The representative democracy has become weakened during the last decades. At the same time the United Nations declared at the Rio de Janeiro meeting in 1992 that environmental problems can best be solved by involvement of all concerned citizens in decision-making. The main purpose of this study has been to examine if citizens panels is a possible way to involve citizens in environmental decision-making and what the outcomes can be. Furthermore the study has investigated what the participation has contributed to environmental politics and how representative the results have been. This has been carried out by investigating the Piteåpanel in the municipality of Piteå by conducting interviews.The result of the study shows that the involvement of the citizens in the decision-making influenced the environmental politics of the municipality.

The effects of anthropogenic climate change are becoming more and more visible as being highlighted by scientists, politicians and media. The causes of droughts, floods, melting ice caps and rising sea levels can all partially be traced back to human activities. In this study, I examine where the future climate refugees of Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands should go when inhabitants of these low lying island nations are forced to leave their disappearing territories due to sea level rise. By using a normative method of analysis i egentlig mening, arguments deriving from certain values will be presented to confront the problem. These values originate from Edward A.

The aim of this thesis is to describe the rise of the Tea Party movement in the United States. By using a known theory within social movement studies, the political process theory, this thesis look into the factors that could have played a role in the rise and fast mobilization of the Tea Party movement. The political process theory consists of three parts and hence looks into both the political structure of, in this case, the United States, how mobilizing structures have been used and into the cultural framing used by the Tea Party to create their identity. In order to bring structure to the thesis, the three theory parts have been transformed into analysis models. These give a very good idea of all the factors that could have played a part and therefore also a good way to describe the rise of the Tea Party movement.The research confirm what the political process theory says, that the Tea Party movements rise came at a time when there were a mix of factors at play, both structural and cultural, creating an opportunity that the Tea Party took.

The purpose of this essay is to illustrate the debate of water politics and privatisation of water distribution. My method is debate analysis and qualitative idea analysis and for my essay I used three books that try to persuade the reader that his or her idea is the best for this water crisis. My main question is to illustrate the debate concerning water privatisations. I will also look at the arguments for or against privatisations and finally determine how the authors think the state should act towards this subject. The first book I used was Vandana Shivas ?Water Wars? that when published started an international discussion about the water privatisations.

Integration projects at two libraries: multiculture, meetings and possibilities takes its start in the fact that Sweden is populated with people from many different nations. The libraries have a unique possibility to arrange integration projects as a supplier of culture and information. This case study focuses on two integration projects arranged by two libraries; the library of Jönköping with the project Brobyggarbiblioteken, and the library of Kortedala which was involved in the project Ordbron. My purpose is to find out how these two libraries chose to work with integration, migrants and multiculture. The aim is to examine if the library could function as a passway to the Swedish society, and to find out if the library can facilitate for migrants to maintain contact with their native country.

The increasing importance of human rights within the international community over the past fifteen years has raised the issue of humanitarian intervention. This concept is a complex one, and in the debate surrounding this issue can be heard arguments from and within legal, political and ethical standpoints. There is not yet a unified definition or agreement as to the nature of humanitarian intervention but it is clear that it is an important issue internationally and it is therefore interesting to see how this has affected the debate within individual countries. This study will thus examine the international development surrounding humanitarian intervention in relation to the official position taken by the Swedish government. The developments and discussion surrounding humanitarian intervention internationally and two central difficulties within this concept, legality vs.

During 2008 we experienced an expansion of large scale investments in foreign farmland. This increasing trend has become a political hot-spot, but there is not much research available within the field. Due to a lack of research it remains a vital task to outline the potential effects of this trend. Drawing on existing ideas from some of the main actors within the field, The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), The World Bank, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the latest G8 summit on agriculture, four main purposes are set out for this paper. First, to outline some of the underlying mechanisms behind the trend is considered crucial for the understanding of the nature of these investments.

This essay deals with the rationale and aims for doing cultural or aesthetic activities and projects in schools, and gives special focus to a specific group of students, attending schools provided at special residential homes for young people (sa?rskilda ungdomshem). These homes receive young people with psychosocial and substance misuse problems and who show tendencies towards criminal behavior. The essay investigates how working with a cultural project in schools at these residential homes is justified and also elucidates how this specific group of students and their problems are constructed in the documents surrounding the project. The essay will further ponder over possible educational and pedagogical consequences of these constructions.The investigation has its theoretical frame work in curriculum theory.

The United States is one of few Western nations that administers capital punishment to their condemned criminals. Texas has executed the most inmates of any state in the U.S. This prompted questions about the psychological characteristics of death row inmates. The purpose of this essay is to widen the perspective on inmates serving capital sentences by analyzing their final statements. The focus of this essay was centered on acute anxiety of death among inmates, visible in their final statements, as a result of an accelerated process of dying.

Since the 1990s, when the number of transnational companies increased, it has created challenges regarding the responsibility of human rights. As a response to these challenges the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) unanimously endorsed the new policy UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) in 2011. UNGP does not have the status av international law, yet simply as guidelines and its implementation is based on good will and voluntary efforts. Now, 10 years later, this study aims to get understanding regarding if UNGP is considered as norm by the Swedish Government, Volvo and Gothenburg Municipality. The material of the study consists of sustainability reports, annual reports and governmental documents with focus on human rights in relation to business published between the year of 2011, when UNGP was endorsed, until 2020.

In subsequent to Post-colonialism the African nations have dilated into different political directions. While some nations have established well-functioning democracies, others are still under authoritarian regimes. The aim of this thesis is to examine if civil society has an impact on democratic development in West Africa. Therefore the theoretical starting point is Putnam?s theory of social capital, but this study will also examine other possible causal explanations for democratic transition.This study will be based on a comparative analysis of Ghana and Guinea.

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.

This essay deals with the rationale and aims for doing cultural or aesthetic activities and projects in schools, and gives special focus to a specific group of students, attending schools provided at special residential homes for young people (sa?rskilda ungdomshem). These homes receive young people with psychosocial and substance misuse problems and who show tendencies towards criminal behavior. The essay investigates how working with a cultural project in schools at these residential homes is justified and also elucidates how this specific group of students and their problems are constructed in the documents surrounding the project. The essay will further ponder over possible educational and pedagogical consequences of these constructions.The investigation has its theoretical frame work in curriculum theory.

Partnering is a collaboration method where the contractor and the client work together, based on a mutual trust towards each other and with a common goal for the project. The method originates from the United States where it was early adapted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It later spread internationally where the United Kingdom and Denmark were early in Europe to see the potential with partnering, to help aid with the issues they were having where construction projects kept running late, going over budget and lacked in quality. By using partnering you can achieve a shorter building time, improved work relationships and enhanced efficiency and cost effectiveness.

AbstractThe Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare has since a year or so started to introduce a new way to work with childcare investigations within the social services. This new concept, BBIC, is meant to put the child?s needs in the first room rather than the grownup?s as it used to be before. This study is about to examine how BBIC affects the legal security of the children within these childcare investigations.BBIC was first developed in England after a massive criticism against the way that the foster home- and institutional care was handled. In Sweden, BBIC was first tested and developed into Swedish conditions in a few project municipalities for about five years but is now being introduced all over the country.