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.

The purpose of this study is to ? through a discourse analysis ? examine how the parliamentary committee ? Ansvarskommittén ? legitimizes the need for merging administrative regions. The committee?s investigation is what underlies the present debate on regionalisation and the merging of regions in Sweden. To carry out this discourse analysis, I have used ?What?s the problem represented to be??, by Carol Lee Bacchi as an analytical framework.

Regionalism is a concept of extensive proportions and as such is complex to define. This phenomenon becomes much clearer by studying it from different perspectives. This paper focuses on regional political parties and description of their political ideas. The goal of this paper is to examine and compare regional political parties in two Swedish regions: Norrbotten and Skåne. By studying two biggest regional parties in these regions, namely Norrbottensparti and Skånepartiet, I will try to get an insight into the regional politics, as well as illustrate regionalism and its meaning.

Since Sweden joined the EU in 1995 there has been a noticeable increase in the value of arable land occurred. This paper is intended to study the inflation of farmland prices. In order to ascertain what affects the market prices so much since Sweden affiliated with the EU three regions has been selected for a detailed study on the subject. These three regions are selected because each of them represents different parts of the Swedish farmlands. The time period that has been examined is the year 1995 until 2009.The price raises in the three observed regions was overall fairly even at the end of the studied period.

The Swedish regions are new phenomena, from the start from the new regionalism which started in the 1980´s. The purpose of the thesis is to analyze Region Skåne and Västra Götalandsregionen to come to a conclusion which model of region they are and want to be by using theories of regional identity and identity of politics and see similarities and differences. My research question is: Which of cultural, administrative and functional region are Region Skåne and Västra Götaland striving to construct?   The methods I have used are qualitative text- and content analysis to analyze the regions, by using theories about regional identity and identity of politics. Furthermore, I am using some statistic from SOM-institutet to analyze the regional identity in the regions.   The result show that Region Skåne is constructing a cultural region, because of their strong regional identity and that the politicians are using identity of politics to combine the citizens.

We have inquired into how the amount of foreign news has changed over the last 30 years in two major Swedish newspapers, which subjects and regions has dominated the content of the foreign news and what subjects dominate the reporting from certain regions. This was done with a quantitative analysis of subjects and regions written about in 1100 news texts during a week in each year of 1978, 1988, 1998 and 2008. To further broaden our study, we also charted with the analysis how the newspapers domesticate foreign news and how they use international news agencies. As a basis for our discussion we use Van Ginnekens theories of world news centres, Westerståhl & Johanssons and Galtung & Ruges theories of foreign news selection as well as the theories of Hjarvard and Biltereyst about the domestication of foreign news due to commercial pressures and objectives on the newspapers. Our result of the amount of foreign news in the two newspapers is also compared to several similar empirical studies by different researchers.

AimThe aim of this study has been to inquire into how the Swedish Golf Federation can make their implementation organization more efficient. The intention with the essay has also been to conclude with a proposal for organization structure for the Swedish Golf Federation. The questions of issue have been: How does today?s implementation organization look like? At which level and within which areas do the interviewees consider that the major problems are found today? How do the interviewees consider that the implementation organization should look like?MethodThrough a strategic selection in cooperation with the assigner the Swedish Golf Federation 15 interviewees have been chosen. The data collection has been executed in form of semi structured interviews.ResultsToday?s organization for implementation consists of one central function in Golfens hus with approximately 75 salaried employees, 21 district federations and 485 clubs.

The Swedish Transport Administration has, and manages, a database containing information of the status of road condition on all paved and governmental operated Swedish roads. The purpose of the database is to support the Pavement Management System (PMS). The PMS is used to identify sections of roads where there is a need for treatment, how to allocate resources and to get a general picture of the state of the road network condition. All major treatments should be reported which has not always been done.The road condition is measured using a number of indicators on e.g. the roads unevenness.

This master thesis is an analysis of how the amount of health centers per inhabitant has changed since the Swedish government implemented a new health care reform in 2010. The reform implies a free choice of health centers in the Swedish regions and opens up the market for private firms. The purpose of the thesis is to study the effects of the different financing systems toward the health centers in the regions. The models are based on theories of the need of health care. Two of the independent variables which are studied are income and age.

Acidification is a central concept in the environmental debate. The effect of acidification of the soil is a matter of a decreasing amount of cations and thereby a decreasing ability to resist a supply of hydrogen ions to the soil. Acidification has gradually increased in the O horizon in Västerbotten over a 30-year period from the 1970th to the 1990th. The aim of this study was from inventories of The Swedish National Forest Soil Survey and The Swedish National Forest Inventory explain and quantify the acidification that has occurred in the O horizon of two regions in the north of Sweden. Data from SMHI, The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, has also been used.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the subject matter of visual communication in presentation brochures of two Swedish regions: Region Halland and Region Dalarna. My focuses are the following questions: what is the aim of the brochures and in what ways does the visual material relate to that aim? How can strategic communication be defined through a visual perspective and in what ways is it useful in the context of presentation brochures of the regions? What sort of communicational functions are specific for the visual material in relation to the written language of the brochures? Lead by these questions, I start by analyzing the brochures through a textual analysis and a social semiotic approach. The result shows that the aim seems to be both political and commercial, but that the visual elements relate more strongly to the commercial aim than to the political aim by the way they strive to present a positive image of the region. The visual elements work in strategic ways that I define as visual strategies.

Aspen (Populus tremula) is a tree that is important for biodiversity. It is a pioneer tree that is favored by much light. It is possible that aspens that regenerated on agricultural land have a different importance for biodiversity than aspens that regenerated in forests, since their conditions have been different. By studying how the land use have changed you can see how many of today?s aspens regeneretad on agricultural land.

This thesis examines Swedish filmmakers' modes of work and production within the Swedish film landscape. An introductory historical overview treats the Swedish regionalization since the mid 1990's. Political and economical aspects of producing films in various regions serve as a background for understanding the new generation of decentralised Swedish filmmaking, and the use of sound and music in contemporary film. The analysis consists of empirical studies; interviews with directors and producers, working with music for film and TV. Although the filmmaking perspective is in focus, composers and film scholars are heard as well.

This investigation indicates that there are regions within Europe that seems to have similar preferences and priorities regarding pike angling travels to Sweden. Swedish pike angling facilities process in first hand markets with favourable economic circumstances and a cultural interest for pike angling. There was a big differences in features between the Northern, Western, Eastern and Southern regions of Europe. They also seems to be tied to specific regions within some of the nations.The regions have diverse requirements and distinguish in terms of consumption and preferences regarding different aspects of pike angling. From there it is possible to divide pike angling tourists into segments.

Production requires the input of capital and labour. Hence, economic growth can be assumed to follow from increased levels of these two factors. Policies aimed at increasing production may consequently successfully be focused on facilitating the accumulation of capital and labour. However, even when an economy has managed to reach the same quantities of input factors as a more prosperous neighbour, the level of the production might still differ. The explanation of this lies in what economists refers to as expression embracing the characteristics of the input factors and the conditions in which they operate.In this thesis a calculation of total factor productivity is carried out, using existing data on the Swedish FA-regions between 1990 and 2005 and the method the economist Robert Solow in the 1950?s.