Abstract Essay in political Science (c-level) by Karin Forsling, Spring 2007 A school for the best interest of the child? - The Swedish School System according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Supervisor: Stig Montin The purpose of this essay is to investigate how the Swedish governments work with the im-plementation of this convention and what progress has been made. The inquiry of this study is to describe how the changing in the Swedish School System correspond to the national strat-egy for implementation of UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Sweden and how the political protagonists. I have read some of the most relevant documents from the authorities and organisations work-ing with children’s rights in Sweden and papers and communications from the political pro-tagonists. Since UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was ratified by Sweden in 1990 the work for implementation has been quite successful but there are still lots to do. There are still some problems in School such as bullying, insulting, insecurity and lack of peaceful and harmoni-ous school environment. That is the political actors quite agree this but the have different so-lutions of the problems. The Social democratic party wants more adults in schools to guaran-tee a peaceful and harmonious school environment and the non-socialist Alliance wants clear roles and increased authority for teachers to create order in schools. Keywords: UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, education, the national strategy, the Social democratic party, the non-socialist Alliance.

This report is a case study of “citizen forums” in the municipality of Uppsala. These forums are arranged to make people participate more in local politics. The aim of this study is to find out if the opinions and the wishes coming from the citizens are later involved in the planning process etc made by the authorities. The aim is also to explain why or why not the opinions from the citizens are of any importance. My empirical data come from interviews that I have made with seven different respondents, both politicians and civil servants. More specifically I study three different forums and all the seven respondents have been present on at least one of these forums. As a theoretical ground I use different explanations for and against the importance of the citizen’s opinions. These theoretical explanations are constructed out of different theories. The study shows that the importance of the citizen’s opinions may vary. Sometimes the authorities listen to the opinions, sometimes the do not. The main explanation why they don’t listen is political and economical factors. The wishes from the citizens are too expensive. The main explanations why the municipal do listen are mostly a mix of two different explanations. The authorities feel insecure about the preferences of the citizens. It also seems like many opinions from the citizens are rather clever and may help the authorities to make the municipal activities run better.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the explanations of globalization and the actions they being taking in answer to it by the three Swedish trade unions Byggnadsarbetarförbundet, IF Metall and Hotell- & Restaurangarbetarförbundet. To answer this three questions have been chosen: what threats and possibilities do the unions see from globalization, what strategy have they chosen against these and how can the choice of strategy be explained. The material used is official publications from the unions. The essay is a qualitative case study and the method is a qualitative text analysis. To answer the two first questions Jeffrey Harrod’s and Robert O’Brien’s Global Unions?- Theory and strategies of organized labour in the global political economy was used. This was complemented by other more specific literature on the trade union movement and globalization. To answer the third question theory on organizational development from Angelo Panebianco’s Political parties: organization and power was used. All of the unions see globalization mostly as a threat; however they all explain this threat in different ways depending on particular events they have recently had to deal with. Their interpretations can also be linked to the interests of the organizations themselves or important interest groups. They also have different strategies of action which can be related to their explanation of globalization. These actions rarely extend that of the particular interest of each of the organizations. This can be explained by them being in what Panebianco calls the third phase of organizational development, the interest based phase. According to him this is a phase of decline for an organization. That all examined unions are in this phase can lead to serious consequences for the Swedish trade union movement. It is also critical that they all have different explanations and actions against globalization since a furthered national cooperation in the trade union movement could potentially strengthen it.

Bachelor essay in political science by Andreas Byfeldt, autumn 2007 ”The practice of deliberative democracy - limitations or enhancements of representative democracy?” Supervisor: Erik Amnå The purpose of this study is to find out what impact the practice of deliberative democracy might have on a representative democracy. What effects deliberative democracy could have in this context are scientifically as well as publically relevant seeing that participation in representative democracies as well as the forms of representation is altering. The essay contains both a theoretical segment and a case study. The information regarding the case is based on the results from a questioner, conversations by and observations from the author. In addition an analysis is performed in the case study. The conclusion of the essay is that there is too little empirical research on the subject of deliberative democracy to make a qualified conclusion about what effects the practice of deliberative democracy could have on a representative democracy. We can though, from the facts that are available, suppose that deliberative democracy can function as a complement to representative democracy by securing a representative interface of the population.

Essay in Political Science C by Peter Nilsson, spring 2008. Det offentliga samtalet – en argumentationsanalys av artikuleringen kring Kristianstad Arena Tutor: Stig Montin The purpose of this essay is to examine the public deliberation of Kristianstad Arena in the local newspaper and clarify who the actors are and what kind of arguments they express. Further I intend to find the differences between the actors and the kind of arguments they use. To fulfill the purpose I’ve used three minor questions which are; a) which actors participate in the public deliberation about Kristianstad Arena, b) Which are the arguments emerge, c) Which clear differences in the arguments is there between the actors? To find my answers I’ve examined the local paper during a period of four months. The tool I’ve been using to analyze the arguments has its origin in Toulmin’s model from 1958. The conclusion of the essay is that the public deliberation involves seven different kind of actors, who express’s three different kind of arguments. The actors are private persons, politicians, politically un-attached thinkers, politically attached thinkers, local business world, sports associations and media. The three types of arguments are about, the decision, the arena and the debate. The private persons and the politicians resemble each other and mainly express arguments about the decision and partly about the arena. The politically attached and un-attached thinkers more or less exclusively express arguments about the decision. The local business has an equal share of decision- and arena arguments, while the media and the sport associations mainly express arguments about the debate and the arena.

Abstract C-level in Political Science by Christoffer Odén, vt-08 “Traditionalism versus Modernism. The Ideology Debate in Left-Socialist Party Today” Instructor: Mats Lindberg The purpose with this essay is to describe the ideology debate in Left-Socialist Party between traditionalists and modernists. This essay have the following questions: 1 ) What are the differences between traditional and modern politics in the Left-Socialist Party? 2 ) What is similar between traditional and modern politics in the Left-Socialist Party? My method is to analyse the Left-Socialist Party programme from 2004 and analyse a programme from the modernist organisation Vagval Vanster. Then I shall compare the political views between those programmes. My results show that there are many differences but also similarity. For example the traditionalism wants to keep their political views and wait on the citizens to realise that a better world is possible. The modernists seek to renew their political views beacause they believe that no party has a self-value. The big similarity between the two groups are that they think the present society is unjust and not democratic enough. I think this essay has been very stimulating and I was suprised of some of the differences between the two groups.

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Oavsett vilken stridskraftstillhörighet ett förband har kommer det alltid att finnas utmaningar för chefen i ledarskapet, speciellt under förhållanden som upplevs som stressade. Det har skett en ökning av förband i internationella insatser under de senaste 10 åren i och med försvarstransformationen i början av 2000-talet. Flygvapnets transportflygförband har upplevt en signifikant ökning av sitt deltagande i internationella insatser i och med Sveriges internationella åtaganden under denna tid. Det är därav intressant att undersöka hur ledarskapet upplevs av transportflygförbandets anställda, och utefter det dra slutsatser på hur ledarskapet kan utvecklas för att bli tydligare och effektivare. Flerfallstudien i undersökningen genomfördes på en fredsfrämjande och på en humanitär insats för att studera upplevelsen av ledarskapet i dessa delvis skilda miljöer. Resultatet visar att, med stress som en övergripande variabel, upplever de underställda variablerna beslutsfattande, chefskap och ledarskap som överlag väl fungerande i insatserna. Ledarskapet kan utvecklas och bli bättre när det gäller ledningens egna förberedelser inför insatser som sätts in med kort varsel. Utbildning av chefer när det gäller stressreaktioner, ökad självkännedom och kunskapsspridande föreläsningar ökar chefens förberedelse och minskar den psykiska reaktionen. Genom utbildning i ledarskap och ökad självkännedom samt med erfarenhetsuppbyggnad kan chefen få insikt i sina känsloreaktioner.