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This thesis is about some Swedish organizations that are connected to the labour movement and their actions to cope with the new hegemony around market liberalism. After the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90-ties, the liberal order, meaning market economy and democracy reduced to the election of elites, has become totally domineering both in the western and in the former communist world. Even left wing oriented organizations have adopted their operations and activities accordingly, especially in their internal governing structure. The organizations that I have studied, mainly the Swedish Tenants organization at its local level of Stockholm, developed during the 70-ties and the 80-ties a participatorier member structure. The "Swedish model" of consensus/corporative decision-making and agreement, used by them on the national level for decades, was during that period introduced also on local and regional levels. In the 90-ties these organizations, according to earlier studies, have instead adapted a more costumer-oriented and elite-democratic way of operating and governing. These later changes could be seen as contradicting both the development of the 80-ties and the basic values of those organizations. My questions are therefore how these changes became possible and my aim is to study how the active members have contributed to this development. Using a constructionist theoretical perspective and discourse analysis, I am showing how this potential conflict between a participatory and an elite-democratic model can be reconciled by a discursive construction. The active members have in fact been able see these changes just as a modernization of their organization. From their point-of-view their organization still works in a participatory democratic way. My analysis shows how this ambiguousness and potential paradox became possible thru internal discourses and under influence from the liberal hegemony.

The policy term green infrastructure highlights the need to maintain functional ecosystems as a foundation for sustainable societies. Because forests are the main natural ecosystems in Europe, it is crucial to understand the extent to which forest landscape management delivers functional green infrastructures. We used the steep west-east gradient in forest landscape history, land ownership, and political culture within northern Europe's Baltic Sea Region to assess regional profiles of benefits delivered by forest landscapes. The aim was to support policy-makers and planners with evidence-based knowledge about the current conditions for effective wood production and biodiversity conservation. We developed and modeled four regional-level indicators for sustained yield wood production and four for biodiversity conservation using public spatial data. The western case study regions in Sweden and Latvia had high forest management intensity with balanced forest losses and gains which was spatially correlated, thus indicating an even stand age class distribution at the local scale and therefore long-term sustained yields. In contrast, the eastern case study regions in Belarus and Russia showed spatial segregation of areas with forest losses and gains. Regarding biodiversity conservation indicators, the west-east gradient was reversed. In the Russian, Belarusian, and Latvian case study regions, tree species composition was more natural than in Sweden, and the size of contiguous areas without forest loss was larger. In all four case study regions, 54-85% of the total land base consisted of forest cover, which is above critical fragmentation thresholds for forest landscape fragmentation. The results show that green infrastructures for wood production and biodiversity conservation are inversely related among the four case study regions, and thus rival. While restoration for biodiversity conservation is needed in the west, intensified use of wood and biomass is possible in the east. However, a cautious approach should be applied because intensification of wood production threatens biodiversity. We discuss the barriers and bridges for spatial planning in countries with different types of land ownership and political cultures and stress the need for a landscape approach based on evidence-based collaborative learning processes that include both different academic disciplines and stakeholders that represent different sectors and levels of governance.

Since the early 1950's the foreign policy of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) towards Sweden and the other Western European states was dominated by a striving for diplomatic recognition. This thesis examines that striving through an analysis of the East German-Swedish relations from 1949 until 1972. The main focus is on the years 1954-1972. The thesis draws mainly on East German archival material from the ruling communist party SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) and the GDR foreign ministry. A starting point of the thesis is that GDR generally used all its contacts abroad to further its foreign political goals. GDR's efforts to develop the relations with Sweden on seven different areas are investigated. An important aim is to analyse GDR's political utilisation of areas, such as culture and traffic, that normally are not considered political or studied by traditional political history. The application of the concept of public diplomacy is central in this context. The analysis of the Ostseewoche (Baltic Week) is a significant part of the investigation of areas that traditionally not are considered as being part of foreign policy. The Osteewoche was a week filled with cultural activities and sport. The analysis of the inaugural ceremony and other activities of the Ostseewoche shows that even official East German ceremonies were used for purposes of foreign policy. However, GDR's relations with Sweden on the normal foreign policy arenas such as diplomacy and economy are also analysed. Great weight is given to analysing the perceptions of the political elite and the foreign policy actors to understand why certain actions were taken and why certain elements were significant of the GDR foreign policy. The question of which political instruments were the most important to the East German efforts to improve the relations with Sweden is also investigated. An important result of the thesis is that GDR had a comprehensive strategy for the development of the relations with Sweden. The main elements of this strategy were in place 1958 and did largely not change since. The spreading of a positive GDR-image was a very significant element of the East German foreign policy. Sweden was one of the most important Western European countries to the GDR foreign policy during this period of time.