This study deals with Swedish nuclear-energy politics from 1980 to 2006. The purpose is to trace and to explain change and stability in three political parties? rhetoric concerning the phase-out of Swedish nuclear-energy and the Swedish government?s nuclear politics. Two hypotheses based on path dependency theory are tested to analyze if rhetoric and politics are developing in separate directions. The first hypothesis is based on the idea that earlier promises from the political parties affect what promises they can make later on.

Since the beginning of 1940 there have been externally developed tests in Sweden. Their appearances have changed over the years together with the cognitive approach. Nowadays, this kind of tests is going by the name of the national tests, which was introduced in the year of 1994. When the Swedish National Agency for Education received the assignment to develop new purposes and national tests to the third grade students, debate took a bounce. The matter was well discussed; national tests in third grade or not?The national tests thus far carried out four rounds in the third grade and the purpose of my study was to find out how teachers are reasoning about the tests.

The intention of this thesis is to examine "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and its position and functions in the public sphere. Particularly interesting aspects are like the linking of private and public issues, the show's potential as a forum for debate and dissemination of knowledge, and what types of criticism the show has been subjected to. The methods used dealt with the textual aspects of the show. Semiotic analysis and conversation analysis were applied to five episodes and a search of literature was made. The thesis rests on theories concerning television studies and talk shows, in addition to theories on modernity and identity.

AbstractThe debate on grammar has been on the agenda for thousands of years. Several different arguments and theories have been used in order to explain the importance of grammar in school. Some newer arguments have been added, while others have stayed, either in their original version, or in a modernised one.This essay aims to clarify the role grammar play in school. In order to do that we have looked into its history, the curriculum, modern research and interviews made with active teachers.The results of the literary studies, the studies of the curriculum and the field studies show that the very presence of grammar in school is disputed. The curriculum of today speaks of an orientation in language, with grammar as a part of it, based on the students? own language.

This study investigates the potential of a rhetorical theory of knowledge to expand beyond its own domain and into political theory, specifically theories of deliberative democracy. Despite the increasing interest in communication in democratic theory in the last decades, the majority of theorists have not turned their interest towards rhetorical science. On the contrary, theorists often regard rhetoric as dangerous and incompatible with the deliberative ideal of reason. The aim of this study is therefore to defend rhetorical science by investigating how the rhetorical theory of knowledge ? as it is presented by Chaïm Perelman and Oldbrecht Tyteca, and further developed by Mats Rosengren and Maria Wolrath Söderberg ? can contribute to the understanding of deliberative democracy.

The activity of interest groups in the political process of the European Union has given rise to a broad debate concerning the effect on European democracy these groups have. As relatively powerful political actors, the question of these groups? views on the EU and how the union should be is an important one. The status of these groups owns democratic representation also affects the democratic status of the EU. Being based on a number of theories, this study adopts an ideology analysis for the purpose of testing these theories on two cases ? the Swedish environmental organizations World Wide Fund for Nature and The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation.

The media plays a key role in constructing identities and categories, as its messages influence the way we understand the world. In the debate on integration issues, categories such as ?Swede? and ?immigrant? are often treated as obvious and unproblematic. ?Swedish?, being the norm, is seldom defined   and   frequently appears   with   subtlety.   This   paper   set   out   to   study   what   characterizes Swedishness in newspaper articles on integration issues, and how it is represented in relations to immigrants.

The economic growth in Ireland, during the 1990s, lead to changing migration patterns. Ireland became a destination country for immigrants instead of an emigration country. Before 2004 people who were born on the island of Ireland had a constitutional right to Irish citizenship. This right was removed after a referendum in 2004.National identity is a sense of community constructed through common history and defines who belongs to the nation. The purpose of this thesis is to do a critical discourse analysis of the debate in media before the referendum.The analysis was done on texts from The Irish Times, one of the major newspapers in Ireland.

When are aerial bombing strategies effective in coercing target states? According to the recent research debate there is a consensus that denial strategies may be an effective instrument for coercing states to change their politics. This study is based on Belkin?s theory which argues that the effectiveness of denial strategies may depend in part on the domestic legitimacy of the target states? regimes. From a political standpoint, aerial denial effectiveness can be considered more likely to coerce when political leaders of target states lack domestic legitimacy rather than when they are legitimate.   The purpose of this study is to contribute an explanation of a condition where denial strategies are more likely to succeed.

The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent some Swedish bishops (1972-2014), mainly archbishops, were influenced by postmodernity as described by Lyotard in his report La Condition postmoderne (1979).This report had a tremendous impact on the western cultural and philosophical debate in general during the very end of the twentieth century. I am trying to find out if this impact could also be observed in the religious sphere and particularly in the Church of Sweden. My theory used, is mainly based on the ideas presented in La Condition postmoderne and my method is a hermeneutical reading of eight pastoral letters. These letters were written during the time that the Church of Sweden transformed from being an officially recognized national church to a free church among other free churches and in this respect ended to be a part of the official governmental power. The terms postmodernism or post-modernity were scarcely used at all in the pastoral letters but on the other hand the bishops seemed to share many of the ideas that Lyotard presented, such as the view on the metahistory/metanarrative and the connection of knowledge to power, the necessity of dialogue and openness and the importance and the role of creating and maintaining language games..

The written sources concerning the process of christianization in Sweden has for a long time been limited to two main texts, Rimberts vita of St. Ansgarius and Adam of Bremen´s History of the bishops of Hamburg. This is due to a rigid source criticism in the beginning of the 20th century, which put other material ? in particular the norse sagas ? out of consideration. The last twenty years however, new questions have been raised concerning the christianization, partly because of new archaeological findings, new interpretations of the significance of runic stones and the recent debate about the formation of the Swedish medieval kingdom.

The executives of a firm possess considerable influence over a company's financial reports. The numbers can be adjusted in a favorable direction by engaging in Earnings Management, which harms the reliability of the financial reporting. Previous research suggests that Earnings Management can differ between genders. In recent years the debate about a woman's role in the business world has received generous attention in media. Moreover, the presence of women in leading positions has become a relevant issue for firms.

The role-playing game attracts a growing number of practisers. The aim of this master?s thesis is to examine role-playing literature as phenomenon in libraries through librarians´ attitudes. The paper is based on qualitative interviews with eight librarians: one personal interview with two librarians and six e-mail interviews with six librarians at different libraries. The paper starts with a definition of the term ?role-playing game?, its different categories and genres and a description of its background.

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.

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to see how illustrators and illustrations are treated in Bibliotekstjänst?s binding booklets compared to how authors and texts are treated, i.e. the picture versus the printed word. My aim is to try and find out if librarians have the aids to acquire information about picture-book illustrators and illustrations in their selective work and reference work. In order to find out about this I need to examine the most common aid in this work, i.e.