The New Public Management (NPM) has made the public sector go through a period of privatization and externalization which has affected the method of accounting of municipalities, from cash to accrual accounting. The NPM has also resulted in a mix of private and public sector that makes the matter of consolidation of municipal groups complicated because of the municipalities’ use of public sector accounting and the municipal companies’ use of private sector accounting.   In Sweden, the Swedish Council of Municipal Accounting (SCMA) has the task of producing recommendations concerning the accounting of municipalities so that the goal of the “true and fair” view of the municipalities’ is met. In 2009, the SCMA produced the recommendation 8.2 (RKR 8.2) containing guidelines concerning consolidation of the municipal group. The purpose of this article is to investigate the use of RKR 8.2 and what kind of municipality is more inclined to use the recommendation. This question shall be answered by a quantitative, document study of the annual reports of Swedish municipalities from 2009 together with the Stakeholder Theory and the Positive Accounting Theory.   The result of the article shows that the municipalities that are more inclined to implement the RKR 8.2 and to implement it to a larger degree are municipalities of a larger size, with a high performance, with a high tax income and with large municipal companies.   Still, the document study shows that only 43 out of 239 municipalities have implemented the recommendation. To increase the implementation and use of the recommendations of SCMA we suggest merger of municipalities as larger municipalities, for different reasons, have implemented the recommendation to a larger degree than smaller ones.

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This thesis seeks to answer the question whether economic and social rights have the same status with civil and political rights under the human rights regime of the Council of Europe. To this end, the thesis examines the assumptions with regard to the nature of economic and social rights, on the one hand, and civil and political rights, on the other. Second, it seeks to find out whether the nature of economic and social rights is different from that of civil and political rights. Third, it examines how the protection of and approach to the two sets of rights developed in the Council of Europe. Finally, it assesses the contemporary protection of economic and social rights in the Council of Europe in comparison to protection of civil and political rights.

Canadian federalism has experienced pressure for change in recent years. By the end of the twentieth century, collaboration became the catch word and federations throughout the world, including Canada, witnessed an emergent movement toward collaborative governance, collaborative public service delivery, collaborative management and collaborative approaches to addressing social and economic issues. But even if the number of collaborative arrangements has grown since the 1990s, the understanding of the design, management and performance of collaborative arrangements in the Canadian federation remains weak. Accordingly, this dissertation argues that, in order to understand and open the black box of intergovernmental collaboration, it is necessary to put collaboration in a historical context and explore the roles of elites and political institutions in shaping intergovernmental collaborative practices. The role of the former provides the necessary complement of agency, while that of the latter represents a perspective that gives theoretical importance to political institutions. The integration of the two theoretical schools, elite theory and historical institutionalism, into one approach constitutes an attractive solution and offers the tools necessary to explore the complex processes of intergovernmental collaboration. The theoretical framework constructed in this dissertation is then applied to analyze whether the Agreement on Internal Trade, the Social Union Framework Agreement and the Council of the Federation can be considered in reality as examples of collaborative federalism.

The thesis investigates how China and the United States used state sovereignty in their official statements provided to the United Nations Security Council when discussing the Darfur conflict during the time period between 2004 and 2009. The thesis looks in particular at the official statements made with regards to the three different measures taken by the Security Council which were: the implementation of sanctions, the referral to the international criminal court and the deployment of peacekeeping. The thesis found that China applied a more cautious, but consistent, approach in which breaches of state sovereignty were never officially supported. The United States use of state sovereignty evolved as it became more willing over time to breach the sovereign rights of Sudan. The investigation into the official stance by China and the United States also provides general conclusions with regard to state sovereignty in contemporary international relations. First, the thesis finds that state sovereignty is still at the core of decision making in the United Nations Security Council, and as well in international relations, and there no present challenges to the role state sovereignty in contemporary international relations. Nonetheless, the different interpretations applied by states such as China and the United States, delays the decision-making process as states disagree on justifiable breaches of state sovereignty. State authorizes, such as the Government of Sudan, use state sovereignty as a barrier to effective international action to prevent atrocities and heinous crimes against humanity. In this application of state sovereignty, the rights of nation -states are protected more than the individual rights of human beings.

This thesis analyzes the culture of coercive voluntarism in Georgia during the First World War using studies of legislation and vigilance, the press, and the Georgia Council of Defense. Each of the themes studied demonstrates how organizations attempted to coerce support of the US war effort in Georgia. The study focuses on Georgia as a single state rather than simply as part of the South, as most other studies have done. The purpose is to challenge studies that have emphasized resistance only, which presents an incomplete picture of Georgia’s domestic scene during the war. In fact, many elements within Georgia—at the state, local, and citizen level—actively supported the war, often with the same level of intention, if not the same results, as did other areas of the country. Georgia attempted to comply with federal imperatives while preserving its rights as a state.

Syfte:                        Denna studie syftar till att undersöka huruvida avskaffandet av revisionsplikten fick de effekterna som önskades av EU samt Svenska regeringen, vilket var att minska de administrativa bördor och kostnader för mindre bolag. Det har nu gått en tid sen avskaffandet och det är nu möjligt att se vilka effekter som de berörda företagen har märkt av.  Metod:                        Undersökningen ämnade utföras med en kvantitativ metod med hjälp av enkäter. Men på grund av få respondenter och stort bortfall används istället en kvalitativ metod. Uppsatsen har en induktiv metod.  Slutsats:        Studien visar att alla de företag som ingick i undersökningen upplever en minskning av kostnaderna efter att revisionsplikten avskaffades, samt att majoriteten av företagen även anser att den administrativa bördan minskat. En del av företagen har valt att ta hjälp av konsulttjänster efter att de valt bort revison. / Objective:                  The study aims to investigate whether the abolishment of mandatory audit achieved the desired effects by the European Union and the Swedish government, the goals where to reduce administrative costs and bureaucracy for smaller companies. Some time has past since the abolishment and it is now possible to investigate which effects the companies have laid notice to. Methodology:            The study aimed to follow a quantitative method using surveys. Because of the high number of correspondents who did not answer the surveys, the study follows a qvalitativ method instead. The study also follows an inductive method. Conclusion:               We conclude that all companies who took part in the study experience a reduction in cost after the abolishment of mandatory audit, and that the majority of businesses also find that the administrative burden has decreased. Some businesses have chosen to take use consultancy services after they abolished audit.

The consumer society exploits the earth’s resources more than the earth itself has capability to produce. This over-consumption causes a mass production of products, which mean that more greenhouse gases are being emitted to the atmosphere. This is one of the reasons why the earth’s temperature is rising, where the result of it is worldwide disasters. The paper consumption is part of the causes to climate change, but this is something we can prevent by just changing little things in our everyday lives. Our question is: What does it actually take for us to stop wasting paper as we do? Is it possible at all? We decided to study what the IT-center of Jonkoping county council need to do to reduce their office paper printing. A survey and interviews were made to get to know the employees way to work. Many are very positive towards electronic documents and do not mind a change, as we can see in the results. But many admitted that they have a way to work that is hard to break. With these studies and previous cases, we found a solution for the IT-center. The solutions are reported in an electronic brochure.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of the Business Opportunity Projects (BOPs) that the Swedish Trade Council uses when promoting export for small enterprises. The Business Opportunity Projects have the same type of setup for all offices where the Swedish Trade Council is established and are subsidized by 60 percent from the government. A dataset on firms’ financial state on a ten year basis is used and survey interviews conducted in 2005/06 and 2007/08. From this data three types of methods are used; a calculations on expected values of return; a panel data model and a probit model.The results show that the expected return of one project is around 250 000 SEK and if the project is successful the average return is around 1 000 000 SEK. The governmental return is around 22 times the invested money. The probability of creating business volume directly or indirectly is around 45 percent. It is also shown that the projects have an impact on the export turnover of the participating firms. The effect comes after two years and it increases until four years after the BOP. The interpretation of the exact effect should be made with caution due to estimation issues. The result also indicates that the BOP generates around 1.5 employees on averages.The results show that the participating firms do not have advantage being larger, or being from the middle region of Sweden nor in a specific branch in order to have a successful project. Firms from north part of Sweden that have a slightly smaller chance of having a successful project, if the project is made in Western European offices, the firms have a higher probability to succeed compared to other offices.

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