To be the president of the Council of Ministers in the European Union is a giant political challenge. The country at the helm is in the centre of EU´s decision making process and in the media´s spotlight. What consequences does this situation have for the country that holds the presidency? In this bachelor thesis I examine if the people’s attitudes towards the European Union changes when their ow

In the present thesis the author tries to examine how cooperation and exchange between friendship cities/sister cities in the environmental field can enlarge our understanding of interactions on environmental problems on the international arena. The thesis takes the form of a case study over Swedish and Chinese friendship cities/sister cities involved in environmental issues. Both decentralisation

The globalization has moved the decision making process in the EU closer to the citizens. Our regional offices are supposed to act as the citizen’s extended arm to the EU-institutions in Brussels. But acting as the voice of the people in an international context has proved not to be entirely uncomplicated. A good democratic legitimacy relies on the client’s ability to maintain the agencies with co

The purpose of this essay is to observe the discussion of effective aid. I have based my observation on three dimensions of aid, and those are: - State aid state - Individuals aid non-profit organizations - Individuals aid private projects My question formulation is “What kind of aid is most effective?” To observe this discussion I have searched through litterature to find authors’ standpoint on

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the overall normative question: How should the juridical system be organized? This is illustrated through private security consultants, who offer crime investigations for private companies and the public sector. They are part of a consistent change within the juridical system, which benefits private operators. The thesis examines private security consulta

This essay intends to map how different values are expressed at different levels of the European trade policy. Prima facie, European trade policy may seem very liberal and as advocating of free trade. This, however, is not entirely true. Within some areas, e.g. agriculture and food policy, EU applies a stricter attitude towards free trade. I believe this to be a consequence of the different priori

Emanating from Putnam’s two-level game theory of international negotiations, the thesis analyse the interplay between the domestic, the supranational and the international level in the European Union, when negotiating the Bra War with China. The thesis expands Putnam’s theory into a three-level game theory in order to better understand the complexity of the European Union. The work concludes five

Decentralization and support to local democracy are keystones in Sweden's development cooperation. This cooperation is channelled through local partnerships in order to create fora for exchange of experiences of local self-governance and to strengthen democratic institutions on a sub-national level. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of, and to future research on, decentralizat

According to latest research the world politics is experiencing an expansion of judicial power. International institutions are becoming more legalized and courts are getting more influence over political issues. In this thesis I investigate the relationship between politics and law in the European Union (EU) and how this international trend is present in the current constitutional changes that are

In this essay I study the democracy enhancing projects on the municipal level in four different cities. The purpose is to determine how the local governments respond to the outer pressure to supplement the traditional democratic forms with new ones that will allow the citizens to participate more extensively in the democratic process. The ideas of increased public participatory have become trendy

This paper investigates the labour force participation among Jordanian women. Although most indicators, such as the country’s political economy and relatively high HDI scores, the high percentage of female students at universities and encouragement from the Royal family, signal that the situation ought to be different, Jordanian women’s labour force participation is below the Middle Eastern averag

Utopian studies, and the word Utopia it self, have always been controversial. In common language utopia often connects to something negative, something impossible. Diverse academic disciplines have their own definition of the word and concept. These heterogeneous views of utopia complicate the discussion in the scientific community. The starting point of this study is to reach at better and more e

This thesis is investigating the conflict between the state and pirates in an actor perspective. It shows that the conflict contains both an indirect- and a direct conflict. The first is a military and juridical struggle where the state tries to defeat pirates. The latter is a competition on controlling the large values transported via sea. I conclude that the state has not defeated pirates becaus

This study examines if there is a hidden normative Swedish nationalism in the Swedish language school for immigrants (Sfi) and if so, how it has been portrayed historically and how it is depicted now. With the help of Umut Özkirimlis theory; dimensions of nationalism and the social constructivist theory, I have analyzed the literature used in Sfi. The methodology used in this study has been a qual

File sharing is causing an enormous debate over the issue of copyright law and freedom of information on the internet. Just recently, the Swedish file sharing network The Pirate Bay was sentenced to pay 30 million kronor to the media entertainment industry, who prosecuted the owners for illegal piracy of copyrighted material. This essay examines weather or not free file sharing, unbound by legal c

This thesis departs from a neorealist theoretical perspective but adds a rational actor perspective based on game theory. It shares Waltz' assumption of deep anarchy and the need for states to ensure their security but also maintains that actor prospects may be able to cope with the structural incentives in a flexible manner. Two cases of international politics are studied; 1890-1911 and 2001-

The thesis that this essay rests upon implies that economic values are much higher prioritized then democratic values in the Swedish administration. This assumption applies throughout the entire public administration. A lot of research points on the danger with the decreasing focus on democratic values and increasing focus on economic values. The two different kinds of values are often seen as inc

This thesis attempts to answer the question why there was a breakdown in talks between India and the USA over the issue Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM), at the WTO Ministerial Conference in Geneva in July 2008. This is done through Robert Putnams’ two-level game framework, which is applied to the interplay between India’s diplomacy and domestic politics. The thesis concludes that the underd

The purpose of humanitarian aid is to save lives, relieve suffering and maintain human dignity for people affected by armed conflicts, natural disasters or other crisis situations. Since crises and conflicts today are diverse and complex to manage, humanitarian aid, as well as international politics in general, are faced with new challenges. On a global level humanitarian aid has increased in volu

The thesis is a study of female guerrilla soldiers, guerrilleras, in two Colombian guerrilla groups: the rural FARC-EP and the urban M-19. Firstly, the roles female guerrilleras play and the treatment of guerrilleras are described. Secondly, poststructural gender theory is used to understand the gender structures that underlie the division of labor within the groups. The study focuses on certain m