Sexual violence is conducted by armed groups in the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in a very high extent and with an extreme brutality. Reports from the region often emphasize the victims' experience of the violence from a human rights framework and fail to recognize the context, with its specific social, symbolic, legal and macro-economic attributes. This thesis ar

The thesis contributes to the debate of an emerging European strategic culture on the use of force. This is highly relevant in order to understand the future development of the military operations within the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). In order to be able to analyse the motivations of the following operations: Concordia, EUFOR DR Congo and Atalanta, the research builds on the constr

Swedish labour market policy has changed towards a greater focus on activation of unemployed citizens. This can be seen as a pragmatic political solution to the problem of high unemployment and the accompanying rise in social welfare expenses. But the activation policy can also be interpreted as a development that produces new and specific values in key welfare policy issues. This master’s thesis

The purpose of this study was to understand the influence of mothers’ satisfaction with health care on health seeking behaviour for children under-five. With a qualitative approach, this study used focus group discussions and one-on-one interviews to collect data from thirty seven (37) respondents but the focus was on twenty (27) mothers with children under-five in Okwampa, a small rural community

Who is to be held accountable for catastrophes that are characterized by man-made risk, i.e. risk derived from the very human technological development? Using theories about man-made risk and accountability in complex organizations, I argue that it is of crucial importance to examine the societal roles and activities of complex organizations in order to find an answer to that question. In today’s

This thesis aims at explaining the Icelandic European debate. It does so by trying to identify the most prominent theme of the debate and to determine if it is characterized by sectoral, national identity or economic arguments. The thesis also aims at determining how the 2008 financial crash and the 2009 decision to apply for EU membership affected the debate. To answer these questions a content a

In this thesis a declaration of gender equality, produced by CEMR (Council of European Municipalities and Regions) is analyzed. This declaration is viewed as an example of how multi-level governance is carried out in the EU. Its main focus is the method of gender mainstreaming and it is supposed to be implemented on the subnational level of the member states. This declaration, as well as the meth

Media and politics have a very close and tight relationship to one another. They share a mutual dependence and are therefore linked in a way which is hard to find anywhere else. The biggest focus for the political coverage deals with national politics. Newspapers in different countries covers almost the entire world but it is still, without question, the political home field were the bond between

Few political ideas have become as rooted in widely different societies and cultures during such long time and extent as civil disobedience. It has been used as a conscientious form of protest by people from all layers of society, and has also been applied to innumerable political situations. However, three individuals have distinguished themselves as both developers and practitioners of civil dis

Many aid agencies are working in countries where side-payments is a common problem in the society. This makes it hard for the aid agencies workers to know how to behave in situations where side-payments are expected. Most aid agencies have a strict policy of not using side-payments, but can side-payments ever be justified if they help the aid agencies to achieve their goals? To answer this questio

The integration of the European Union has reached the core of the welfare states. Since 2001 an open method of coordination has been used to improve the level of welfare in the member states. The aim of this thesis is to examine the level of democracy in the writing of the national action plans which are part of the OMC social inclusion. A vast number of participants have been involved in the proc

This thesis examines the blog ‘Alla Dessa Dagar’ by the Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Bildt; one of the pioneer politicians using social media to broadcast political messages. Based on role theory and theories covering social media, with capacities of democratization and blurring between public and private, the focus of the study is twofold. To begin with the study aims to identify how

This thesis focuses on the phenomenon of ethnic immigrant communities as diaspora and related issues like implications to ethnic and host identification, acculturation attitudes and self-esteem. Based on the characteristics of host society, previous experiences, myths and stereotypes, different ethnic groups form various kinds of ethnic communities. In this thesis I analyze small Lithuanian commun

This study was conducted in order to gain an in-depth understanding of Parent-Teenage Sexual Communication (PTSC) by focusing on a small town in Zambia. Recent studies have suggested that African parents are breaking traditions and beginning to speak with their children about the dangers associated with sexual risk, and this study aims to further what we know about how African parents and their ch

Cosmopolitanism is a widely acknowledged theory in the academic debate of global political theory and what this thesis aims to do is, is conducting an idea critique on this political theory of cosmopolitanism. The analysis is divided into two main parts where one is a reconstruction and one is a critical discussion. The reconstruction is based on four analytical dimensions: the temporal dimension,

Departing from the question of how the EU self-image and role conception have been constructed in 1999-2009, this study locates the analysis of the EU as a foreign policy (FP) actor within the constructivist framework of role theory combined with a discursive approach. Guided by the central assumption that identity and role conception can be analysed by studying language in the form of discourse,

This study stems from an opinion that the current approaches to the repatriation of articles of cultural heritage to their places of origin are inadequate. Attempting to find alternative ways to discuss the matter, I am using idea analysis to investigate if the museums of world culture can be problematised and criticized from a post-colonial perspective – if they can be found to be maintaining a h

The prominence of science in contemporary politics is remarkable. The prominence of science may however contradict democratic ideas since a potentially detrimental knowledge and power inequality exist between experts and non-experts. One suggested way of bridging the gap between the two groups is democratic deliberation which is an idea that will be considered in this study. Furthermore, scientifi

Early warning systems are institutionalized hypothesis of an adversary’s behavior. Such systems are mere models of our bias perception, not the real world. At best they describe casual relationships and employ predictive validity within the cognitively constructed analogies of the systems constructor and operator. An analogy is an experience used to create a generalizing model of analysis where a

Dankwart A. Rustow claimed in 1970 that the factors that keep democracy stable are different from those that bring democracy to existence. This claim, interpreted as a theory, will be tested in this essay. Deeply divided societies are kept stable through more specific factors, than those generally deemed to correlate positively with democracy, such as high per capita GDP. In the absence of such st