The main purpose of this essay was to study whether niche parties that were represented in municipal councils in Sweden during the 2007-2010 term of office were politically relevant. Furthermore, factors that might facilitate political relevance for niche parties were studied. Political relevance was studied using two theoretical perspectives. The objective model of political relevance presents four categories of relevance based on the relations between political parties in a political assembly; governing parties, coalition parties, blackmail parties and isolated parties. The subjective model of political relevance relies on the party representatives? own judgments of the relevance of their parties.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to describe and compare the debates regarding the public funded publishing company En bok för alla (EBFA). On two occasions, 1992 and 2007, the public funding was threatened, which lead to debates and protests. The funding was revoked in 2007. I want to examine if by studying a particular product of cultural policy, one can se tendencies to how the cultural policy in whole change over time.

Palm oil has been used in processed food commodities since the 19th century. An increasing demand for regulating and ensuring a more sustainable palm oil production has resulted in various initiatives. However, these initiatives have received critique due to lack of compliance and insufficient revisions of palm oil plantations. The initiatives for creating an ethical, social and environmentally sustainable production are not sufficient for the Swedish industrial users of palm oil. As a result, stakeholders such as Swedish food processing companies, commit to ethical sourcing codes of conduct that go beyond the international palm oil initiatives.

This article discusses desirable political representation within the framework of representative democracy. In the desirable representation it is the responsibility of the politician to balance authoritative decision making with responsiveness towards the voters. The article intends to make visible the ethical complexity within representative democracy. Ethically the commission to represent is further complicated because the political parties constitute a central role in the political life and request loyalty of the politician. At the same time the politician is elected by the voters and thus the representative has to balance the dual representation.The politician can meet supplementary but also contradictory norms of action in decision taking.

The increasing significance of social economy as a concept is linked to general global processes such as the crisis of the welfare state, neoliberal globalization, anti-bureaucracy tendencies and decentralization, but also to a growing political interest in human rights and social development. In Sweden the idea of the social economy generates wide support within civil society as well as within the government and across party political boundaries. Furthermore, what is problematic in this context is the fact that the discussions on the subject tend to be relatively uncritical and often it seems as if though the expansion itself is the main objective. The emphasis on cooperation and the third sector in terms of welfare production implies a set of risks in relation to state responsibility, democracy and the autonomy of civil society. This paper aims to explore those risks and how they can be dealt with within the Swedish context..

The X-Files (svensk titel Arkiv X) är en TV-serie som producerades mellan 1993-2002. Serien har gått till historien för att fånga tidsandan och dess postmoderna misstro mot myndigheter och intresse för nyandlighet. I ett flertal avsnitt kommer huvudpersonerna i kontakt med den kristna religionen. Uppsatsen undersöker hur olika former av kristendom gestaltas i The X-Files. Frågeställningen berör de bikaraktärer som dyker upp i serien och som kan beskrivas som representationer av kristendomar.

Who is the journalist, a conversation analysis of interviews with party leaders during the 2006 election period, focus on the ideology of journalismÖrebro University, Department of Humanities, Media- and Communication studies, C-studySupervisor: Mats EkströmAuthor: Erica HellstrandIn contemporary society the media is part of the politics, or maybe, politics is part of the media. Whatever the case, they are important to each other, the media play a conclusive role in the connect between politics and citizens, and thus, results of election. The relation between the media and politics should continuously be studied and discussed in the continuously changing modern society.This paper examines the practice of news journalism in interviews with swedish party leaders during the 2006 election period. Focusing on how the ideology of journalism and the professional identity of journalists affect the practice the researcher hopes to contribute to the further understanding of the area. Steven E.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate, analyse and interpret the educational ideals of the ABF (Workers Educational Association) as they are understood by five members within ABF. The paper also examines how the educational ideals are represented in the national guidelines and statues of the ABF. The basic theoretical perspectives are intercultural theory and theories about Bildung and adult liberal education in a multi-cultural pedagogical environment presented by Bernt Gustavsson and Hans Lorentz respectively.The empirical study consists of five semi-structured interviews and a text study of the official documents of the ABF. The data is interpreted with hermeneutic and semiotic tools. Organisational theory focusing on organizational culture has also contributed to the study.The result of the study, when analysed in accordance to the methods, shows mainly four things.

A logical cause of migration is of course immigrants which is a topic always creating discussions. When arriving in a new country a process of integration with the goal to adapt to the environment is started. This study will explore the need for integration and seeks to examine the connection between population composition and radical right opinions.To fulfill the aim, a multivariate regression analysis is done on aggregated level in Sweden with statistics concerning the year of 2010. The relation between ethnic composition and voters support for the Swedish radical right party Sverigedemokraterna is studied as well as integration as an explanatory intermediate factor operationalized through unemployment, financial assistance and trust.The results of the study indicate a positive connection between immigrants from EU/EFTA and the voter support for Sverigedemokraterna. A negative relation is identified between trust and the voter support for Sverigedemokraterna.

The aim of my thesis is to unveil orientalistic powerstructures in the new national curriculum for religious studies in Swedish upper secondary schools. Western imperialism and modernistic ideals has formed the Swedish perception of what constitutes as Swedish, this perception also influences the Swedish religious understanding. This understanding is imbedded in the national curriculum for religious studies which enables a western hegemony to prevail..

The socialdemokrats? long possession of government power from the 1930?s to 1976 gave them the opportunity to put their stamp on Swedish domestic and foreign affairs in the shadow of the cold war. The government policy in security and foreign affairs, therefore, was that of the socialdemokratic party. The stance of the government has been researched, but it lacks focus on the opposition. The purpose of this paper is to analyse Folkpartiet´s view of security and foreign affairs in comparison with government policy.

The aim of this paper is to investigate how teachers in Swedish schools abroad reason about their work developing the Swedish language as the students live in a non-Swedish speaking country although going to a Swedish school. Furthermore the study intends to examine the teachers' attitudes towards the impact the Swedish language has upon the school. Research questions:What thoughts do the teachers signify in reference to the language development of the students?How do the teachers reason about the role of the Swedish language in the school?In order to answer these questions, qualitative measures has been used in terms of observations and interviews. The study is based upon a social constructivist perspective with the idea that reality is socially constructed.

I will write about product placement in film from a Swedish point of view. This entails writing about Swedish films with different types of product placements, not only how they are done but also discuss how they succeed from a sales perspective. In my earlier work I have written about the product placement of watches. In this thesis I focus on the film series about the Swedish agent Carl Hamilton, since here you can see how Swedish film has developed during the past 30 years with regard to product placements. Both world politics and the concrete placements are illustrated in a clear way.

ABSTRACTThis C-essay in political science is written by Ingrid Karlsson, autumn 06. Advisers: Gregg Bucken-Knapp and Susan Marton.? The identity of Tornedalen, a study about identities and its affect on the view of the Swedish state.?The purpose of this essay is to investigate the identification amongst the population in Tornedalen and if their identity affects the view of the Swedish state. I am going to look into how people from that region looks upon their identity. Do they consider themselves as Swedish, Tornedaling or Finnish? I have two research questions on this topic: 1) What does a person from Tornedalen consider their identity? 2) If the way the Swedish state treated Tornedalen, from around the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, has affected the way people from this region looks upon their own culture, and if the treatment has affected peoples view of the Swedish state.

Swedish listed property companies report their investment properties under the standard IAS 40 that gives the opportunity to value investment properties to either historical cost or to fair value model. One problem with the fair value model is that there is no observable market price since the real estate market is far from complete which means that the price of the asset is hard to determine because of the limited information.IAS 40 gives companies the opportunity to choose between internal or external valuation and this study aims to show how the property companies? values appeared between the years 2007-2011. From the result we will study if there could be a difference in the outcome depending on if the company chose either internal or external valuation.To investigate this we observe all Swedish real estate companies listed on OMX Nordic Stockholm and their financial reports during this period of time and complement this information by interviewing people working with these matters in the property companies. The methodology for the study is therefore partly quantitative and partly qualitative since we collect data both from financial reports and from interviews.