The theme of my exam project, the practical work and the essay will be the phenomena of dreams. The dreams you have when you are asleep, the dreaming State of mind, places where your mind takes you, when you no longer decide what to think of. It is a fascination about what our mind creates itself. This essay brings up the theme out from seeing the dreams and the unconsciousness as a source of inspiration, both in personal development and from an artistic point of view. How has the world of dreams bin used as inspiration in the art? .

About 29 000 different services was given by the Swedish welfare state to children with disabilities within the ages 0-22 years before October first in the year 2008. Studies about children with disabilities and their experiences of their situation have rarely been done and it is therefore difficult to know how they think and feel about their lives. Both Swedish law and the UN:s convention about children?s rights states that children have the right to tell their opinion in matters that are of their concern. Thus, we don´t know much about if and how the Swedish welfare state maintain this right towards children with disabilities.

Theory of mind är att kunna tillskriva andra människor mentala tillstånd som förklarar deras beteenden. Dessa mentala tillstånd kan röra sig om uppfattningar, intentioner eller känslor.    Theory of Mind Scale är en bedömningsskala utformad av Wellman och Liu (2004), som undersöker olika nivåer av theory of mind. Theory of Mind Scale är uppbyggd i skalsteg med stigande svårighetsgrad. Syftet med föreliggande studie var att översätta Theory of Mind Scale från engelska till svenska samt validera bedömningsskalan för barn mellan 3 och 4 år. Studien syftade även till att se om det fanns ett samband mellan dessa barns förmåga till theory of mind, impressiva grammatiska förmåga och impressiva ordförråd.      Valideringen i föreliggande studie visade att skalstegen i den amerikanska originalversionen av Theory of Mind Scale var applicerbara på barnen i föreliggande studie, med undantag för den sista uppgiften.

Background: Individuals in pain is something that most nurses encounter on a daily basis. Chronic physical pain is often followed by psychological pain. The total effects of chronic pain are felt by the patient as well as by close ones. The findings showed that life changed radically after getting chronic pain. Individuals and closeones both had to take every day as it came, because the degree of pain was hard to predict and could worsen at any time off the day.

Mind-mindedness refers to the mother?s ability to treat her child as an individual with a mental life of his or her own. In the present study, the purpose is to investigate the relationship between the amount of mind-related comments the mother produces when the child is 9 months of age and the child?s development in language and communication at the age of 15 months. The hypothesis is that the amount of mind-related comments the mother produces has a positive affect on the child?s language abilities as well as his or her ability to initiate joint attention.

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..

Vellinge is one of few municipalities in Sweden that refuses to accept refugees. The subject of this thesis is to find out how the local politicians in Vellinge make their considerations when they decide not to welcome refugees. The analysis uses the representation theory as a starting point. The two ideals of the representative role, either as a bound mandate or as a free independent role, is the base of the analysis. Vellinge is in the analysis compared to Lomma, a very similar municipality in southern Sweden that for a long time alsohas refused to accept refugees, however suddenly in 2007 decided to change their mind.

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.

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.