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The main question in this thesis is what kind of considerations political parties in the Swedish parliament have made between individual freedoms and state power in matters concerning information technology. Hence, it relates to a central and never ending debate about the proper relationship between the individual rights of citizens and protection of their personal integrity vis-à-vis state power and the interest of society in general, and in particular how this is affected by the rapid development of information technology. Four cases of legislative processes about information technology are analyzed. These cases concern parliamentary debates regarding the secrecy act (sekretesslagen) in 1980 (first debate), three debates concerning the personal data act (personuppgiftslagen) in 1998-99, three debates concerning the surveillance and crime prevention act (lag om hemlig rumsavlyssning & åtgärder för att förhindra vissa särskilt allvarliga brott med mera) in 2006-07 and three debates concerning the national defence radio establishment act (FRA & lag om signalspaning) in 2007-09. An analytical model is developed that includes two ideal types, individual freedom and state power, for the study and categorization of the parties and their positions in each debate. Thus, parties are categorized according to their proximity to the ideal types. The study illustrates that the majority of parties have a tendency to compromise between values constituting the two ideal types; they choose a so called hybrid position in between individual freedom and state power. The exception to this pattern is the Green Party and the Left Party that tend to choose a position close to individual freedom. Three hypotheses are tested. The first implies that parties tend to position themselves in-between the ideal type positions of individual freedom and state power (hybrid positions). This hypothesis gets strong support as hybrid positions are the most common outcome. The second hypothesis infers that a party has a tendency to support ...

In his famous essay On Liberty, John Stuart Mill divides individual acts in two categories; acts that only harm the acting individual himself, & acts that harms other individuals. The former is called 'self-regarding acts' & the latter is called 'other-regarding acts'. There has been a long debate between famous scholars about how to interpret Mill at this point. Some argue that Mill permit that (1) only other-regarding acts could be punished, & other argue that Mill support that (2) even self-regarding acts could be punished. I argue that Mill could not hold both of the positions at the same time, & if he does he must be guilty of a severe inconsistency. The analysis shows that interpretation (3) is most reasonable. One conclusion that follows is that Mills liberalism is not "radically individualistic," it is instead a perfectionistic form of political liberalism, including both radical & communitarian ideas. Tables, References. Adapted from the source document.

Political commitments in our time are often described as characterized by political de-collectivization & increasing individualism. In the article this polarity between individualism & collectivism is addressed. Empirically, it is based on a survey which 1066 global justice movement activists participated in. Among these, activism has both strong individual & collective orientations. Personal commitment & individual political action is emphasized at the same time as the activism aims at reforming institutions & is carried out in collective contexts, involving traditional political actors as parties & trade unions. Furthermore, this is done despite a low degree of trust in political institutions & traditional political actors, especially among activists who participated in the events during the EU summit meeting in Gothenburg 2001. Tables, Diagrams, References. Adapted from the source document.

The liberal state, it has been argued, must be neutral between different conceptions of the good. Honoring individual autonomy & embodying ideals such as fairness & impartiality, the doctrine of state neutrality is intuitively appealing. Working as a restraint for state actions it is however problematic. In this paper, a possible solution to this predicament is outlined. Drawing on the distinction between liberty & what gives worth to liberty, it is argued that we must never accept non-neutral restrictions of liberty itself, but may pursue non-neutral policies affecting the distribution of what gives worth to liberty & may impose taxes funding non-neutral state actions, although such taxation inevitable limits the worth of our liberty. It is suggested that we, by adopting such a policy of limited state perfectionism, can recognize the right to individual autonomy without having to restrain the state from doing the good it can. References. Adapted from the source document.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the implementation of a political aim – formulatedfrom a context of sustainable development. In 2006 both the Swedish national Parliament andthe municipality of Växjö (among others) stated that 25% of publically served food wouldstem from organic production by the end of 2010. The thesis investigates the outcome of theimplementation of this policy in a local perspective - looking at one part of the public sectorby focusing on four differently organized schools within Växjö municipality. School food in Sweden has a specific institutional setting. It holds the almost unique statusas a non-charged, legal right to all pupils in the compulsory school system. School food as apublic good is affected by the EU legislation of public procurement. The thesis studies theoverall institutional framework (i.e. legislation and regulations) fundamental to school food.With the institutional framework in mind the thesis also describes different organizationalactivities connected to school food. Thus the thesis involves four geographical levels: Theregional (EU), the national, the local and the individual level. The latter is defined in theorganized context from a number of individual professionals. Some of these individuals arefurther considered as so called street level bureaucrats – officials sandwiched between superiorsand their clients. The thesis builds a conceptual framework based on institutional, organizational and streetlevel theory together with policy analysis. Methodologically the thesis is formed around andcarried out as a local case study through a number of semi-structured qualitative interviews.The empirical and analytical part of the thesis is further structured around the three theoreticalconcepts. From the thesis´ purpose three guiding questions were outlined. The main implications of the thesis are that a number of factors were found to be involvedin the policy implementation. The most significant factors for the policy implementation arefirstly the formulation of the political goal, and secondly the individual professionals actuallybuying the food for the schools. As long as the policy of the school food is non-forcing (i.e. anaverage aim of the public sector, and not included in the legislation) the final outcome of thefood depends on the decisions made by the buyer. There is disagreement of the policy intention and of whether organic food is more sustainablethan other food. Thus I end the thesis by suggesting a change of concepts if the politicalaim is to reach sustainability. I encourage a system to control the food´s total ecological footprint.This would be achieved by formulating the policy around a suggested level of the ecologicalfootprint. The level would be calculated and set where experts say it´s in accordancewith sustainable development. From this the street level bureaucrats can sum up the componentsof the lunch they buy and serve. No matter if the individual product is labeled organic,local, conventional, or… This would – according to me – improve the chances for Växjö actually to live up to itslogo: the greenest city in Europe. At least this idea could awake a debate. ; Opposition kl. 13.15

Ecological challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss lead to a need for change, but the radical changes that are required seem not to come about. One hot issue debated is who has the power and responsibility to change. This discussion has many different dimensions (e.g., between countries, or technological fixes vs radical system change) but here I base my study on the discussion of agency or structure. To put it simply, do we need to focus on structural political changes or rather on the level of the individuals and their consumerist lifestyles. This thesis aims to contribute to this debate by providing a better understanding of the (im)possibilities of individual lifestyle changes in a society that is largely organized to accommodate consumerist lifestyles. It does so by focusing on the example of Voluntary Simplicity, a lifestyle movement that advocates for a post-consumerist lifestyle. With the help of practice theory, which is especially fit to analyze everyday practices and change, and a qualitative interview study with seven voluntary simplifiers living in Sweden, I answer the following research questions: What are the motivations and drivers for having a voluntary simplicity lifestyle?, what are the challenges and obstacles that voluntary simplifiers need to overcome?, and does life, in consequence, get more complicated by striving for a "simpler" life because it is against the grain of society? The analysis demonstrates a motivation among the simplifiers to live sustainably and to reduce material possessions, working hours and stress. Impediments include the struggle of wanting to be part of a community but at the same time being different from the mainstream society, inflexible work structures and time and labor-intensive activities such as self-sufficiency. The question if life got simpler could not satisfactorily be answered and is connected to considerations on what life is about. In the discussion, I argue to consider social norms and values because they seem to exacerbate change both for politics and individuals. Future avenues for study could be based on participatory observation, autoethnography or doing research in non-capitalist-consumerist societies. This study is relevant because it opened up and contributed to the debate about change by acknowledging the entanglement of social structures and individuals.

Legitimacy, as one of the most important concepts in political science, is analyzed from a theoretical and empirical perspective. A study will be conducted in Swedish municipalities by surveys and case studies, which are trying to explain the variations in legitimacy between municipalities and if these variations are mainly contextual or individual. L. Pitkaniemi

While gender equality in Swedish political science has increased during the last two decades, the top university positions of the field are still dominated by men. While the time lag hypothesis predicts full equality, practical evidence has proven otherwise. Several juridical, collective and individual actions are suggested to alleviate the problem. L. Pitkaniemi

Theoretically, gender research deals with two discourses, sameness/difference and power. I argue against male critics who flatly deny that there can be a power relation between the sexes or critizise it as a holistic concept without much connection with reality. Within gender research, I criticize the postmodernistist thought that all apparent realities are social constructs. In queer theory the identities of individuals as men and women are purely social constructs to be dissolved. In that way one can avoid the power question altogether: no political groups exist, only individuals. A political theory dealing with the relationship between the sexes has yet to be developed. Formal equality is a first step, the difficult question is how to deal with power, the preferential interpretation of the dominant group of what is important and valuable in society. The division in a public and a private sphere is inadequately dealing with family as an institution. Are women in countries where the state is minimal, where they marry very young and have thirteen children, "free"? Adapted from the source document.

With soap, water, and diligence discusses attitudes and practices around cleanliness and health at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At this time, scientific findings on how diseases spread had rendered both the body and the home as particularly risky in terms of the health of an individual. However, the zeal for cleaning was more than just a health issue – it also contributed to societal change at large. This book aims at deepening our understanding of cleanliness in relation to social class, gender, work, consumption, and space, viewed from a Nordic perspective. The battle against dirt was fought on a broad front, and on different levels of society. The book at hands offers glimpses of the long and complex societal process which was required for the Nordic societies to grow cleaner over time. Behind the gradually increasing interest in soap and lather lay challenges, negotiations, and disagreements about the ways in which cleanliness should be advanced, and who would be the ones advancing it. To establish the supremacy of soap required a lot of hard work. The ten chapters shed light on the interaction between debaters, voluntary associations, institutions, and individuals. How was cleanliness promoted and what was the reception like? Who and what was to be cleaned, and on which terms? What did cleanliness mean in different contexts and for different individuals? The book makes both ideals and practices visible by exploring the ways in which the gospel of cleanliness was presented, propagated, understood, questioned and renewed, and also by showing that in some cases people's quest for cleanliness had motivations other than those intended by the promoters. The chapters have been written by economic historians, ethnologists, social historians, and historians of ideas from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The book is intended for students, scholars and the general reading audience interested in a social historical perspective on cleanliness

Public catering can have a considerable environmental and educational impact. A scenario of more legume and less meat consumption in Sweden was in the present study used as a tool to explore the possibilities of Swedish public school meals to become more sustainable. Strong structuration theory provided a focus on organisational structure and stakeholder influence, enabling a holistic view of the issue at hand. A literature review, on the topics of successful implementation of sustainability projects within public catering and individual agency within school meals, provided a knowledge base from which an online survey and a guide for complementary interviews were built. The survey was aimed at municipal dietary managers and assessed their experiences of working with sustainable school meals and their attitudes towards the dietary scenario. Furthermore, the survey tried out a way of measuring how much legumes and meat are served in school canteens. The complementary interviews focused on individual actors' perceived agency to act for sustainable change. The results suggest that the study participants in general have both the knowledge and interest to make school meals more sustainable. They also saw the more legumes dietary scenario as desirable. Complicating factors are that the priorities of catering organisations and schools are often not well aligned, and resources are lacking to work on collaborations to improve this. It is also often unclear who has the responsibility to make sure teaching on sustainability is carried over from the classroom to the canteen. Individual agents with a high motivation to make positive change can be important drivers of sustainability projects, but for a change such as significantly greener school meals to take place, a whole food culture needs to change. Educational efforts and finding ways of engaging multiple stakeholders in the decisions are needed to this end. Unambiguous political goals, with adequate action plans, would give structure to the work on more sustainable school meals. Finding ways of quantifying and comparing sustainability efforts between municipalities would draw attention to the importance of the matter. The approach that was tried out in the present study however proved to be too impractical to use.

In recent years, ideas of conscience and the liberty of conscience have become ever more salient in public discourse. Historically, these concepts have been used to mark out a certain scope of freedom and protection in moral, political and legal conflicts. In our time, individual conscience is frequently used to legitimate objections to, for instance, military service and medical interventions like abortion and vaccination. So too in Sweden – a country widely described as one of the most modern and secularized societies in the world. In this volume, a group of researchers in history, human rights, law, ethics and sociology of religion address some of the most central issues around conscience and the liberty of conscience in Sweden from the middle ages to the present. By situating conscience and liberty in wider intellectual, social and political settings, the essays provide alternative ways of thinking about the most intractable problems surrounding these concepts – the relationship between law and morality, the tension between individual and collective freedom, as well as the role of religion in public affairs. This volume will create new avenues of research for scholars and students interested in challenges related to conscience and liberty: both those in ethics, politics and law seeking a historical perspective, and those in history who want to tie their studies to the present.

Many urban trees are located on private property in residential areas, but these trees are infrequently included in urban forest strategies and plans, meaning that for most local governments, the complete urban residential tree population, its potential for supplying ecosystem services and its dynamics are unknown. This thesis examined the assessment methodologies of ecosystem services provided by trees in the attempt to provide valuable information about residential trees. The abundance of trees on individual residential properties was tested against potential decision-driving variables, collected using field work, remote sensing, questionnaire surveys and spatial property information. While residents reported positive attitudes to trees and benefits they provide, this did not necessarily result in greater tree abundance on individual properties. It was found that long-term of validation of sampling methods is required for monitoring of urban trees. Remote sensing could be seen as a reliable and non-invasive way to determine canopy cover using publicly available information in residential areas. This thesis improved understanding of residential urban trees and the ecosystem services they provide as the part of the urban forest. These assessment should include social and spatial variables influencing their development to allow residential trees to become integrated into local governance arrangement structure in order to develop informed management approaches for the entire urban forest.

Policymakers in Sweden, as in most of the rest of the world, believe that we are responsible for the crimes we commit but not for our ill health. One reason for why we are excused for the latter, even in cases where our actions is the cause of our ill health, is because these actions are in turn ultimately caused by factors outside our control. If this is true for these actions, however, it seems that the same thing could be said with regard to our criminal behavior. In this paper I argue that this disparate position can be explained with reference to data from the field of experimental philosophy. In cases where individuals have done something we believe is morally wrong, then we tend to disregard from the fact that their behavior is ultimately caused by factors outside their control. In cases where individuals instead have done something morally neutral, then we instead tend heed to the fact that their actions is ultimately caused by factors outside their control. Since most of us believe that being sick is morally neutral & committing a crime is morally wrong, this can explain why policymakers tend to think that we are responsible for the one but not the other. Adapted from the source document.

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are widespread in conservation policy. In PES, environmental effectiveness and social equity are often perceived as conflicting goals. Empirical studies on the relationship between popular design features, such as payment differentiation and payment conditionality, and effectiveness and equity are scarce. Further, they struggle with measuring and separating ecological and equity outcomes. In this study, we combine two incentivized lab-in-the-field experiments with 259 land users from eight villages in North-Western Vietnam to assess both individual conservation effort and community-level equity perceptions under four different PES designs. Effort is measured in a real-effort task with real-world environmental benefits; equity perceptions about payment designs in the real-effort task are measured in a coordination game. We demonstrate that payment design affects both effort and equity perceptions. Payments which are differentiated and are solely conditional on individuals' contributions of effort are perceived as most equitable. They are also more effective in motivating conservation effort than other designs, although the differences are small and not significant for all comparisons. By working out the positive correlation of effectiveness and equity across the four payment schemes, we show that these objectives are not necessarily conflicting goals in incentive-based conservation policy. Further, we can show that women exert greater conservation efforts. We discuss how greater equity and effectiveness could be achieved with reforms towards more input-based distribution criteria in Vietnam's PES legislation and the limitations and opportunities of the experimental paradigm for research on PES.