have embraced this and use social media as a partof their daily work. They also use social media to portray themselves from a morepersonal angle, which has created a higher interest for their personal life.

This thesis examines the democracy theories that can be found in the internet websites of Region Skåne and Stockholm county council. Within the framework of deliberative democracy, participatory democracy and electoral democracy, the author tries to distinguish democratic aspects by empirically studying these websites and their communicative effect on the internet users.This research shows that Region Skåne is slightly better in implementing democratic aspects at their home page, which is probably due to an active work with these issues carried out by the Politicians and the report on the democratic development from 2004. However, a great deal of work regarding democracy and the possibility of civic participation in the decision- making process is still to be done.The problems and challenges in using internet as a democratic tool shows that citizens run a risk of being neglected, due to their uneven participation in using internet in daily life. The conclusion of this thesis is that the Politicians have to make an active choice in deciding to what extent the internet is allowed to be used when it comes to developing democracy. This work has to be done in cooperation with political scientists and IT experts, in order to assure a correct democratic model..

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine the environmental scanning by the employees and Politicians at the central administration at the County Council of Kalmar län. The background of the study is the closing of the administration library in January 2003, which gave more tasks to the hospital libraries of the County Council.The main questions of this study concerns the information needs of the employees and Politicians, what electronic sources they prefer to use to satisfy those needs and if they are experiencing a need for more support and help, from a librarian or by the development of a common catalogue of hyperlinks. All 104 persons in the population were asked to answer a questionnaire on the Intranet. The task was performed by 60 persons.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the extent of the civil rights political participation on a municipality level. The starting-point is the participatory democratic theory. I have chosen to make a case study of the extent of participation among KPR ? the board of the pensioners in the municipality of Skara. KPR is represented by fourteen members from the seven existing associations for pensioners.

Allocation of funds to public libraries is uneven and this study will try to explain the reasons and clarify why the allocations of funds are distributed like they are and what calculations influenced the financial apportionment. This master thesis accounts for allocation in seven public libraries in Uppsala. The study shows that one reason for uneven allocations is demographic. Another reason is that the library has come into a good or bad circle. There are no models for allocation of funds to public libraries in Uppsala, thats why their allocations are given after a percentage increase of earlier years allocations, and that leads to a good or bad circle.

The aftermath of colonization, culture diversity and the recognition of the ownidentity - living in a country which has the role of a former colonizer has got consequences in the multicultural French society. These consequences can be seen studying the politics, the education and the history of that country. In this bachelorthesis I discuss the aftermath of French colonization with a focus on how the French cultural identity can be explained in defining colonialism in French lawmaking. The aim is to understand the definition of the own cultural identity from a postcolonial perspective and what meaning the multicultural society has for this definition. This is an issue which can be seen in politics as well as ineveryday life, and to make an understanding of it, I study how French Politicians are representing their country's role as a former colonizer in a postcolonial era.

Abstract Mona Sahlin's dishwasher decides the election! Maybe. How journalism portraits politics is at least not fully objective with focus on societal matters. There is also a change over time indicating an up-going trend of less objective journalism. Other results of this case study indicates that Politicians are more inclined to participate in journalism than before and that politics presented as scandal is increasing.The aim of this study is to investigate objectivity in political journalism over time. Using the quantitative content-analyses the study encoded 600 journalistic articles subjecting politics in the Swedish society.

Swedish public administration has for the last few decades undergone reforms aimed at making it more efficient. A substantial part of these reforms have concerned creating clearer roles for Politicians versus officials in the public sector, i.e. giving Politicians a responsibility for setting goals and steering activities and public officials the role of implementing them.This study aims to examine one reform following this path that is under implementation in a Swedish public authority; Försäkringskassan, the Social Insurance Agency. The purpose of the reform is to increase the organization?s effectiveness and the rule of law.

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine how daily encounters between the Danish public libraries and the library-users called ethnic minorities are described within the public library field. Danish public libraries have been assigned to play a larger role in societys strive towards integration of immigrants and refugees. Within Danish politics I find an emphasis on the importance of maintaining Danish culture, but it is rarely expressed if ethnic minorities are, can or should be a part of it. Theoretical and methodological starting points are hermeneutics and text-analysis. My theoretical framework is research about international migration and ethnic relations IMER.

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.

Today`s society requires that municipalities focus must be more on effectivity and quality. Because of this it is important for municipalities to look after the controlling systems. Many municipalities choose to adopt models that reflect the efficacy. The municipality of Vellinge has chosen to implement balanced scorecard in all their efficacies. We found it interesting when it was exposed that 70 % of all implementations of balanced scorecard fails.

Today`s society requires that municipalities focus must be more on effectivity and quality. Because of this it is important for municipalities to look after the controlling systems. Many municipalities choose to adopt models that reflect the efficacy. The municipality of Vellinge has chosen to implement balanced scorecard in all their efficacies. We found it interesting when it was exposed that 70 % of all implementations of balanced scorecard fails.

The purpose of this essay is to study causes for the lack of political trust in Europe and especially in Sweden. The essay starts with a presentation of two theories about the reasons for low political trust. Robert D. Putnam among others presents a theory that gives social capital an important role when viewing the low political trust. As Putnam sees it a person that participates in any kind of organization, political or not, develop trust for other human beings that in the long run affects political trust.