This essay is a case study about the Swedish Armed Forces during the years 1988-2004; when it transformed from a force constructed to meet an invasion, to an international force with the primary mission to help subdue conflicts around the world. The essay uses texts and documents to examine what happened between these years and to find out what drove that change. By asking the questions A) ”What happened between the years 1988-2004?” and B) ”What is the difference between the Armed Forces in 1988 and in 2004?”, it is possible to also ask C) ”Why did the Swedish Armed Forces change?”. The essay is divided into three main parts; 1) a theory-part focused on three main theories of international relations: liberalism, realism, and constructivism, 2) a historical case study examining the evolvement of the Armed Forces during these years, and 3) a conclusions section that uses thethree theories of international relations to examine why this change happened. In examining the historical period and making conclusions about the differences between these years it was also necessary to construct a scale of military power, on which the historical case study is based.

The 1st of July 2006 Sweden made a change of authorities in the system concerning the reception of separated asylum seeking children. Prior to the change, the Swedish Board of Migration was held completely responsible for the reception of these children, who arrives in Sweden without their parents or any other relatives to care for them. Since the alteration of the law (1994:137) the responsibility for the housing of these children now lies within the Swedish municipalities, while the Board of Migration still handles their legal commissions. The change was intended to fundamentally improve the conditions under which these children were taken care of. However the implementation took a severe wrong turn when the municipalities weren't prepared for their new responsibilities and the immediate result was alarming.   This qualitative study is based upon interviews with the people responsible for the reception of the separated asylum seeking children in the municipalities of Kronobergs County, as well as one of the two people in charge of the new system at the Swedish Board of Migration. The study aims to illustrate the causes to the problems in the process of implementation and the different types of steering that was used to improve the situation. This, combined with a report on the actual status of the system, finally provides a brief analysis of the complete Swedish system regarding the reception of these children. A system that even though it has improved considerably, still struggles with problems caused from the damages of the bad implementation, two and a half years ago.

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Ever since the governments began to meet for the Conferences of the Parties (COP) to try to come to agreement over an international climate agreement, civil society organizations involved in the climate issue have also gathered for their own conferences in relation to the COP. Still the role of these re-occurring “COP counter summits” in global climate governance have not been researched in depth. In order to contribute to a better understanding of the role the COP counter summit in climate governance in general, the aim of this study is to conduct a qualitative single-case study of one of these meetings. This is carried out by a field study to the COP counter summit in Paris 2015 with methods of participatory observation and semi-structured interviews with informants. An analytical framework was developed based on theory within related research fields, like parallel summits, social movements and globalization studies. The study contributes with research about what functions of the COP counter summit in Paris had for civil society and how these functions were performed.

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This study is based on theories on how social capital can lead to collective action in the case of the international volunteers active during Europe’s refugee crisis. The purpose of the study is to investigate if previous research on social capital can explain why people came together from different countries to support the people seeking refuge in Europe in late year 2015 and early year 2016. Thus, the study is based on a theory-consuming method, using triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis to determine if the volunteers’ levels of social networks or social trust can explain the action that was taken in this specific case. The results show that the volunteers studied in this paper have high levels of social capital, in regards to both social trust and social networks through the quantitative analysis. The high levels of activity in social networks were furthermore confirmed through the qualitative analysis of the volunteers’ own comments to why they decided to volunteer. The conclusions are that the volunteers are showing signs of creating bridging social capital between them through the activity in their social networks, that the higher levels of trust in other people shown in the results can help them to over-come collective action problems, and that the hypothesis of that high levels of social capital should have facilitated collective action also in this specific case is considered confirmed for the volunteers responding to the survey.

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Det råder en intensiv debatt vad de alltmer tilltagande utvecklingspartnerskapen mellan Kina och afrikanska stater är ett utryck för och kan förklaras. Syftet är att nå närmare en rimlig förklaring. Frågeställningarna är huruvida det är bistånd eller utvecklingssamarbete i ekonomiska termer som kan observeras. Och hur kan man på basis av relevanta antaganden hos Ekonomisk Nationalism samt Marxism/beroendeteori förklara den kinesiska verksamheten utifrån dess orsaker, form samt konsekvenser. Metoden för denna forskningsuppgift har varit att utifrån tidigare forskning som källor samt de teoretiska antagandena finna relevanta indikatorer i linje med syftet. Slutsatserna är att det primärt är statens (Kinas) eller eliters intressens som styr. För säkra sin egen utveckling bedriver Kina en resurs- och marknadsorienterad approach. Men det kan också vara den ekonomiska och politiska eliten – i Kina samt i Afrika -som strävar efter bibehållandet av maktpositioner och en ökad ackumulation av kapital. De kinesiska instrumenten/medlen tar villkorande former som faciliterar fortsatt kinesiska intressenters närvaro; genom frånvaron av politiska men närvaron av ekonomiska konditionaliteter. Detta tenderar att reproducera exploaterande och utnyttjande strukturer/beroendeförhållanden. Man bör vara kritiskt mot det kinesiska engagemanget men detta är inte möjligt utifrån premissen om att de Sino-Afrikanska samarbetena är av traditionell biståndskaraktär.

As the 21st century has been approaching the concept of genocide is nothing new, rather the opposite. Since the beginning of the 1990s we have seen several major genocides taking place around the world, all in where hundreds of thousands of people have been brutally murdered, died or ended up forced to flee from their own country, home and sense of security. This thesis will examine the differences and similarities on how the world has acted in two major genocides: Rwanda 1994 and Darfur 2003-2007.

This thesis intends to analyse conditions for a successful implementation of consociational democracy, as a democratic model in Afghanistan. The lack of critical reviews regarding the democratisation-process in Afghanistan initiated the purpose of this study. Lijpharts democracy model was used as the basis in the comparative study. Along with empirical evidence regarding how the complex process of democracy in Afghanistan is progressing, the study investigated whether the identified conditions occurred or not. The choice of which democracy model to use can be crucial for the democratic possibilities to even survive and become established in conflict-affected communities. The principle of consociational democracy is that it is an empirically based normative model that aims to organise the state in a way that works against the risks of majority domination and oppression against the minority. The empirical case study revealed that a majority of the conditions were not met, which then can counteract the possibilities for consociational democracy in Afghanistan. The study has critically examined the prospects for the success of consociational democracy in Afghanistan, and it can be assessed that there is a limited probability for a successful applying of this model.