The essay?s main focus has been to investigate and analyze the political actions behind the 2015?s grade compromise; an agreement to introduce grades from the fourth year in primary school. Through a game-theory analysis, mainly based in Leif Lewin?s and Jörgen Herman's research on rationality in politics, this study examined the grade debate  during a fifteen year period. The primary task has thereby been to explain the grade compromise through game-theory.

This thesis is a comparative analysis of language policy in the Post-Soviet states Ukraine and Kazakhstan, wherein the states are seen as rational actors using language as an instrument in the nation-building process. With a take-off point in an underframe of theories on the nation, national identity, instrumentalism, power and the particular role of language in the nation-building process, this thesis shows that language is a key instrument used by the two states.The Ukrainian and Kazakhian language policies create and put across a certain image of the nation, by emphasising the titular languages as symbols of the new states. The line of argument in the language policy is a balance act between large-scale promotion of titular languages and a careful and inclusive attitude towards the Russian language. The biggest differences are that Ukraine, compared to Kazakhstan, has a more comprehensive and consequent language policy with a deeply rooted historic rhetoric. The most obvious instruments of the states in language policy is censuses, corpus-planning and the state choosing one official language..

The aim of this paper is to describe which view the Chinese government in connection with the Olympics wants to display for the natural world and analyze if this view coincide with China?s foreign-policy goals. A qualitative content analysis is used. By using the theory of rational choice and a model with three different political approaches I want to examine whether or not the foreign-policy goals of the Chinese regime comport with the view that displays in two major newspapers in China. Since the runoff voting in Moscow in 2001 for the 2008 Olympics the Chinese government has been able to act rational and to compose different strategies to use the Games in Beijing for political propaganda.

The basis for this study is the question of what happens at the point of impact between receiver and message in the case of a social marketing campaign on Facebook promoting sustainable travel. Hence the aim of this study is to analyse the reception of the social marketing campaign Fairadise in a sample of 19 individuals. The design of the study is therefore reception analysis with the help of four focus groups and thematic analysis to later identify patterns and themes in the gathered material. The theoretical approaches were collected from the field of media and communication and focused on public communication campaigns, public understanding of public communication campaigns as well as decoding of messages. The questions posed were; how is the Facebook campaign Fairadise received by the focus group participants? How do the participants read (decode) the campaign; dominant, negotiated or oppositional? And what assessments do the participants have regarding the visual versus textual information in the campaign? Previous research has shown that visual and emotional attributes are of great importance when it comes to interpreting messages about sustainable tourism and that rational information attributes are of less importance. The findings in this study agree with this previous research except when it comes to rational information.

To understand the motives, and perhaps more importantly the barriers, for farmers to convert from conventional to organic farming is of great interest for policy makers as well as for academics. In Sweden and in other EU countries, proposed targets of the area in organic farmland have failed to be reached in spite of different kinds of policy measures. Most studies agree that the average profitability seems to be comparable to or better in organic than in conventional farming. This would indicate that there must be other factors of importance which can explain the low particiapation rate. A higher perceived risk in organic farming with respect to yield and price is frequently brought up as a potential explanation within a qualitative framework.

The Swedish and Icelandic women's movements, the Support Stockings and the Women's Alliance both had the goal to change their nation's women politics. The goal was to increase the low representation of women in their parliaments and to highlight women issues on the political agenda. The essay shows that the most important reason behind the will to form a party, was a new issue being disregarded by existing parties, although there is a considerable interest concerning the issue amongst society. While a party was formed on Iceland the Swedish equivalence did not occur. Even though only one party was formed, both movements achieved the same results.

This study examines the effects of credit risk and information disclosure in the new bank regulating system Basel II on bank and bank customer. The effects are then discussed in a perspective of the economic man and information asymmetric theories. Furthermore is the Basel II effects on the capital adequacy of Andelsbanken för Åland examined.The approach of the study is qualitative and several interviews with individuals on different levels of the examined bank, Andelsbanken för Åland, have been carried out during the collecting of empirical facts about the effects of the regulating change from the Basel I system to Basel II.The research findings are as follows:Andelsbanken för Åland have increased its capital adequacy ratio from 12,7 percent to 14,4 percent, mostly due to lower risk weights on housing mortgages compared to Basel I. Andelsbanken för Åland have started to use a completely new credit risk and customer assessment system which classifies every customer and gives them a credit rating. The system cause a much heavier information gathering of the customers profile as well as a much better assessment of risk than the previous system, which the bank finds positive.

After the tsunami disaster in December 2004 many arguments were heared that one oft the major reasons behind the poor Swedish effort connected to the evacuation and health care of the Swedish citizens in Thailand right after the incident is the Swedish model with independent government authorities. By comparing the constitution, the political decision making tradition by the ministers and the handling of the catastrophe in the tree Scandinavian countries Denmark, Norway and Finland, plus analysing the behaviour of the Swedish foreign and prime minister from a rational choose inspired individual decision making theory the research shows that there is no proof that a constitutional change in Sweden into the traditional model with government authorities controlled by the ministers alone would led to a more effective crisis handling by the government due to crises concerning Swedish citizens out states. Although the research shows that the constitution and the tradition of decision making in the government provides the basic condition of the ministers individual rational decision making.

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.

I denna uppsats analyseras de faktorer som ligger bakom beslutet att låta Turkiet inleda inträdesförhandlingar med EU. Dessa faktorer analyseras utifrån Allisons tre modeller: Rational Actor Model, Organizational Behavior och Governmental Politics. Modellerna beskriver olika komponenter som låg till grund för beslutstagandet.I vår analys belyses först de statliga aktörerna och deras motiv för att ge Turkiet kandidatstatus och ett datum för eventuella förhandlingar, enligt Rational Actor Model. Därefter belyses de organisatoriska strukturerna bakom EU och dess inverkan på det faktiska inledandet av förhandlingarna enligt Organizational Behavior. Slutligen nämns kortfattat Governmental Politics, som behandlar nyckelpersoner och förhandlingskonstellationer, eftersom modellen ej kunnat genomföras i sin helhet.Uppsatsen har som uppgift att tillämpa de olika modellernas styrka i den specifika fallstudien och utgör en ny syn inom europeisk integration..

At the EU summit in Cologne in 1999, a consensus was reached concerning the common foreign and security policy within the European Union. It was decided at the summit that the WEU (Western European Union) should be incorporated into the EU - whom would then be given military capability to act autonomously without the necessity of Nato involvement. This essay investigates the factors that made this agreement possible from a rational choice perspective, but also from the perspective of the power and influence on negotiations on behalf of various types of leadership present at the meeting. Many nations at the summit of Cologne where for the creation of a military force in the form of ESDP (European Security and Defence Policy) within the Union, and many where against such a decision. However a consensus was reached and that is what this essay shall try to explain.

What role should science play in democracy? Political scientists often assume that it is possible to demarcate between ?instrumental? and ?moral? knowledge, and argue that citizens and/or politicians should use their moral knowledge to agree upon political goals and then apply the instrumental knowledge of scientists to achieve them. This straightforward view is challenged by writers in science studies, who identify three major problems in the use of science in democracy: uncertainty, risk and hidden values. They suggest that these problems could be solved through citizen participation.In this essay I perform an analysis of the internal logic of their suggestion. Is it likely that citizen participation enhances the democratic decision making process so as to reduce the problems? The internal analysis shows that it is rational to advocate citizen participation by reasons of legitimacy.

AbstractBachelor thesis in political science by Alexander Hassan, autumn 2008, ?Effects of external factors on a nations democratisation process during the transition from authoritarian to electoral democratic rule ? A categorical analysis?Supervisor: Tomas SedeliusIn recent years globalization has become a hot topic in understanding the world we live in today. Globalization has indeed had a great impact on international relations and with it a great influence on the domestic conditions that determine a nation?s possibilities. It is therefore rational to hold true that this also would apply to a nation?s democratic process.

The transformation among armed forces in Europe is a consequence due to shifted security perspective and the growth of international security actors, such as NATO and the EU. Sweden has played an active role in EU to ensure its influence in forming the security policy for the organisation. Some studies mean it´s because of Sweden?s interest in strengthen EUs roll as a security actor they transformed their own armed forces to be able to take part in international operations. This transformation led to what can be called ?the Swedish defence dismantle? and some studies mean that it has led to the point where Sweden completely lacks the ability to defence themselves.The question is if the ambition to become an active member in these security organisations can explain all the decisions made throughout the Swedish defence-transformation, or if some decisions were made due to other factors?By studying the decision process leading up to the decision to locate the flight education to Malmen in Linköping this study seeks to answer why the decision was made.

Almost every company sooner or later ends up in a more or less difficult economical situation. The reason for the economical crisis varies for each individual case but common for them all is that it is the management group that has failed in their work to guide the organisation to avoid a negative result. The next common denominator is that it is the management group that has to handle the changes in the company's environment and lead the company out of the crisis. But how can they do this and take decisions in a rational and effective way and is there warnings signals that the management group missed before the crisis was a fact? This is some of the questions that this study is going to discuss and analyze. The aim of the study is from a management perspective chart the strategic work of the company's management work when handling an economical crisis.