According to many scholars America's soft power is in decline, a power resource whose importance has been increasing in world politics. This makes it interesting to examine if there is a difference between how Democratic and Republican administrations wield their soft power.This thesis is a hypothesis-testing study and the purpose is to test the hypothesis that Democratic administrations, to a greater extent than Republican, can create, utilize and defend soft power. My thesis is based on Joseph Nye's theory of soft power and the focus of this study is the aspects of the foreign policy resources. In order to measure this concept I have made my own operationalization where five different indicators serve as my guidance. I use the method of least likely-cases to select and motivate the administrations being tested, which gives me a comparative study of the Democratic administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton and the Republican administration of George H.

Den 8 augusti 1995 tog USA:s president Bill Clinton ett beslut att försöka skapa fred i Bosnien. Beslutet skulle komma att ha betydelse för USA:s fortsatta roll i europeisk politik efter kalla kriget. Vi argumenterar för hur beslutet kan ses som ett strategiskt val men också för hur självständiga organisationers möjligheter och begränsningar samt viljestarka individer gjorde beslutet möjligt.Vi använder oss av Graham Allisons tre modeller: rational actor, organizational behavior och governmental politics för att analysera Clintons beslut. Tillsammans med tillgänglig kritik av dessa modeller hittar vi både för- och nackdelar med Allisons ansatser i fallet Bosnien och kommer fram till att modellernas interrelation både underlättar och försvårar vårt fall. Vi hittar också svårigheter med att använda modell 1 i en unipolär värld.Slutsatsen är att alla tre modellerna krävs för att fullständigt förstå varför USA agerade som de gjorde i slutfasen av Bosnienkriget..

The aim of this study was to analyze society's efforts for girls who are victims of honorrelatedviolence and oppression. More specifically its aim was to examine what efforts thesociety can offer girls who are exposed to honor-related violence and oppression, and howsocial services and shelters cooperate on issues of honor. We have chosen to focus on girlswho are victims of honor-related violence, but we are aware that even boys and men face thisproblem. The study was conducted using a qualitative approach through interviews. Tocomplete the study we have conducted eight interviews throughout Sweden.

This thesis approaches the problem of estimating the arm angles of an industrial robot with flexibilities in joints and links. Due to cost-cutting efforts in the industrial robots industry, weaker components and more cost-effective structures have been introduced which in turn has led to problems with flexibilities, nonlinearities and friction. In order to handle these challenging dynamic problems and achieve high accuracy this study introduces state observers to estimate the tool position.The observers use measurements of the motor angles and an accelerometer and the different evaluated observers are based on an Extended Kalman Filter and a deterministic variant. They have been evaluated in experiments on an industrial robot with two degrees of freedom. The experimental verification shows that the state estimates can be highly accurate for medium frequency motions, ranging from 3-30Hz.

When the Tsunami occurred on Boxing Day 2004 it caused a major stress upon the governmental agencies in not only the affected areas but also in states that had a large number of citizens in the affected area. The governmental agencies were not prepared for the demands from the citizenry in these countries to deal with rescue and crisis management in areas situated halfway around the globe. This thesis main purpose is to research what the causal mechanisms of Sweden?s and Finland?s crisis management were through the method of process tracing. Taking its theoretical stance in Allison?s & Zelikow?s three models of decision making, the thesis compares the course of events of the first two critical days in Sweden and Finland to establish what mistakes were made during this critical period.

Taiwan has over the past thirty years experienced a substantial political transformation. Being ruled by Chinese nationalists since World War II, Taiwan started its democratic transition in the late eighties. The new democratic system did not only provide people with freedom to vote, it also marked the beginning of a search for a new national identity. Based on the international theory of constructivism, this paper defines and studies the Taiwanese people?s progression away from a dominant Chinese national identity towards a uniquely defined Taiwanese identity.

The Court of Justice of the European Union has progressively revised the rule of purely internal situations to ensure a wider scope of application of the economic freedoms as well as the EU citizenship right to move and reside freely within the Union. This development, combined with the increasing importance of fundamental rights, has strengthened the family life protection of those EU citizens who come within the scope of EU law. The limit between the individuals who may benefit from a EU right to family reunification and fundamental rights protection and those who find themselves in purely internal situations has, however, become more legally uncertain. The disadvantage suffered by those who fall outside the scope of EU law is known as reverse discrimination.The 2011 case Zambrano confirmed the trend towards an increasingly generous EU law protection of family life in cases where the exercise of freedom of movement and enjoyment of EU citizenship rights is potentially restricted by a Member State measure. By contrast, in the subsequent McCarthy- case, it became clear that families in purely internal situations may only rely on national immigration and procedural law to obtain family reunification and protection of their fundamental rights.

The aim with this Master's thesis is to study the debate that takes place in the local community when a public library branch is threatened by closedown through the local newspapers. Through this it is our aim to understand why the debate takes place, and why so many people gets concerned with it. By relating this debate to contemporary research of library- and information science, and the discussion in three major Swedish library journals, we have found the answers to these questions. By studying the debate, we found six subjects that where essential for this study. These were Politics and economics, Urban and rural districts, Democracy and accessibility, The service of the library, The meeting place and To replace a closed down library.

Under 1990-talet märktes en tydlig förändring bland automatkarbinerna. De blev mer och mer anpassningsbara och fler tillbehör blev tillgängliga för soldaterna. Samtidigt blev automatkarbiner mer kompakta för att bli mer lämpliga för operationer i urbaniserad terräng och fordonstjänst. Med invasionen av Afghanistan och den därefter följande upprorsbekämpningen upplever många försvarsmakter problem, eftersom striderna sker på antingen väldigt korta eller väldigt långa avstånd. Den ena situationen kräver ett kompakt vapen för SIB medan den andra situationen kräver ett vapen med lång pipa för att kunna uppnå verkan mot en fiende som ofta anfaller från avstånd på 500 meter eller mer.

The purpose with the essay is to point out how the main differences of the Helsinkicommission, Helcom and Baltic 21 can be explained from a general perspective and with a specific focus on two of their ongoing projects: Baltic 21 Lighthouse projects and The Baltic Sea Joint Comprehensive Environmental Action Plan. And to investigate how the organisations them selves formulates the purpose of the two projects. This will be an indication on why environmental problems are handled with in a traditional matter although the rhetoric of the environmental politics is permeated by the concept of Sustainable Development.This dilemma is being treated from the theoretical approaches of Ecological Modernisation and Sustainable Development and linked to how these organisations actually carried out their work and how the historical heritage have a role to play in this complex of problems. The results of the essay shows that concrete differences exists in the way that the two organisations are constructed and how their ongoing projects are designed and formulated. These differences can be derived to the theoretical platforms Ecological Modernisation and Sustainable Development and be explained by in witch political context the organisations were created.

The United Nations is an important organization when it comes to international peace and security. Recent events in international politics, however, have brought about a widespread concern about the abilities of the organization. Powerful states have shosen to act outside of the organization to achieve their goals. They have furthermore a disproportionate influence on the decision-making body, the Security Council.The aim of this essay is to examine wheather UN can function productively as keeper of the international peace and security in the political climate of today, and to find out to what extent the powerful states harm the organization. I use a theoretical article, concerning states relations to international organisations, to analyse the acts of powerful states in UN.

Shelters and Nuclear weaponsA discourse analysis of the Swedish defense and civil defense debate during the Cold warSweden during the Cold War set into motion one of the world?slargest civil defense policies at the time, second only to neutral Switzerland. The governments expenditure was far greater per capita than both that of USA and Soviet Union and included massive evacuation plans for Stockholm and other large cities in Sweden, with the hopeful expectation to bring down the amount of people in each of them to 15000 in case of a foreign hostile nuclear attack. The policies included construction of shelters with room for 2,5 million of about 7 million citizens in total at the time along with gasmasks for the whole population. Not only this, Sweden was considered one of the biggest military powers of that time in relation to its size and population.

The purpose of this thesis has been to explore in what ways Franz Kafka?s ?The Metamorphosis? can be read as a story of gender. By bringing together Judith Butler?s theory of materialization and Lennard J. Davis?s crip theory I have spoken of Dismodernity as the domain of abject bodies that have been repudiated by (post)modern societies as untintelligible and dysfunctional.

This paper examines the consequences of membership and participation in immigrant associations on individual immigrants? political integration and indirect political participation with reference to Swedish society. The theoretical underpinnings consist of a social structural outlook on social capital, combined with the Civic Voluntarism Model, both of which focus on the potential role of social networks for moving people into political action. After a presentation of parallel qualitative data over the experiences of individual members in a Finnish and Bosnian-Hercegovinian organisation, it is suggested that immigrant associations support the political integration of their members into the host society. Firstly, the case studies indicate that members of immigrant associations gain the opportunity to augment their civic skills, which is a significant prerequisite for political participation.

The question how teaching should be organized in order to give the students the help and support they need to reach their goals is always of vital interest. All students are unique individuals with different prerequisities, possibilities and needs. Streaming in mathematics could be one solution.The first week at upper secondary school a diagnostic test is carried through. Thereafter, the result is used as a basis for dividing the classes into different teaching groups. Thus, the groups working with mathematics become more homogeneous and the students? previous knowledge is approximately at the same level.