According to the theory of elitist democracy civic political participation should be reduced to participation in the democratic elections. This essay examines whether a high rate of institutionalized political participation beyond the elections leads to: (a) that those who are included gets a more favourable treatment at the expense of the common interest, in other words that their self interest threatens the political equality, (b) reduced freedom of action for the politicians and the headmasters, (c) the emergence of vague conditions of responsibility. These hypotheses are examined in an empirical study of user-boards at four schools on three locations in southern Sweden. In these user-boards the parents are in majority and have the right of decision, which has been delegated to them from the local government and the headmaster. The main conclusion is that, based on this empirical investigation, there is no support in any of the hypotheses.

The Capturetheory wants to give an alternative explanation for the need of regulation. From this point if view the government does not have enough information to make an optimal regulation. There is a possibility for different interest groups to take advantage of the political arena by rent- seeking behaviour. An industry may be willing to be regulated to protect itself from competition. The objective of this paper is to account for the pros and cons of the theory of regulatory capture and also if it can be applied to the Swedish market of pharmaceuticals.

The majority of free content on the internet is financed by online advertising. A requirement for thismodel to work is that the visitors see the ads. The emergence of ad-blocking software has shifted thepower from the advertiser?s choice of publishing ads to the consumer?s choice of viewing ads. Weexamine the consumers? opinions regarding the use of ad-blocking software and compare them to theopinions of companies using online advertisement.

AbstractBachelor essay in Pedagogy by Johan Lidén &Kristian Sagfors, 2011."Genus i gymnasieskolan: En oengagerande fråga?".Supervisor: Zeki YalcinGender and gender equality in our school system has throughout the years become a well researched subject, however most of that research has focused on the lower levels of compulsory school. The upper secondary school has not gotten the same attention.We have chosen to explore how social science teachers in upper secondary school treat the subject of gender and gender equality, what strategies they apply in the classroom and how their pupils respond to the subject.We wanted to get access to their classrooms so we could do an ethnographical study to find the answers to how their lessons were planned and executed, if different teachers made different didactic choices depending on the orientation of the class. As our work progressed we ran in to an interesting problem which ultimately made us rethink the purpose of this paper.In our pursuit of respondents we contacted many schools by e-mail and later visited the schools to find participants. This proved difficult as we were met with a wall of silence and lack of interest.

This thesis uses statistical methods to investigate if political appointees working for the Swedish government are good representatives for the members of the ruling party. This is a relevant question since the number of political appointees and the political fields in which they are employed have increased. Some say that this is a sign of presidentialism, which in this context means that the prime minister and his cabinet are becoming more independent from parliament and supporting party. The research is done by comparing the political appointees with an select elite of party members regards to socioeconomic background, which interest that are promoted in society and ideology. The consequences of differences on these characteristics between political appointees and the party elite could be that some interest in society are wrongly overrepresented while others are wrongly underrepresented by the unelected political appointees.

AbstractBachelor essay in Pedagogy by Johan Lidén &Kristian Sagfors, 2011."Genus i gymnasieskolan: En oengagerande fråga?".Supervisor: Zeki YalcinGender and gender equality in our school system has throughout the years become a well researched subject, however most of that research has focused on the lower levels of compulsory school. The upper secondary school has not gotten the same attention.We have chosen to explore how social science teachers in upper secondary school treat the subject of gender and gender equality, what strategies they apply in the classroom and how their pupils respond to the subject.We wanted to get access to their classrooms so we could do an ethnographical study to find the answers to how their lessons were planned and executed, if different teachers made different didactic choices depending on the orientation of the class. As our work progressed we ran in to an interesting problem which ultimately made us rethink the purpose of this paper.In our pursuit of respondents we contacted many schools by e-mail and later visited the schools to find participants. This proved difficult as we were met with a wall of silence and lack of interest.

The scarcity of qualified forest machine operators as well as the increased competition for competent machine operators among others from the mining industry in Norrland, were the reasons to investigate what attracts and what deters active and potential forest machine operators to the occupation. An interview study was conducted among four groups with four persons in each group. The groups were students in year 1 and 3 respectively at a forestry school at upper secondary school level as well as employees of a forest company and employees of contractors. The majority of all respondents were of the opinion that their interests in machines had been important for the choice of occupation. But for the active machine operators both the interest in the forest and their interest for machines have had importance for choosing this occupation.

A new type of chartered holiday, fitness holiday, has evolved during the last years and has also been mentioned in different media channels. Despite this, fitness holiday is a relatively new and unexplored phenomenon, which caught our interest to further explore this. The desire to travel on a holiday of this type has also increased. Therefore, a study about this particular phenomenon with focus on the traveler?s motives behind the choice to go has been done.It?s a qualitative study and most part of the data has been collected during a field study to Playitas Resort, Canary Islands.

This thesis reports on a case study of a forest company, Stora Enso, and their experience from a number of trials and experiments with ash recycling. A literature survey and a total of eleven in-depth interviews were carried out. Ash recycling was found to be the concern of three different divisions of the company. The pulp industry which produces the ash, the forest division which would be responsible for identifying land and spreading the ash, and Stora Research, which has had a major part in the design and implementation of research trials. Lacking an overall company decision on ash recycling the matter is left to the individual divisions.

Pathogenic microorganisms pose a big threat towards food production. Meanwhile, negative impacts on humans and environment are seen by the use of pesticides. Biological control agents are an alternative to the use of chemical pesticides, and plant-growth promoting rhizobacteria, such as Bacillus amyloliquefaciens has been shown to have good properties as biocontrol agents. Before these bacteria can be used commercially their impact on other soil organisms has to be evaluated. This thesis looks into what biocontrol bacteria are and how they might affect earthworms.

This study's interest area loops around how it is possible to understand texts' leverage over human thinking and acting. Focus lies on understanding which forces that form people?s views around men and women's relationships and relations in the public room. From this perspective our interest is to explore how the phenomenon rape is expressed in texts and how we can understand how rape through these texts are to be shaped in individuals' thoughts awareness and. Finally, it is also relevant to create understanding for how rape as a discoursive practice can have effects on individuals and society.

This work focuses on the relation between human and animals and especially on the relation between horses and human. I have brought up the human och horse relationsship, today, and in history and wrote about the behaviour of the horse. Some older studies with human and animal interaction, including animals like dog and cattle are discussed. I have also discussed physiological parameters that might influence the bond and the interaction between human and horse and some critical aspects concerning the methodology when studying this kind of physiology. The purpose of the experimental study was to analyze if common management routines and grooming of horses increases horses interest in making contact with humans. Many horse owners feel that they have a good connection with their horse and factors that can influence the relationsship could be physical contact, feeding or some challange that make the horse trust the human.

This thesis uses statistical methods to investigate if political appointees working for the Swedish government are good representatives for the members of the ruling party. This is a relevant question since the number of political appointees and the political fields in which they are employed have increased. Some say that this is a sign of presidentialism, which in this context means that the prime minister and his cabinet are becoming more independent from parliament and supporting party. The research is done by comparing the political appointees with an select elite of party members regards to socioeconomic background, which interest that are promoted in society and ideology. The consequences of differences on these characteristics between political appointees and the party elite could be that some interest in society are wrongly overrepresented while others are wrongly underrepresented by the unelected political appointees.

The findings in this case study are mainly based on material collected during a field trip with a fellow student to Laos in February-March 2005, which was sponsored by Sida through a Minor Field Study scholarship. The original interest was to study a political aid project (Governance and Administrative Reform Project Luang Prabang, GPAR LP) in a country like Laos with very complex preconditions such as one-party polity. In Laos my interest in evaluation of political aid grew mainly because I found out that the two donors in the project, Sida and the UNDP, had reached different conclusions in their respective evaluations of the project.The main interest in this thesis has been to study how donors have evaluated a political aid project. The study shows that Sida and UNDP used, what in the literature usually is referred to as, Conventional evaluation as methodology when they conducted their evaluations of GPAR LP. The study also shows that the main reason for the different points of view that are expressed in the evaluations depend on a lack of dialogue and consensus, regarding for the project crucial concepts, rather than choice of evaluation methodology.

I nära tio år har främst amerikanska placerare utnyttjat strategin carry trade för att skapa positiva avkastningar. Strategin innebär att lån tas på en marknad med låga räntor för att sedan placeras på en annan marknad med högre räntor. Det är främst de japanska och amerikanska räntemarknaderna som har använts.Syftet med uppsatsen är att utreda om det går att få en positiv avkastning vid carry trade-affärer. Vi kommer även att belysa vilka risker som uppstår vid dessa investeringar, samt undersöka vad som kan göras för att minimera de risker som uppstår. Genom att studera andra länder med betydande räntedifferenser vill vi även utreda om denna strategi går att tillämpa på andra ränte- och valutamarknader än Japan och USA.För att uppfylla syftet har en kvantitativ studie genomförts baserad på sekundärdata, där vi skapat olika fiktiva affärer över tre tidsperioder för att kunna räkna ut och jämföra avkastningar.