AbstractIn this thesis I will discuss the relationship between the European Union and the regions of Europe. The development of the European Union has meant that many decisions are taken in Bruxelles. Many actors participate in the policyprocess ranging from national goverment to policynetworks of different kinds. An emerging actor has been the regions of Europe. Their influence on the policyprocess have grown and today almost all of them are represented in Bruxelles through Region Offices.

Det råder brist på transparens och ansvarsutkrävande i många afrikanskaförvaltningar. Dessa demokrativärden är centrala för utveckling och de börinstitutionaliseras. Denna uppsats analyserar hur stigberoende och historiskafaktorer har varit avgörande för denna institutionaliserings framgång. Fyrafaktorers påverkan på transparens och ansvarsutkrävande undersöks. Dessa ärreformer och internationell påverkan, förvaltningens struktur, juridiska system ochinstitutionaliserad tillit.

In this essay, the aim is to study the role the politicians play in relation to the people they represent. This is manly a theoretically study, which focus is on the theories behind the way we choose to identify the role of politicians. We ascribe different underlying values to the role of politicians and as a result from these different values a conflict can arise. Two central terms in my discussion are the way the politicians represent people's values and meanings combined to the possibilities for the people to hold the politicians responsible. Depending on which ethic values you put to the role, you have different views about how the politicians should act.

This thesis focuses on how sewdish politicians try to argue to get other EU-countries to accept a larger responsibility for refugees. Since the war in Iraq broke out in 2003 there have been a great increse in the number of refugees arriving to Europe. Sweden have accepted a very large part of these refugees. This have sparked a debate in Sweden aboute how reasonable it is that sweden accepts a proportionaly much larger number of refugees than other countries within the EU. The swedish gouvernment policy is that responisbility for refugees and migration is something that should be shared by all members of the union.

Denna uppsats behandlar hur Dagens Nyheter och Hufvudstadsbladet har rapporterat om den planerade gasledningen genom Östersjön och det ryska parlamentsvalet 2007. I uppsatsen används attributionsteorin för att genomföra en kvalitativ textanalys av ledare i de båda tidningarna. De utvalda ledarna har skrivits angående de båda händelserna och är skrivna under perioden 2007-01-01 till 2007-12-14. Uppsatsen använder sig av den metod och teori som Stefan Höjelid använde i sin doktorsavhandling "sovjetbilden i nordisk press". Med hjälp av attributionsteorin kan vi se distinkta olikheter, men även likheter i ledarnas orsaksförklaringar till händelserna.

This thesis examines organisations as mediators and how different kinds of organisations have different prerequisites to act as mediators. Global, regional and subregional organisations are often asked to mediate in conflicts, but considering the circumstances, who should mediate?In a mediating process the mediator should be considered as important an actor as the disputing parties and should hence be scrutinized as one. Mediation is a complex subject to study and theoretically the opinions differ on what characterises a good mediator. I have taken many of the different views in consideration and constructed a model from which organisations and their prerequisites can be compared and evaluated.

The aim of the thesis is to highlight external factors to explain why the EMU was created. The external factor considered here is the monetary policy of the United States, which often conflicted with European interests. The statistical data in the thesis, as well as previous research, show that even though the EU economically in many ways had become an equal partner of the US during the second half of the 20th century, the union still faced US influence and dependence.The results of the thesis can be explained with neorealist theories on power measured as an actor's distribution of capabilities and balancing of power. An actor that is equipped with the world's leading currency is more independent from others. Other actors, on the other hand, become increasingly dependent on the major currency and the policy of its owner.

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.

Forskningen om teorin gällande sambandsförhållandet socioekonomisk utveckling och demokrati, även kallad moderniseringsteorin, har pågått sedan slutet av 1950-talet och pågår än idag. Jag har gett mig in på att göra en egen studie av sambandsförhållandet för att försöka verifiera eller falsifiera teorin. Detta är ingen enkel uppgift då det är mycket svårt att bevisa att det är just variabeln X som orsakat variabeln Y, men jag har gjort ett försök.Jag har gjort en kvantitativ studie där jag mäter sambandet mellan socioekonomisk utveckling och demokrati, mätt i HDI respektive Freedom House frihetsindex, i alla länder som det finns tillgänglig data för. Som ett komplement till detta har jag även gjort en mindre fallstudie av Kuba som är ett avvikande fall från teorin. Kuba har hög socioekonomisk utveckling men är odemokratiskt styrt, frågan är varför?.

Sedan 1998 tillämpar den svenska grundskolan ett nytt betygsystem som ska vara mål- och resultatrelaterat. Elever med samma kunskaper ska få samma betyg i hela landet. Mål och betygskriterier är fastställda. Lärare, elever och alla andra kan alltså känna till vad som krävs för de olika betygsstegen: G, VG och MVG.Men Skolverket konstaterar i en rapport att likvärdiga betyg inte ges. Genom att jämföra skolors resultat på nationella prov i engelska, matematik och svenska med de betyg som ges i årskurs 9 några få månader senare står detta klart.Min uppsats granskar de icke likvärdiga betygen.

Uppsatsen undersöker effekterna av biståndspolitiken i Afghanistan. Afghanistan befinner sig i en gråzon mellan modernitet och traditionellt klansamhälle. Denna övergång försvåras av ett antal faktorer. Fokus ligger på korrelationen mellan NGOs, staten och biståndet. Den afghanska statens oförmåga skapar utrymme för NGOs att sörja för befolkningens fundamentala behov.

From a democratic point of view the existing organisation with municipality sections in the city of Malmö, Sweden will be examined. The matter of how an alternative organisation should be structured will also be discussed. Two incompatible models of democracy theories will be arranged: libertarian democracy and participation democracy. The intentions with the reform were primary to increase the civic participation. By applying those values that are used to characterize participation democracy it will be shown whether the local participation has actually increased.

In this essay I will look at the independence of the Swedish municipalities. By looking at articles for the biggest journal in Sweden on this subject Kommun aktuellt I will look at the discussion for the years of 1978 and 1998 to see if one can draw some parallels in the debate and see if some subjects are always returning in the agenda for the independence. The autonomy of the Swedish municipalities is a very important part of the Swedish welfare model. The municipalities handles for example both the primary schools and the social welfare services. Both these institutions are money draining and the municipals right by law to claim local tax does far from all the time cover its expenses.

A question that is asked far to seldom is what it means to be a good leader. The answer is not all that simple. It is a comlex and multi-faceted question that varies between the values and what ethical perspective you choose to have. As the title indicates, this essay has one particular ethical-theoretical perspective in focus, virtue ethics. According to the virtue ethics perspective a good political leader is a virtuous leader.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate and develop a useful theory of human behavior that recognizes the importance of our emotions. The new framework, called the theory of emotional choice, is developed by a holistic method in which results from the fields of psychology, sociology and (neuro-) biology are used to mutually support the conclusions. The theory is distilled into six preliminary points, which are based on the finding that we are not thinking as logical, rational and longsighted as is often assumed. Instead the regular human thinking is suggested to be shortsighted, intuitive and ruled by our emotions and our needs for generality, causality and normality.To demonstrate the usefulness of the new framework, it is used in an analysis of financial bubbles. Additionally, the fields of negotiation, election and ethics are suggested as potentially interesting to analyze with the new theory..