Because of a more globalised world the national states have been forced to make structural changes at both national, regional and local level to cope with different challenges. The regional community has become an important area which has resulted in a policy of more self governing, both for the regional and the local level.The aim of the thesis is to study the relation between regional and local level in the partnerships organisation. To fulfil the aim of the thesis, a case study of Region Skåne is used. The analyse is based on expressions such as cooperation, conflict, power and influence.The result of the thesis confirms that the opinion between the regional and the local level is very different. The representatives from Region Skåne experience the cooperation as quite good because it creates an opportunity for discussions and a possibility to learn from the other actors which in turn creates a qualification in the exchange of knowledge.

This bachelor thesis is studying the INTERREG cooperation between Denmark and Germany, and if there has been a change to the organization and the individual conditions due to the Danish regional reform in 2007. The research method used is semi-structured interviews and the participants are a mixture of politicians and civil servants. The study is based on two themes, change in work routines and cooperation, and change in visions and targets.The participants have experienced change, both positive and negative, in work routines and cooperation and to a lesser extent in visions and targets. Preparation is the key to success and makes the transition much easier, which has been the case for Denmark. Other mentioned aspects are more work due to more complicated applications, and that the politicians so far lack a regional perspective and tend to stick to the local.

This study aims mainly to investigate what kind of role the public library plays in the regional and local development. The aim is also to investigate how the public library can strengthen the role as a factor of regional and local development. To explore the subject, the study is focused on the Swedish region of Västra Götaland. Three officials along with two policy documents, are included in the study as representatives of the region. Four public library managers are also interviewed but as representatives of the local perspective.

The general aim of this paper is to describe how the European Union can affect and transfer their conditionality politics to the Western Balkan countries. A specific purpose of this study is to describe and explain what we in this paper consider to be a specific additional membership criterion, regional cooperation that has been especially designed for this region. The point of departure for this paper is Europeanization theory that will be used to study the European Union?s impact on non EU-members in Europe. The theoretical Europeanization mechanisms are taken from Heather Grabbes ?Europeanization model?.

The base for the study is laid during an internship at a regional office in Brussels. The study initially concentrates on the function and activities of different regional offices located in Brussels, in order to answer the core question.The main focus is to reveal an eventual change of cooperation patterns between different regional offices, and in particular the eventual redirection away from a main cooperation between offices deriving from the same national state.Through an empirical material, based on a series of interviews, an analysis is made using three hypotheses concerning the patterns of cooperation among regional offices.The notion of a coming change stated by, in particular, two older studies is used as a theoretical steppingstone with the conclusion that a change, in the way offices collaborate, has taken place..

This thesis aims at analyzing why the municipality of Flen, in the eastern part of Sweden, has experienced strong depopulation for the last forty years in spite of its relative vicinity to Stockholm. The study uses current theories on regional developement, population theory and theories on regional enlargment to help explain and to evaluate the different regional factors that affect the developement of Flen on the local level. The thesis is primarily focused on the subject of regional policy and strategies to meet regional depopulation. The study also gives a presentation of the strategies of major regional institutions as well as analyzing what impact regional policy have on local policy in the municipality of Flen.Interviews with local officials, politicians and other people representing the population of Flen were carried out to achieve a better understanding of the specific challenges that the municipality faces and of the measures that are taken to meet them. Regional policy in Sweden prioritises measures that promote regional enlargment to link the housing and labour markets together with the regional infrastructure.

The aim of this master?s study is to examine the function of the public library in the local community at present. I have searched for the answers to the following questions: Which position has the public library in the local cultural policy? What characterizes each library and which are the priorities? What is the local profile of the public library? What cooperation partners does the public library have and what do they mean to the library? Does the public library intensify the local community in any way? To answer this, I have made three qualitative case studies. Interviews and collection of documents were carried out in three different communities.

The transformed municipality ? Economic and social growth in Örnsköldsvik 1997-2007Author: Kristina HanssonThis thesis focuses on the economic and social growth in the municipality of Örnsköldsvik. It is a single case study and the municipality is studied through economic theories concerning regional growth in the period of 1997-2007. The aim is to analyse whether these theories, such as Åke E. Anderssons and Ulf Strömquists K-society, and other more or less microeconomic assumptions, also are applicable in smaller local contexts.

The following essay aims at the interplay between regional och municipal growth work, and theway cultural heritage is used in growth work strategies. The main issue has been whether theregional strategies are followed up in the municipal strategies, which has been investigated bymeans of question which impact the region?s strategies has at the local level.The essay draws upon an instrumental perspective on cultural heritage and cultural environment,here defined as instruments in the national development and growth efforts. Three publicationsthat highlights potential roles of cultural heritage and cultural environment to act as instrumentsin the regional and municipal development and growth efforts has thereby been selected astheoretical models. These roles has further been summarized in a tabular form as a schematicdivision of main themes with sub-categories, used as a framework for deciphering the regionaland municipal strategies.A content analysis of available strategies at both regional and local levels have been used as amethod for investigating the issue, where the role of cultural heritage and cultural environment(as defined in the schematic table) has guided the reading.

The main purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine three Swedish librarians views on their role regarding their local learning centre and its adult students. The thesis also tries to find out whether the persons responsible for the local learning centres in these municipalities regard the libraries as a resource in this context and if the municipalities express the importance of such a cooperation in documents. Previous research in information seeking and learning is presented and a survey of lifelong learning, local learning centres and libraries is made. Relevant theories, such as Loertschers taxonomy, Kuhlthaus approaches of library skills instruction and levels of mediation as well as Bruces categories of information literacy, are presented and later used in the analysis. A qualitative method was found to be most appropriate for this study, as the majority of the empirical material has been collected through interviews.

This paper is the result of a study of competition and cooperation in regard to tourism between the five largest municipalities in Norrland in northern Sweden. The municipalities are Luleå, Skellefteå, Umeå, Sundsvall and Gävle. The aim was to study the relation between competition and cooperation between these municipalities. An important theoretical aspect in this study is coopetition, where competition and cooperation occur at the same time. The studies on coopetition in the Nordic kontext is limited and the main literature on coopetition study the relationship between firms. This study however takes a geographical standpoint and aims to fill the gap in the literature on how competition and cooperation are connected to each other between chosen municipalities. To do this the tourism strategies of the municipalities were studied thoroughly. These written strategies provided information about how the municipalities view their competitive advantages and disadvantages and some general information about how they cooperate with the nearest regions. To find out how the municipalities think about competition and cooperation with the other four specific municipalities interviews were made with experts on the tourism field in each municipality. The results show that the municipalities do not have established strategies for how they are to be competitive compared with other specific municipalities. They do not see it as profitable to compete, instead they should complement each other. At the same time however, most of the municipalities mostly cooperate with municipalities in a short distance from them, and due to lack of resources only briefly or not at all with the municipalities studied here..

The focus on this essay is derived from an international and national dialogue for sustainable development. The recommendation from international level has been to find solutions for governments to implement strategies for sustainable development between local and regional level. This initiative is to improve and stimulate the dialogue between the local inhabitants, officials, entrepreneurs and stakeholders in the communities together with the authorities on the regional level. The purpose is to share knowledge and find ways to learn about the natural systems and how to co-operate in the work of preserving the natural resources and developing different processes for a sustainable development. Many scientists? today stress the importance that ecosystem resilience is promoted by biodiversity conservation and that we need to find solutions for local ecosystem management practices.This essay aims to find theoretical approaches and perspectives that can be used in a wider framework to study co-operative processes between the local (agent) and regional (structure) level.

This study is based on a case study of Pilotprojekt Drevfjällen, a project whose ambition is tofind ways to secure nature conservation in a local context. This is promoted at governmentlevel, which says that a local connection is needed to achieve sustainable regionaldevelopment. The study, based on a theoretical background of the concept of governance,intends to evaluate whether Pilotprojekt Drevfjällen can contribute to a sustainable regionaldevelopment.This study is based on meeting documentations, semi-structured interviews with variousstakeholders in the project, field studies and participant observation at an informativemeeting. The region of interest, north Dalarna, was visited twice to obtain the specificconditions that Pilotprojekt Drevfjällen have. The interviews revealed positive attitude to theincreased dialogue and cooperation that Pilotprojekt Drevfjällen has meant for theparticipants.

This thesis aims at investigating the two municipality?s Gislaved and Ljungby. Where the aim is to see if there is any connections, between the type and the degree of public-private partnerships, and the municipalities obtained environment performance. In this essay the starting point is that the environmental performance in the chosen municipalities is good.Interviews among local politicians and representatives for the municipalities plastic industries, has functioned as a way to test the hypothesis. Gislaved and Ljungby have thereafter been compared, in order to see if there is any similarity in the sort and the degree of public-private partnerships, and how that will affect the environmental performance. The overall questions in this essay are:How can the cooperation among the chosen municipalities and the      local business life be described? What kind of Public-private partnership      exists in the selected municipalities?Is there any difference between the municipalities, referring to      the degree of cooperation between the municipalities and the local      business life? Does the degree of cooperation affect the progress on the environmental      performance? The end result shows that the local business life doesn?t have any impact on the environmental performance.

The acts of promoting local business and implementing efforts to appear as an attractive location for potential business are rather new activities among Swedish municipalities. The knowledge about how these activities are organised and what strategies are perused are fairly limited. In addition the structures concerning cooperation between municipalities for economic policies contain incentives both for and against cooperation. This creates a complicated situation. Using prior research mainly done by Markus Gossas, Lennart J Lundqvist and an analytical model designed by Jon Pierre, which in this essay is completed with the works of Roger Henning, these issues are addressed.