The democratic conditions in national states have change radically at the same time as the society has changed. Because of social and economic globalization processes, the states and government has lost power for the benefit of transnational and global institutions. That affects the democracy since the nation state earlier defined the domain of citizenship. At the same time, citizens? confidence towards political parties and politicians has gone down.

?During the past few years cooperation between the EU member states has expanded considerably in areas such as justice and homeland affairs. International cooperation in criminal justice has become more important as borders between EU countries has been lifted and because of this, various criminal groups have also had more opportunities to commit crimes cross borders. The Italian mafia groups in particularly have been operating in almost every country in Europe and have exploited the possibilities offered by the EU. The increase of organized crime in Europe has created a demand for EU to step up their actions against the organized crime.The purpose of this essay is to investigate exactly how the significant EU is has been in battling organized crime in Italy.

Several previous studies have in different ways tried to explain how new social movements are affected by the different sets of political and social contexts within different states and societies. This essay asks the question how much the institutional aspects within the theory of Political Opportunity Structures (POS) have determined how the rather successful animal rights movements in the Netherlands and Great Britain have mobilized and acted to gain progress. Since the Netherlands and Great Britain contains different kinds of political and institutional contexts, these two states are found to be suitable for a comparative analysis of the theory's durability. A qualitative portrayal of both state's institutional political opportunity structures are presented. Then the mobilization, progress, and actions of the political party ?Party for the Animals? in the Netherlands, and a wide group of animal rights organisations in Great Britain are determined.

In tune with the cross-border trade the infringement of intellectual property rights has become a growing problem in Europe and the rest of the world. In June 2008 negotiations about a new international agreement was initiated between Europe, its member states and ten other countries, which will restrict infringements of intellectual property rights. The agreement is called ACTA, which stands for Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. On January 26, 2012 the European Union (EU) and twenty-two of its twenty-seven member states signed a letter of intent to the agreement and the EU?s internal processes of the agreement began.

In a recently published official Report from the Swedish Government (SOU 2010:73) a leg- islative proposal has been introduced. Its main purpose is to prevent parallel registrations of ships that are bareboat chartered to other countries. The legislative proposal claims that by preventing parallel registration of ships the Swedish Maritime Code will better corre- spond with the UN convention on the law of the sea.The UN convention on the law of the sea clearly states that ships are forbidden to fly two flags. There is however no restriction concerning parallel registration, simultaneously, in two registers. A ship that is bareboat chartered out from Sweden does not fulfil criteria re- quired in order to be deregistered, according to the Swedish maritime code.

Article 5.1 in the Brussels I-Regulation regulates special rules on jurisdiction for contractual disputes. The aims of this thesis are to determine the location as provided under Article 5.1 b), as the place of performance for the obligation in question. The focus of this thesis is the problems that occur when services, according to the contract, are to be performed in several Member States..

This thesis aims to explain the emergence of the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union, and its institutional shaping, by using elements of Neofunctionalism and Liberal Intergovernmentalism.Using Neofunctionalism, the Common Foreign and Security Policy can be explained both as a side-effect of Europe's economic integration, and as a way to maintain the former and the European Union's position as an economic superpower. The institutional shaping is a result of lack of convergence between important national interests. Therefore it rests on a firm intergovernmental base, with rigorously limited use of supranational decision-making.For Liberal Intergovernmentalism, geopolitics and ideology, and to a certain level log-rolling, have played important roles. The reunification of Germany convinced France to form an alliance between the two countries. France, determined to achieve an economic and monetary union, thus offered Germany a political union, including a Common Foreign and Security Policy on intergovernmental terms.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how the parties (USA, Great Britain, UN and the European Union) legitimize their intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina as seen from without the conceptions of sovereignty and intervention. USA and the UN have legitimized their intervention on security reasons. The American president, George W. Bush, claimed that democracies never engage in war with each other and that democracies were prosperous just because they were democracies. According to the president, that is why it is important to democratise the whole Balkan region to protect the international community from terrorism which grows in unstable and undemocratic states.

Trade was assigned as a Community responsibility at the founding of the European Community in 1957. It was then recognized that Europe would achieve a greater international influence if it were to negotiate trade deals with one voice. Since then, the basic rule has been that the European Commission negotiates agreements on behalf of the EC, and presents the agreements negotiated for approval in the European Council. Today, the 25-member European Union is the largest trading power in the world, and most member states have decades of experience of coordinating their national trade interests into a common position. However, partly as a result of the complex nature of the trade decision-making processes it is sometimes problematic to identify who or what really influences EU trade policy.

In the social sciences, geopolitical theory is used in order to analyze states actions and commitments when it comes to foreign policy. This thesis develops a new understanding of geopolitical theory. Firstly, the development and application of geopolitical theory, from its foundations in the early twentieth century to contemporary geopolitical studies is discussed. Secondly a revised understanding of the variables integrated in the concept and how it can be operationalized as an analytical tool is presented and tested empirically.The critical assessment of the research field of geopolitical theory tells us that six different geopolitical perspectives have been considered the most influential (room, strategy, power projection, identity, affiliation and governance) when it comes to analyzing state action. This model is applied as an analytical tool and thus tested on a single case.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the satellite states of the former Communist bloc immediately departed on a journey towards democracy and market capitalism. Among the many tasks of the newly elected governments, one was to transform the paternalist Communist welfare state into a social system that would decrease the oversized role of the state, at the same time as protecting the citizens from the hardships ensued from the transition.I have studied the evolution of new welfare systems in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, three countries generally agreed as the most similar and most successfull transition countries of the Eastern bloc. Gøsta Esping-Andersen's prominent typology of welfare regimes, consisting of the liberal, corporatist and social democratic regime-types, has constituted the theoretical basis of the analysis. Simultaneously, applying new cases to the typology implies an element of theory testing.The study shows that 40 years of Communism and partial isolation from the West has not prevented these three countries from developing welfare states fully compatible with those of Western Europe and the Anglo-Saxon nations and that all three of them in fact fall within the scope of the corporatist regime-type..

This report describes the process of translating Russian financial information in accordance with Russian Accounting Standards to IFRS, International Financial Reporting Standards. The author describes the two regulatory frameworks and reveals a number of risk factors in the process. These risk factors may affect the reliability of figures from Russian companies. The conclusion states some recommendations on how these risk factors can be managed..

The purpose of our work has been to investigate how gender is viewed by pre-school teachers, as well as taken into account in their everyday work. We have also looked into how gender plays a part in the planning and shaping of the pedagogical environment.Our work is based upon qualitative research method, as we have conducted several qualitative interviews at different pre-schools along the way. The reason we chose genus as our main focus is that the pre-school curriculum states that all staff is obliged to meet the goals concerning gender..

According to old european tradition the ideal national state has a unified people, but in reality practically all states has one of several minorities that to a smaller or greater degree differs from the majority. One such minority that have been present in many countries and managed to avoid becoming completly assimilated are the jewish people. Their dream of a state of their own eventually lead to the founding of the state of Israel where they themselves are now in majority. The purpose of this report is to study how the jews historic experiances has affected the political parties in Israel, how they choose to meet the ?challenge? of their own minorities och whatever they treat different minorites differently.

Title: GMO Food ProductsThe issue of marketing and selling them in Europe - A Business and Legal Perspective.Author: Shane KingSupervisors: Anneli Carlsson and Ewa RabinowiczProblemThe European Unions regulations in regard to GMO?s and the approval process for both release into the environment, and onto the market, has been under fire by the USA along with Canada and Argentina. The WTO has ruled on this issue in favour of USA et al.The problem that was identified was in regard to consumer opinion in the EU. How could the EU meet its numerous international trade obligations while at the same time meetingthe needs of the citizens of the Union? Added to that was the issue of whether or not the?EU? perspective was indeed an EU perspective or rather the perspective of a fewMember States.