The purpose of this essay has been to compare different constitutions, and their outlook on citizenship, rights, obligations and natural duty. This has been done in the light of the political philosophy, in order to give the answer to four questions. These questions are: Which rights and obligations can be seen in the constitutions, and how can it be interpreted. Can there be signs of any political philosophy in the constitutions?  Are there any differences between the constitutions regarding citizenship, rights, obligations and natural duty? If so, what are the differences? Can the rights be seen in a further extent than the obligations in the constitutions?I have conducted a qualitative comparision study and analyzed the political philosophers and made a classification scheme of their views.

During year 2007 ClaraHälsan Ltd bought the company health service Solstahälsan in Karlstad. The wide merger of the two health services the problems arose around the employees? employment agreements when certain parts of the agreement differ. At a transition of a company, in this case a health service, the rights and obligations for the employees will pass on to the new employer according to directive 2001/23/EG who came in force in the swedish legal system in year 1995. The former employer is only responsible vis-à-vis the employees ?for economic obligations related to the time before the transition, the code of protection of employment 6 b §.

In present there is no Swedish legislation regulating bareboat registration of Swedish ships. Despite this absence however shipowners with vessels already registered in the Swedish Vessel Register do not hesitate to take advantage of the positive aspects of bareboat registration and thereby allowing the registration of their ships in another State as well. The fact that there is a lack of legislation in this area has left a legal loophole resulting in Swedish ships being registered in a second State without any regulation providing options or protection for the different parties involved. With this as a background, the main objective of this thesis is to analyze parallel registration of ships, its consequences and the future of dual registration in Sweden. To fulfil this objective another aim is to impart a collected legal and economical presentation of the problems that may occur when a bareboat chartered vessel is registered in two different States simultaneously.

Liberal theorists typically argue that state action should not favor any particular conception of the good or meaningful life. On this view the defining characteristic of the liberal state is neutrality among rivaling ideas of the good. This thesis argues that state neutrality is impossible to maintain in practice. Two different versions of state neutrality; neutral justification and neutral aims, are used to analyze a wide range of political issues. It is concluded that far from being neutral, the liberal state favors individualistic and market oriented conceptions of the good life.

What role does the state play in economic development? This thesis seeks to investigate the relationship between a strong state and economic development. To define the concept of a strong state I focus on the relationship between the scope of state functions and the efficiency of which these functions are implemented. The concept of a strong state is in this thesis defined as the efficiency of the state functions. By using a database constructed by three economists; David Kaufman, Aart Kraay and Massimo Mastruzzi as a measurement of a strong state I test the relationship with economic development empirically.

When Vladimir Putin in the year 2000 came to power in Russia many believed that the Russian civil society were weak and had very little influence and with Putin people say that the situation have deteriorated. The purpose of this paper is to establish what kind of relationship exists between the Russian state and the civil society and to analyze this from a top-down perspective. We are looking at Russia during Putins first term in office from the year 2000 until 2004. In order to establish the relationship we have used John S. Dryzeks theory of inclusive and exclusive state and whether it?s active or passive in this process.

The three post-communist states - Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine ? have gone different ways in terms of freedom and democracy since the breakdown of the Soviet Union 1991. During these years, the state and the civil society have been fundamental actors in the struggle against, and even for, authoritarianism.A strong state with great capacity in Belarus has undermined the chances for the civil society to fulfil its task as a watchdog of the state and link between the citizens and the government.Failed authoritarianism in Moldova has led to a situation where both the state and the civil society are weak. The major problem is lack of organization and cohesion; both the state and the civil society have often been divided by ethnical differences and are therefore not strong enough to promote democracy.In Ukraine, the dominance of a strong state ended in 2004 when the Orange Revolution took place, sometimes called a ?peak of democracy? where popular mobilization and protests succeeded in it's opposition against the state.

This paper attempts to survey the debate in the Swedish parliament on state surveillance on the Internet, from 1994 to March, 2007. With a discourse analysis inspired by Foucault, we follow how the idea of state surveillance is viewed by politicians during the period. By focusing on the Internet, we expect to find how politicians in the parliament regard the idea of an unregulated forum for citizen communication and interaction, and how the need for state surveillance on the new arena that is Internet, is expressed and argued for. Theoretical framework is given by Foucault?s theory of the Panoptic state, as well as his thoughts on discourse, power and governmentality.

The liberal state, it has been argued, must be neutral between different conceptions of the good. Embodying ideals such as fairness and impartiality, state neutrality is intuitively appealing, but working as a restraint for state actions it is somewhat unsatisfactory. People make mistakes about their lives and people live less valuable lives than they could do. To then restrain the state from doing as much good as it can seems just as unappealing as neutrality at first seemed appealing. In this paper, a possible solution to this dilemma is presented.

This thesis aimed to, with the help of a case study, investigate and discuss state responsibility towards climate refugees. The state of Tuvalu was selected because of their vulnerability as a low-lying island state. This was fulfilled by on-site study how the state Tuvalu acted to climate threats, determine if the future migrants from Tuvalu can be counted as climate refugees and find out if they are by that definition included by the UN Refugee Convention. The result indicated that the state of Tuvalu is adapting to climate threats, that in the future the population can be seen as climate refugees, if they are forced from their homes due to climate change, and that they, despite that definition, can not be included by the UN Refugee Convention. The study also indicates a need for greater international protection of climate refugees by, for example, an expansion of the UN Refugee Convention so that these vulnerable people do not fall into oblivion due to a question of definition..

This essay seeks to explore which country´s laws should be applied when a dispute concerning damages in non-contractual obligations arises från illegal copying. In Europe today we have merely a few documented laws regarding choice of law concerning illegal copying. Thus, a proposition regarding a regulation which shall control the choice of laws applied on disputes in non-contractual obligations has been prepared. Another main reason for the existence of such a regulation is the need for a united set of laws to enable recognition of other countries´ judgments in Europe. This proposal will be called the Rome II-regulation.

This study is about state officials who handle applications for sickness benefits and about municipal officials who handle applications for financial assistance. The purpose of this study is to explore the differences between the two professional roles regarding their conception about their exercise of authority, in terms of flexibility, individual adjustment, empathy and legal security.The study has a qualitative approach and is based on structured interviews with two state officials and two municipal officials. The questions that this study aims to answer are:- Is there a difference between state officials and municipal officials regarding their experience and use of flexibility? - Is there a difference between state officials and municipal officials regarding their perceptions of legal security, individual adjustment and empathy in their exercise of authority? - What kind of bureaucracy can you find in the two organizations?The results show that the state officials in this study have very limited flexibility due to legislation which makes their exercise of authority neither empathic nor individual. The municipal officials in this study state in their turn that the law entails broad flexibility and the opportunity for them to be empathic and to make individual decisions.

This thesis gives an introduction to securitization in general and the tranching of collateralized debt obligations in particular. It does this by using a firm-value model to simulate the underlying portfolio via monte-carlo simulations.The simulations in turn give a loss-distribution from which the various tranchings of the CDO?s are derived. To get an understanding of the influence of different variables involved in the tranching the simulations are repeated several times where the portfolio variables are changed to generate different tranchings. This to give a understanding of the influence different variables have on the tranching and consequently risks involved in CDO?s in particular but also general risks and problems of securitizations..

The function of traditional leaders in the modern states of Africa has been under debate for decades. The dominant research discourse suggests that these institutions should be integrated into the state in order to minimize the amount of parallel political spheres, since the latters are considered to affect state legitimacy negatively. But are the states in a situation where they need to compete with the traditional institutions in order to gain more legitimacy? If so, is the struggle for legitimacy a zero-sum game where there can only be one winner? Or is it possible for these institutions to co-exist or even benefit from each other? The aim of this bachelor?s thesis is to research if, and to what extent, African citizens? confidence in traditional institutions has an effect on state legitimacy. This has been done by statistically analyzing the data from the latest completed round of the Afrobarometer survey, a study that has been conducted in 20 different countries across West- and Northeast Africa.

During the last years a discussion has emerged around problems with Swedish state boards trying to influence the public opinion and even political bodies through different kind of information efforts. Several observers inside and outside the academy have studied how state boards increasingly use information as an instrument and also how political bodies increasingly have given such instructions to state boards. This essay put those studies into the context of both information political history and previous theoretical interpretations in that field of research.The analytical tool consists of four ideal typical ways ('state opinions') to arrange relations between the state and the citizen. Some critics focus on problems with too much political steering and how political majorities uses state boards to spread ideological propaganda. Others highlight problems with autonomy and bureaucratic organizations taking initiatives by themselves to spread normative information.