Uppsats för avläggande av fiosofie kandidatexamen i Kulturvård, Ledarskap i slöjd o kulturhantverk 15 hp. Institutionen för kulturvård Göteborgs universitet. 2014:32.

This study aimed to explore the perceived role and mandate of civil servants employed in municipalities in Kronoberg county. The study aimed to answer the question whether civil servants engaged in municipal economics have different perspectives on their mandate and role based on how said civil servants implement and manage policy tools available in Swedish municipalities. The study aimed to through policy tools theory explain how civil servants through four categories view the policy tools employed in the municipality. The study is based on the reasoning that policy tools influences exercise of authority that in turn influences view on policy tools. In order to study civil servants perspective on perceived mandate and role interviews were conducted with a sample of civil servants from each of the eight municipalities in Kronoberg county.

Policy documents in the public library field, such as the library legislation, local political goals and intra-library plan documents, often include ambitious but ambiguous formulations. This two years master?s thesis examines the relationship between four policy documents and library practice in a local context. The theoretical framework is inspired by a sociocultural theory developed by the Swedish professor of pedagogical psychology Roger Säljö. The theory emphasizes the importance of context to learning and development.The thesis? method is a case study.

This essay seeks, by applying to theories of nationalism, to explain the reasoning behind the Russian annexation of Crimea and to understand the ideology and nationalistic influences in Russian foreign policy in the case of the Ukraine crisis and the annexation of Crimea. The argumental analysis exemplifies the nationalistic tendencies of Vladimir Vladimirovitj Putin and the Russian foreign actions and attempts to specify a nationalistic motif in the case of Crimea and in Russian foreign policy. The study seeks to illustrate tendencies in Russian foreign policy and to show what can be expected of Russia in the near future..

The aim of this paper is to empirically examine the ideological trends and positioning of the Swedish liberal party with the Danish social liberal party. This paper also aims to analyze the reasons behind the trends. By examine the development in these two Nordic liberal sisterparties, this paper contributes to our understanding of why and how party change is initiated. The paper commences with an intuitive notion that the Swedish party has in fact, made a lurch towards the right, during the past ten to fifteen years while the Danish party has retained their social-liberal position in the centre of the Danish political spectrum. The questions then asked are: can this hypothesis be verified empirically? If so, how can this phenomenon of divergence, be explained?The method used in this thesis is process-tracing and the empirical material does to a large extent rely on interviews with central agents as they are specified in the theory of each party.

Officially, the EU gender policy since 2000 has been guided by the strategy of Gender Mainstreaming. This strategy aims to promote gender equality and is informed by a feminist ontology which stipulates that women are structurally subordinated.In this essay, I examine whether the European Commission has adequately adhered to this gender policy in its free trade negotiations with the ACP (African, Caribbean, and Pacific) countries as part of the Cotonou Agreement. As a result of my text analysis of documents related to the negotiations, opinion pieces by interested actors and policy papers of the EU, I find that the Commission does not act in accordance to its stated gender policy.To explain this discrepancy between policy intent and actions, I employ postliberal feminist theory and Robert Putnam's Two-Level Game Theory Model. By analyzing statistics and published research, I explore how gender issues are being represented politically on a domestic and international level.My findings show that a key cause of this discrepancy lies in the low levels of female participation in the political institutions of the EU and ACP; a lack of participation that is especially pronounced in the area of international economics. In explaining the constraints on female participation and the prospects of full implementation of the EU's gender policy in the international political economy, I emphasize the role of culturally and historically gendered institutions..

This paper discuss the possibilities to transfer the Danish labour market policy, called flexicurity, to Sweden. There are two main purposes of this essay. The first purpose is to discuss the reasons why the Danish labour market policy could be interesting for Sweden. The second purpose is to investigate which obstacles that might occur during the transfer. For guidance I have used two startingpoints which highlights the Danish flexicurity's pros and cons.

The process of European Integration and creation of the single market revealed many questions and boundaries on the development and improvement of the European Social policy. Pension?s sustainability has become the priority issue especially during the EU enlargement processes. Different policy instruments and institutions available to governments of Member States in realization of social objectives resulted in a growing diversity of pension polices which produced different combinations of public and private provisions - ?private-public hybrids? , with the state exercising different degrees of influence in their development.

In Sweden there is scepticism if there really is a difference between the two biggest political parties, the Moderate/Conservative party and the Swedish Social Democrats. The voters feels that the arguments used by both parties are more or less the same and that it does not matter on whom you vote. Hence I am going to compare the parties? policy programs, developed by the members in each party, by an analysis of ideas to see if the two parties are so similar that they hardly are two different options, or if there is a divergence between the two. My choosing of the parties? policy programs comes from a decision to look at the members? party, they are the authors of the programs, the core. I have to admit I am not unbiased in this work.

This thesis aims to develop a theory in the under researched field of international comparative cultural policy studies. lt does so by combining theories from the fields of political scienceand cultural studies, researching how and to what extent the concepts of culture of different states have an impact on the way cultural policies are constructed.The thesis uses this theoretical development in order to research a specific problem, namely the perceived possibility that Swedish and German cultural structures are slowly converging. Two recent official policy documents from each country are the objects of study. Through comparative idea analysis and with Michiel S. D Vries theories on decentralization, the thesis explains the convergence between the countries by differing cultural views between them.

The aim of this study is to analyze the process of an agenda setting and see how a specific issue came to materialize on the security policy agenda. The empirical goal of the study is to see why Sweden chose to participate in the EU-led operation to Chad, and how that process came to be? The analysis is based upon Kingdon's multiple streams theory (2003) where he distinguishes the process into three streams. Central for his theory is the coupling of these streams and the importance of a policy entrepreneur. I complement Kingdon's theory of policy entrepreneurs by taking inspiration from Hinnfors (1995), Gustavsson (1999) and especially Eriksson (2000) and their analysis of policy change and agenda setting.

Fiscal policy and its consequences have attracted much attention on both academic and societal level, in Sweden and elsewhere. However, the dependence between fiscal policy on municipality level and business cycles has only recently sparked a debate among Swedish economists. Studies point out that a law which came to force in 2000, balanskravet, may have caused municipalities to lower expenditures, alternatively raising taxes, during recessions. This thesis examines how the level of municipality taxes depends on business cycle fluctuations and the impact that balanskravet has had on this correlation. We employ econometric regressions, with annual data covering the period 1980-2014, to enable an analysis of the dependence between taxes and business cycles, both before and after the introduction of balanskravet.

Aim: To examine director?s experiences of the process to implement smoke-free working hours and also their need of support to make it feasible in the municipality of Östhammar. Method: A qualitative interview study with a descriptive design was used. Semi-structured interviews were made with six directors who were selected from different levels, localities and administrations in the municipality of Östhammar. A qualitative content analysis was used to analyze the data.Results: Many positive aspects were pointed out regarding the implementation of smoke-free working hours.

This study draws from Zygmunt Bauman´s theory that a governmental policy of values can reduce the personal responsibility and moral choices for employees, to focus only on maintaining the government?s internal rules and regulations. The apparent risk with this type of moral attenuation is that the employee is deprived of the possibility to react morally on conduct of the government?s external misuse of power. In this study, this theory is connected to the Swedish Armed Forces? policy of values, as these values do not include a critical standpoint for officers and soldiers.

There is a clear difference between types of regions and forms of regionalization. This theoretical division can point out other division lines on different areas and levels, like the one of discourses. In this article is urged that regional political discourses may be divided in West and East European ones. To argue for West and East differences in regional discourse the article shows division lines both in the history of regionalization but also in ideologies. The regional policy of the EU is one example for today's regionalization as a West discourse and the Transylvanian in Rumania as an example for the East discourse.