Diploma thesis "Nordic countries and their support of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on their way to European structures" deals with foreign policies of Denmark, Sweden and Finland towards three Baltic countries in the 1990s. The paper is focused on Danish, Swedish and Finnish bilateral support of three Baltic countries on their way to European structures, particularly to the EU. The thesis strives to explain a rationale and motives which were behind decisions of Nordic countries to help Baltic countries in the 1990s. Although the thesis is primarily focused on a development in the 1990s, a short part is also devoted to a historical development of the relations between Nordic and Baltic countries. This historical excursion helps to identify changes of Nordic foreign policies (Baltic policies) which occurred in the 1990s. The main proposition of this thesis is a statement that though there were several motives behind decisions of Nordic states to help Baltic countries, the main factor which caused high involvement of Denmark, Sweden and Finland in the Baltic Sea area were security related factors. The thesis also offers a summary of some motives which were behind high involvement of Nordic countries in the region and provides some similarities and differences in Baltic policies of Denmark, Sweden and...

Diploma thesis "Nordic Cooperation. Its Transformation in the Second Half of the 20th Century and Its Current Shape" deals with the Nordic cooperation among Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden from the second half of the 20th century with the focus on the period from the 1990s till 2008. At the beginning, there is an introduction to the history of cooperation in Scandinavia till the 1990s and a description of two main institutions of the Nordic cooperation: the Nordic Council and the Nordic Council of Ministers. The main chapter analyses the Nordic cooperation from the 1990s, it focuses on areas and intensity of the cooperation and describes concrete programmes, projects, institutions, targets and results of the cooperation. The thesis also deals with the question of the impact of the three Baltic States involvement in the Nordic cooperation in the 1990s. The answer is that the internal Nordic cooperation has been developing very intensively - it was demonstrated by the analysis of the Nordic cooperation in the 1990s in the main chapter - without any affecting of the Baltic States involvement in the main. On the contrary, the Baltic States involvement has brouhgt the external opportunity for the Nordic countries to integrate into the cooperation in the Baltic Sea region.

Diploma thesis deals with local polity, politics and policies in the Nordic countries. The main aim of this thesis is to study local polity, politics and policies in the Nordic countries and then identify what are the most important common features of these countries and the most significant differences between them. The first chapter deals with known theoretical approaches to distinctions between local government systems. This chapter presents some typologies of local government systems. Another four chapters are dedicated to local politics in the Nordic countries. The second chapter is focused on Sweden. The third chapter deals with Denmark. The fourth chapter is focused on Norway, while the fifth chapter on Iceland. The each of these four chapters is split into several subchapters, which are focused especially on competencies, tasks and duties of municipalities, structure and functioning of municipal institutions, forms of intermunicipal cooperation, number and size of municipalities, structure of municipal earnings and expenditures and other financing matters, electoral and party systems at local level, neighborhood councils, user democracy and free commune experiments. The last chapter summarizes and compares findings. Conclusion presents the most evident common features of local polity, politics and...

The party system of Iceland was always well-known for its strong stability and moderate nature typical for its whole modern development. But since the 1999 parliamentary election the Icelandic party system has been going through several changes and it is not appropriate to consider it nowadays as a traditionally stable party system with, in the long term, the dominant Independence Party. The party system is splitting off and the new parties are found out. Although after the 2013 election the system returned to the pre-2009 model, there is still an important question whether it reflects repeated stabilization of the Iceland political and party system, or it is only a reaction to the left-wing government in the years of 2009 to 2013. The aim of this thesis is to answer the following questions: is the Icelandic party system going through some changes of its structure or inter-party competition, and if so, is this transformation caused by the financial and bank crisis in 2008, or does it concern long- term transformations? Did the electoral shock in 2009 result from the reaction of the Icelandic voters to the financial crisis, or the election results were only another validation of the long- term Icelandic party system trend, namely by erosion of its traditional adjustment? In the analysis of the...

The Nordic welfare state is usually referred to as the most successful model of its kind; this social system based on the principle of universalism is a common ideal for other European states. The goal of the diploma thesis The Nordic Welfare State Model is to introduce this social model, both from a theoretical and practical point of view. The description of theoretic models as well as the history of European welfare states are vital in order to understand the functioning of social systems; however the main purpose of this paper is to characterize the Nordic welfare state model through the examples of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and to capture the main commonalities and disparities in comparison with the rest of Europe. Based on up-to-date analyses of mainly Scandinavian researchers as well as reports of international organizations this paper offers an extensive analysis of the Nordic Welfare State Model.

Syftet med detta examensarbete är att göra en jämförande studie mellan faktorerna som enligt en teoretisk ram påverkar en miljöinvestering och faktorerna som ingår i ett företags bedömnings-modell. Respondentbolaget begärde i ett tidigt skede att få vara anonymt och benämns därför som Företaget. Det är en multinationell koncern med verksamhet i många skilda branscher, men med fokus på norden och produkter som kan kopplas till lantbruk. Den teoretiska referensramen har sin utgångspunkt i begreppen värde och investering samt hur deras koppling till miljö och miljöinvesteringar för att identifiera de faktorer som påverkar en miljöinvestering. Faktorerna som ingår i den teoretiska referensramen och som jämförs mot respondentbolagets faktorer är:  Investeringens värdetillförsel  Investeringens miljöpåverkan  Hur investeringen påverkar produktionsförutsättningarna  Krav från samhället  Kundkrav Kopplingen däremellan bedöms enligt en femgradig skala. Informationen från Företaget inhäm-tades genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer med representanter från Företaget. Slutsatsen för detta arbete är att Företaget har identifierat samma faktorer som den teoretiska referensramen. De använder dock mätetal som inte fullt ut reflekterar faktorerna. Den största avvikelsen är bedömningen av en investerings värdetillförsel, då Företaget fullt ut införlivar det producerade värdet samt det faktum att en miljöinvestering skall ses som irreversibel. Enkelhet premieras hos Företaget och det är för att prioritera modellens användbarhet, som Företaget väl-jer att acceptera brister i bedömningsmodellen. För att förbättra bedömningsmodellen bör Företaget därför införliva nya mätetal som till större del reflekterar faktorerna som påverkar en miljöinvestering / The purpose of this master thesis is to present a comparison between the factors that affects an environmental investment. This is done through applying a theoretical framework on the factors affecting a company’s existing appraisal model for environmental investments. The company that was a part of this thesis asked at an initial stage for confidentiality, therefore it is called the Company in this thesis. The Company that contributes with the appraisal model is a multination-al group with operations in many different industries, but with a focus on the Nordic countries and products that may be linked to the agricultural sector. The theoretical framework has its base in the concepts of value and investments and their connection to the environment and the envi-ronmental investment. The identified factors in the theoretical framework are:  The investment’s addition to the value creation to the company  The investment’s environmental impact  How the investment affects the production  Demands from society  Customer demands From these, the factors affecting a company’s existing appraisal model were compared and their connection to theoretical framework was judged according to a 5-grade scale. Information from the Company was acquired through semi-structured interviews with representatives from the Company. The largest deviation is how the company considers an investment’s contribution to the produced value. Because of this imperfection does the company's model not fully incorporate the produced value and that an environmental investment is irreversible. The overall conclusion is that the Company has identified the same factors as the theoretical framework. The Company has though chosen to use their existing methods and performance indicators that don’t fully incorporate the factors in the theoretical framework. The largest devia-tions are how the company considers an investment’s contribution to the produced value and that it should be considered as irreversible. The Company must therefore in order to enhance their appraisal model develop new performance measures for the factors.