AbstractIn this thesis I will discuss the relationship between the European Union and the Regions of Europe. The development of the European Union has meant that many decisions are taken in Bruxelles. Many actors participate in the policyprocess ranging from national goverment to policynetworks of different kinds. An emerging actor has been the Regions of Europe. Their influence on the policyprocess have grown and today almost all of them are represented in Bruxelles through Region Offices.

The purpose of this study is to ? through a discourse analysis ? examine how the parliamentary committee ? Ansvarskommittén ? legitimizes the need for merging administrative Regions. The committee?s investigation is what underlies the present debate on regionalisation and the merging of Regions in Sweden. To carry out this discourse analysis, I have used ?What?s the problem represented to be??, by Carol Lee Bacchi as an analytical framework.

Since Sweden joined the EU in 1995 there has been a noticeable increase in the value of arable land occurred. This paper is intended to study the inflation of farmland prices. In order to ascertain what affects the market prices so much since Sweden affiliated with the EU three Regions has been selected for a detailed study on the subject. These three Regions are selected because each of them represents different parts of the Swedish farmlands. The time period that has been examined is the year 1995 until 2009.The price raises in the three observed Regions was overall fairly even at the end of the studied period.

Regionalism is a concept of extensive proportions and as such is complex to define. This phenomenon becomes much clearer by studying it from different perspectives. This paper focuses on regional political parties and description of their political ideas. The goal of this paper is to examine and compare regional political parties in two Swedish Regions: Norrbotten and Skåne. By studying two biggest regional parties in these Regions, namely Norrbottensparti and Skånepartiet, I will try to get an insight into the regional politics, as well as illustrate regionalism and its meaning.

I have studied how human networks can affect decision-making and different constellations. The primary purpose is to clarify the possibility to affect the decision to move the infrastructure investments from Region Skåne to Region Västra Götaland. The study starts at the EU-level and continues to the Government and on to the region. Region Skåne is studied especially since it was from there the infrastructure investments were moved.The conclusion is that there is no specific representation in the government that represents regional topics, in spite of the fact that almost 30% of the members of the Parliament come from these Regions. There is no discussion between the members that could be considered a networking-activity beneficial for the Regions.

A fauna passage is a way for animals to cross roads separated from the traffic. In Sweden, there are an unknown number of passages with different functions and appearances. These passages would, with the question ?Which fauna passages can be found in Sweden, and how well do they work?? as a base, be compiled in a comparable way. This would be done with a number of questions asked to the different Regions of Vägverket.

European cities of today are under the challenge to find ways to stay competitive and flourish in a rapidly changing world, where the old patterns of centrality and periphery not necessarily holds true. New and improved communication networks, a changed political geography in Europe, and the globalisation of not only the financial and industrial markets but also to a certain extent the globalisation of people, have all led to great challenges for cities and Regions.In a changed spatial reality the classic monocentric models are challenged by newer models of urbanisation. The polycentric urban region is one such model which has been used to describe urban Regions like the Randstad in the Netherlands and the Rhein-Ruhr region in Germany. Regions which lack the single dominant central city of the monocentric models of old, and instead shows a high degree of more equal-sized and sometimes more specialised cities in regional cooperation. The polycentric urban region is in that aspect a possible model for how other urbanised Regions in Europe may act to be able to position themselves as attractive urban Regions and regional hubs in the European urban network.Polycentric urban Regions are not a universal solution, though.

The Swedish Regions are new phenomena, from the start from the new regionalism which started in the 1980´s. The purpose of the thesis is to analyze Region Skåne and Västra Götalandsregionen to come to a conclusion which model of region they are and want to be by using theories of regional identity and identity of politics and see similarities and differences. My research question is: Which of cultural, administrative and functional region are Region Skåne and Västra Götaland striving to construct?   The methods I have used are qualitative text- and content analysis to analyze the Regions, by using theories about regional identity and identity of politics. Furthermore, I am using some statistic from SOM-institutet to analyze the regional identity in the Regions.   The result show that Region Skåne is constructing a cultural region, because of their strong regional identity and that the politicians are using identity of politics to combine the citizens.

My essey concern the non-profitable organization Ung företagsamhet and their extenal communication with collaborators. I have done three intervjues with three of Ung företagsamhets 24 district in Sweden, and these are Kalmar, Jönköping and Skåne. My qustions conserns their rethoric and strategic communications channales, and the focus lies in their external communications with collaborators. I have also made a secondary data analysis about their media coverage and seen how they consciously works with it.Ung Företagsamhet is a non-profit organization that need good partnerships in order to survive financially. My analysis shows that the three different Regions works variously with their external communication.

A fauna passage is a way for animals to cross roads separated from the traffic. In Sweden, there are an unknown number of passages with different functions and appearances. These passages would, with the question ?Which fauna passages can be found in Sweden, and how well do they work?? as a base, be compiled in a comparable way. This would be done with a number of questions asked to the different Regions of Vägverket.

The analysis of regional development and the formation of regional policy have experienced an increasing importance in Europe and in Sweden during the last decades. There is a widespread assumption that the increasing significance of Regions is due to the diminishing role of the nationstate in the era of globalization. This essay suggests that there is a hegemonic discourse, heavily relying on the assumptions of New Regionalism, when addressing regional building. Sometimes described as an ideology, New Regionalism, which is derived from research of successful Regions, is based on the assumption that regional competitiveness and autonomy creates economic growth. The Committee on Public Sector Responsibilities (Ansvarskommittén) suggests that Sweden requires new regional structure, due to the increasing expenditures facing the welfare state.

The aim with this essay is to explore the possibility that jewellery was worn in combinations during the Bronze Age in the south of Sweden and Denmark as a way to show identities. By examining neck-collars and neck-rings and the jewellery found with these objects in graves, I have managed to find a few combinations that re-occur within Regions which I think point towards ways of expressing different identities.To fully explore the subject I have also examined the design of the neck-collar to see if the designs have the same regional difference as the combinations. Though there is some difference between Regions it is the similarity of the design over Regions that stand out. It is possible that the design of the neck-collar has shown a different meaning than the jewellery combinations.There are similarities between the jewellery found in combinations in the graves and the jewellery found in hoards. Neck-collars and neck-rings found in combination with other jewellery in hoards show a greater regularity over the south of Sweden and Denmark then those combinations found in the graves..

Aspen (Populus tremula) is a tree that is important for biodiversity. It is a pioneer tree that is favored by much light. It is possible that aspens that regenerated on agricultural land have a different importance for biodiversity than aspens that regenerated in forests, since their conditions have been different. By studying how the land use have changed you can see how many of today?s aspens regeneretad on agricultural land.

We have inquired into how the amount of foreign news has changed over the last 30 years in two major Swedish newspapers, which subjects and Regions has dominated the content of the foreign news and what subjects dominate the reporting from certain Regions. This was done with a quantitative analysis of subjects and Regions written about in 1100 news texts during a week in each year of 1978, 1988, 1998 and 2008. To further broaden our study, we also charted with the analysis how the newspapers domesticate foreign news and how they use international news agencies. As a basis for our discussion we use Van Ginnekens theories of world news centres, Westerståhl & Johanssons and Galtung & Ruges theories of foreign news selection as well as the theories of Hjarvard and Biltereyst about the domestication of foreign news due to commercial pressures and objectives on the newspapers. Our result of the amount of foreign news in the two newspapers is also compared to several similar empirical studies by different researchers.

The marketing campaign ?Låna dig rik? [Get rich by lending] involved 25 public libraries in three Regions; Kronoberg, Kalmar and Blekinge. This paper examines 28 news-articles concerning this campaign, found in eight publications in the responding Regions. The purpose of this is to determine to what extent the description of the campaign found therein responded to the intents of its founders and to what extent the public had a say in these articles. The result found indicates that the overall image of the campaign presented in the news-articles was well in correspondence with the intents of the campaign itself but that the public views where arguably absent..