The paper is a discourse analysis of the liberal environmental discourse in Sweden today. It is based on articles in two of the main liberal Swedish newspapers, Dagens Nyheter and Sydsvenska Dagbladet, and a liberal periodical, Neo.The purpose of this study is to analyze how the environmental problems that have been produced by the industrialised society, especially global warming, are seen upon in the liberal discourse in Sweden today. The theoretical point of departure is a discourse analysis that as a method seeks to analyze the material to reveal what assumptions the discussion departs from, and what assumptions the discussions reject.The thesis concludes that the main trends in the discussions are to position the environment against the financial system and state that the capitalist system is the only system that can solve the environmental issues. The existing environmental problems are not denied, but constantly belittled and only considered to be a problem if it poses a direct threat to humans. The solution for these environmental problems is believed to be the strengthening of the financial system and the development of new technologies..

In 1998 a new regional development policy was introduced by the Swedish government. A central feature in the policy was the formation of partnerships at the regional level. The partnerships were meant to consist of local and regional stakeholders, representing a great variety of interests, who would collaborate in order to improve regional development. The new policy was promoted, besides being more efficient, as a way to broaden political participation and to break male-dominated structures.This thesis discusses whether the regional partnership actually favours ?women's interests?, in terms of how the relationship of power between women and men is constituted by the model.

The first purpose of this thesis is to investigate if, how, and why the perceived collective identity in the town of Karlskrona has changed. Collective identities can due to their socially constructed nature change rapidly in light of new collective experiences. The reason for suspecting such a change in Karlskrona is the immense impact that the change in the global economy, according to Saskia Sassen, has on cities. By interviewing politicians and media representatives from Karlskrona the perceived identity is drawn. The second purpose of this thesis will then be to test if the identity as it is perceived by Karlskronas habitants differ from the one that town officials present through city marketing.

The overall purpose with this thesis has been to study the strategic development of the Swedish Green Party, Miljöpartiet de Gröna. From its first appearance in the Swedish parliament 1988 to its decision to cooperate with the Social Democrats and the Left Party in 1998, the Greens has gone from a radical antiparty to a pragmatic support party. The analysis has concentrated towards identifying the causal factors behind this strategic move made by the Greens, and to determine how this party change has affected the party's strategic goals. In order to do so, a qualitative case study has been conducted where an integrated theoretical approach has been used. By studying official statements and internal debates the thesis concludes that the strategic change made by the Greens was due to the evolvement of a new dominant coalition of within the party.

This comparative linguistic textstudy focuses on the relationship between a newspapers own outspoken political standpoint and it´s ambition of being an unbiased provider of objective information. This connection becomes particulary interestering in times of election when a newspapers role as provider of information is of great importance for the citizens. When a newspaper reports an event to the public, the reporter always has to choose from a small selection of possible linguistic forms when representing the story. Through linguistic analysis of these forms we can see that the final choice is often not a complete arbitrary one. We compared two daily newspapers, Dagens Nyheter and Dala-Demokraten, that stod on opposite sides in the Swedish EMU-elections 2003.

Homelessness has always been and will always be a problem in every society. How should we organize the work and care for these people? There are three different types of welfare states, the liberal, the conservative and the social democratic. In the liberal welfare state the market is the supplier of the public good. In the conservative state the family and church and in the social democratic the state is the supplier of the public welfare.The Swedish welfare state has been the archetype of social democratic welfare with de principal of ?Folkhemmet? in focus.

AbstractIn the literature on multiculturalism and group rights there is a strong tradition that sees diversity as something directly paradoxal to unity. In this tradition, scholars put forward a view of multiculturalism as a divisive and exclusionary process which breaks down the cohesion and unity of society. Related to this notion is that of a neutral and universally valid frame of reference in which political dilemmas can be solved; for example a neutral civil sphere where the ?true essence? of society lies. In this essay I attempt to criticise these two notions.

In august 2006 the Swedish government official report (SOU) about the structural discrimination was published and caused a lot of debate in the media. This paper is about the report as such, as much as the academic quarrel it caused in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. My aim is to explore why the report is so provocative and what the debate actually is about. I use discourse analysis both as a method and theoretical framework, inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Using this methodology I explore which discourses that are articulated.

Since a decade back in time, Sweden is officially recognised as a multicultural society. Different cultures exist side by side and the city of Malmo is one of the clearest examples of this setting. In multicultural societies, the dichotomy of ?us? versus ?them? is common, which leads to segregation and asymmetrical relations of power. The concept of intercultural education is in theory known to be able to create a position of ?us? where every culture is equally recognized and reinterpreted and thus become an alternative to the dichotomy.

AbstractCities are once again becoming the locus of economic, social and political processes. The effect of these processes on the city is two-fold: one one hand they threaten to fragment and dislocate the city and the actors within them, on the other hand they give actors within cities new opportunities to react and mobilize resources towards different strategies of integration. The latter gives rise to what Patrick Le Galès calls the collective actor-city. The aim of this thesis is to explore the notion of the city as a collective actor in a swedish context by utilizing Le Galès theory of european cities as collective actors in an abductive case study on the city of Malmoe. By utilizing Le Galès five dimensions that make up a collective actor I analyze interviews conducted with city officals aswell as documents produced from the city wide plan of action Welfare for everybody.

The aim of this essay was to describe and analyse the use of snuff as a social activity. By accomplishing eight qualitative interviews with snuff-users I wanted to get a glimpse into their relationship to the snuff and find out in which situations and frames of mind the snuff-use alter. I also wanted to find out if age, class or gender has any affect in snuff-using. The interviews were analysed in a sociological perspective with help from Erving Goffmans and Joseph Gusfields ideas, among others. I found out that each snuff-user creates his own rituals and routines, but there are factors in daily life, which can change the use of snuff.

In 1992, the European Union began institutionalizing the cooperation against terrorism within the EU structure. Since then, this cooperation has gone through a number of changes. From a historical institutionalistic point of departure we explain these changes by identifying sources of institutional resilience and institutional change. Based on these results, we were able to pose hypotheses of when and what category of change was most likely to take place.The results show that the cooperation against terrorism within the EU was most likely to remain stable because of strong sources of institutional resilience. If change would occur through an increase in the sources of institutional change, it was most likely to be of a less extensive category.

There is a growing interest for ethical consumption, in general as well as in the clothing industry. The consumption of ethical clothes is a complex phenomenon though, where aspects such as quality, style, function, price, time assets, accessibility and ethical attitudes affect the decision making. Researches that have been executed show the diversities in development between different countries. There are fairly strong indications that the ethical clothing market is more advanced in the United Kingdom than in Sweden and therefore these two countries are objects of this research. The aim with this thesis is to describe and explain what have affected the development of the ethical clothing market in the United Kingdom compared to Sweden. For that reason a qualitative approach has mainly been used, where deep interviews with people within the ethical clothing industry have contributed to most of the empirical part. As a complement secondary data such as statistics of the two countries have been used in order to investigate our area. One useful tool, among others, to investigate the macro environment is the SLEPT model.

The present state of politics in contemporary Venezuela portrays a country of polarization, a chase for power and accusations of authoritarian and even undemocratic rule. The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine the democracy in Venezuela, in order to clarify the sometimes vauge perception of the political situation. By applying the theories of polyarchical democracy put forth by Robert Dahl, one of the most highly regarded theorists on the subject, accordingly the discussion will therefore follow a theoretical framework. Dahl requires seven nstitutions to be guaranteed in a democracy, amongst them the possibility to vote, run for public office and the practise of freedom of speech. Measuring Dahl's levels of institutions in Venezuela, it is made clear that the level of democracy vary in different areas.

Konkurrens av privata aktörer på skolområdet verkar inte leda till ökad effektivitet, snarare tvärt om. Effekten på medelbetyg verkar vara marginell, samtidigt som de elever i en kommun som redan har svaga resultat drabbas negativt, och effekten i det sambandet kan växa över tid. De elever som drabbas behöver inte vara samma som går i friskolorna. Friskolor ser ut att ha en kostnadsdrivande effekt. Inom den teori som kallas New Public Management antar man att marknadens strukturer kan föras över på den offentliga förvaltningen, men det verkar inte stämma på skolområdet.