I april 2011 arbetar riksenheten mot korruption med nio utredningar där koppling till kommuner, landsting eller kommunala bolag finns. Trots att Sverige i en internationell jämförelse har en låg korruptionsgrad så förekommer fall av korruption. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka korruptionens mekanismer på kommunal nivå i Sverige. För att uppfylla detta söks svar på frågeställningar gällande den kommunala organisationens betydelse för korruption, om några sambandsfaktorer finns samt huruvida etiska förhållningssätt kan vara av betydelse. Teorin som övergripande används menar att en gynnsam frestelsestruktur främjar ett korrupt beteende. Till de olika delarna används skilda metoder såsom statistisk analys, fallstudie, beskrivande studie samt textanalys. Den genomgående design som tillämpas är komparativ, då kommunerna hela tiden jämförs för att hitta skillnader och likheter. Studien visar på att skillnader i kommunal organisation samt skillnader i etiska perspektiv hos kommunerna finns, samtidigt som skillnader i antal fall av korruption finns. I statistisk analys framstår bland an-nat privatisering, medelinkomst, lokala partier samt skatteunderlag som faktorer som eventuellt kan ha viss betydelse för antalet korruptionsfall.

Abstract As human beings, we are all governed by our innate instinct that to kill another human being, or to just inflict pain on another, is to go against what makes us human. Still, it happens every day, far and near. Some of these killings happens in war-like situations, where atrocities against humanity occur. The international community has since the founding of UN in 1945, a duty to intervene where crimes against the human rights occur. This is a difficult task, because, in order to intervene and help those in need, the situation might postulate states violating states sovereignty. This is a problem.                        Hence, the main aim of this study is to investigate how a state can justify intervening in a foreign country in the light of human rights and state sovereignty.                       In order to do this, the theories of sovereignty, nature rights, human rights and intervention has been applied upon the empirical material of USA’s invasion of Iraq, also named, Operation Iraqi Freedom. To execute the analysis, an idea centered analytical method was used. The two questions that guided this study lies both on an theoretical and empirical level. The previous question looked into how states can defend their actions when intervening on basis of the human rights, in a foreign state. The latter question investigates USA’s reasoning and justification, in regards to sovereignty and human rights, prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.                       The study showed that the human rights, as well as liberal values, such as, freedom and liberty were the prevailing arguments in America’s reasoning.                       The international community’s agreement on international law and respecting the principle of self governance, has, in recent years, put a clear tension on the relation between sovereignty and humanitarian intervention.                       This goes to show that in questions of sovereignty vs. human rights, the latter comes out on top in international law. At least in the case of USA’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.                       Though, the question on who has the right and when it is right to intervene is very much circumstantial, and so, the discussion ought to continue.   Keywords: sovereignty, nature rights, human rights, intervention, Iraq, USA, Operation Iraqi Freedom, White House

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The aim of this thesis is to analyze the recently formed global governance of migration, which has got an unprecedented trans-boundary nature due to the impacts og globalization in the post Cold War era.

Innovationer och innovationssystem har på senare tid fått en allt viktigare roll i synen på vad somfrämjar ekonomisk tillväxt och regional utveckling. Forskning visar att statliga satsningar inominnovationspolitiken uppvisar ett prioriteringsmönster där kön synes vara en organiserandeprincip. Tekniktunga branscher som främst sysselsätter män som anställda får majoriteten av demedel som delas ut för att stödja och utveckla innovativa processer . I Halland är Hälsoteknik etts.k. prioriterat tillväxtområde och därmed mottagare av dessa medel. Hälsoteknik har somområde en potential att vara gränsöverskridande då det sammanför mansdominerade branschermed könsbalanserade och kvinnodominerade branscher. Uppsatsen studerar om tillväxtområdetoch innovationssystemet hälsoteknik utmanar de dualistiska genuskonstruktioner som forskningvisat att den svenska innovationspolitiken bygger på, samt visar på genusperspektivets relevans iatt synliggöra obalanser i strukturer som kan verka tillväxthämmande.

This thesis deals with political representation in EU multi-level governance. The European Union and its political system is quite complex, due to its unusual and multi-level governance. It has gained the reputation of capturing professionalism, and conforming to elite governance to a point where it is seen as an elite political game. The thesis wish to examine the European political system, and ask the questions, how important is the degree of consent between the political elite and the public in the European Union? Does it necessarily have an effect on the system of political representation as such, and if is does, does it influence legitimacy? Or in other terms, is it necessary for a degree of consent between the political elite and the public for political representation and legitimacy? The European Union has a tendancy to gain critique for its focus on professionalism and elitism, and I wish therefore to state that it is important to generate an evident relationship between political representation and legitimacy in EU multi-level governance. It is necessesary to create a functioning relationship between the political elite and the public, but it does not necessarily mean that it influence political representation and legitimacy. It is important to view the opportunities for political representation and legitimacy in a situation such as this. The degree of consent is not to create an impossibility for sufficient political representation and legitimacy in the European Union, is it?

The topic of this thesis is immigration policy in the European Union with focus on the Schengen cooperation and illegal immigration. Immigration policies and other policy areas such as asylum and refugee policies have become hot topics on the EU agenda in recent years. Partly because of cooperations like Schengen, but also because a need of a common immigration and asylum policy has emerged. The purpose of the thesis is to give a better understanding of the relations that might be found between illegal immigration to the EU and the Schengen cooperation. Schengen plays an important role in dealing with international migration in the EU and will probably continue to do so in the future. The thesis is a comparative case study with Spain and Germany as the two specific cases. Their national immigration policies are examined and put in relation to the Schengen cooperation. The research questions are: What was the basic problem that was supposed to be avoided when incorporating Schengen into the framework of the European Union? How does Spain and Germany deal with the illegal immigration they have been exposed to and what are the similarities and differences between the two countries? How do the Spanish and German actions relate to the Schengen cooperation? The result of the study is, when it comes to illegal immigration to the EU there are no functioning systems to handle it. Even though there are cooperations like Schengen, that tries to standardize the management of immigration, illegal immigration included, it seems like the individual countries still prefer to deal with it in their own ways. / Uppsatsen handlar om EU:s immigrationspolitik, med fokus på Schengensamarbetet och illegal immigration. Immigrationspolitiken och andra närliggande politikområden som asylpolitik och flyktingpolitik har blivit heta ämnen på EU:s agenda de senaste åren. Dels på grund av samarbeten som Schengen och dels genom att behovet av en gemensam immigrations- och asylpolitik har uppmärksammats. Syftet med uppsatsen är att ge en bättre förståelse för de samband som finns mellan illegal immigration till EU och Schengensamarbetet. Schengen har och kommer antagligen att få en mycket betydande roll för internationell migration och EU. Uppsatsen är en komparativ fallstudie där Spanien och Tyskland är de undersökta fallen och deras nationella immigrationspolitik undersöks och sätts sedan i samband med Schengensamarbetet. De frågor som uppsatsen utgår ifrån är: Vad var det grundläggande problem man ville komma tillrätta med då man bestämde sig för att införa Schengensamarbetet i EU: s ramverk? Hur har Spanien och Tyskland hanterat den illegala immigrationen i respektive länder och vad finns det för likheter och skillnader dem emellan? Hur går Spaniens och Tysklands handlande ihop med Schengenavtalet? Resultatet av studien är att när det gäller den illegala immigrationen till EU finns det inget fungerande system att hantera den. Även om det finns samarbeten inom EU såsom Schengen som försöker att standardisera hanterandet av immigration, även illegal immigration, verkar det som att de enskilda länderna fortfarande går sina egna vägar.

I de senaste decennierna har medierna haft stor inflyttande i den politiska processen. Synnerligen när det gäller att granska och kritisera en del politiker mer än andra, Samt att ta upp de frågor som de tycker är viktigast. Detta gör att medborgarna för det mesta tar del av de frågor som kommer upp i medierna m.m. Syftet med detta arbete är att undersöka vad relationen/samarbetet mellan politiker och journalister bygger på i lokalsamhället, samt veta vad aktörerna har för syn på det egna och motpartens roll/uppgift i lokalsamhället, samt vilka är det som har makten över att sätta dagordningen. Undersökningen visar att relationen mellan aktörerna är bra och baserat på att samarbeta genom att utbytta informationer, samtala, debattera, granska och bli granskat. Politiker tyckte att journalisterna gör ett bra jobb, fast tar inte alltid upp de frågor som politikerna vill. Journalisterna ansåg att politikerna är samarbetsvilliga och tillgängliga när man vill kontakta de om information, debatter osv. Båda aktörerna ansåg att det är journalisterna som sätter dagordningen, men inte när det gäller den politiska dagordningen.

All over the western world, media are giving Muslims the role as scapegoats for everything that is wrong with society. Through grave generalizations as well as alleged connections between Islam and terrorism, social categorizations are established in which Muslims become the ‘others’. Research has been made on a various amount of western nations, with the exception of a few, and this thesis explores how Argentinean media portray Islam and Muslims. With the use of quantitative and qualitative text analyses, the result will show the levels of priming and framing in relation to earlier research. By assuming social constructivism, a high frequency of these two ‘faces of power’ would affect societal relations, possibly creating a gap between an ‘us’ and ‘them’. Our findings suggest, however, this is not the case in Argentina; on the contrary, Argentinean media lack the frames which make Muslims ‘others’. This important discovery implies that the relationship between Islam and the West of today does not necessarily have to be one of two combatants, incapable of coexisting.

The number of parties in the Swedish parliament has increased from five to eight during the last twenty years. The political agenda is still based on a two-block system with the consequences that the number of parties in each block has increased. To be represented in the parliament, a party needs at least four per cent of the total votes in the election. If only one party fails to achieve that, the whole block will lose the election to the other block. This could encourage voters to vote tactically for the small parties in the block to ensure that the block wins the election. The purpose of my essay is to study the last election to see whether or not the voters did use tactical voting as a tool to make it possible for their block to win the election. This has been done by comparing the results in the elections to the Riksdag and to those of the municipal councils in Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö. These results were then compared to the major polls before the election to see if there were any signs of tactical voting.