The purpose of this Master's thesis is to examine the decision-process concerning public art in Borås municipality. My questions have been from where the initiatives come, who the decision-makers are, how the decisions are taken and which questions are discussed. I have examined this through partly interviews with the members of the deciding organ in Borås municipality, partly through literary studies. I have also analysed texts such as debates and protocols from the Swedish parliament. I have also been present at two of the committees meetings.

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.

In January 2007 the Öresund committy changed its statutes to become a more politically oriented lobby organization. This change can be interpreted as one part of a continuously evolving process where the Öresund region is emancipating itself from the national states in a multi-level European environment. By focusing on this latest development the thesis puts forward the importance of political institutions, as well as politicians and civil servants as actors in them, as crucial factors in the process where the region is gaining political power. The thesis shows how the political cross-border cooperation in the Öresund region is being institutionalized which affects its power relations to other levels in the multi-level system, predominantly the national states. In other words, there is a connection between power and institutionalization.The Öresund committee has by gaining better access to policymaking agendas on the national levels proven that the organizational change has already started to bear fruit.

The aim of the study is to examine different statements for and against regional identity in the research of the new organisation of the Swedish society. The aim is also to observe in what extend the Swedish committee of responsibility has had an awareness of the identity politics in its effort to improve the presumptions for the new, successful regional division.The questions are:1. In which ways do the opinions of the participant of the work of the committee of responsibility, coincide and differ when it comes to the importance of the regional identity in the case of a new regional division?2. How has the committee of responsibility worked on development of consciousness and mobilisation for the creation of the regional identity in its final report?A method called the argumentation analysis was used in this study.

In the beginning of the twentieth century in Sweden the laboring class grew and became more established. This entailed both a change in housing conditions and the design of the social policies. The purpose of this study is to show how the Child Welfare Committee in Kalmar conducted its work during 1911-1918. The aim is to show on what grounds they made their decisions and how the interaction between the committee and the families functioned in practice. This will be accomplished by giving examples from the protocols written by Kalmar?s Child Welfare Committee.

Essay in Political Science, C-level, by Camila Alvarez Cea, spring semester 2010. Tutor: Alf Sundin?Reality or a Political Mirage? ? A Study of the Swedish Press Views on the Health Insurance Reform in the USA? The purpose of this essay is partly to examine whether the picture that Swedish press presents of the health insurance reform in the US, which is part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Act bill, will be of crucial importance to the possibilities that the American population has to receive health insurance. The main research question is accordingly: ?Does the picture that Swedish press presents of the health insurance reform in the USA, seem like something that will be of radical importance to the possibilities of the population to receive healthcare?? The purpose is also to examine in which model (demand or market) the opinions of the Swedish press fits. This purpose will be answered by using three specific questions asking whether their opinions differ when it comes to three criterions: organization, financing/resources and delivery systems.

The purpose of this masters thesis is to examine the arguments that are being used when closing and establishing peoples libraries. During the 90:ies, in the community of Gothenburg, 4 public libraries were closed and another 3 public libraries were opened. A possible reason for this change lies in the reform from the city Committee that split the community of Gothenburg into 21 pieces; all with one centrally appointed political Committee. The library activity has since the reform was implemented got worse in some areas, foremost in the already neglected city sections, and better in some areas, which where able to establish new libraries. Argumentation analysis indicates that the arguments used at closure where mainly economical and neither the number nor relevance and validity of the arguments where good.

After World War II a rapid expansion of the Swedish health care took place. Theexpansion was realised chiefly as a development of the hospitals and was bothproduced and financed mainly within the public sector. The financing consisted to ahigh degree of government grants from the state to the county councils.During the period for this examination (1945-1955) the public responsibility for thehealth care was expanded. This was expressed in the publicly financed system forhealth insurance and the cut down in the charges that the patients had to pay for thehospital care. These changes led to some discussions on the national level but reformscould on the whole, with exception for the suggested reform of the open health care,be implemented.This case-study performed on the county council in Värmland shows that the degreeof consensus was enhanced on the regional level.

In May 2007 a committee called ??Ansvarskommittén??, assembled by the Swedish government, came with a proposal of changing the Swedish regional structure. The committee which consisted of representatives from all the sitting parties in the parliament proposed that the present regional structure consisting of 20 county council districts and 21 counties would be reduced to between 6-9  regions called ??regionkommuner??.The purpose of this study is to analyze how the committee?s proposal balances democratic and economic values by using a qualitative method. The committee?s proposal is analyzed by a comparison in five political areas with two differentiated regional theories called old and new regionalism.

The purpose of this study is to examine how parliament executes its responsibility of oversight against the government. In Sweden, parliamentary oversight of the government rests with a standing committee of parliament known as the constitutional committee.Drawing on general principal-agent theory I construct a model in which members of the constitutional committee are seen as agents in double and conflicting agency assignments. This constitutes a problem for the agent. Since it is the party group in parliament that controls the fulfilment of the agents? objectives, the agent is presumed to follow the party assignment to the detriment of the parliament assignment.The model generates two hypotheses concerning they type of oversight we should expect the members of the constitutional committee to perform against the government.

According to the national legislation concerning discrimination within labour law, it is prohibited to discriminate on the grounds of sex, ethnic belonging, religion or other religious belief, functional disability, sexual nature and part-time work or time-limited employment. The EC-law goes further and also prohibits discrimination on the ground of age. According to an EC-directive the member states must incorporate a national provision against age discrimination by the 2nd of December 2006 and the Swedish legislator is now in the progress to implement this into Swedish law.Even though national legislation does not contain any provision on the area, the EC-law directive has a certain influence at national law. Measures that are in breach of the purpose of the directive can for example not be taken. When the time for implementation has expired, the directive has direct effect and can be referred to within the member states.

This paper is a critique of the hegemonic democracy ideal in France today, the myth of the Republic. Based on critical theory, the paper also contains a normative attempt giving the chance to subaltern groups to tell their, less often heard, version of the "truth".The theoretical foundation is the ontological narrative perspective, where identities and actions are understood as being constructed by the telling of stories. The interdependent relations of different narrative dimensions are analyzed. The power over who gets to tell the story of the "truth" is understood as decided in the interaction by dimensions of metanarrativity, public narratives, ontological narratives and conceptual narrativity. The author argues, inspired by Chantal Mouffe, that consensus is an illusion based on exclusion of those that differ.

Sweden is a member of the European Union (EU) since 1995. The association results in considerable proportions of the European law, also called EC-law, for Sweden. The legal system has precedence above Swedish law, which forces our national court to take consideration into and interpret the law in the light of EC-law.Sweden doesn?t possess a general legislation of discrimination. An appointed committee investigates the matter and the requirement of a common law, including all discrimination prohibits.

The intention of this study was to examine how social workers, leaders within the social work administration and politicians in the social work committee in Helsingborg related to residential treatment of youth and the research showing signs of undesirable results.The main questions were:1. How do social workers, leaders within the social work administration and politicians in the social work committee relate to residential treatment of youth and the research existing about it?2. Which factors do the different categories mean justify the placements?3.

Title: Lobbying in the Swedish parliament - a qualitative study about experiences and attitudes of lobbying among the members of the Swedish parliament, from a communication perspective.Author: Bodil Hassel and Kristofer PerssonTutor: Emma SvenssonPurpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study lobbying towards members of the Swedish parliament. We aim to study their point of view: what experiences and attitudes they have towards the phenomenon. Key questions to be answered are: What experiences and attitudes do the members of the Swedish parliamentary Committee on Environment and Agriculture have towards lobbying? What skills does a successful lobbyist possess, according to the members of the committee? How do the organizations Skogsindustrierna and Naturskyddsfo?reningen lobby?Method/Material: The material used in this study consists of interviews with nine respondents of the Committee on Environment and Agriculture in the Swedish parliament. Additionally, two informant interviews with the organizations Skogsindustrierna and Naturskyddsfo?reningen were made.