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Framsida; Innehållsförteckning; Förord; I. Reformism och utopism?; II. Wigforss pragmatistiska position; III. Ett annat samhälle är möjligt att tänka sig; IV. Ett annat samhälle är möjligt att utforma; V. Ett annat samhälle är möjligt att skapa engagemang för; VI. Wigforss och socialdemokratins framtid; VII. Pragmaticism, reformism och utopism; Referenser; Baksida

Scholarship in international law aims at addressing global forest governance comprehensively. This article reviews the recent contribution Global Forest Governance - Legal Concepts and Policy Trends by Rowena Maguire and puts it into the perspective of recent political and policy science research on global forests. While finding Maguire's volume being a very timely and valuable contribution to the interdisciplinary discussions on international forest governance, we identify some weaknesses which are mostly rooted in methodological critique and a lack of a systematic framework for analysis.

Regional politics is changing; it is transforming from being mainly a responsibility of the central state to a concern that is more for the regional or local governments. At the same time, there are signs of a transformation of the political system in general. The development indicates a decreasing hierarchy as the power of the state is challenged and the political agents are increasing in number. This indicates that the political agents are changing but there are also indications that the political forms are transforming. The politics is increasingly characterised by project and process politics, networks, cooperation and partnerships. This transformation is generally described as the transformation "from government to governance". New governance is one of the most frequently discussed issues in contemporary political science literature, and this has led to a wide variety of conceptualizations. Considering the changing regional politics and general changes as the political forms and agents, this thesis studies who governs the regional politics and how regional politics is governed.The purpose of this thesis is to provide empirical contributions in order to increase the understanding of changes in regional politics at the local level. This is done by dividing governance modes into typologies. Four political processes at the local level in the municipality of Åre between the years 1973-2007 are analyzed. The thesis is based on qualitative semi-structured elite interviews. The informants have been selected by snowball sampling. The interviews have also been complemented by documentary studies. The documents that have been studied are the protocols from the municipal assembly from 1973, when the municipality was created, to􀂒􀂟2007. The documents also consist of the parish archives (sockenkrönikor) governmental reports and official documents of the local and state-level government. The material has been analyzed by using process tracing.The main results of the study are that there have been changes in the regional politics at the local level in relation to the political agents and the forms of politics. The 1970s were characterized by strong state power and hierarchy. The political processes have increasingly been characterized by the typology of the new governance. The study has shown that in practice the regional politics in Åre is characterized by both traditional governance and new governance at the same time there has not been a paradigmatic shift. The elements of new governance are increasing but there are still significant signs of the traditional bureaucratic system such as hierarchy and ordered rule. As the signs of new governance increase, the political entrepreneurs play a bigger role in the processes being analyzed. The study also shows that the critique of traditional forms of governance relating to participation and influence has not become irrelevant as the signs of new governance increases.

Already from the title of this dissertation can two important points be made. The first is that the dissertation is about the relationship between central and local government, more specifically in Sweden today. The second point is that this relationship is seen from a balance of power perspective, where the relative power of the actors is an empirical question rather than derived from a given hierarchical structure. Such a perspective is based on analysing the actors as interdependent. The central government can thus be dependent on the local government, as well as the other way around, and this interdependence can vary over time and between policy areas. This perspective differs from that of most studies, which often see the relationship either in terms of steering (that local governments are executing centrally determined policies) or local self-government (that the Swedish local governments has a constitutionally protected right to handle their own affairs within certain legal limits). I argue that both these perspectives take a hierarchical point of departure and are, to a large degree, static in their approaches, which means that they risk not discovering, or have problem explaining, changes in the relation between central and local government. To view the relationship between central and local government as interdependence leads to a focus on the resources that the actors possess. For public organisations the most relevant resources are: authority-related resources, financial resources, political resources, informational resources, and organisational resources. The central government has a power advantage concerning authority and financial and political resources while local governments generally have an advantage in terms of informational and organisational resources. The policy area chosen is Swedish refugee policy. The basic paradox within this area is that the central government grants the refugees asylum but cannot give them a place to live without the permission of the local government. This permission is accomplished through voluntary agreements signed between the National Integration Office and the local governments. It is then the local governments that integrate the refugees to Swedish society by providing housing, education, healthcare and so on while the central government is giving the local government a grant to cover the expenses. The central government has lacked political, informational and authority-related resources. The resource used to compensate for this has been the financial resource. By economic incentives the central government has encouraged local governments to increase their refugee reception. This has been the central government's universal weapon and has been used to reduce its vulnerability as well as its sensitivity. For local governments, authority-related and financial resources have been lacking. The resource that the local governments have had, all the way through the time period studied here, is the organisational resource. This is something that the central government simply cannot provide and this is why there is a relationship of interdependence – just as only the central government has authority in its power base, the local level is the only one with organisational resources.

The Royal Academy of Sciences was an important organization in eighteenth-century Sweden. It brought together scientists and scholars contributing to a wide spectrum of areas, encompassing nature as well as society. But it also maintained close ties to the elite and the political establishment. The academy formed part of the institutional landscape of power and functioned as a consultive body and an arena for the upper echelons of the Swedish realm. The monograph sheds light on the political and economic outlook of the Royal Academy of Sciences during the period 1739–1792 against the background of its intimate connections to the ruling stratum. Not least the Hat Party, which dominated the Swedish political scene during the Age of Liberty, and the autocratic King Gustav III. The study shows that the members of the academy overall gravitated towards traditional viewpoints and that their conceptualizations of society were substantially affected by their interactions with the power holders. While some fellows offered new ideas in line with an increasing contemporary emphasis on spontaneous societal development and the capability of individuals to act responsibly on their own accord, such notions were by no means prevalent. Moreover, the book demonstrates that neither the academy nor its members constituted a passive tool for the elite and the powers that be. Rather, they engaged in self-promotion by attributing themselves a crucial role in the project of general improvement they envisioned and added to.

This dissertation examines the last thirty years of internal reforms in the Swedish Government Offices. Analysis of the evolution of personnel politics, the formation of one agency and the attempts to introduce a collective activity planning model, show that the immediate problems of the early 1970's – an over dimensioned staff, territory battles and unclear division of responsibility for personnel and organisation – remains to this day, notwithstanding the many reforms to approach them. One principal explanation behind this is that the key players for successful reorganisations – the politicians – do hardly ever partake. Instead, and on the basis of the perspective of bureaucratic politics, this dissertation demonstrates that the internal development of the Government Offices should be explained as the result of struggles between different bureaucratic actors, with diverse views on problems and their solutions, and with various prospects and strengths to affect the outcome. Due to the choice of politicians to leave this policy field open to bureaucratic politics, the policy is essentially shaped and decided within a bureaucratic context. The dissertation ends in a conclusion that there is an almost constant bureaucratic battle behind internal organisation of the Government Offices, a conflict where tradition, values and strong bureaucratic actors play an important part, and where institutional change is exceptional, since the preserving powers in these processes have the upper hand. But politicians can change – in spite of these traditions, values and bureaucratic agents – if they have the determination. The theoretical aim of this dissertation, through a critical assessment of the bureaucratic politics perspective – an evaluation motivated by the empirical data and inspired by two challenging and related theoretic models; sociological and historical institutionalism – is to display the qualities and shortcomings of the bureaucratic politics model, to develop and improve the original model of bureaucratic politics, and making it more expedient for future studies of institutional change in central political organisations.

In recent years evaluation has become a very important element in the public administration. The Swedish state administration to a significant extent both evaluates and is evaluated. This means that the evaluating state is at the same time the evaluated state. In this dissertation the institutionalization of evaluation is studied in a field within which this development has been particularly lively and interesting, namely the field of higher education. The dissertation focuses on evaluation activity that has been carried out in conjunction with central public authorities within higher education: the Office of the Chancellor of the Universities and Colleges in Sweden, the National Swedish Board of Universities and Colleges, and the Office of the University Chancellor, and encompasses the period 1964-1995. A newly revived research tradition within political science – historical institutionalism – is used as a perspective and a methodology. Since the application of this tradition has not yet been fully tested, another purpose is to examine the practical utility of this analytical tool and the kind of knowledge that it produces. The dissertation thereby combines the fields of education policy, evaluation research and institutional theory. The beginning of the institution has been dated to the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s. In the dissertation the forces behind the initiation of the institution are taken up. Events and developments in the field that have influenced the further development of the institution have been identified and analyzed. Developments reveal that the institution has been stable during the entire period of time under study, despite some changes. The use of historical institutionalism as a perspective and methodology has proven satisfactory on a general level. However, special solutions have been required as problems and ambiguities have arisen. The dissertation concludes with reflections on the practical utility of historical institutionalism in political science research.

The EU Renewable Energy Strategy (RES) Directive requires that each member state obtain 20% of its energy supply from renewable sources by 2020. If fully implemented, this implies major changes in institutions, infrastructure, land use, and natural resource flows. This study applies a political geography perspective to explore the transition to renewable energy use in the heating and cooling segment of the Swedish energy system, 1980–2010. The Nordic welfare model, which developed mainly after the Second World War, required relatively uniform, standardized local and regional authorities functioning as implementation agents for national politics. Since 1980, the welfare orientation has gradually been complemented by competition politics promoting technological change, innovation, and entrepreneurship. This combination of welfare state organization and competition politics provided the dynamics necessary for energy transition, which occurred in a semi-public sphere of actors at various geographical scales. However, our analysis, suggest that this was partly an unintended policy outcome, since it was based on a welfare model with no significant energy aims. Our case study suggests that state organization plays a significant role, and that the EU RES Directive implementation will be uneven across Europe, reflecting various welfare models with different institutional pre-requisites for energy transition.

Symbolic politics is the degree to which political decision-making is motivated, not by the tangible aspects of the decision, but by the interpretation of what the decision represents symbolically. While symbolic politics is widely recognized as an important aspect of political decision-making, the phenomenon is insufficiently explored in political science. The first aim of the present dissertation is to develop and systematize concepts and mechanisms necessary for the study of symbolic politics. The second aim is to make a preliminary evaluation of the explanatory power of the suggested concepts. This is done by applying the concepts in two case studies of current Swedish policy-making. The first case is a study of the decision in 2000 to give state subsidies to broadband Internet connections. The second case is a study of the decision in 1997 to commence the nuclear power phase-out by closing the Barsebäck nuclear power plant. Symbolic politics is suggested to be defined negatively, as being those aspects of a political decision that are not tangible. The taxonomy of symbolic politics consists of four varieties: categories, principles, examples, and expressions. Categories are ways to create a symbolic connection between political issues by cognitively grouping them together. Principles are ways to give the categorization normative implications: since the issues are alike, they should be treated alike. Examples are instances where a single member of the group is offered as prototypical example of the entire group. An expression is the communicative use of political decisions, a deliberate signal or an unintended symptom of the actor's intentions. The taxonomy of symbolic politics can be incorporated in general theories of policy processes and political decision-making. Categories play an integral part of almost all public policy theories, and can help to explain problem-definition processes. Principles are techniques to expand the scope of a political conflict and mobilize new groups of actors. Examples are important to raise attention, both on an individual level, and on the political agenda. Expressions can be used both to expand and to contract the scope of a political conflict. The first case study, the broadband decision in 2000, reveals a mixture of instrumental and symbolic factors explaining the decision. Broadband connections were used as a prototypical example of Internet and information technology. In order to signal governmental commitment to it, the social democratic government changed their previously demand-based policy towards a more supply-oriented one. The second case study, the decision in 1997 to commence the nuclear power phase-out by closing the Barsebäck nuclear power plant, reveals a similar mixture of motives. It was decided in 1980 that all Swedish nuclear power should be phased-out before 2010. Fifteen years on, the credibility of this decision had successively eroded. By closing one nuclear reactor, and thereby sending a signal reassuring of the government's commitment to the phase-out, it was possible to abandon the 2010-limit without being accused of disrespecting the popular will. The symbolic political taxonomy is concluded to hold enough promise to warrant further elaboration.

Posters have been used in political communication for more than a century, and are still an important element in the election campaigns. However, few studies have been devoted to the way in which text and image work together in order to obtain the rhetorical goal of making voters vote for a specific party. In this study, election posters in the 2002 general election in Sweden from all parties represented in the Swedish parliament are analysed. The context of this specific sample of political communication is described through a sociological approach inspired by Pierre Bourdieu, and through theories of political marketing. The model for analysis of the posters combine semiotics and rhetoric in order to present a model capable of analysing both text and image, and the way in which they are used in order to influence and persuade voters. The conclusions are that Swedish parties favour textual messages and not visual elements, and that when visual elements are used, these are mostly portraits of candidates. So apparently, the predominance of visual elements in advertising does not show in election posters. Neither can one claim that personalisation is a predominant element, as the total percentage of posters depicting candidates is quite low. The tendency towards negative campaigning seen in earlier elections is not present in the 2002 posters, and the rhetoric is mostly epideictic and thus aimed at keeping already convinced voters rather than attracting new ones. This might indicate that the posters have lost their role as means of attracting new voters and have become more of an "internal" affair, telling the party's voters, in a way which presupposes shared points of view, that the party is there to be voted for as always. The posters thus fulfil a symbolic function of binding together adherents rather than attracting newcomers.

The concept of integrated pest management (IPM) has been accepted and incorporated in public policies and regulations in the European Union and elsewhere, but a holistic science of IPM has not yet been developed. Hence, current IPM programs may often be considerably less efficient than the sum of separately applied individual crop protection actions. Thus, there is a clear need to formulate general principles for synergistically combining traditional and novel IPM actions to improve efforts to optimize plant protection solutions. This paper addresses this need by presenting a conceptual framework for a modern science of IPM. The framework may assist attempts to realize the full potential of IPM and reduce risks of deficiencies in the implementation of new policies and regulations.

The concept of civil society has lately become fashionable in political as well as scientificcontexts. This article critically discusses the 'politics of truth' in A Persistent Democracy!, thefinal report of the Swedish Commission on Democracy. The argument in the article is that thereport over-stresses the importance of civil society and the role of individual responsibilitiesand initiatives against public arrangements and interventions, referred to in the report as statepaternalism. The report is making specific 'technologies of government' visible, as it is creatingcitizens as primarily 'moral human beings'. The problem with strategies to 'roll back theState' for the benefit of a civil society of this kind, is that they necessarily open up for inequalitiesand conflicts in-built in civil society. To deepen democracy presupposes a continuouslong-term struggle for changing predominant power structures and unequal distributionsof vital resources, material and non-material. In this perspective, the report of the Swedish Commission on Democracy does not offer an adequate answer to challenging questions forthe future of a vitalized Swedish democracy. ; Reprint ur Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift 2000 (http://www.statsvetenskapligtidskrift.se/section.asp?id=552)

Intro -- Brev till mamma Vincent -- Tack -- Social aspekt -- Första mellanakten -- Introduktion -- Kamikaze -- Jag ser fattiga människor... -- Gangnam Style -- Politisk aspekt -- Andra mellanakten -- Falska Profetior -- Korruptibilitet -- Mohamed Bouazizi -- Ekonomisk aspekt -- Tredje mellanakten -- Say Whaaat?!(Vad sa du?!!) -- MÄndring av paradigmet -- Fjärde mellanakten -- D.R.I.P. -- Diamanter är alla kvinnors bästa vän -- Hop-o'-My-Thumb -- Blueprint -- Femte mellanakten -- Det nuvarande ohyfsade samhället -- Abracadabra -- Skyhögt -- Cirkeln är sluten -- NOTES -- Och slutligen.

En tredjedel av all mat som produceras försvinner på vägen. Det innebär att en stor del av den negativa miljöpåverkan som livsmedelsproduktionen står för, har skett alldeles i onödan. I EU:s livsmedelsstrategi är matsvinn en av nyckelfrågorna.