The purpose of this thesis is to study the level of democracy within the European Union (EU). To do so the following issues were examined: How the EU works and the efforts it has made to improve levels of democracy; and the degree to which the EU fulfils the criteria set by Robert Dahl in his theory of polyarchy.The study is based on a qualitative text analysis. The focus of the analysis is documents released by the EU that can be connected to democracy, and human and fundamental rights. The theory of polyarchy proposed by Robert Dahl and Joseph Schumpeter?s theory of democracy are the principal theories applied.

Background: Ambiguity and confusion of ideas within the area of social responsibility have led to that companies not really know how to work with these types of questions. One way for companies to deal with their social responsibility is to affiliate to an initiative that exists and through this show their standpoint. One of these is Globalt Ansvar, a Swedish governmental initiative that is based on Global Compact?s principles and the guidelines of OECD. What does it mean for the companies when showing their point of view? Is this a way to gain legitimacy?Purpose: The purpose with the thesis is to judge if organisations? work with Corporate Social Responsibility gains more legitimacy by affiliating to Globalt Ansvar.Research method: A survey made through telephone interviews with representatives from all of the fifteen Swedish companies which today are affiliated to Globalt Ansvar.Conclusions: In order to give the affiliated companies more legitimacy, Globalt Ansvar has to be a legitimate initiative.

In contemporary Sweden political participation among foreign-born Swedes is viewed as low and it is well known that foreign-born individuals do not use their voting rights to the same extent as the general population. At the same time there are numerous ethnic associations around the country who work with various activities involving political, democratic and integration issues. This study aims to study how four members of a Somali association regard, relate to and work with politics, democracy and integration. The study is based on these four people, but also on their relationship with authorities and other agencies in the community. The conclusion of this study shows in brief that the desire to participate politically is great, but that democracy and politics is accessible to all, depending on the level of language skills and what political knowledge the individual has.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how public libraries work with children's books, in other languages thanSwedish, regarding acquisitions. The purpose is also to describe what the libraries assignments are in regard tochildren with non-Swedish backgrounds. This is then put in a relation to the libraries democratic assignment.The main questions are: What are the libraries' assignments, as described in the libraries regulations? How do thelibraries work to fulfil their assignments?To answer these questions a survey in two parts has been carried out. The first is a study of the libraries'regulations, and various handbooks that serve as an inspiration for librarians.

The aim of this study was to investigate the social behaviour and time budget of breedingbulls kept at VikingGenetics, Falkenberg in Sweden when the staff was off duty. It was ofinterest to see if there was any difference between bulls housed in group pens and bullshoused in individual pens. It was also of interest to investigate if there was any differencein the behaviour between the dairy breeds Swedish Red (SR) and Swedish Holstein (SH).Sixteen bulls were used in this study. Eight bulls kept in individual pens and eight bullskept in group pens were used. The individually housed bulls had a social gate with widerbars where the bulls could but their head and neck through to have social contact with thebulls in its neighbouring pens.

Today, we live in a consumption society. We buy products to soothe our needs and desires. Thru material things we can express our own personal identity and shopping is seen more as a pleasure than a need to survive. With the background media- and communication studies, the reason of this study was to explore how blogs as a social medium can influence the consumption ideal in society. With dialogical analysis and semiotic analysis we wanted to see if we could find a specific consumption culture in the content of six blogs we did our studies on. We found that the blogs showed us that there is normal to have everyday luxury and spoil oneself with expensive things.

May 2010 a project called drop-in sports was started to get boys and girlsin the ages of 13-20 more physically active and keep them away from  committing crime. With the slogan ?come as you are, whenever you want and do what you want for free ? spontaneous sports was organized. To evaluate the project a research of the activity was carried out, where two of the objectives were to investigate how responsibility and empowerment is taken. Twelve hours of observations studies were used to collect data about leadership decision-making and democratic values in forms of respect, everybody?s right to play and influence.

Our purpose was to investigate the schools and the social welfare´s experiences of Roman children´s school situation in a Scanian town. We have done a qualitative investigation, interviewing 14 persons from both school and social welfare. Through the interviews we wanted to find the factors which influences the Roman pupils schooling and which efforts the professionals has to their disposition to influence these children´s school situation in a positive direction.The main result of our study is that the majority of the Romans is an isolated group, both in the Swedish school system and in the society. The Romans got access to the Swedish comprehensive school first in 1965, which implies that the Romans have a young school tradition. Most of the Roman pupils have a high absent, which is grounded in a complex of problems.

Because of the increasing numbers of international tourist arrivals each year it is essential that tourist operators are aware of the impacts that tourism generate. Tourism affects the world in an environmental, social and economic way, positive but also in a negative way. To travel responsible and sustainable is therefore important, and operators have a responsibility in this subject.Because of this I wanted to look at how Swedish tourist operators manage responsible tourism, together with what amount of information their customers receive about this. To be able to study how operators work with this I conducted three interviews via email. The tourist operators were of different sizes and specializations to receive a more extensive result.

This study regards the Swedish documentation system, BBiC, which is translated from the English version LACS. BBiC is created to make sure that the children?s needs are put in centre of attention in child protection investigations. The BBiC-system becomes problematic regarding unaccompanied refugee children because of the parent-perspective which is a keystone in the system. Therefor BBiC creates discretion for the social worker which is not BBiC: s original intension.

Public libraries have an important roll of making information accessible to all people. This democratic right supports the cultural development in our society. When public libraries build websites offering information and services it can sometimes cause obstacles for impaired users. It is therefore our purpose to evaluate a selection of websites and library plans to examine how the libraries work with accessibility for these users. This thesis is based on theories of cognitive and human computer interaction, and information architecture.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how two elementary schools work with Swedish and Swedish as a second language through four teachers thoughts and perceptions. My issues are: How do the teachers perceive the Swedish classes in the school, and how do they perceive that they are conducting it? Which examples of material for teaching do the teachers show me and how do they use it in each school? Do the work with Swedish and Swedish as a second language in the multi-ethnic school and the more mono-ethnic school differ according to how the teachers perceive they are conducting it? Do the teachers think that the equivalent education that is part of the curriculums values and mission always is maintained and why/why not? My study is performed from a sociocultural perspective. My conclusions are that the teachers from the multi-ethnic school are more aware of how to work with Swedish or Swedish as a second language regardless of the students ethnic or national origins. Some aspects of how the teachers work with Swedish are equal with each others, but there are differences to.

Organisation and market orientation of elderly careThis comparative literature study is intended to describe how elderly care is organised and financed in Germany and Sweden. Furthermore, it analyses the degree of competition and market orientation in both countries' care systems. Important aspects in this context are the kinds of measurements which are used on the two markets and the question if there are quasimarkets.The theoretical backgrounds of the study are Esping-Andersen's "Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism" and Harold Wilensky's convergence theory. Esping-Andersen's theory describes Sweden as a social democratic and Germany as a conservative welfare regime which means that there are different conditions for the development of welfare. The use of Wilensky's theory shows that both welfare systems are converging since the end of the 20th century.

Daily citizens are informed by the media about the environment and the climate changes. The schools purpose is to educate students according to events that are of current interest and take place in present time. According to Swedish curriculum, Lpf94, all Swedish education should include and discuss the problems surrounding durable development. The purpose of the study is to se how the textbooks in History, Social studies and Geography and their contents meet the demands of the curriculum. The study shows that only the textbooks in geography meets the demands that the curriculums have on durable development.

The purpose of this examination paper has been to examine the situation for Swedish as a Second Language Programs in relationship to their interaction with the parents of the stu-dents. This case study was performed at two schools in the county of Stockholm. A com-parative analysis of both national and local documents for school governance was used to analyse the contents for incidents of parental involvement in schooling. Furthermore, qualitative semi-structured interviews were carried out with five staff-members holding key positions. The findings of the study are that schools tend to practice parental involve-ment only to the level that it is recommended in the national documents.