Suchergebnisse

Rising levels of discontent among rural residents and parts of the hunting community toward large carnivore conservation policy has effected a phenomenon of socio-politically motivated illegal killing of these unpopular species. Such wildlife crime formed the investigation of an interdisciplinary and internationally collaborative research project headed by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Ultuna, Uppsala. Through 3 years of in-depth interview studies with hunters in Sweden, a quantitative survey to hunters, comparative studies in other parts of the world and close collaboration with Fennoscandian researchers and practitioners, this project ran to completion at the end of 2016. The following report marks the dissemination and discussion of the research results and insights for future research produced by this project. Hence, it represents the first time the full research project and its members stand before the public and interest groups. The report synthesizes two days of workshop thematic discussions between 45 participants from societal sectors including hunting and nature conservation NGOs, county administrative boards, Environmental Protection Agencies, law enforcement, environmental attorneys and farming associations as they feature across the Fennoscandian countries: Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. Its discussions center on social control in wildlife crime, the juridification of hunting issues, the influence of the EU and platforms for going forward to mitigate poaching, in particular of large carnivores like the wolf. The report is an essential read for both researchers and practitioners faced with the problem of socially accepted, but secretive and hidden, forms of illegal hunting in response to governmental legitimacy crises, distrust of policy and policy-makers, and as a manifestation of rural resistance in modernity.

This dissertation is about municipal procurement of construction projects. Public procurement is often portrayed as inefficient since public organizations can have several, potentially conflicting, objectives. In this dissertation, I use Uppsala municipality as a case to study how procurement worked during a time when municipal procurement was not regulated by law. The main interest is how the administration balanced procedural and outcome-related objectives and how its choices can be explained. Earlier research has suggested that public organizations use discretionary decision-making and so-called low-powered incentives (negotiations and cost-plus contracts) to a lesser extent than private clients do, making procurement less efficient. Rigid rules and fear of corruption are usually mentioned as explanations. The results of this dissertation show that low-powered incentives and discretionary decision-making became more common when there were more rules and a more bureaucratized administration. It is suggested that the structure and institutions of the construction sector, in combination with government financing policies and the municipality's organizational capability, can explain the pattern. The results have implications for the literature on public procurement as well as on the development of the public administration in Sweden. First, they indicate that the relationship between formal rules and procurement practices is more complicated than previously suggested. Second, they highlight how discussions about the public administrative system can benefit from incorporating the local level as well as informal institutions and practices.

Because of population clustering, it is increasingly difficult for the rural poor to access land in Zambia. Such a clustered space is along the line-of-rail, where more people are looking to make use of land. Simultaneously, in a country where multiple political authorities can perform recognition of land, people also have to balance and navigate within this pluralistic political landscape to enjoy secure access and use of land. As such, property has the potential to improve security and create legitimacy to land. Within 100 yards along the railway, land is in administrative limbo due to the lack of effective control by its legal owner, the state. This thesis investigates the property production in land occupied by rural people along the railway in Southern Province, Zambia, through ethnographic and interview-based fieldwork. With a widened understanding of property that goes beyond juridical interpretations inseparable from law, I show how property making abandons formalised scripts, and instead is performed through contextual and localised orders. Occupants of land along the railway put labour and material investments into the land to reinforce legitimacy, both among each other as well as when facing political authority. With the state as formal owners of railway land, chiefs and headmen (i.e. customary authority) get squeezed by engaging in administering the land since it is outside of their legal jurisdiction. At the same time, state authority also administers and recognizes land, albeit implicitly, when maintenance workers survey the railway tracks. I conclude that these findings together create a whole greater than the sum of its parts of how property production can take place on land in limbo.

This thesis deals with the question of how Swedish society responds when juveniles commit crimes. The focus is social work co-operating with the legal system and the interaction between these two. The aim of this study is to make visible/analyse factors that affect the choice between treatment and correction of juveniles in an emergency situation, when there is a necessity to choose between immediate preventative custody on the one hand, and detention on the other. This study analyses the selection through outcome patterns. Theoretically the base is six concepts; system/practice, and treatment/correction. Together they form a model where the actors (the social services/the police/the attorney/county administrative courts/district courts) on this juvenile field can be situated. The strategies of the actors' decision-making are implied by either norm-rational decision-making or goal-rational decision-making. Empirical data is studied through records of immediate custody and detention of juveniles aged 15-18 years old. The immediate denial of freedom represents, in the Swedish legislation, a process whereby social services and law enforcers meet and decide whether to treat or correct the juvenile. This selection is the focus of the empirical study of this thesis. In 1992, 1998 and 2003 a national overall survey was made of all juveniles aged 15-18 years that have been either in immediate custody or in detention or both. Documentation was obtained from the courts. The results show that the general denial of freedom of juveniles have increased greatly during the years 1992, 1998 and 2003, and especially from 1998 to 2003. Almost all of the acts concern boys, even though girls are making at break-through in 2003. There are differences between the groups that either have been in detention or in immediate custody in ways of "survey-year", "ethnic background", "age" and "categorising of crime". This study shows a large discrepancy between legislation and the legal practice.

This study starts out with the hypothesis that the integration process in Europe is connected to cross-border régionalisation, a process which supports the institutionalization of subnational cross-border cooperation - region-building. Cross-border régionalisation is characterized by the decentralisation of vertical links and enhanced opportunities for horizontal links across state borders. In addition, political integration is expected to have some impact on the cross-border institutional forms that emerge at the subnational level. Three different approaches are utilized in order to establish the empirical connection between political integration and region-building. These are: an analysis of the factors which determine the general pattern of cross-border cooperation in Europe, an analysis of the policy network related to the regional and structural policies of the European Union (EU), and case studies of cooperation in the heartland of Europe, the Regio Basiliensis along the external border of the EU, and the EUREGIO along one of the internal borders. Two institutional factors are found to have a significant impact on the number of subnational cross-border cooperations, EU-membership and centrality. Federal constitution was shown not to be significant. It is suggested that the interaction between actors at different politico- administrative levels creates network relations, which typically bring both private and public actors together. More precisely, region-building is described as the outcome of the interaction which takes place between actors. A closer examination of the emerging policy network shows that community initiatives, the Interreg-programme in particular, improve the prospects for multi­level interaction. The EU plays a crucial role in providing the incentives for cooperation by increasing resource dependency and by establishing direct ties between the European Commission and a large number of subnational actors through partnerships. It appears as if the Commission wishes to demonstrate its capacity to deal with problems relevant to individual citizens. By, in part, bypassing central governments, it seems to increase its own importance vis- à-vis member states. The modus vivendi of cross-border region-building and régionalisation is the degree to which institutional actors at different levels share the same objectives. As shown by the case studies, there is a common interest in cross-border cooperation up to the point were public statues are introduced. Interests seem to coincide as long as the structures and contents of cross-border cooperation do not ultimately challenge the authority of state institutions. Therefore, it is not surprising that it seems impossible to give cross-border regions any rights under international law. Functional cooperation, rather than regionalist manifestations of cultural or political unity across borders, constitutes the backbone of region-building. Activities transcending borders are less controversial than those that may contribute to the establishment of new borders. It is concluded that region-building is a process which is embedded in the institutionalization of a multi-level interaction pattern. More favourable multilevel relations have been achieved through the transfer of some authority to the supranational level. This is the main reason why traditional integration theory fails to explain why there is a connection between political integration and cross-border cooperation. ; digitalisering@umu

The European Union (EU) Directive 2001/42/EC on the assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment (hereafter called the SEA-directive) that came into effect on 21 July in 2001 has started a policy implementation process in the 27 member states. In Sweden the spatial planning in municipalities and their comprehensive planning activities will be a major arena for implementing the SEA directive. The aim of the thesis is to investigate the planning practice emanating from the implementation of the SEA-directive into Swedish municipal planning. The aim is also to shed light on SEA as a steering tool for change. The results from the discourse analysis of the policy expectations of the SEA implementation as expressed in the preparatory works to the law picture a national SEA discourse that wants to above all promote efficiency in the municipal comprehensive planning processes. The message from the discourse is however contradictory. On the one hand a no change picture is outlined on the other hand is outlined major benefits for planning. In relation to sustainable development the role of SEA is down sized. Another study shows how the implementing officers at the local authorities perceive the coming change when SEA is introduced into Swedish municipal comprehensive planning. They foresee difficulties with financing the extra work, new personnel and education, with a greater need for inter-and intra organisational communication, difficulties with political climate and economic environment, as complications with tiering, since the Swedish planning system is not particularly tiered at present. The implementers also have difficulties in understanding the purpose of SEA and how to tackle contradicting objectives, such as more consultations and faster planning processes. The above brief description leads to questions relating to what kind of implementation that will be the results of this situation? In 2007 twelve municipalities, out of a total of 290 had made their first attempts to implement the SEA directive as part of municipal comprehensive plans (MCP). First results or policy outcomes can thus be explored. The main focus of this study is the planning documents, including the environmental report (ER), as they represent the written part of the planning process and the results of the local SEA practice. The empirical focus of the main empirical study are the contents of the SEAs in 24 plans made before the introduction of the SEA directive and the contents of the first 12 municipal comprehensive plans that have implemented the Swedish SEA legislation based on the SEA directive. The result is a change in perspective towards more specific environmental issues in the later plans as compared to the ones made before the demands of SEA. The transparency of consultation has increased and consultations with the County Administrative Board have been held by many of municipalities. By taking a policy implementation perspective, the importance of context is made obvious, for the role that SEA implementation can take and what space for action the implementers have in developing their SEA-practice. The discourse perspective helped to "uncover" and display the character of the governments SEA discourse and thus also to, in more detail, outline the discursive governmental input to change of planning and SEA practice in the municipalities.