This bachelor thesis explores the conditions for a harmonized EU gender equality policy. Recently the maternity leave directive has been introduced by the European commission and seeks to improve the conditions for pregnant workers. The controversial subject of this maternity leave has illustrated many of the problems connected to the development of a social dimension in EU. First of all, the debate concerning the maternity leave directive in the European Parliament has shown that both sides in the parliament seem positive towards creating legislation in this matter on EU level. However, parties at the right tend to disagree to many of the amendments in the proposal, such as the maximum entitlement.

In this thesis I analyse and discuss what impact the 2003 U.S lead intervention in Iraq, had for the cooperation against global terrorism between the European Union and the United States. Six years have passed since the Bush administration decided to go on with the intervention, even though they did not have the necessary UN mandate. Due to unsuccessful argumentation in favour of the intervention by the Bush administration, the world got divided. George W. Bush reference to a ?war on terror?, which passed almost unnoticed by Americans, rang alarm bells in many European countries.

This thesis presents a study aiming to identify the selection criteria for the digitization of posters at the National Library of Sweden (Kungl. biblioteket). The theory is that cultural heritage institutions are empowered to decide how our cultural heritage is presented as they select what items (or, as in this study, posters) will be digitized. The poster is studied as it is an interesting media form which historically was an important means of communication. The poster can represent and reflect historical events and opinions in society.

AbstractUniversity of Växjö, School of Social SciencesCourse: PO 5363, Political Science 41-60Title: US and UN, cooperation or conflict?Author: Charlotta BjuvlingSupervisor: Lennart BergfeldtDate: Autumn 2007The international society changed a great deal after the end of the cold war. It gave the United Nations a new oppertunity to act after the deadlock during the war, and it gave the United States a new hegemone role in the world politics. The aim of this paper is to investigate wheter the United States foreign policy action have been accordence to a realistic way of thinking since the end of the cold war. I will do this with the help of my research questions:? Have the United States followed the guidelines of the United Nations in their foreign policy?? Are there signs that show of a change, either towards more or less cooperation between United Nations and the United States?To answer these questions I will use the theories realism and Hedley Bulls concepts of fairness and his ideas of an international system in his book ?An Anarchical Society?.

This paper aims to describe the geographical changes of Swedish international aid politics since 2007, which was the year the new aid reform of decreasing collaborating countries, came up. To decrease the number of aid receiving countries due to efficiency is not a new idea within Swedish aid politics, but Sweden received criticism from the (DAC) Development Assistance Committee, saying Sweden was active in too many countries, and the government established a policy to decrease the amount of countries given aid. Despite the government?s recent work, science has shown on a failed country focusing. This is followed up in the paper trough examination of statistics to measure the extent of the reduction.

Alltsedan Sverigedemokraternas entré inom den politiska makten har flertalet ansatser gjorts för att undersöka deras framgångar och söka kategorisera partiet. SD har framförallt gjort sig kända genom att förespråka en restriktiv invandringspolitik, vilket återspeglas i många av de frågor partiet berör. I denna uppsats studeras Sverigedemokraternas utveckling och förändring mellan åren 1999 och 2010, genom att partiprogram från angivna tidsperiod analyseras. Tillsammans med analyser av partiprogrammen granskas vallokalsundersökningar över svenska folkets åsikter i sakpolitiska frågor under samma tidsperiod, för att undersöka huruvida det finns ett samband mellan förändringen i partiets förespråkade politik och opinionens rörelser. Inom statsvetenskapen finns omfattande belägg för att opinion och policy påverkar varandra.

In an effort to strengthen democracy in the union, the EU in 2005 took a new approach to communications policy to reach out to the citizens. The strategic document "Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate" was accompanied by two other documents, and the three of them were the core of this policy. Both democracy and communications work means at EU level a higher complexity than in the nation-state arena. Objective of this study is to examine how the implementation of Plan D has turned out in a democracy renewal perspective. To achieve that answers are sought to questions concerning the goals of Plan D, how they are still present today, what happened in practice regarding the efforts that are highlighted, and how the substance of the activities can be judged from a democratic theory perspective.

Within process or manufacturing industries, the production of goods and services or the products themselves may have negative side effects such as pollution. An important task for environmental policy is to control and limit these pollutions, for example via regulatory measures. Although, the efficiency of such measures vary greatly between different industries and an increasingly important task for environmental policy is then to encourage companies to engage in environmentally motivated innovation. Governments can utilize other measures than regulation to indirectly decrease pollution. This thesis aims to analyze such activities and how it affects the innovativeness of wastewater treatment, refrigeration and automobile manufacturing industries.

The aim of this essay is to study the importance of team organisation of teachers? learning of teaching and learning and to find out different obstacles and possibilities.I carried out the study at a schooldistrict in a community in the south of Sweden. Data was collected by group interviews and document studies. To get all kinds of teachers, from pre-school to year six, in the groups the sample was made by the headmaster of the schooldistrict. Since it is a case study the findings can not be considered as general, but they can hopefully contribute the pedagogical discussion and future research.The findings show that there exists a difference between the expectations on policy level on the one hand and on the team level on the other hand.

This paper was made together withTechPay AB, by their request.The dissertation has been divided into two separate parts; one of which is fully theoretical, with the focus on the security requirements of a digital cash register, and how to meet these requirements.The second part covers the implementation of anAndroid-oriented Java-library,created with help from the security requirements found in the first part. The purpose of this library is to make it easier to develop a cash register that uses payment terminals from TechPay.This paper also covers different communication protocols, encryption techniques and recommendations from authorities, banks and Android. This paper also contains a small review of how users are validated in applications on the current market that handles money transactions..

Today there is a keen competition between regions in the world for companies and inhabitants in order to improve regional development and economic growth. In many regions there is an active effort to create a good home base for companies and inhabitants. Since 2003 municipalities in nine counties in Sweden have come together in co-operative agencies in order to work towards more efficient regional development.This essay focuses on the relation between the state and the co-operative agencies in the regional development policy and which possibilities the state gives the co-operative agencies to pursue an efficient regional development policy, both legally and financially. I have researched and analysed this through models and ideas on how the state governs the administration and through the translation theory. The result of my study is that the co-operative agencies have a relatively large amount of freedom to make there own priorities, but the ability to act efficiently within regional development is limited..

This bachelor essay studies families that have migrated from countries in Europe to Sweden,and their experiences of adapting to new conditions of the Swedish welfare state. Theirexperiences are studied firstly from an institutional point of view, which refers to the family?s experience of adapting family life to Swedish family social policy. Secondly it focuses how the families experience new norms and values connected to Swedish family social policy. The main aim is to seek what problems families migrating to Sweden might be confronted with when adapting to new conditions of the welfare state.

This study examines which socially constructed threats and subjects of security existed during the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Stockholm 2010. With ideas of identity and difference as a starting point the theoretical framework is then developed with ideas from the new critical security studies including key subjects such as attributes, risk, imaging and visualisation. The study will be executed with the use of a discourse analysis approach using newspaper articles and chronicles as the principal empirical material. The analysis will then follow two separate themes. Firstly, the different threats and subjects of security will be deduced, and also, how these social constructions inevitably create each other and require each other to continue existing.

This thesis explores how the concept of ?legal corruption? manifests itself within the European Investment Bank with a modern approach to the theoretical understanding of anticorruption efforts. This approach conceptualises the idea of complementing theories based on contextual applicability rather than focusing on their competing qualities. The European Investment Bank (EIB), as the world?s largest multilateral lender, is an underexplored yet vital organ of the European Union, which has recently faced criticism for its alleged lack of transparency and dubious application of policy.

The public administration and its officials have a number of values which they have to relate to in their work. The values are a set of democratic and economic values.This study?s purpose is to examine how the officials at the National Insurance Office in Sweden give priority to these values. The study is performed by interviews with officials at two insurance offices.The study shows that the officials in a high degree value the democratic values legal security and public ethics. In turn they experience that productivity, which is an economic value, is being promoted in a high degree from the management.