Earlier the regional social insurance office was exposed to critisism because of bad administration and a lack of providing public service. Among other things the regional social insurance office was attacked because of long investigation hours and indinstinct working methods and was blamed for not being able to solve the unhealth in the society. This lead to the reformation of the previous regional social insurance office into a government authority agency on the first of Januari, 2005. Extensive organizational changes were made so that regional social insurance office could handle the demands and become a uniform public administration. I have made a qualitative study where the purpose was to se how the changes affected the public administrators and I focused on their participation and willingness to change.

The purpose of this article is to describe the discourse in which public-private partnership (PPP) resides, within the Swedish parliament, in the field of infrastructure. I have chosen to look at the latest three years deliberation where PPP appears in parliament bills.This case study is based upon discourse as a qualitative method. Five indicator signs which is history, comparison, geographic location, vision of growth potential and solution controls the context of PPPThe result of the analysis was that a clear discourse was unravelled. A first rather surprising conclusion shows that it is possible to disconnect the discourse from PPP. PPP is not important by itself, the result shows that it only play the part of possible solution to the problems related to the discourse and does not have any value in its own.This result lead the conclusion that PPP is no more than a tool for politicians to get as much out of their infrastructural aims as possible, as rational vote-maximizing actors.

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.

Business is changing and so are society?s expectations. Companies are expected to take responsibility for their trade and the context they are operating in, by looking at socially, economically and environmentally aspects. Many companies handle it by implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) to their line of action. This is often handled by collaborating with other organisations, such as non-governmental organisations.

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.

The main argument of the thesis is that multinational companies (MNCs) can promote democracy through corporate social responsibility (CSR). MNCs hold some prerequisites giving them the means to create positive changes. But they lack one important prerequisite: knowledge about local conditions. Therefore the best CSR result is reached through partnerships with local NGOs.H&M's CSR-work in Bangladesh, including a partnership with the Bangladeshi women's rights organisation Karmojibi Nari, serves as an illustrating case. It is argued that the CSR-work promotes democracy through strengthening the civil society, through indirectly implementing national laws concerning labour legislation and human rights and through raising awareness about rights and legislation among the workers.The CSR process changes the terms for both NGOs and MNCs.

This essay revolves around partnerships established between local authorities and civil society to promote integration in segregated urban areas. The main focus is on who is active in formulating the local integration policy in these partnerships. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with representatives from the local public administration and from different parts of civil society in Rosengård and Södra innerstaden in Malmö. The conclusion is that local authorities to a large extent decide the content of integration policy. The authorities, in having the major responsibility of the integration projects, decide what parts of civil society to involve and what projects will promote integration.

The purpose with this master thesis is to analyze how the Swedish County Administrative Board (Länsstyrelsen) acts in an environment that changes fast with more regional actors than ever before. There are also proposals regarding new public authorities and eventually a reduction of the Swedish County Administrative Board.By studying a report issued by the Board in December 2005 the aim is to find their intentions and actions for the future. By using three diverse theoretical concepts - the public organisation, the instrumental perspective and two separate perspectives from new institutionalism - the expectation is that I will have the possibility to analyze the intentions of the organisation in many different ways.In this case study I also want to take into consideration the central discourses in the regional debate, shall we decentralize or shall we keep on having a strong state even in the future? What kind of regional policy does the Swedish County Administrative Board prefer?The result shows that the Swedish County Administrative Board struggles for a strong state even in the future, but it does not propose any huge changes. In many ways it seems like they act as they are supposed to - as an instrument for the government - but despite that it is obvious that the Swedish County Administrative Board tries to show that it has the traditions and knowledge.

Denna studie handlar om EU som normativ makt i området för EU:s östliga partnerskap (Eastern Partnership/EP). Med utgångspunkt från säkerhetsgemenskapsteori och konstruktivism undersöks EU:s försök att sprida sina normer och intensifiera kopplingarna till länderna Moldavien och Armenien, som omfattas av European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) och EP. Studien finner att EU:s strategi för att intensifiera kopplingarna till Moldavien och Armenien är mycket lika, där utvecklingen av praktikergemenskaper verkar vara något som EU särskilt vill prioritera och etablera redan i ett inledande skede för att partnerlandet skall acceptera de normer, värden och uppfattningar om intressen som utgör ramverket för EU:s kollektiva identitet. Men det verkar som att ländernas förmåga, möjlighet och vilja att tillmötesgå ramverket skiljer sig åt, och att det är där vi kan hitta förklaringen till varför EU mer framgångsrikt spridit sina normer till Moldavien än till Armenien ? ett faktum som denna studie argumenterar för ytterst visat sig genom Moldaviens godkännande av EU:s bindande samarbetsavtal Association Agreement, och Armeniens avvisande av samma avtal till förmån för en tullunion ledd av Ryssland.  .

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.

Lundin, Ellen (2007): Jämställdhet i regional planering: nedslag i tre planeringsnivåer Stockholms län [Gender equality in regional planning]D-uppsats 10 poäng, fördjupningskurs i kulturgeografiHandledare: Gunnel ForsbergSpråk: SvenskaKORTFATTAD SAMMANFATTNINGUppsatsens syfte är att förstå hur planerare på olika nivåer i den regionala planeringen arbetar med jämställdhet och att tolka vad dessa skillnader eller likheter kan ha för konsekvenser. Frågeställningarna behandlar planerarnas upplevelse av jämställdhetsarbetet, hur de ser på den som de planerar för och vilket av synsätten ?lika behandling?, ?kvinnans perspektiv? och ?genusperspektivet? som planerarna uppfattar ligger närmast deras egen verksamhet. Uppsatsen bygger på forskning om jämställdhetsintegrering och genusperspektiv i planeringsarbete och testar denna mot en intervjuundersökning genomförd under hösten. Tjänstemän från Länsstyrelsen, Regionplane- och trafikkontoret och två kommuner i Stockholms län har intervjuats om jämställdhet i sitt arbete.

AbstractEssay in Political Science, autumn 2010. ?ALBA ? A regional integration project with good conditions?? Autor: Anna Sjögren. Course: Political Science, C-level, Tutor: Sten Berglund An essential part of the political science research on regional integration has been about why states join economic unions and what forces drive the process of integration. This essay is a case study on the Latin American regional integration project called ALBA.

For the past decades, culture has been given a role as a factor for local and regional development. But what is meant by development and in what ways culture can be of importance in this aspect can be unclear. This thesis examines the perception of the role for local and regional development of one specific cultural place and network ? the cultural cooperative Not Quite in Fengersfors, Sweden. I study the way the role as developer is expressed and interpreted in the discourse of the cultural workers who are members of the network and in the discourse of public cultural policy in the region Västra Götaland and in Åmål municipality.

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.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att belysa olika uppfattningar om den internationella handelns betydelse för fattiga länder, samt att undersöka om EU:s Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) är en möjlighet eller ett hinder för fattiga länders utveckling. Frågeställningarna är:1.Hur kan internationell handel påverka fattigdom och utveckling?2.Hur kan EPA påverka de fattiga länder som avtalen berör?Det finns många olika teorier om hur handel uppkommer och fungerar. Merkantilismen menar att export är bättre för ett land än import. Liberalismen ligger i grunden för hur det ekonomiska samhället är uppbyggt med handel och konkurrens.