Abstract?Political participation by the citizen?- Citizen proposals in Karlstad municipalityEssay in Political Science, C-levelAuthor: Tobias GustafssonTutor: Michele MichelettiIn Sweden the political parties are losing more and more of their members. That in combination with a tendency that the participation in the elections is getting lower is a problem for the representative and parliamentary political system in Sweden.In order to strengthen the democracy in Sweden and to make the gap between the citizens and the elected smaller there has been some democracy-projects. The purpose of these democracy-projects is to make the political participation by the citizens, between the elections, higher. One of them is ?citizen proposals to the municipality?.The purpose of this essay is to examine this democracy-project in order to see what influences it might have on the local democracy.

The point of departure for this essay is the observation that themunicipality of Lund is giving priority to handicap associations overother forms of associations. This act can be regarded as trespassinginto the realm of civil society. In respect of this, two aspects appearto be particularly interesting to explore. The first is to determinewhich perspective of freedom the municipality of Lund holds. Ireconstruct how the liberal and the communitarian state relate to thenegative and the positive freedom.

The aim of this study was to explore how social workers interpret the part of the Swedish social services act that regulates each municipality?s responsibility of the people staying in it. The study?s general methodological approach connects to sociology of law. The research questions were: (1) What factors are considered important by the social workers in assessments of responsible municipality? (2) Are there variations in the assessments of responsible municipality and in that case; how can the variations be explained? (3) What discretion do the social workers consider that they have in assessments of responsible municipality? Previous studies have found considerable differences in professional social work assessments in Sweden.

This final thesis is a basic inquiry into a countryside programme for the municipality of Hässleholm. By interviewing people who live in the countryside in the municipality of Hässleholm I?ve tried to get a picture of how the thoughts on development of countryside are. Trough these interviews I?ve also tried to find out how people on the countryside defines the concept of countryside.

This Paper examine how a municipality hire employees and in what way they use relevantlegislation in the recruitment process. The purpose of this paper is to clarify one specific municipality and their recruitment process, where the selection of the candidates is in focus of the process.The premiss is that municipalities can hire whoever they want, although some legislation needs to be considered. The principle of objectivity, the precedence and prohibition against discrimination are some restrictions municipalities must be aware of and not contravene.Further on candidates have an opportunity to require probation of the legality if they experience that mistakes have been made with the recuritment. However, only members of the municipality can emphasise this request.The municipalities job advertisements conformation and demands will be clarified in the paper. Job advertisements has a validity regarding disputes refering to discrimination because only the advertisement can justify employers procedure and choise.

A student at the Technical University in Jönköping was given an assignment from Falköping municipality. The assignment was to evaluate their IT systems 'users' awareness of information security and even present suggestions for IT-Users to improve their information security within Falköping municipality.Falköping municipality consists today of seven administrations. The target groups for the study of the information security are a pilot group consisting of 30 IT Users and four different managers from various administrations within Falköping Municipality.The purpose of this work is mainly to indicate an understanding of the importance of the information security knowledge among IT Users in Falkopings municipality, mainly those who use their smartphones and tablets for work-related activities.This work aims to answer the following questions:? How wide is the awareness of information security among municipality's IT users?? How can information security improve among the municipality's IT users?Theories that work consists of are mainly what information security is, how it is handled and the threats and risks that may create problems for the municipality, basically when IT Users use their smart phones and tablets.The Work Implementation started with sending surveys to a pilot group of IT- system users and the student even interviewed four general managers working in Falköpings municipality. Both the questionnaires results and interviews results are presented in diagram and text.The result from both surveys and interviews was very positive and it shows that the municipality investigated IT-Users are very aware and have knowledge about information security, when they use their smart phones and tablets.

How the running and controlling goes, vary on different municipalities, depending how the organization is constructed and what is being prioritised. There exist laws and directives which the businesses have to follow, but beyond this the organisations are quite free to prioritise and to decide what the best is for the community as a whole unit. The municipality has access to different tools which purpose is to help them running the organization as good as possible, so they can create a well-operated business. This is very important, regarding that the tax money should be spent in an effective way, and be able to do so it is required good and well-functioned system of control.A big change has happened when the instrument BSC (Balanced Scorecard) was introduced in certain municipality. In this essay the focus lies on two municipalities, Vellinge and Kristianstad.

This thesis is a case-study of an ongoing court case between the Swedish Competition Agency and Växjö Municipality about a set-up requirement to the long-distance heating system for newly built private houses on municipality owned land. This requirement was set up as part of the municipality?s long-term environmental goals; however the Competition Agency claims that the demand is damaging the free market in the municipality. The purpose of this thesis is to determine which normative assumptions the decision makers have based their actions and re-action on, and whether or not these assumptions are valid, thru theoretical ideal types. This is determined via method of textual analysis.

The purpose of this master thesis is to describe and analyse the development of the library history in the municipality of Karlsborg. This is done with a comparison to the library development in Sweden as a whole and in particular to the cities of Lidköping and Halmstad. I have worked according to the following questions: 1. How did the libraries develop before the municipality took over? 2.

The purpose of this Master's thesis is to examine the decision-process concerning public art in Borås municipality. My questions have been from where the initiatives come, who the decision-makers are, how the decisions are taken and which questions are discussed. I have examined this through partly interviews with the members of the deciding organ in Borås municipality, partly through literary studies. I have also analysed texts such as debates and protocols from the Swedish parliament. I have also been present at two of the committees meetings.

Today, nine out of ten municipalities are active on social media and it has become increasingly popular among municipalities that make use of placemarketing to promote their particular region. A problem that is raised in this study is that the population of the municipalities in northern Sweden often is in decline. The purpose of this study is to investigate how a democratic-controlled organization such as Luleå Municipality uses the social media Facebook in its placemarketing, to highlight a place of scale and to attract new residents and stakeholders to move to or visit the city. In order to answer the purpose I have with the help of a critical discourse analysis examined how Luleå Municipality using social media Facebook in their marketing of Luleå as a place. The results were then analyzed using theories of placemarketing, Norrland and the market-oriented municipality.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the extent of the civil rights political participation on a municipality level. The starting-point is the participatory democratic theory. I have chosen to make a case study of the extent of participation among KPR ? the board of the pensioners in the municipality of Skara. KPR is represented by fourteen members from the seven existing associations for pensioners.

The aim of this study was to understand how evaluations are implemented and used in procured nursing homes for elderly. Our methodological approach consisted of a single-case study research. The case in this study was Växjö municipality. Three procured nursing homes for elderly were chosen in the municipality as examples of implementation and use of evaluation. The method for retrieving empirical data and the analyzing of it was based on triangulation.

The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyse the development of libraries on Tjörn, an island on the Swedish west coast. I have divided the thesis in two parts, one in which I will describe the libraries development between the years 1873 to 1952 in the municipality of Stenkyrka and one in which I will describe the libraries development between the years 1976 and 1985 in the municipality of Tjörn. The study is mainly based on written materials and a theoretic model will also be used in which I apply three factors, society, the libraries economy and individual actors on the library activity. The libraries in Stenkyrka during the early period were dependent of public grant from the state for their survival and the libraries were undeveloped. The society around them was poor and hardly any money or assistants came from the municipality.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate why the two Swedish municipalities of Frykerud and Östmark were the only municipalities in Värmland that were forcibly merged by the state during the ?Municipality block reform? of 1971, and whether local identities played a role in the resistance against this reform.     The study is designed as a comparative case study and builds on both history and political science to analyze the topic from a broader perspective. Based on the research situation three theoretical theses have been formulated, the durability of which will be tested in the analysis part of the essay.    The study notes that Frykeruds resistance against the ?Municipality block reform? started when the reform prevented a planned retirement home construction in the municipality. In the analytical part of the essay, the author discusses how the discontent can be interpreted as symptomatic of bourgeois centralization resistance, as well as being due to the fact that traditional, local self-government as a political subject was perceived as threatened.