While the call for regulations against greenhouse gas emissions are louder then ever before, demand for oil is also at an all time high. Oil companies face the dilemma of making sound business without being perceived as environmental villains. In this essay I will examine how BP, one of the largest companies in the world, broke rank with the industry and devoted itself to being an environmental fr

Is the Muslim Brotherhood a political force that can be able to push Egyptian society in to the process of democratization? We think that the answer to that question is yes, even though the movement clearly state that their main aim to create a democratic state, but based upon the Islamic shari?ah-laws. In this paper, we examine if the Brotherhoods? political platforms and ideas are compatible wit

This essay is a comparative study the role of class actors in Kenya's independence movement and democratic transition in 2002. The concept of social class in an African context is explored in order to develop Berins Collier's theory of working class and elite actors in democratic transition. What roles the actors played, their motivations and arena of action are analysed in both transition

This thesis provides an account for the events leading up to the 1992 peace agreement and the following transition to democracy in Mozambique. In using process-tracing as a method, I have identified the factors that made the democratization process possible. My research is based on a theory by Leonard Wantchekon, which argues that democracy can arise directly from anarchy when elite actors activel

Botswana is suffering from one of the worst HIV/AIDS outbreaks in the world and the entire society and several stakeholders play a role in the containment of this pandemic. This dissertation aims at turning the focus to the governance aspects of the disease and to examine how different stakeholders in the Botswana society adhere to their responsibilities with reference to policy, resources and im

The purpose of this thesis is to critically investigate how to understand the regional transformations that are occurring in Sweden and Denmark. At a higher level of abstraction the results can be generalised to a wider context and I have found that there is an ideological hegemony that explains the regional transformation. Nation states are reterritorialising due to a changing world where global

To integrate environmental concerns into non-environmental policy making has become an important policy objective within the European Union. This essay investigates policy instruments in use to achieve environmental policy integration in the EU's transport sector respectively fisheries sector. The point of departure is a theoretical discussion about governance and the use of different policy i

The process of economic globalization has in recent decades increased the power of multinational corporations. In recognition of their powerful position, corporations have begun to adopt Corporate Social Responsibility as a way of managing their social impact. Their interaction with the surrounding society reaches a peak when involved in large-scale projects, such as the Three Gorges Dam in China

This thesis suggests that neither the cue nor the result of a diffusion process need be manifested in a policy-change, but can indeed be simply the maintaining of the status quo, or rather, the hindrance of transformation. Also, it attempts to use this theory of regional diffusion of stability to explain the robustness of the authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and Northern Africa. This thesi

The thesis explores the meaning of the concept "children's best" in relation to the social Swedish parental insurance debate from a post-structuralist view. The main material has been taken from daily news papers and the methodological as well as theoretical basis is provided for by Laclau & Mouffes discourse theory. In particular has the concept "empty signifiers" been

After the Cold War the nature and character of international conflict has changed dramatically, from traditional inter-state conflicts to protracted social conflicts. This constitutes a major challenge to contemporary peacebuilders, foremost the UN, but the expanding size and number of peacekeeping missions are threatening to erode UN resources. Peacebuilding scholars have different views on what

This essay is about the Northern Ireland Conflict and the Belfast Agreement. Its focus is on the development in Northern Ireland politics after the implementation of the Agreement which was ratified in a referendum. The essay is a case study which analyzes the progress towards an Assembly Government and powersharing between the unionists and the nationalists/republicans. The development is anal

Tanzania is today one of the greatest aid recipients in the world, but still - after over 45 years of huge amounts of aid - one of the poorest and least developed countries. How can that be? Civil society is said to benefit the democratization process, but has not succeed in Tanzania. Has the extensive aid had any impact? Our purpose is to investigate this set of problems. We are using theories c

In this thesis, I compare the economic development between one democracy, India, and one autocracy, China. The idea is to see whether democracy has anything to do with economic development in terms of growth and welfare. To my disappointment, I have found that democracy does not have a big impact on economic development. Instead, it seems that the economical development depends on the economical p

Since the abrupt ending of the Cold Wars the international system of politics has been dominated by the unipolar United States. Leading scholars within structural realism sees this stage as just a temporary condition for various reasons. They also target China as aspirant to embody the role of a balancer against USA and pole in a bi- or multipolar system. Some even argue they are destined for supe

This paper concerns the question of how one can frame a political message. I investigate how a political frame is bound both to the line of argumentation connected with a certain discourse and to the audience closely related to that discourse. I have chosen to study a single case where the policy process was characterized by a framing contest. The case shows how negotiating the new Services Direc

This thesis focuses on the perception of immigration and refugees in the common European refugee and immigration policy. It identifies different discourses and studies their development and interrelated power structures. Using the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, documents from the European Council, the Commission, the Justice and Home Affairs Council and Parliament debates are analysed

This thesis investigates the Swedish Moderates? transformation under Fredrik Reinfeldt. The question at issue is as follows: What motive(s) were behind the Moderates? declared transformation after Reinfeldt became party leader? We define the actor who possesses the motives, which is Reinfeldt and his closest associates, and the action we want to explain. Indications of what motives the actor had

The means to political participation at the local level in Sweden are changing and this change is analyzed through a case study. The first aim is to explore the forms of public political participation in Swedish municipal Älvkarleby, namely public question time in local government, citizen motions and open meetings. A part of this is also to analyze he every day contact between citizens and repres

Ending conflict and generating peace is an undertaking challenged by many threats. This essay deals with one of those, spoiling, i.e. actions that aim to destroy peace processes. The spoiling concept is a young phenomenon in political science. The author argues that the concept nonetheless carries a number of flaws. Those are the concept's definitional vagueness, normative underpinnings, a