With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 9/11 attacks, the landscape of the freedom of religion has changed. The issues now facing freedom of religion varies greatly from the issues that the drafters of the universal declaration of human rights faced after World War II.In the light of the new issues that States face in the intersection of religion and societal interest, scholars have criticized the European Court of Human Rights to give too much leeway to the States in determining how the human rights should be implemented, by using the doctrine of margin of appreciation. Critics of the margin of appreciation claim that it is based on culture relativism and that the doctrine undermines the universality of the human rights. In order to decide if the margin of appreciation has indeed led to a relativization of the human rights I compared it to the jurisprudence of the UN Human Rights Committee and its use of the Syracusa principles. My conclusion is that the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights cannot be considered to be based on culture relativism.

On the internal market within the EU, freedom of establishment under articles 49 and54 TEU stipulates that companies have the right to set up businesses in other MemberStates. On the internal market there are 27 different national tax law systems whichhave caused obstacles regaring taxation between Member States. These obstacles havebeen shown deterrent when a company enters a new market. One problem area is thelack of cross-border loss compensation for groups. This means that cross-bordergroups is over taxed when they are unable to set of gains against losses.

The aim ofthis study was to examine how economic growth affects the level of democracy inauthoritarian states. Some of these states have experienced high economicgrowth. However, one can discuss how it affects the country?s democratization-process.For that reason this study was needed to contribute to a clarification of howeconomic growth can affect authoritarian rule and democratization. This wasdone through an examination of the development in China.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 9/11 attacks, the landscape of the freedom of religion has changed. The issues now facing freedom of religion varies greatly from the issues that the drafters of the universal declaration of human rights faced after World War II.In the light of the new issues that States face in the intersection of religion and societal interest, scholars have criticized the European Court of Human Rights to give too much leeway to the States in determining how the human rights should be implemented, by using the doctrine of margin of appreciation. Critics of the margin of appreciation claim that it is based on culture relativism and that the doctrine undermines the universality of the human rights. In order to decide if the margin of appreciation has indeed led to a relativization of the human rights I compared it to the jurisprudence of the UN Human Rights Committee and its use of the Syracusa principles. My conclusion is that the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights cannot be considered to be based on culture relativism.

The presidency of the European Union (EU) is one of the most important institutional actors for the improvement of democracy and equality between the member states. To hold a presidency is a big task and for many countries a tough challenge. What makes a presidency successful? The purpose of the thesis is to examine this question using Ole Elgströms? ?four properties for defining a successful presidency? as the theoretical background. This thesis will employ a comparative framework of four countries, using size and age (age understood as ?time being an EU Member State?) as the defining factors.

Projekt har blivit en allt vanligare arbetsform i dagens organisationer, men trots arbetsformens ökande popularitet inom flera olika sektorer så är det inte ovanligt att problem uppstår i samband med ett projekt. För att erhålla en ökad kontroll över ett projekt har därför sofistikerade projektstyrningsmetoder utvecklats, främst av militära myndigheter i USA. Syftet med denna uppsats var att beskriva hur en av de framtagna metoderna, EVM, kan vara ett verktyg för projektstyrning och hur metoden bör implementeras. Vi har också undersökt vilka problem som kan uppstå vid ett byte av projekstyrningsmetod. För att uppnå syftet med uppsatsen har vi genomfört en omfattande litteraturstudie samt en fallstudie på SSAB Tunnplåt i Luleå.

The purpose with this essay was to examine how the European Union is working totransfer norms to states they signed an agreement with and provide support for inframe of the Barcelona process and the Tacis programme. The theory which weused was Ian Manners (PhD in Political Science) theory of "the EU as a uniquenormative power". The aim was to examine whether the EU - which Manners mean- has had a normative power to influence states to change. We used a qualitativeapproach through the use of a multiple case study and qualitative text and contentanalysis. The States which formed the basis of our study were within the BarcelonaProcess; Morocco and Tunisia as well as Azerbaijan and Armenia funded by theTacis programme.

AbstractEssay in political science, C-level, by Bo-Josef Eriksson, spring semester 2007Tutor: Susan Marton?Universal morality - does it exist? - A case study of small states foreign policy?The purpose of this essay is to examine how well does realism stand of against idealism when the focus of the study is on small states foreign policy? The essay takes it?s starting point at the debate between the two theories of international relations (IR). Realism is the theory that has had the most impact on the study of IR since the second world war. Idealism has been it?s greatest opponent and the debate is still active even up til this day.My case study of Danmarks foreign aid policy constitutes a worst critical case scenario for realism and therfore my assumptions were that idealism would be the theory that could explain the core-elements of the Danish foregin aid.

During 2004 to 2008, The United States Marine Corps (USMC) executed counterinsurgency operations in Anbar Province with the purpose to stabilize one of the most violent areas in Iraq. The Marine Corps successfully managed to suppress the insurgency as violence dropped dramatically in late 2007. What did the marines do in order to suppress the insurgency? Why did violence drop in the province? The Marine Corps approach and procedures have been examined earlier through theories of organizational learning and adaptation. However, there is an absence of studies aiming to analyse the Marine Corps? counterinsurgency approach through the analytical lens of counterinsurgency theory.

The aim of this paper is to look into the occurrence of home schooling by choice in Sweden. It examines the subject of home education in order to provide an informative overview. It also looks into the legal aspects of the matter to see whether freedom of choice is an issue here when it comes to choosing a certain type of teaching for children of compulsory school age. A further purpose is to provide a comparison of home education in Sweden and in other countries such as the United States, England and Norway.In order to do this we have carried out a secondary analysis of previous research and have also interviewed teachers as well as people with experience of home educating their own children. To accomplish this, we had to look to England for literature and home educating families as home education is a much more common practise in England.The result of this paper strongly indicates that home schooling is not only a legally viable option to traditional schooling, both in Sweden and the other countries concerned, but that it is also a trend that is expected to increase.

The economical and judicial cooperation that EU constitutes results in that there is an increasing amount of international disputes arising. These international disputes in turn result in questions concerning private international law. The principle of mutual trust is not only an important principle in the entire judicial cooperation but especially important in the area of private international law. The principle means that the member states have to trust each other and the different legal systems. The aim of the principle is to ensure a well functioning internal market that is permeated by free circulation and freedom of establishment.

This essay examines on what kind of Muslim stereotypes exist in entertainment movies which are being produced in the West and particularly the United States. First, the focus will be on explaining the concept of stereotypes and Islamophobia and what role the media has in the movies' production of its contents. The incident at the World Trade Center will also be discussed briefly. By using semiotic and narrative analyses the essay investigates if a stereotyped image is being used about Muslims and how Muslim main characters that have the role of being protagonists, are visualized in entertainment movies. The material that is included in the empirical analysis consists of three selected movies.

The main purpose of this essay is to study ideas concerning the concept of ?art? within the discourse of the exhibition space that is part of a fanart community. In order to do so I have used a hermeneutical and to some extent structuralistic, discourse analysis. I have examined structure and rhetorics in two established and popular communities, Fanart-Central and deviantART.My conclusions states that personal ideas regarding artistic value are undermined the joint policies, because of a collective rhetoric somewhat inherent in the community structure.When a lot of works are being based on internal knowledge of symbolics and historical narratives, this may to some extent have consequences where unfamiliar observers might fail to notice elements of possible significance. Moreover, certain interests in keeping a united front of ?quality art? may also affect a general idea immediate to what signifies fanart.

The aging population is a challenge for Europe and there must be cooperation between EU member states to join the challenge to meet. The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze the EU's ability to influence older people's health, based on experiences from a selection of European officials and on a review of the EU's common strategies. The authors studied and problematize the implementation of the strategies that the EU has negotiated for the work against the elderly poor health, with a view of member countries have different conditions. Using qualitative methods, we have collected and processed statements from targeted interviews and publications by a range of European policies. The material was then analyzed from implementation theory and organizational theory, and based on results of previous research. The result shows that the EU is developing common strategies and coordination methods to the aforementioned challenge to meet. The results also show that the differences existing between Member States causes implementation difficulties of the common strategies. The study states ultimately decide that there should be common strategies to facilitate the work of Member States when it comes to countering the elderly poor health.

This thesis provides a good introduction to the American environmental certification system LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and trough compar-isons between Sweden and the United States an explanation to the systems design is given. The work is closely linked to a LEED Core & Shell project in Stockholm, Swe-den, where the goal is to reach the second highest rating in LEED - Gold.This thesis gives a broad description of the LEED system and a more profound study of the energy sector, Energy and Atmosphere. Here, for example, an analysis has been made of how the energy consumption of an imaginary building designed according to the requirements of the BBR (Swedish building code) performs in comparison to the Baseline building in LEED.The existing model of Borgarfjord 3, which served as a case study in this work, has al-so been modified to investigate the energy savings that could have been achieved by adding extra insulation to the building. A description of the problems, regarding how the Swedish district heating system (DES) is treated in LEED, is given as well as the suggested modifications. This is an issue that will be pursued during the process of shaping a new, international, version of LEED due to be launched 2012..