This study in Public Administration uses feminism and historical institutionalism toanalyze a highly debated contemporary policy problem that concerns genderequality in the policy of parental leave. The parental insurance was introduced in1974 with the governmental goal of gender equality. In 1974 only 0,5 percent of thenumber of days of parental benefit was paid to men. Today, 40 years later, the goalremains the same and the numbers of days of parental benefit paid to men are 24,8percent.The debate that has characterized the Swedish policy of parental insurance andspecifically the design of the parental benefit is the debate of freedom of choiceversus quota.Our study focuses on ideas and arguments that influence the policy of parentalbenefit. The study assumes, with basis in the theories of feminism and historicalinstitutionalism, that a policy like parental benefit is slow-moving and that pathdependency has lead to a slow development of gender equality..

In this thesis I will examine Willy Brandt's new Ostpolitik with the help of Robert Putnam's analytical framework of two-level games perspective and the theory of social constructivism. Firstly, I will briefly set out the development of Germany's history before it was divided into the Federal Republic of Germany and German Democratic Republic in 1949. After that I present West Germany's foreign policy from 1949 to 1969 in order to show how Willy Brandt continued and broke with different foreign policy doctrines. Finally, I want to illustrate his new Ostpolitik and the international and domestic factors, which contributed to its realisation. The main question of this essay is: How significant were the changes of the West German society for the realisation of the new Ostpolitik from 1969 to 1973? One of the most important findings in this essay is that on the one hand that many West Germans had accepted that their country was divided and on the other hand that many groups in the society such as the significant newspaper Die Zeit and intellectuals supported the new Ostpolitik.

Unemployment amongst Swedish citizens is higher within the group which falls under the designation foreign-born. The aim of this thesis is to examine which municipal factors that can explain the differences in unemployment amongst foreign-born relative to native born.The empirical models are examined with both cross-sectional data for the year of 2010 and panel data for the years of 2002-2012. The examination is implemented through a linear regression analysis of the type Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Fixed Effect regressions. A theory section will be presented where the theory on Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate (NAIRU), theories on discrimination and country-specific human capital are illustrated.The result from the cross-sectional data shows that the amount of foreign-born, the level of foreign-born immigrated from Nordic countries have a significant negative effect on unemployment amongst foreign-born. The general unemployment shows a significant positive effect on the unemployment amongst foreign-born.

The purpose of this study was to examine the incentives behind Sweden?s decision to engagein the Afghanistan conflict.The method used to fulfil the purpose of the study is content analysis. The material that hasbeen used in the study is various books and articles concerning Sweden in Afghanistan,Swedish foreign policy and perspectives in political science.The study is multi-theoretical and thus the analysis explains the incentives from a liberal, arealist and a constructivist point of view.The conclusion of the study is that identity has a great part in explaining the incentives forSweden to engage in Afghanistan, especially because of the transformation in strategy andforeign policy that has taken place since the end of the cold war. Other factors, such as peacebuilding and national interests also are incentives supported by the material used in the study.Yet, perhaps they are first and foremost connected by the constructivist idea of identity..

The aim of this thesis is to study different aspects of the public libraries' investment in public access computers connected to the Internet. What level of accessibility can be found at the surveyed libraries concerning the number of computers open to the public, as well as chat and email services? What activities have been taking place with the computers in focus, and what have the goals of these activities been? Is there any control of content, and what aspects of the Internet are, if that is the case, subject to censorship. And how do the governmental policies relate to the surveyed libraries' intentions and activities regarding the Internet? In order to answer these questions, each main library in the 42 largest towns of Sweden was surveyed response rate: 100 %.

While almost 23 percent of the students in the Swedish upper secondary school are foreigners, only a fraction of the school libraries? collections consists of literature written in other languages than Swedish or English. This study examines how five school librarians experience the task of working with literature composed in foreign languages in the multicultural and multilingual school of today. The results of the qualitative interviews are analyzed in relation to the legislation and policy documents that the school libraries are working by, and also in relation to the theoretical framework of sociocultural theory and the theories on second language acquisition developed by linguist Jim Cummins.The study shows that while multilingualism is discussed as an important matter in the legislation and policy documents that the school libraries work by, the librarians in this study largely view the question of foreign literature as peripheral. Most part of the librarians connects first language reading to leisure-time activities rather than curricular activities, and stresses that the Swedish language should be prioritized in Swedish schools.

This paper has bearing on the subject of foreign policy analysis and decision-making,but is nonetheless important to peace and conflict studies due to its emphasis onnuclear weapons and deterrence.I have constructed a theoretical framework for the analysis of foreign policydecision-making that I set out to test on a crucial case. The framework iscrosscutting, and takes into consideration four levels of analysis: the system-,regional-, state-, and individual level. It is centred on a key decision maker, andapplies a cognitive approach for determining his or hers belief system through whichthe inputs from the other levels are filtered in order for the decision maker toconstruct a perception of reality, from which the decision is then formulated within.The framework is applied to North Korean and its leader Kim Jong Il. It sets outto explain his behaviour in the matter of their claimed nuclear weapons program, andhis decision to conduct a nuclear weapons-test, getting inside his head trying to figureout why he chose to do it and for what reasons.The conclusion indicates that the basic structure of the framework and its generalapplicability is sound, but that it needs further testing in order to make it perfectly solid..

ABSTRACT. Introduction: In the Swedish government?s public health policy the municipalities are emphasized as one of the most important actors. Based on their broad range of operations the municipalities have good opportunities to influence the health situation of its citizens. Aim: The purpose of this study is to investigate how the local public health coordinators in Region Västra Götaland are working and what barriers they experience in their work.

This study in political science examines the UN adopted resolution 1970 (2011) andresolution 1973 (2011) on the basis of foreign policy decision-making. The study aims toexplain how the UN principle of Responsibility to Protect came to be legitimized for the firsttime by the UN Security Council in the Libya conflict in 2011. By a poliheuristic perspectivethe study attempt to explain Russia and China?s acting in the voting of resolution 1970 andresolution 1973. The background to the conflict in Libya 2011 is presented in the study aswell as the Security Council?s actions during the conflict, from the beginning of the conflictuntil the adoption of resolution 1973.

According to many scholars America's soft power is in decline, a power resource whose importance has been increasing in world politics. This makes it interesting to examine if there is a difference between how Democratic and Republican administrations wield their soft power.This thesis is a hypothesis-testing study and the purpose is to test the hypothesis that Democratic administrations, to a greater extent than Republican, can create, utilize and defend soft power. My thesis is based on Joseph Nye's theory of soft power and the focus of this study is the aspects of the foreign policy resources. In order to measure this concept I have made my own operationalization where five different indicators serve as my guidance. I use the method of least likely-cases to select and motivate the administrations being tested, which gives me a comparative study of the Democratic administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton and the Republican administration of George H.

We have inquired into how the amount of foreign news has changed over the last 30 years in two major Swedish newspapers, which subjects and regions has dominated the content of the foreign news and what subjects dominate the reporting from certain regions. This was done with a quantitative analysis of subjects and regions written about in 1100 news texts during a week in each year of 1978, 1988, 1998 and 2008. To further broaden our study, we also charted with the analysis how the newspapers domesticate foreign news and how they use international news agencies. As a basis for our discussion we use Van Ginnekens theories of world news centres, Westerståhl & Johanssons and Galtung & Ruges theories of foreign news selection as well as the theories of Hjarvard and Biltereyst about the domestication of foreign news due to commercial pressures and objectives on the newspapers. Our result of the amount of foreign news in the two newspapers is also compared to several similar empirical studies by different researchers.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to identify and describe thedifferent roles that are expressed in a public library by researchingthem in the four policy documents concerning Västerås public libraryin 2010 and by interviews with three specially chosen key persons.Further studied are the discourses that can be perceived in thematerial and whether or not the roles could come in conflict witheach other. Laclau and Mouffes discursive theory constitutes themethodical frame for this thesis and by using terms from discursivetheory the analysis was made in four steps.Seven roles were identified from the policy documents concerningVästerås public library and the interviews with the key persons. Thefirst role of the public library was the intermediary of knowledge andinformation, the second was viewed as a democratic role, the third asa marketing role, the fourth as a role that handled the collaboration,the fifth role was to improve literacy, and the sixth and seventh roleswere as a culture centre and a meeting place. With the help fromkeywords five major discourses were found within the material.

The aim of this study is to analyze the process of an agenda setting and see how a specific issue came to materialize on the security policy agenda. The empirical goal of the study is to see why Sweden chose to participate in the EU-led operation to Chad, and how that process came to be? The analysis is based upon Kingdon's multiple streams theory (2003) where he distinguishes the process into three streams. Central for his theory is the coupling of these streams and the importance of a policy entrepreneur. I complement Kingdon's theory of policy entrepreneurs by taking inspiration from Hinnfors (1995), Gustavsson (1999) and especially Eriksson (2000) and their analysis of policy change and agenda setting.

This thesis is about the public library of Ulricehamn and the cultural activities at the library during the period from 1960 to 1998. We have focused on the study of the cultural activities. It begins with the foundation of the library of Ulricehamn and a historical background to it. It follows with the definitions of the public library and a historical background to the public library in Sweden. Then we present the goal of the public library in general and the goal of Ulricehamn's city library.

In this thesis, the introduction of smoke-free restaurants and bars in several EU Member States in a policy convergence perspective is studied. The thesis sets out to explain whether policy convergence has occurred and the possible explanations connected with it. It is stated that 15 out of 25 EU Member States had introduced or decided to introduce smoke-free restaurants and bars up to April, 2006. Out of all the countries in the world, 35, including the EU Member States, had introduced or decided to introduce smoke-free restaurants and bars. The result is analysed by using policy convergence theory and by putting the case in a global environment where tobacco control has become an ever more central theme for public health policy.The EU Member States are different in several ways considered to be important factors for policy convergence, such as cultural, institutional and socio-economic similarities, and the conclusion is made that EU membership has been a most crucial factor for the rapidity of the policy diffusion.