With a background in the 17th century?s English political events, but also the ideological scene of that time, the purpose of this essay is to analyze two concepts, freedom and happiness, in Thomas Hobbes?s political writings. Hobbes is well known for his political works, mostly for Leviathan, where his thoughts about government and religion are exposed. But what does he say about freedom? And what about happiness? The study shows that Hobbes?s political thought is quite original from this aspect too.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the success of theconcept of empowerment in the field of social science can be explained by referring to it as the new paradigm replacing the former paternalistic era. Therefore, I investigate if the character of its history, domicile and practice has the same distinguishing features as the scientific progress. The analysis is based on Thomas Kuhn's definition of a scientific paradigm through the concepts of consensus, crisis and revolution. I also look for alternative ways to explain the sudden appearance of empowerment at the world agenda. Due to the lack of a uniform definition of the concept and the absence of common approaches in the stimulation of empowerment it's difficult to argue that the situation is marked by consensus.

The purpose of this thesis was to gain an understanding of how Swedish political parties gain knowledge of their voters. The assumptions taken in the thesis were that political parties are using same methods as businesses do to find interesting segments. To attain insight into the purpose of the thesis, two research questions were formulated: how are Swedish political parties obtaining insights in who their potential voters are? With the second question, an attempt is made to answer how the very same parties are using their knowledge about their voter segments. To find answers to those questions, personal interviews were performed with seven political parties.

This thesis is seeking to explain why policy change come about. This is done by applying a part of Karin Lindgrens dissertation Vad styr ledaren?. The research evolves around the term pressure and the hypothesis are that policy change come about when there is middle range pressure on the decision-maker. Low and high pressure results in no or small policy change.The thesis is done as a case study where the economic crisis in Thailand 1996-1999 makes my case.

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.

Många av världens ursprungsbefolkningar lever i nybyggarsamhällen, där deras situation präglas av en social marginalisering och tyngs av sociala problem. För att kunna ge ett bidrag och ökad förståelse kring denna problematik är studien utformad som en kritisk diskussion kring medborgarskapet. Det statliga medborgarskapet är centralt, eftersom det definierar vilka individer och kollektiv som inkluderas respektive exkluderas i en politisk gemenskaps specifika rättigheter och skyldigheter. Trots ett inkluderande i det formella medborgarskapet, har ursprungsbefolkningarna dock haft svårigheter att ta del utav dessa rättigheter. Medborgarskapet vilar på en konstruktion som utformats efter det hegemoniska nybyggar-kollektivets värderingar.

The following essay studies the change in the use of terminology pertaining to socioeconomic categorising in public political material, and how this relates to ideological changes in politics. The aim is to determine which expressions government commission reports have used after the Second World War to classify citizens in social and economic groups, and subsequently, to link the understanding of these terms to the development of Swedish welfare politics. Welfare politics in Sweden have experienced a transition in a liberal and economistic direction that is reflected in the commission reports? choices of words and phrases ? thus studying the altering terminology can increase understanding of the ideological change. My methodology is grounded in ideology critique where I examine how dominant ideology is reproduced in public political documents.

Political marketing has changed the way political parties internationally behave in relation to the voters. The purpose of this study was to investigate how political marketing is conducted on a local level in Swedish political parties, and how the local and national level of the political parties coordinate the message they send out to the voters. An explorative study was performed by interviewing experts in the field in the form of politicians on both a local and a national level. Initially the local parties' methods were investigated, followed by a second stage where we researched the link between parties on the local and the national level. Marketing of parties on a local level turned out to a large extent to follow traditional methods.

With a background in the 17th century?s English political events, but also the ideological scene of that time, the purpose of this essay is to analyze two concepts, freedom and happiness, in Thomas Hobbes?s political writings. Hobbes is well known for his political works, mostly for Leviathan, where his thoughts about government and religion are exposed. But what does he say about freedom? And what about happiness? The study shows that Hobbes?s political thought is quite original from this aspect too.

The purpose of this study is to investigate if reconciliation between former war-enemies and ethnic groups (Muslims, Croats and Serbs) in Bosnia and Hercegovina is possible today. Reconciliation between these groups is necessary for the development of the state and sustainable peace. In order to fulfil the aim I have applied qualitative conversation interviews together with qualitative literature study.In this research I have studied the three largest parties (SDA, HDZ and SDS) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Conversation interviews were made with two representatives of each party. The reconciliation theory and the recommendations that the theory advocates were used in the study.

The purpose of this study was to examine social workers apprehensions about institutional placement of youths and what determines when these proceedings are used. When research not always shows that institutional placements lead to positive changes for youngsters, we wondered how social workers act on their assessment to institutional placement. We wanted to find out if the social workers meet any dilemmas along the way. To find out about that we used qualitative interviews with ten social workers, who worked in social service and came from different places in the southern parts of Sweden. To analyze our material we used the theory of human service organization and street-level bureaucrats work situation.

Var står ursprungsfolk i den internationella politiken?.

The topic of this thesis interest is the relation between branding as a place making/marketing technology and the process of regionalization. The main proposition advocated is that the officially communicated image of the Øresund Region, as a cohesive place and community, is a space that has been configured with branding and can be described as a territorial simulation. The concept of territorial simulation consists of two conjoined terms: simulation which aim at explaining the idiosyncratic brand image, as a social formation, which does not represent the place it imitates but commoditise it; and territorial which seeks to visualize the process of the unfolding of this image as a territory. The main argument is made in the third chapter, which traces the process of actualization of the brand image as a territory: ?Øresund?.

Uppsatsens syfte är att besvara vad som föranleder våldsamma yttringar, likt upploppen i Paris 2005 och Rosengård 2005. Jämförelsen mellan Paris och Rosengård medför en följdfråga om det finns liknande tendenser i Rosengård att fullskaliga upplopp likt de i Paris kan äga rum.Vi använder oss av en teori som bygger på att det saknas tillit mellan etniska grupper och majoritetsbefolkningen som kombinerat med en social utsatthet bildar en problematisk bild. Dessa två faktorer, brist av tillit och utsatthet, skapar ett spelrum för missnöje vilket kan yttra sig i våldsamheter. Det förefaller för oss vara faktorer vilka livnär sig av varandra, likt en ond cirkel. Variation finns emellertid mellan olika områden, där skillnader i graden av misstro och utsatthet visar på två olika situationer.

The purpose of this essay was to investigate which factors the individuals found important in the process of becoming a person with a drug-free life. The framing of the questions we had were to get the experiences, thoughts and wishes of the drug users. The survey was based on thematised qualitative interviews and focused in the personal stories of the interviewees. We interviewed four women and five men, all of which had several years of drug-abuse behind them. We found similarities and patterns and we could identify that the three most important things was the own motivation, will and that the drug-abuser had the possibility to change their social network and had the ability to find other important things in life..