The European Union is struggling to maintain democracy and tries to increase the participation among the citizens in Europe. The European Citizens? Initiative, ECI, is a platform established by the European Commission to allow citizens to propose new legislation. ?Water and sanitation are a human right! Water is a public good, not a commodity!? is the first ECI that has met the requirements.

The aim of the thesis is to highlight external factors to explain why the EMU was created. The external factor considered here is the monetary policy of the United States, which often conflicted with European interests. The statistical data in the thesis, as well as previous research, show that even though the EU economically in many ways had become an equal partner of the US during the second half of the 20th century, the union still faced US influence and dependence.The results of the thesis can be explained with neorealist theories on power measured as an actor's distribution of capabilities and balancing of power. An actor that is equipped with the world's leading currency is more independent from others. Other actors, on the other hand, become increasingly dependent on the major currency and the policy of its owner.

In this thesis I analyse and discuss what impact the 2003 U.S lead intervention in Iraq, had for the cooperation against global terrorism between the European Union and the United States. Six years have passed since the Bush administration decided to go on with the intervention, even though they did not have the necessary UN mandate. Due to unsuccessful argumentation in favour of the intervention by the Bush administration, the world got divided. George W. Bush reference to a ?war on terror?, which passed almost unnoticed by Americans, rang alarm bells in many European countries.

This study analyzes how civil society contributes to the democratic development in a Nicaragua governed by the sandinist party FSLN. The empirical focus lays at the relationship between state and the civil society. By using a conceptual framework outlined by Caroline Boussard, the civil society is being analyzed as an actor with a democracy-building potential that is supported or constrained by a political context.The civil society is divided between traditional social movement and more newly borned NGOs. Social movements tend to approach the government comparatively to NGOs, which adopt a highly critical attitude. In contrast to NGOs, the traditional social movements are improving their democratic functions as a counterpart while NGOs confine its democratic potential to an agenda setter drawing attention to democratic deficits.

Political realism is a general theory within political science focusing on the principle interest defined as power. The theory?s mutual standpoint is that states are inspired by power politics meaning that military and economic power or security stands in the centre while moral and ethics are placed in the periphery. This essay?s purpose is to analyze realism which helps to understand the development and change of the perspective.

This report is a degree project performed at Freudenberg Household Products AB, (FHP). The degree project comprises measurement and analysis of the power net at FHP Basproduction. The content is divided between one theory-part, one document- part with measurements and also conclusions and a list of measures to be taken. During the project the purpose and restriction change from a quality investigation to only concentrate on harmonics and finding the reason why they exist, and also to find a solution to the problem with harmonics. The measurements shows that the power net contains harmonics of different order and intensity.

This study aims to show how teachers talk about their teaching with regards to gender in relation to literature.We have interviewed four teachers of Swedish for upper secondary school to discover how they feel about, and understand, the fact that gender is a factor in the teaching of literature and that they should present to the students literature written by both male and female authors. To analyze the interviews we use Sannersted's (1991) theory about teachers as street-level-bureaucrats ("närbyråkrater"). He states that teachers are persons who have to follow what politicians have decided but they are fairly free to choose how they do it, but to be able to follow a decision as closely as possible three qualifications have to be met. The teachers have to understand the decision, be able to follow it and want to follow it. We find that the teachers that we have interviewed are aware that they discuss gender issues with their students and they all claim that they present a variation of authors to their students.

In the rural districts of Sweden, especially in Skåne, the political party Sverigedemokraterna is gaining more and more territory. The aim of this thesis is to examine if the presence of Sverigedemokraterna has had an effect on the other political parties in Kävlinge and Svedala municipality, with focus on images and collective identity. The aim is also to examine what influence Sverigedemokraterna might have on the political agenda of the two municipalities. In order to be able to fulfil the purpose of the essay, we chose to combine three kinds of qualitative methods; interviews, observations and literature studies. We used theories about images and collective identity to examine in which way the municipal politicians tend to classify Sverigedemokraterna in terms of different images and if their presence has effected the other politicians in terms of forming a collective identity.

Background: Good health at community and individual levels are key policy priorities. These priorities can be shown through supporting parents about various different healthy lifestyle choices. In order to know where interventions are needed, it is of interest to study how parents generally feel and how they perceive their parenting.Aim: To study how parents rate their own health and parenting skills, and examine whether there is any correlation between perceived general health and perceived parental competence.  Further, this study will show whether there is a correlation between rate of perceived general health and rate of perceived parental competence when it comes to gender.Method: 64 questionnaires were collected at strategic open kindergartens in the municipality of Uppsala. The questionnaires were distributed to the parents present and who chose to participate in this study.Main result: The result of this study shows that parents have a high rate of general health.

This essay is a comparison according to the ideological thoughts about womens position in the society of Mao Zedong och Josef Stalin. The material I have analysed is writings by Mao and Stalin, in a wide range from leaflets to orders to the armies of the states of China and the Soviet Union. The method I have used is an ideological analysis where the attitude towards women is the target for my survey. The attitude towards women generally was not unified in the world during the time for Mao and Stalin. In many countries the women was intended to take care of the children and the home, not be active in working and fighting.

Increased trade and exchange within the European Community has brought with it the need for less restricted circulation of judgments. The situation has improved greatly due to the enactment of Regulation (EC) No. 44/2001 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters (the Brussels I Regulation).Despite recent improvements the proceedings are still time-consuming and difficult. Many creditors refrain from having judgments recognized and enforced as the proceedings cost too much time and are too time-consuming. On January the 21st 2005 a new Regulation entered into force, Regulation (EC) No.

                                                  AbstractThe development of our society has in many ways changed the relationships between the political parties and the citizens. Fewer citizens are active in political parties, which has contributed to the fact that we see a form of catch-all effect and a development of parties that organizes more in forms of professional organisations. This paper has made a research of modells of democratic ideals and values between leaders and party-members in political parties in the local area. The purpose has been to show how these ideals and values can reflect back on the political development. The result shows that the development has created a form of catch-all effect and a professionalism in the parties.

Forskningen kring effektiva marknader a?r uppdelad; ena sidan pa?sta?r att marknaden a?r fullsta?ndigt effektiv och det inte ga?r att skapa na?gon form av o?veravkastning. Andra sidan ha?vdar tva?rtemot att endast historisk information reflekteras i dagens priser. Pa? kort sikt kan det finns en viss ineffektivitet och de flesta erka?nner att marknaden inneha?ller anomalierSyftet med denna studie a?r att underso?ka om det existerar systematiska fel betra?ffande informationsflo?den som pekar mot att den svenska aktiemarknaden inte a?r av semi-stark form eller stark form av effektivitetVi utga?r fra?n tre metodologiska sta?llningstaganden; utga?ngspunkt, forskningsansats samt kunskapssyn.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the inflation hedging capabilities of property shares. A common notion is that property is a good hedge against inflation. Indeed, positive correlations have been found for direct investments and inflation. However, property shares are generally perceived as a perverse inflation hedge. This discrepancy has often been quoted as evidence of property shares divergence from the development of the underlying property market.

Abstract  This paper examines the Copenhagen Climate Conference held in the Bella Center in Copenhagen, December 2009. The aim of this paper was to analyse the highly anticipated conference, and why it did not result in a binding protocol between the world?s states. The focus of this paper was to examine two key actors in the Copenhagen negotiations: the people?s republic of China and the European Union.