This thesis deals with the concept of soft balancing, traditionally defined as the diplomatic means of restraining a dominant state's ability to exercise its military power. As the dominant power in today's unipolar system, the United States, and other states? behaviour towards it, is the focus of analysis. The aim of this thesis is to explore the possibilities of developing the concept of soft balancing so as to include strategies to restrain also the political and economic capabilities of a dominant power. The thesis also considers the possibilities of soft balancing that small states ? to a large extent overlooked in existing theories on the subject - can possess.As a state with policies that aim to reduce the U.S.

The aim of this study is to gain an increased knowledge and deeper understanding of compulsive gambling and its consequences in today?s society. Gambling addiction will be described and analysed by a selection of experts, therapists and people with an addictive gambling background. The basis of the empirical research has been undertaken by a qualitative design with interviews consisting of three fundamental themes. The research group of eight participants included four gamblers, two therapists and two specialists.

The aim ofthis study was to examine how economic growth affects the level of democracy inauthoritarian states. Some of these states have experienced high economicgrowth. However, one can discuss how it affects the country?s democratization-process.For that reason this study was needed to contribute to a clarification of howeconomic growth can affect authoritarian rule and democratization. This wasdone through an examination of the development in China.

This study examines how professional social workers relate to problematic computer and video gaming as an addiction. It is a qualitative interview study aimed to describe and analyze how professional social workers, who in some way work with problematic computer gaming, relate to the player?s problems in terms of a concept of dependency. The theoretical approach is based on social constructivist theories of discourses, normality, the definition of dependency and diagnoses. The study was conducted through five qualitative half structured definition interviews with professional social workers that work directly or comes in contact with problematic computer gaming.

We have written this paper about gambling problems with the purpose to give us and all of our readers a sense of understanding. With the term understanding we mean that we all know what type of activity gambling is but not a lot of us know how it feels for individuals that due to their addiction play almost every day and sometimes several times a day. By somehow trying to explain what kind of experiences people who engage in gambling feel, we hope that we somehow can increase our knowledge towards these persons and towards gambling. We are well informed that the content of our particular subject that we?ve chosen is massive and that more research needs to be done about or subject since there are no simple answers that can explain gambling behavior so easily.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 9/11 attacks, the landscape of the freedom of religion has changed. The issues now facing freedom of religion varies greatly from the issues that the drafters of the universal declaration of human rights faced after World War II.In the light of the new issues that States face in the intersection of religion and societal interest, scholars have criticized the European Court of Human Rights to give too much leeway to the States in determining how the human rights should be implemented, by using the doctrine of margin of appreciation. Critics of the margin of appreciation claim that it is based on culture relativism and that the doctrine undermines the universality of the human rights. In order to decide if the margin of appreciation has indeed led to a relativization of the human rights I compared it to the jurisprudence of the UN Human Rights Committee and its use of the Syracusa principles. My conclusion is that the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights cannot be considered to be based on culture relativism.

The purpose of our study is to examine what risk factors can contribute to a child/youth with neuropsychiatric disorders developing an addiction to drugs. We also wanted to find out what protective factors can contribute not to develop an addiction. In order to find out these two different aspects we interviewed twelve professionals to get their view upon the matter. The professionals work within different sectors such as school, healthcare, social services and one of the interviewed is a member of an organization that specialises in neuropsychiatric disorders.When analysing our result of the interviews we used Bronnfenbrenner´s theory on the ecology of human development. What we found was that there are significant risk factors and protective factors on different levels of the child's environment.On the first level, the microsystem, interpersonal relations have an impact on the child's development.

Ett problem som många människor lever med i dagens samhälle är missbruk av alkohol eller droger. Inom socialtjänsten i Sverige används olika bedömningsmetoder för att fastställa klienters problem och hjälpbehov. En av dessa metoder är Addiction Severity Index (ASI) som rekommenderas av Socialstyrelsen i Nationella riktlinjer för missbruks- och beroendevården och som är en del i en överenskommelse i RIM-projektet i Uppsala län. Tidigare studier har visat att socialarbetare har en positiv attityd till ASI men trots det används metoden inte fullt ut eller i så stor utsträckning som kan förväntas.Syftet i föreliggande uppsats var att undersöka hur personal inom socialtjänsten implementerade ASI, det vill säga hur de använde och värderade metoden i verksamheten. Studiedesign var fallstudie i vilken intervjuer utfördes med 10 socialsekreterare i Enköping och Uppsala.

The presidency of the European Union (EU) is one of the most important institutional actors for the improvement of democracy and equality between the member states. To hold a presidency is a big task and for many countries a tough challenge. What makes a presidency successful? The purpose of the thesis is to examine this question using Ole Elgströms? ?four properties for defining a successful presidency? as the theoretical background. This thesis will employ a comparative framework of four countries, using size and age (age understood as ?time being an EU Member State?) as the defining factors.

In Sweden between 800.000 and 900.000 people have some kind of alcohol related addiction. Each and everyone are expected to have three relatives who in some way are involved in the abuser´s way of life. The consequences of living close to someone with an abuse of alcohol is described as a chaotic life with extreme emotional stress, fear and anger.The aim with our essay has been to look into how social workers are describing their work, from the relatives´ point of view. We also wanted to understand how the relatives´ situation can be. We reached our aim through interviews with social workers and by literature studies.The primary conclusion of the essay is that the dominating theory is that addiction is an illness.

The purpose with this essay was to examine how the European Union is working totransfer norms to states they signed an agreement with and provide support for inframe of the Barcelona process and the Tacis programme. The theory which weused was Ian Manners (PhD in Political Science) theory of "the EU as a uniquenormative power". The aim was to examine whether the EU - which Manners mean- has had a normative power to influence states to change. We used a qualitativeapproach through the use of a multiple case study and qualitative text and contentanalysis. The States which formed the basis of our study were within the BarcelonaProcess; Morocco and Tunisia as well as Azerbaijan and Armenia funded by theTacis programme.

AbstractEssay in political science, C-level, by Bo-Josef Eriksson, spring semester 2007Tutor: Susan Marton?Universal morality - does it exist? - A case study of small states foreign policy?The purpose of this essay is to examine how well does realism stand of against idealism when the focus of the study is on small states foreign policy? The essay takes it?s starting point at the debate between the two theories of international relations (IR). Realism is the theory that has had the most impact on the study of IR since the second world war. Idealism has been it?s greatest opponent and the debate is still active even up til this day.My case study of Danmarks foreign aid policy constitutes a worst critical case scenario for realism and therfore my assumptions were that idealism would be the theory that could explain the core-elements of the Danish foregin aid.

Studiens syfte är att studera de bakomliggande sociala faktorerna som kan bidra till utvecklingen av datorspelsberoende. Studien genomfördes kvalitativt genom att intervjua fem personer som själva ansett sig vara datorspelsberoende. Tidigare forskning som berört detta ämne har handlat om hur användare påverkas av spelet, och inte vad som lett fram tillatt det intensiva spelandet påbörjades. Som teoretisk utgångspunkt för studien valdes den utvecklingsekologiska modellen som användes för att studera individen utifrån ett mikro-,meso-, exo-, makroperspektiv. Våra data visar resultat främst på en mikronivå där vi fann att en problematik på denna nivå fanns genomgående för samtliga informanter.

The purpose of our study is to describe and understand whether, and if so, how social workers in school and in social services construct computer gaming adolescents as a social problem. We chose social workers who encounter adolescents with different problems. We have conducted qualitative interviews with vignettes to capture the social workers' reasoning about computer gaming adolescents and how they handle this in their work. The study shows that all social workers we interviewed had encountered adolescents with troubling computer gaming habits. In the study, all agree that computer gaming becomes a problem when it leads to deviant behaviour such as not going to school, staying up all night and so on.

Even though many states have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and sworn to protect human rights, viloations occur every day both in developed and developing countries. United Nations gave Sweden critique for not implementing the Convention conrerning article 11, which raises the question how respected the Convention is amongst other states? Does democracy contribute to a higher level of implementation?.