Our purpose with this essay was to make a comparative study of the methadone programme in Sweden versus Denmark. We wanted to examine the issue by illustrating the historical and recent development of the drug political policy and the growth of the methadone programme in both countries.We chose to work with the following questions:1. What differences occur in the methadone programme if you compare the same in Denmark and Sweden? 2. How is the respective methadone programmes designed? 3.

Regionalization has become a catchphrase in European countries during the last twenty years with the establishment of the European Union. An ideational development has occurred during time towards emphasing more politicially powerful regions with the idea of new regionalism. Sweden represents a deviant case study, where regions historically have been politically weak and where Sweden has been characterized as a strong unitary state. The aim of this paper is to analyze the political debate in the Swedish parliament concerning the implementation of a stronger regional level (storregioner) during 2007-2010 and to determine if the debate can be characterized as a case of depoliticalization. The theory of depoliticalization have been introduced by Richard Katz and Peter Mair to explain why political parties through external pressure from europeanisation and globalization tend to become more consensual with similar political agendas, leading to a diminished the lef-right scale.

Regionalization has become a catchphrase in European countries during the last twenty years with the establishment of the European Union. An ideational development has occurred during time towards emphasing more politicially powerful regions with the idea of new regionalism. Sweden represents a deviant case study, where regions historically have been politically weak and where Sweden has been characterized as a strong unitary state. The aim of this paper is to analyze the political debate in the Swedish parliament concerning the implementation of a stronger regional level (storregioner) during 2007-2010 and to determine if the debate can be characterized as a case of depoliticalization. The theory of depoliticalization have been introduced by Richard Katz and Peter Mair to explain why political parties through external pressure from europeanisation and globalization tend to become more consensual with similar political agendas, leading to a diminished the lef-right scale.

The name of the study means ?The short arm - a study in diversity and arm?s length in the cultural collaboration model?. Right now there is a reform in the Swedish cultural administration where the responsibility for handing out state funds and grants to cultural organizations is changing from the state government to the local regional governments. The purpose of this study is to map the organisational changes caused by the reform and investigate how this affects the regional policies concerning cultural diversity and the arm?s length principle.

Many institutions currently work with visitor participation. Participatory culture is basically to invite visitors to participate and to give an opportunity to co-creation. In my research I have studied two projects. The first one is the exhibition Hej! produced by Postmuseum (the Swedish mail museum) and the second one is Present by Riksutställningar (a Swedish government).This development indicates that the museums are on their way towards a new definition. Earlier museums were defined as a source of knowledge which purpose was to spread lore to the people.

I have studied how human networks can affect decision-making and different constellations. The primary purpose is to clarify the possibility to affect the decision to move the infrastructure investments from Region Skåne to Region Västra Götaland. The study starts at the EU-level and continues to the Government and on to the region. Region Skåne is studied especially since it was from there the infrastructure investments were moved.The conclusion is that there is no specific representation in the government that represents regional topics, in spite of the fact that almost 30% of the members of the Parliament come from these regions. There is no discussion between the members that could be considered a networking-activity beneficial for the regions.

I februari 2007 redovisade ansvarskommittén sitt slutbetänkande för regeringen. I sitt slutbetänkande föreslår ansvarskommittén en omstrukturering där 6-9 regionkommuner kommer att ersätta dagens 21 landsting, samtidigt kommer 6-9 län, sammanfallande med de föreslagna regionkommunerna, att ersätta dagens 21 län. Den föreslagna omstruktureringen har fått regionaliseringsdebatten att åter blossa upp i Sverige. I debatten är det tydligt att känslorna för den egna regionen varierar mellan olika regioner, då vissa regioner vurmar mer och andra mindre för den egna regionen. Vad beror detta på? Handlar det om regional identitet eller avsaknaden av densamma? Dessa frågor ligger till grund för denna uppsats med syfte att undersöka hur region och regional identitet konstrueras och rekonstrueras i tidningsmedia.

In Sweden there is an integration policy and a policy for national minorities. The integration policy aims to integrate newly arrived immigrants (nyanlända invandrare), whereas the minority policy aims to maintain and strengthen the rights of the national minorities. The national minorities are though, at times, included into the integration policy, even though they hold a minority status in Sweden. This paper aims to, through discourse analysis, investigate the research question: ?how is the content of integration referred to, when it is related to immigrants, contra when it is related to national minorities?.

This study aims at examining the prospects for a policy transfer of a Swedish municipal environmental policy (that of Växjö) to the French urban commune Blois, for which an ambition of becoming a leading eco-city in France, was declared by the mayor in 2008.In the analysis, emphasis is laid on mechanisms to institutionalize the main environmental policy principles, such as political and institutional structures and processes. Other prospects for an institutionalization of a new environmental policy that are to be investigated are economic structures as well as visions of the different decision-makers concerned. Research methods used in the study are qualitative interviews, document studies and a questionnaire.The findings of the analysis show that today?s prospects for an environmental policy in Blois close to that of Växjö, are clearly limited. The limitations can partly be found in economic structures but these seem to be rather related to a lack of priority amongst actors.

The aim of this paper is to try to explain how specific, foreign policy decisions are made, and why one state decides to use violence against another state. A qualitative method is used, and text and documents are analysed. The two theoretical points of departure are central within foreign policy analysis: realism´s theories on external threats and constructivism´s theories on ideas´ policy influence. The empirical case chosen is the US decision to use military violence against Iraq. The paper investigates whether the real threat from Saddam Hussein´s Iraq was the cause of the American military attacks, or whether the ideas of leading politicians in the USA were decisive for the decision to invade the country.

The main aim of this study is to examine the development policies of Sweden and the European Union from a postcolonial perspective. Sweden and the European Union are increasingly coming to be viewed as normative powers rather than military powers. So how does the colonial past of the western societies affect the policies of today? Are there any signs of the power structures of the past, and if so, how are these power structures manifested in the development policies of today? Since both Sweden and the European Union have come to be viewed as normative powers they are compared with each other to highlight their similarities and differences. The results of the study shows that both Sweden and the European Union can be seen as carriers of western values and interests.

In Sweden there is an integration policy and a policy for national minorities. The integration policy aims to integrate newly arrived immigrants (nyanlända invandrare), whereas the minority policy aims to maintain and strengthen the rights of the national minorities. The national minorities are though, at times, included into the integration policy, even though they hold a minority status in Sweden. This paper aims to, through discourse analysis, investigate the research question: ?how is the content of integration referred to, when it is related to immigrants, contra when it is related to national minorities?.

The purpose of this study is to make a close and critical scrutiny of the EU Lisbon Strategy and the assumption of `sustainable growth´. A basic question is to clarify what is meant by `sustainability´ in the economic and the environmental dimension respectively, and also, to analyse the meaning of `sustainable growth´. Secondly, I try to investigate the relationship between the economical and environmental dimensions of the strategy. Are the goals of the dimensions compatible and mutually supporting or are they conflicting? By illuminating these issues the study moves towards a final set of questions: What are the arguments that encourage or counteract the Lisbon assumption of `sustainable growth´? Is the European Union approaching `sustainable growth´ looking at different economical and ecological indicators? What are the prospects for the Lisbon Strategy as a way towards global `sustainable development´?.

This essay explores the Swedish state?s geopolitical view and creation, of the spatial spaces in and of the Arctic. With a critical geopolitical framework, a discourse analysis is conducted on the Swedish strategy for the arctic region, with the ambition to unfold the underlining spatial spaces, actors and dramas that this discourse creates. The result of this analysis shows that Sweden creates three different Arctic spaces within its geopolitical discourse; a Swedish Arctic, a Nearby Arctic and a Regional Arctic. This has major political consequences, which will be illuminated in the essay.

In this study, we aim to analyze how the terms documentation and pedagogical documentation respectively are portrayed in the curriculum (skolverket 2010) as well as in the curriculum complementary material (skolverket 2012). The analysis is performed by use of critical discourse analysis. We used published research as a theoretical base to analyze the empirical data against. Our aim is to increase the understanding of how the terms documentation and pedagogical documentation are used in the various policy documents and what messages these documents relay concerning the aforementioned terms.We aim to give some answers to the following questions:How to interpret the term documentation in relation to the term pedagogical documentation.How to interpret the ways the terms are promoted in the policy documents. We conclude that the term documentation is vastly more open to interpretation than the term pedagogical documentation. We note that the curriculum exclusively use the term documentation and stress the importance of using a variety of documentation forms.