This Masters Thesis is about the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs and the arms length principle. The principle is used to explain the separation of power between two parts with a common interest. The main purpose is to elucidate if, and if so in what way, the arms length principle can be used to explain the relation between the National Council for Cultural Affairs and the Ministry of Education and Culture, i.e. the Swedish government, but also to examine the structures of power and relations within the Council. In the thesis we show that in the field of cultural policy the content of the arm lengths principle varies due to the many interpretations of the meaning.

There are three main purposes for this thesis; the first is to distinguish the possible violations that can occur in time of natural disasters. The second is to analyze if there is a correlation between political systems and how the effected country handles the aftermath of a natural disaster. The third purpose is to determine the role of the global community and what responsibility lies with them. The issue is often that the aid becomes the main object for discussion and analysis, but the focus rarely shifts to the effected State. Therefore the focus in this essay is the political system and how they cope with the human rights violations that can occur in a time of natural disaster.

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.

Swedish school system is today victim of facing competition. Today sees the school leadership the students like customers whom they depend to operate their school. But I have asked myself, what will be the new students see and how much this spectacle in both money and time that project will cost for the municipality and school teachers. The question is if whether the school will be better when the competition becomes school or just better marketed? I'm interested in how clearly ideologies emerge in schools brochures if we study them at critically and analytically way.

This thesis deals with the legislative problem of thin and thick capitalization of subsidiary companies situated abroad. This kind of companies are often used for tax planning purposes, as means for transferring company profit from a high tax state to a low tax state. Today, the legislative flora around the world mainly focuses on the question"how low/high can the capitalization level of the company be, before thin/thick capitalization can be considered to be at hand?". Instead, this thesis raises the question"how far from the optimal capitalization rate is a probable capitalization level for a company, and can this be an alternative approach to legislation?".

Globalization is one of the most popular catchphrases in the international relations debate today. Globalization is a complex concept with as many definitions as authors. National borders or jurisdictions do not control the phenomenon, instead, it is moving without restraints from region to region. Is this a threat to the sovereignty of nation-state and an end of the system of Westphalia? Does the globalization undermine the nation-state by increased factor-mobility, less tax revenue and participations multilateral co-operations, as the globalists think? Or is it strengthens its importance by offering better allocation of resources through free and healthy competition, as the skeptics believe.The aim of this thesis is to analyze theories of globalization by applying them on Sweden and the Netherlands.

This essay contains a comparative analysis of Erik Olin Wrights Marxist class analysis and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negris post-Marxist class analysis as presented in their books ?Empire? and ?Multitude: War and democracy in the age of Empire?. I discuss the shift in analytical focus from state level to global level that Hardt and Negri's analysis represent and the ensuing relevance of this for contemporary class analysis. The essay also address the challenge and implications posed to class analysis by the ever increasing economic globalization, from a material production to an ever growing immaterial service economy and the decrease in state power in controlling capital and labor movement. I propose that analytical understanding of class conflict help us to a better understanding of the mechanisms and dynamics that generate social and economical inequalities and that an updated Marxist class analysis still have much to contribute to our understanding to how these issues not only shape our society but also our capacity to counteract them..

The purpose of the study is to explore how social workers work with youths that seek financial assistance and what importance gender plays in this process. The participants were six female social workers that work with financial assistance. They were interviewed and had to reflect over a case, where the client where either male or female. The results was analyzed and compared in relation to social constructive theory and gender theory. The study shows that social workers work in two parallel processes, when they decide about financial assistance and other help benefits, the formal and the intuitive.

Container Security Initiative was launched in 2002 by the US Customs and Border Patrol in order to secure the global flow of containers destined for USA. This thesis attempts to analyze Container Security Initiative in relation to a possible future scenario made by the weapons industry where the state's global traderoutes are being subject to militarization. A development which is partly based on the threat posed by global illegal trade. The latter is discussed and defined based on current research made by Carolyn Nordstrom, Moíses Naím and theories on the cosmopolitan perspective made by Ulrich Beck. Strategy documents concerning Container Security Initiative are then analyzed in terms of discourse to try to say something about what the program indicates.

To ensure that animals are treated well and kept in environments fitted for them, Sweden has animal welfare legislation. One of the requirements in the legislation is that horses are kept in spaces that has a ceiling height that measures at least 1,5 * the height at the withers of the horse, but always a minimum of 2,2 m. But a minor derivation can be accepted from these measurements if certain criteria are fulfilled. If the ceiling height is to low the ventilation in the stable can be negatively affected. It can also affect the posture of the horse and may increase the risk of the horse being injured.

To introduce a standardized component assortment takes a lot of effort in order to make real cost savings. The rationalization effect itself is important, but perhaps even more important is to state the aim of the standardization efforts in a well-defined way. How can an organization assure that they are working in a proper way? How do they know that their efforts are being interpreted into the whole organization? And, how do they know that the standardization efforts actually save money? Different components differ heavily e.g. in technical complexity and quality issues.

The gap between rich and poor is increasing. Economic inequality is widening on a global level but also in individual countries like the USA and Sweden. The consequences for individuals are great considering life chance, health, educational level and standard of living. The curriculum for social studies from 1994 as well as the curriculum coming in effect 2011 emphasize the importance of teaching social class as a tool to interpret development in Sweden as well as the world. Earlier studies have looked at how much and in what way textbooks discuss gender, sexuality and ethnicity but social class has been overlooked. This study examines if social class is described in textbooks written for high school. The study also analyzes in which way social class is described.

This thesis scrutinises the material on post World War II Swedish architecture produced by the Swedish Public diplomacy organisation "Svenska institutet" ("The Swedish Institute") during the period of 1945 through 1976. The outset is the dilemma encountered by every such organisation: how can the projected narrative of the own nation relate to as many countries as possible, without becoming too general? And how can the organisation address specific countries, without excluding others?By employing a two-sided model of interpreting the material, where it on the one hand is interpreted from the universal properties projected on the narrated architecture, and on the other hand from the particular ideological notions related to the same, the thesis suggests that the Swedish Institute continously relates the architecture to a West-European and American context by consistently connecting its universal properties to particular ideological notions orientated towards the West.The results underline the malleability in regard to ideological notions connected to modernist architecture. Earlier research in the Swedish context has focussed on how modernist architecture in Sweden, under the local tag "funktionalism", was established in regard to a Swedish audience as a particular Swedish architecture by relating it to a alleged continuos Swedish tradition, as well as to notions of a a progressive welfare state. By studying a similar material, though aimed towards a foreign audience, the thesis suggests that these allegations constitue an elucidatory example of how national and ideological narratives can form within the framework of technological-ideological dynamics of modernist architecture.

 I denna studie har jämförelse gjorts mellan Interacoustics Eclipse och GSI Audera i samband med Auditory Steady-State Respons (ASSR) mätningar.Syftet med studien var att undersöka ASSR som metod, att utvärdera dess tillförlitlighet i jämfö­relse med tonaudiometri för personer med normal hörsel och personer med hörsel­nedsätt­ning. Avsikten var dessutom att undersöka om elektrod­placering­ på örsnibb eller på mastoid påverkade mät­resultatet, försökspersonens upplevelse av instrumen­­t­ens ljudstimuli, om de estimerade ASSR-värdena påverkades av att mättillfället påbörjades eller avslutades med Interacoustics Eclipse samt undersöka tiden för mätningarna.En experimentell studie genomfördes. Mätningarna som utfördes var tonaudiometri och ASSR, den senare uppmättes med Interacoustics Eclipse och GSI Audera på (n=20) vuxna med normal hörsel och (n=4) vuxna med hörselnedsättning.För personer med normal hörsel påvisades en god överensstämmelse mellan estimerade ASSR-värden och tonaudiometri för Interacoustics Eclipse, något sämre överensstämmelse för GSI Audera. Genomsnittlig mättid för båda instrumenten var ca 40 min. Resultaten visade att elektrodplaceringen inte har någon påverkan på ASSR-värden för Interacoustics Eclipse.

The large number of surrendered and feral cats is a big animal welfare problem all over the world. Populations of feral cats arise through a large number of unwanted cats which can lead to surrender of these, through cats allowed to roam free outside which can lead to the owner losing these and through the reproduction that occurs amongst these surrendered or lost cats. One aim of this study is to give an account of this problem. It is however difficult to draw general conclusions about these populations of cats since studies all over the world has been carried out on different types of populations, during different conditions and different periods of time. The welfare of many of these cats is presumably low because they are exposed to risks as disease, starvation, climate, traffic, other animals and humans.