Many theories describe failed states as potential threats to international security due to the breeding ground they constitute for transnational terrorism. Ken Menkhaus believes however that transnational terrorists are dependent on a state for their own protection in order to be able to operate.This essay seeks out the relevance in Ken Menkhaus? theory which states that transnational terrorists rather exploit corrupted states than operate in countries where there is a state collapse. His theory will be applied on a case study on post-Libya after Gadhafi?s fall.

Nobel Prize Laureate Joseph Brodsky is a key figure in Soviet Russian literature. Expelled from the USSR in 1972, he became a US citizen in 1977 and Poet Laureate of the United States in 1991. In this essay, I have sought to examine the state of exile perceived in Brodsky?s poems. Using Russian literary critic Viktor Shklovsky?s concept of defamiliarization, I have strived to illuminate the formal composition of this state ? its technique.

The focus of this thesis is a specific part of Swedish library policy called library plans. A library plan is a political document created with the purpose of constituting a platform for co-operation between different library systems within a municipality, e.g. through determining and analysing the needs for library activities within municipalities in Sweden.This thesis´ aim is to investigate whether library plans are, or can be used as, a tool for change and thereby increase legitimacy for public libraries in Sweden.We have examined aspects of library plans using theories from change management to determine whether these plans include tools focusing on conditions in organisations that could result in an improved and stronger position in the society for public library. Through the use of theories from new institutionalism we opted for an understanding of the interaction between the libraries and the context in which they are part of.Upon examining 23 library plans, we discovered similarities as well as diversities among them. From our study we have drawn the conclusion that it is important to analyse the specific needs of each different municipality and to consider these individual conditions and needs when developing and composing the library plan.

Abstract:The old established description gunboat diplomacy has in modern time changed to a broader and more nuanced definition called maritime diplomacy. But what is maritime diplomacy and how is it described? This essay analyses the theories from the Englishman James Cable and the American Edward Luttwak. Both Cable and Luttwak represent nations which have a global security interests and deploy their maritime forces worldwide. The foundation for their theories is power politics.

Solid State Drives (SSD) blir idag allt vanligare som lagringsmedium och håller på att bli ett alternativ till magnetiska hårddiskar. Denna studie+ har undersökt hur man på bästa sätt kan utnjytta SSDer i en MySQL-databas. Undersökningen genomfördes med hjälp av experiment där prestandamätningar gjordes för att få en klar bild på i vilken konfiguration av SSDs som ger bäst prestanda i MySQL. Mätverktygen som användes var sql-bench och mysqlslap.   Resultaten visar att en databas på en enskild SSD presterar lika bra som en databas med  SSD-cache  under  majoriteten  av  mätningarna  och  visar  bättre  resultat  än resterande konfigurationerna som var en databas på hårddisk och transaktionsloggen på en SSD. .

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 recent years, several scandals have been revealed where public employees been involved. Some researchers argue, moreover, that the NPM's rampage has led to an increase in the risk of corruption in public administration. The Regulation on Internal Control shall, according to the government, lead to adequate protection against corruption by analyzing and managing risks. However, Riksrevisionen have criticized the authorities' protection against corruption to be too unstructured and unsystematic. In addition, they questioned whether the regulation really has significance in the work against corruption.

The aim of this essay is to examine whether democracy in St Petersburg isconsolidated or not. Since studies of democratic transition have been rarelyconducted on post-communist cities, this study seems fruitful. Using the Linz andStepan theory, where democracy is considered consolidated when it has become?the only game in town? and Orttung's three criteria legitimacy, politicalpolarisation and policy effectiveness; this essay analyzes people's attitudes,political behaviour, the rule of law and civil society in St Petersburg. Theory isused to interpret the material mainly consisting of two interviews and newspaperarticles.

In this thesis the construction of identity within the EU is discussed. A thesis problem in three dimensions is used to explain the purpose of the construction, its realization and the consequences of such identity. These aspects show the complexity of the problems related to identity construction on a structural level.By using a post-modern and a social constructivist theoretical approach identity is presented as socially constructed by discourse. The theory of discourse makes it possible to analyze the development of an identity forming discourse within the EU and its status today.With an approach inspired by critical theory, we use discourse analysis as a methodological tool to illustrate the ideas that govern discourse, and in what way it is related to the social reality.The analysis states that the purpose of identity constructing is the striving for legitimacy. Without identification, the legitimacy is threatened.

This thesis aim to investigate the living conditions among marginalized habitants of suburbs in the Swedish welfare state. To approach an understanding of the complexity of marginalized urban areas, this thesis focus on studying the Stockholm suburb Husby in a context of the May riots 2013.The research method used is qualitative interviews with seven informants, who have a connection to the Husby area.The theories applied to the empirical material is Gösta Esping-Andersens theory on welfare state regimes and Loïc Wacquants theory on advanced marginality, also known as ?The new urban poverty?.By observing the complexity of the Husby riots in a contextual aspect of the Swedish welfare state and the living situation in Husby, the analysis has shown that the Swedish welfare model is going through a changing process. This process means a shift from a social democratic welfare model towards a more liberal regime, with an increased privatization of public welfare and a focus on individual responsibility regarding the citizens own living conditions. Husby as an area is characterized by a low socioeconomic status, a high level of unemployment and poor school results.

Using interviews conducted within the municipality of Nam Dich, Vietnam, this qualitative study explores how ethnic minority parents and children navigate around the state's supervision in order to preserve their traditional practices of child marriages. Moreover, the research explores the roles and expectations between individuals within an ethnic minority family as a collective unit. Using governmentality supported by the concept of state evasion, culture bearers and empowerment, I argue that understanding child marriage as a phenomenon requires analysis of cultural context. The paper starts with an introduction of the ongoing relation between the Vietnamese state and ethnic minority traditions related to child marriage. While the Vietnamese state ?s modernization projects aim to empower individuals by creating more freedom within the process of marriage and increasing the opportunity for education and work, certain ethnic minority groups want to uphold their cultural ways of marriage when parental arrangement occurs from an early age.

Recently, there have been intense discussions about the humanities and their role in society. Internationally, as well as in a Swedish context, the humanities have been regarded to be in a state of crisis. However, these discussions usually demonstrate a lack of historical perspectives based on thorough empirical research. The notion of a crisis needs to be historicized.In this study, a case is being examined where the relationship between science and society was renegotiated. In the context of World War II, a discourse has been identified in a borderland between science and politics through an analysis of Swedish journals and anthologies during the time period 1937-1947.

The tradition of a strong church ruling in the Swedish society ages back to the very first start of Christianity reaching the country.  Due to the separation between the church and state in 2000 in Sweden, there have been a lot of changes. No longer would the church be able to influence the politics as it had been able to do before. Since Sweden is a democratic country, the decision had to be made in a voting amongst the parties. The purpose with this paper is to understand the argumentation made by the Swedish parties Socialdemokraterna, Kristdemokraterna and Centerpartiet. This has been made using a text analysis, which studies the argumentations made by the parties in their motions.

Sustainable development has become the ideology of the twentieth first century. As an important concept and as a framework of political action, sustainable development can at this point be considered as the very symbol of a paradigm in the international debate over environmental issues and the threats of climate change. But what does the concept of sustainability actually suggest? This thesis uses discourse analysis in order to examine the Swedish learning for sustainable development as to three different discourses on the national arena: the government and the municipals of Piteå and Växjö respectively. When the study foremost concerns official policy documents that contain associations with the study area, the methodology used takes into consideration both language, signs, metaphors and so called story lines.

Sustainable development has become the ideology of the twentieth first century. As an important concept and as a framework of political action, sustainable development can at this point be considered as the very symbol of a paradigm in the international debate over environmental issues and the threats of climate change. But what does the concept of sustainability actually suggest? This thesis uses discourse analysis in order to examine the Swedish learning for sustainable development as to three different discourses on the national arena: the government and the municipals of Piteå and Växjö respectively. When the study foremost concerns official policy documents that contain associations with the study area, the methodology used takes into consideration both language, signs, metaphors and so called story lines.