Abstract Essay in political science, C-level, by Samanta Pudic´, spring semester 2008. Tutor: Susan Marton. “The relationship between national government and local municipality when a refugee centre shall be located.” The purpose of this essay is to examine the relationship between government and municipality with the help from the interdependens theory when a refugee centre is located. To be able to say something about the relationship between those two actors I have been using two municipalities as examples. I have interviewed two politicians who work in two municipalities and two head employees who work at the Swedish Migration Board. I have, on the basis of the interdependency theories four identified factors which affect the relationship between the government and the municipalities and I have designed seven assumptions which shall help me implement the interviews, the analysis and the conclusion. The examination is thereby a case study, so that I can examine the relationship deeper between national government and local municipality with help from my two examples and the elite interviews. My purpose is not to generalise my conclusions for the whole of Sweden, but rather from the historical examples, examine how a relationship between government and municipalities can look like when a refugee centre shall be located. The answer to my research question is that the relationship between the government and the two municipalities are symmetrical with low dignity. By this it means that both the state and the municipalities are mutual dependent on each other and it isn’t so difficult for them to have a mutually beneficial relationship.

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Abstract C-essay in political science by Anna Bryntesson Supervisor: Michele Micheletti Spring 2006 “Young municipality politicians - Why some young people become municipality politicians, how they think it is and what they think should be done to engage more young people in politics?” The Swedish municipalities have problem with that they doesen´t have many politicians under 30 years. Many of the young people who become politicians drop out after a short while. The conclusion of this is that the Swedish municipalities have problems to engage young people in politics. The purpose of this essay is to study and try to find out what young people think about politics? This is done with personally interviews with 7 young municipality politicians from the municipality of Eda. The specific research questions are: • Who are they which became young municipality politicians? • What was the reason that they became politicians? • How do they look at municipality politics? • Which roll and function does the young people have as a municipality politician? • What do they think should be done to get more young people to engaged in politics and become a municipality politician? The young Eda politician is a girl living in a house in the country and she has middle education. Many of the young politicians in Eda has become politicians because their parents has asked them if the want to be a politician. They think that politics is hard but fun. Their roll is to look at think in a new way. Politicians need to go to schools and tell the kids in school what they do a a politician to try to make young people more intrested in politics. The teory that is more usually that men is engaged in politics than womans isn´t right in Eda. Because there among the young peolpe more womans than men are engaged.

Essay in political science, D-level by Lisa Kringsberg, spring semester 2008. Tutor: Michele Micheletti. “Civil Society in Singapore – can it make democratization possible” The third wave of democratization and the end of the cold war has together increased the interest of the civil society as an impact on democratization. Singapore is a country which is higly-developt in both the socie-economic and economic field. Dispate this Singapore has not yet achieved to become a democratic state. The purpose of this essay is to study how the civil society can affect democracy in a country. My main research question is to test how civil society in Singapore can figure as a force to introduce democracy. The methodological approach is a qualatative case study. To come to any conlusions about my main research question I’ve used an analyse chart which focuses on three variables; freedom of speech, liberty of press and freedom of association. The theoretical approach that my thesis takes its aim from is based on research done about civil society. The conclusion of this thesis is that the possibilities for the civil society to figure as a force to introduce democracy in Singapore is limited.

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This thesis is foremost dealing with the process and the consequences of the restoration of the Latvian republic after 1991. It was examined what liberal and ethnic democracy can tell about the assessment of citizenship in general and about the restoration of Latvia in particular. Further, it was analysed how the Latvian legislation defines the citizenry and if preference to a certain ethnic group is given. The change over time of the relevant legal documents was subject to this study as well. It was evaluated, which impact the exclusive approach to citizenship (initially purely based on state-continuity) that in 1991 disfranchised 30% of the population, had for the rights of these people. The method of ideational analysis was used to scrutinise the law texts. In order to gain information on the effects for the population in question, the method of effect analysis was used. This was enriched with interviews conducted by the author on two occasions with governmental representatives, researchers and members of NGO´s in Riga 2008. The legal documents here, encompass the Latvian Constitution (1922), the Resolution on Restoration (1991), the Law on Citizenship (1994, 1995, 1998) and the Law of the Republic of Latvia on the status of former USSR citizens who have neither the Latvian nor another state’s citizenship (1995). The literature read for the purpose of this study spans generally from 1992 to 2006. The conclusion drawn here is that the strict application of the state-continuity thesis and the denying of state responsibility for the changes of population in 50 years time are inconsistent with liberal democracy. Rather this citizenship policy resembles features of an ethnic democracy. The changes in the Law on Citizenship of 1995, where ethnic Latvians and Livs were given the possibility to come to Latvia and receive citizenship automatically (even if they were not citizens of interwar Latvia), while children born to non-citizen (all of them non-ethnic Latvians) after 1991, were not automatically conferred citizenship, made the preferential treatment for one ethnic group obvious. Due to the fact that large parts of the minority population were disenfranchised, they were not able to contest important governmental decisions. As a result, laws directed against the interest of the minority population were introduction. As a whole, a marginalisation of the minority population took place.

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Because of its importance for indigenous biodiversity and the local Sami culture, the Laponian area, in the north of Sweden, was declared a World Heritage Site Area by the UN organization UNESCO in 1996. Most of the area is protected because it encompasses national parks and nature reserves and is state owned, and, thus, managed by the County Administrative Board. Local stakeholders who want to participate and influence both the policy-making process as well as management activities have recently questioned this top- down arrangement. The issue is complex with stakeholders on different levels, overlapping jurisdictions and pending questions of indigenous rights. In this thesis, different problems are identified that have to be solved in order to promote and maintain a sustainable development of Laponia. The thesis aims to analyze if the adoption of multi-stakeholder co- management of Laponia is a possible solution to above-mentioned problems. A key question is how to understand the concept of co-management in this specific issue. Yet another question is, if and how, decision-making can be delegated to a local management organization. With the basis in common-pool resource theory, it is discussed whether or not, self-organization and self- governance of the area is a probable solution. It is concluded that one way of dealing with this problematic issue could be to create a co-management system for the Laponian area. / I december 1996 utsåg FN-organet Unesco Laponiaområdet i Norrbottens län till världsarv på grund av dess unika natur- och kulturvärden. Världsarvet Laponia är 9.400 km² stort och uppbyggt kring fyra nationalparker och två naturreservat. Det är också det empiriska fall som behandlas i denna uppsats. Den svenska naturvården har under lång tid varit formad med ett ovanifrånperspektiv, det vill säga den har varit hierarkiskt och statligt styrd. Under senare år har dock i flera delar av landet, allt tydligare krav ställts från lokal nivå, om delaktighet i förvaltningen av naturresurserna. Laponia är ett sådant område där de kommuner, inom vilket området ligger, och dess samebyar har uttryckt att de vill ha ett inflytande. Till en början verkade dessa intressenter ha likartade önskemål, men situationen förändrades genom att frågan om självbestämmande blev viktigare än frågan om lokal förvaltning. En av de grundläggande frågorna i denna uppsats är: Hur ska världsarvet Laponia kunna förvaltas hållbart och på ett sätt som accepteras av lokala, regionala och nationella intressen? Studien söker utifrån teoribildning inom CPR-området ("common-pool resource") identifiera de principiellt viktiga frågor som kräver lösning om Laponia ska få en långsiktigt hållbar förvaltning. Vilka är förutsättningarna för att någon grupp nyttjare ska organisera sig för att själv förvalta Laponia? I uppsatsen konstateras, med utgångspunkt från resursens och nyttjarnas attribut, att renskötarna är den enda grupp som verkar tänkbar i fråga om självorganisering och självförvaltning. Samisk självorganisering och självstyre möter dock på flera sätt problem att nå hållbar utveckling, framför allt på grund av dess svårighet att få legitimitet från övriga nyttjare. Om inte självförvaltning och självstyre är troligt, vilka är då alternativen? Ett tänkbart sådant är en förvaltningsform som under senare tid har fått ökad uppmärksamhet inom internationella organisationer, nämligen samförvaltning ("co-management"). I uppsatsen tydliggörs vad "co-management" innebär. För att kunna hantera samförvaltningsbegreppet och lösa problem i en komplicerad gemensam resurspool av Laponias karaktär, föreslås i uppsatsen att det skapas ett system för samförvaltning. Detta samförvaltningssystem kan innehålla olika institutionella arrangemang för förvaltning på olika nivåer - operativ nivå, kollektiv samt konstitutionell nivå. / <p>Godkänd; 2002; 20070222 (ysko)</p>

The central undertaking in this thesis is to explore the explanatory power of the concept of policy networks. The main question is whether there is a relation between the structural features of policy networks and their performance? Does network structure matter for network performance, and in that case, in what sense? In order to investigate the relationship between structure and performance, five implementation networks, engaged in inter-organizational collaboration with the task to create multidisciplinary units, at Luleå University of Technology (LTU), are studied. Each network is analyzed regarding both structural properties and performances. First, network performance is measured by the level of effectiveness and innovation. Next, the structural features of the implementation networks are measured. Drawing upon previous work of Burt, the structural analysis is based on the examination of two specific network mechanisms, namely network closure and global structural holes. Basically, while the former refers to the degree of interconnectedness, the latter considers the extent to which the actors span global structural holes, meaning that they have contacts reaching outside the network in focus. A positive relation between the two above mentioned mechanisms and performance is proposed. The empirical analysis confirms the assumption that there is a relation between structure and performance. While the existence of global structural holes is a necessity for innovative networks to form, their level of effectiveness is positively related to the degree of network closure. Following this, an innovative network is a network in which the actors are tightly connected and, at the same time, have many connections to other actors, engaged in other network constellations. Further, on the basis of the empirical findings, two new hypotheses, specifying the relationship between structure and performance, are suggested. Firstly, it is proposed that the function of prioritizing, so vital for the process of organizing, is facilitated within centrally integrated networks. Secondly, the function of mobilization of resources is facilitated within networks that span a large amount of global structural holes. Accordingly, network structure does matter for the effectiveness of innovative policy networks. To conclude, there is certainly a lot of explanatory power in the concept of policy networks and the formal analytical approach, offered by social network analysis (SNA), is one way to explore its possibilities. / <p>Godkänd; 2004; 20070128 (ysko)</p>