The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine and analyse how the public librarys mission is interpreted and formulated in a selection of library related journals. The journals are both international scientific referee journals from the LIS field and journals with a closer connection to the practitioners within the public library field. The idea is that these journals can be seen as windows to an academic theoretic perspective on public libraries, as well as to the practitioners way of talking about the librarys mission. The study also aims to examine if there is a difference in the way that the librarys mission is interpreted and discussed among theorists and among practitioners within the field. The theoretical starting-point is Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory, and the method is text analytic.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att beskriva och analysera processen från policy till praktik och att exemplifiera detta utifrån hur arbetet med kommunikationsplattformen i Lunds kommun har gått till väga. Ett viktigt mål är också att utifrån detta konstruktivt försöka bidra till plattformens fortsatta implementering. I uppsatsen identifieras aktiv kommunikation, kärnvärdesprofilering och effektiv implementering som organisatoriska nyckelbegrepp.Utgångspunkten är fyra dokument som utgör kommunikationsplattformen för Lunds kommun och en utvärdering av implementeringsarbetet för kommunikationsplattformen. Dessutom har även tre intervjuer genomförts med nyckelpersoner i kommunen. Med en kvalitativ innehållsanalys av dokumenten och intervjuerna görs en nulägesanalys av situationen och problematiken tematiseras.Det sista steget i uppsatsen är att skapa konkreta förslag till åtgärder.

This study deals with religious independent schools and its impact on society. The purpose of this essay has been to examine what various teachers from both religious independent schools and public schools have for perception of religious independent schools. The questions highlighted in the study is the teachers´ general view to religious independent schools, teachers´ perception of the Education Act " a denominational education, but a non- denominational teaching", and what teachers believe to be segregated or inclusive.The study has consisted of five qualitative interviews with different teachers, where three of them work at religious independent schools, while the other two teachers work in public schools.The study shows that there are prominent differences of approach to religious independent schools. Teachers who work at religious independent schools avert criticism of religious independent schools and argue that teaching in religious independent schools do not differ appreciably from the public schools. Instead can religious independent schools serve as a good alternative to the public school.

Citizenship and immigration policy are controversial aspects of the European integration project. Fourteen years ago Roger Brubaker stated that the vital differences between German and French citizenship policy were unthinkable to harmonise. This paper therefore seeks to investigate whether the old image of the two countries are accurate. By evaluating citizenship and immigration policies in today's context with the increasing influence of European Union policy I here present a more correct picture of the situation in both countries. Partly to see how the harmonisation has come this far.

In the late 20th century there has been some changes in the public sector. These changes are described as New Public Management. When ideas from the private market is transferred to the public sector, for example to regard citizens as cus-tomer. Central in this paper is the use of term customer in the Swedish public sec-tor. There are two questions in the paper; which possibilities has a disappointed customer to effect the public sector, and what may happen with democracy, the common good, when the citizen becomes a customer?To answer the questions I study two different cases, Svedala kommun and the tax department, Skatteverket.

Libraries all over the world struggle against the threat of decreased funding and a lack of governmental interest. In countries with an under-developed library sector the interest from the government is often minimal or non-existent. Since the 80´s Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency has contributed to the library development in Central America through the Royal Library of Sweden. Nicaragua was the first country to be counterpart in the project. For a period of eight weeks I have completed a field study in Nicaragua and visited the National Library Rubén Darío and public libraries in the country.

This thesis explores how public art is received by the general public in Borås, Sweden. As a point of departure it was assumed that a study of the local papers would offer an accurate insight in to the debate of public art. Hence, press clippings were chosen as primary source material together with the works of art. The questions addressed in the study are: what is written in the local daily press about public art? Who writes in or makes statements to the local dailies about public art? Textual analysis is the predominant method employed while hermeneutics is the underlying theory.

The purpose with this thesis is to understand the relationship between a square?s design and its function as a public meeting place, were Sundstorget in the city of Helsingborg is used as a study object. The architect Jan Gehl developed a theory of people?s outdoor activities in his book Livet mellem husene (1996). He divides the activities in three categories; 1) necessary activities, 2) optional activities and 3) social activities, which are differently affected by the place?s design.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine librarians opinions about media. Four questions are asked: What kind of different attitudes to new media has librarians had? How is new media discussed in relationship to each other in the debate? What mechanisms and underlying causes control the discourse for new media in public libraries? Does the discourse change over time, in that case, how? The theoretical background is theory about moral- and media panic and popular adult education. The media panic theory includes the idea that the same reaction occurs every time a new media is introduced. The theory about popular adult education is that the public need to be cultivated.

In a global context the traditional democratic process is facing new challenges. Scholars are talking about a transition from government to governance, where local and regional networks as well as international collaboration are an important part in how regional policy is produced and implemented. In this paper the processes in regional projects funded by the European Union are considered, and related to the traditional democratic process. The study has been fulfilled through informant interviews with representatives from four EU-projects. The interviews are supplemented by a qualitative text analysis of current statutes.

The relationship between dividend policy and investment is a controversial area and the relationship between these two may differ depending on the company's priorities. The study examines this more closely by studying dividend policy's impact on investment and how it differs depending on the company?s market capitalization. The study is based on companies listed on the OMX Stockholm within the segments Large Cap and Small Cap, during the period between 2003-2012. Secondary data was obtained from each company's annual reports where relevant data was used to operationalized into measurable variables.

In this essay I examine how a municipal- and an independent upper secondary school compare to the ideal types the Company and the Political organization and how that affects the school practise as it?s described in policy documents. The conclusions are that the municipal school on a number of variables correlate to the ideal type the Political organization. At the same time the school reforms of the 1990s are considered as an intention to ?companylize? the municipal school and a number of tendencies how that have affected the municipal school are shown.

The aim of this thesis is to develop two idealtypes of politics to help serve as instruments in understanding and analysing the view on politics held by top civil servants in the municipality of Lund Sweden. The two ideal types developed here are symbolic sense making politics and rational instrumental politics. These two ideal types were applied to material from a qualitative survey to help bring out clear results and to help with the interpretation of the material The results of the study showed that the two idealtypes could not help to clearly categorize the civil servants views on management by objectives. But while categorizing the top civil servants views the important features of policy documents the ideal types were helpful. By using the ideal types I came to the conclusion that the view on policy documents was mainly characterized by sense making politics.

This study treats cultural policy, it´s view of the value of literature, and how this view varies within different fields of cultural policy. The aim of the essay is to find different competing approaches through an investigation of texts from three different fields within cultural policy. The fields investigated are: The publishing subsidy of the National Council for Cultural Affairs, which values above all quality literature. En bok för alla, concentrates on spreading quality literature to new groups in society. Centrum för lättläst, which values that the contents of a text are successfully delivered to, and understood by, the reader.

It is not unusual that women and children fall behind in development countries. It is not even unusual that these groups are exposed to all forms of discrimination due to the countries lack of capacity to erase poverty. We also know that women and children in a larger extent suffers from the shortage of proper health conditions. India is one of these countries. It is a country where women even before birth are exposed to discriminatory family planning.