Youth unemployement in Sweden is at an all-time high, a fifth of all university and college students live in poverty and the number of young on welfare is increasing. This study attempts to answer the question of how youth deprivation has been made possible as a consequence of political action, focusing on youth unemployment. I critically examine the role of the Swedish government, the Swedish Labour Organisation (LO), and the various government departments through text analysis, in order to answer the question of how the current discourse on youth position in the labor market. Because youth unemployment is not an isolated phenomena the analysis covers several policy areas, such as education policy, labor market regulation and housing policy. I use discourse theories drawn from Laclau and Mouffe to expose how language is used as an instrument of political power. I conclude that the current situation is a result of policy choices where the young have fallen behind due to lack of political organization. Their situation is not problematized to the required degree and is often explained on an individual level rather than on a structural level. .

Abstract  Title: Från neutralitet till öppenhet? ? En studie av säkerhetspolitikens utveckling i Sverige efter kalla krigets slutAuthor: Jens KindhSupervisor: Patric LindgrenLinnaeus UniversityDepartment of Political ScienceSpring term 2012 When the Cold War ended, a new security situation was unfolded in Sweden. The purpose of this thesis is to describe and compare how the Swedish security policy is organized and how it has changed since the Cold War ended. To do that, I?m going to try answer the following questions:How is the Swedish security policy organized?What defence resolutions have affected the Swedish security policy after the Cold War ended?How has different political actions made its impact on the Swedish security policy after the Cold War ended?My theory is to try explain how the Swedish security policy has changed after the Cold War through a realism security perspective called traditional security, which refers to a realistic construct of the states security policy.

One fundamental principle in Swedish contract law is that passive acceptance does not constitute a binding acceptance of an offer. Still, business owners use the consumers unknowing of this, and form offers saying passivity will lead to a binding agreement. Business owners are thus trying to ?negatively bind? the consumer to agreements. There are rules prohibiting this kind of actions in the Swedish marketing law (MFL).In order to find out what constitutes this forbidden kind of agreement-entering according to the Swedish Market Court, an analysis of seven cases settled between 2002-2009 and concerning consumers in these situations, is made.

AbstractThe purpose of this thesis is to analyse the basis of Russian diplomacy, and by doing that develop the analytical instruments available, in order to improve the comprehension between the parties in negotiations. Descriptions of the national characteristics of Soviet and Russian diplomacy are made by an analysis of memoairs and other examinations of their negotiating behaviour. To ensure the result of the characteristics two case studies of the non-nuclear proliferation negotiations are made, followed by a comparation between the Soviet and Russian diplomacy. From these results, I analyse the groundworks of russian diplomacy, using three theories about how ideology, national identity and prevailing self-image can affect the national negotiating behaviour. The results show that there have been changes in only some parts of the negotiating behaviour and that there is a need for all three theories to explain different parts of the complex system of Russian diplomacy which is based on the plurality of culture, ideology, language, ideology and history..

The purpose of this study is to examine the actual political conditions that exist for the Iranian women. What is the political reality of the Iranian women and how can they exert political influence within the political system that exists in Iran today. This is done to see how the Iranian women's potential political influence affects Iran's democratic status. This will be answered through the overall research question: What opportunities do the Iranian women have to influence policy? This overall question is then split into three smaller research questions:1) What formal possibilities to political influence do the Iranian women have?2) What real possibilities to political influence do the Iranian women have?3) How have women in Iran tried to exert political influence outside the institutional framework?This will be done through a qualitative text analysis where texts concerning the Iranian women?s political influence are examined.

The main purpose of this C-essay is to answer the question: What have been the consequences and effects of the merit point system on language studies and the parties concerned (teachers, students and principals) during the school year of 2010/11?The merit point system is the result of a political decision and was implicated for the first time in the Swedish upper secondary school during the school year 2010/2011. Being a completely new phenomenon it is of great interest and importance to study its effects.The study in this essay also aims to verify, falsify or nullify two hypotheses very often referred to in the political discussions regarding the merit point system:The merit point system will replace affection and interest as main reasons for language studies in upper secondary school and cause a rectification amongst the students choices of additional courses.The merit point system will have a segregating effect upon society and make it harder for people to rise in society through education in the future.A verification of these hypotheses would imply the appearance of an increased rectification amongst students as well as an orientation towards an in the future more segregated society.The empiric material has been collected and examined with qualitative as well as quantitative methods (questionnaires and interviews) and belongs epistemologically to the phenomenological and hermeneutical traditions..

The concept of sustainable development is a challenge that demands cooperation from all levels of society for it to be successful. The focus for this thesis is how politicians within the local councils understand the concept of sustainable development and how they implement it in political decision-making.The basis for the study is a questionnaire that was distributed to 303 local politicians in three municipalities of varying size in Southern Sweden. The study concentrates on departments within the local councils that are directly connected to the Swedish environmental law and the Swedish planning and construction law. One of the primary goals with the aforementioned laws is the achievement of sustainable development within one generation.The outcome of the study was that over half of the local politicians could correctly define sustainable development according to the World Commission on Environment and Development?s (WCED) definition.

This thesis takes as its point of departure the Swedish governmental family policy and the debate on the proposed reform ?vårdnadsbidraget?. The supporters of the reform present it as something that will increase the freedom of choice for families and benefit the children, whereas the opponents warn for decreased equality and a return to the male breadwinner-model.From a constructivist perspective, language is closely related to power through defining and ascribing meaning to reality. By applying a feminist political theory on the debate within the Swedish national parliament 2007/2008 and conducting a discourse analysis, the aim of this paper is to analyse which concepts are used and how they construct to what makes a family within the political debate ? is there any difference or similarity between the view of the opponents and the supporters of ?vårdnadsbidraget??The main conclusion of this paper is that even though the political ideal and rhetorical concepts differ between the supporters and the opponents, they still constitute the heterosexual nuclear family as an obvious norm in family politics.

One fundamental principle in Swedish contract law is that passive acceptance does not constitute a binding acceptance of an offer. Still, business owners use the consumers unknowing of this, and form offers saying passivity will lead to a binding agreement. Business owners are thus trying to ?negatively bind? the consumer to agreements. There are rules prohibiting this kind of actions in the Swedish marketing law (MFL).In order to find out what constitutes this forbidden kind of agreement-entering according to the Swedish Market Court, an analysis of seven cases settled between 2002-2009 and concerning consumers in these situations, is made.

This thesis discusses the Swedish drug policy and its principle of prohibition. In the world of today there is an ongoing discussion about prohibition and the concept of harm reduction. This thesis is an analysis of Swedish drug policy and an investigation as to whether the prohibition concept is in a state of decline. It tries to answer the question; is the Swedish drug policy moving away from its prohibition principle towards a harm reduction principle? The recent debate, articles, documents and earlier research has been analyzed in order to find answers to my questions.

I have investigated the political culture of post-communist Russia. For a long time it has been assumed that, the history is of great importance in shaping the political culture. I wanted to find out if this was true, I chose to study the political culture of Russia. How great effects had the autocratically legacy of Soviet Union in the democratisation of Russia? My thesis show that the role of history isn't of such great importance, instead it's the Russian state that has had the greatest possibility of shaping the political culture of Russia but it failed.

The aim of the current study was to examine the radical right-wing sympathizers in Sweden. To fulfill this aim, a quantitative case study on Sweden Democrats sympathizers was conducted. More specifically, this study has examined socio-economic backgrounds and political attitudes of the Sweden Democrat sympathizers. The results show that sympathizers of Sweden Democrats are higher among younger people and men. The results also show a higher support for Sweden Democrats among people with lower education and low income that also live in small towns and in the countryside.

The aim of this paper is to examine how the Swedish implementation of the new trafficking laws may differ from the original intention from the UN and EU and if they are substandard due to poorly conducted law implementation. Or if it might be a victim of political symbolism, to win support and votes for the politicians in power from the people, a ?hollow showpiece? only meant to be shown off. Trafficking is a relatively new phenomena and problem to be researched and discussed. This paper investigates the impact of the Palermo protocols international definition of the problem, the convention against organized crime presented by the European Union on the Swedish legal system and its action plan. A qualitative text analysis focusing on the discourse of the intentions behind the internationally presented legal documents and compared against the carrying out of said national objectives.

Declining union memberships are a fact in both Sweden and Finland. At the same time, the autonomous labour market parties and the high membership rates are the most significant factors for the two countries compared to Europe and the rest of the world. These two factors have in turn been developed and strengthened since the beginning of the twentieth century. By autonomous labour market parties I refer to the fact that the labour market parties themselves through collective bargaining are agreeing on the labour market conditions, without interference from the government.This paper is therefore taking it's stance in the question of what happens with the autonomous labour market parties when the membership rates are in decline. With this in mind, this paper describes the judicial development, the collective agreement and labour market structures, the legal consequences of collective agreements and the opportunities of industrial and sympathy action in both Sweden and Finland. The two countries' systems of labour law have caught some negative attention, hence two of the most discussed cases of recent years are given some attention as well. The collective judicial conditions are very similar in both Sweden and Finland regarding the labour market main actors' collaboration, the collective agreement structures and legal consequences and the opportunities of industrial and sympathy action.

Our study is focused on how the public sector can collaborate with the private sector on a certain issue. The public sector wanted to create a project to increase bicycling in the municipality of Kalmar. Our problem was to develop a sustainable way to collaborate between the two parties. We managed to present a suggestion on how the public sector with communication could improve their Public Relations with the private sector and therefore letting the parties benefit from their differences, thus making it possible to release synergy.Using semi-structured interviews and a workshop, we could clarify the values and attitudes of the parties to bring forth the core values to develop a shared vision. Where the identified differences were found, we used a dialog strategy based on intercultural conflict management as a communication tool.