Suchergebnisse

International Politics has been characterized as an American social science. This article traces the early development of the discipline in Sweden in the shadow of US hegemony. The advantages & disadvantages of the Swedish decision to keep International Relations (IR) within the broader discipline of Political Science are discussed. Recalling the early tensions between International Politics & Peace & Conflict Research, the author identifies some prominent traits in the development of Swedish IR in recent decades. Finally, broader developments in IR research generally are outlined in terms of consecutive debates, continuously broadening research themes, fashions, reaction to dramatic events in the world, & dialectics between paradigms emphasizing anarchy or order. References. Adapted from the source document.

Traditionally a distinction has been made between political theory, which concerns itself with relations within a nation-state, and international politics, which focuses on relations between nation-states. Yet these two areas can often overlap. The result is a cross-discipline commonly known as international political theory. This subject area is the focus of a new journal. Adapted from the source document.

Among those under consideration, evaluator Leif Lewin has found that four of the candidates are qualified for the professorship. Of those qualified, three in particular, in his opinion, stand out as experts in international politics. He has given top ranking to Jens Bartelson. Adapted from the source document.

This article contains an overview of how the study of human rights issues has developed into a separate multidisciplinary field of academic study & education in Sweden. Its relationship to the different fields of political science is outlined, as well as general problems of a multidisciplinary subject. Three contributions to an edited volume containing Swedish & foreign scholarship on human rights issues drawn from the Swedish Forum for Human Rights, a biannual gathering of practitioners & scholars, are discussed. Those contributions deal with the tensions between universalist & relativist approaches to the character of human rights, the tensions between the development of international law & power relations in international politics, & tensions between group rights & individual rights. 25 References. Adapted from the source document.

This thesis aims to explain how small states, in this case Sweden, security politics adapts to new circumstances after great conflicts in the 20th century. The analytical model is built by a combination of the opposite theories of international politics, realism and idealism, combined with actor based and structure based perspectives and thus creating a four field analytical matrix. The empirical foundation constitutes of three post conflict periods; post-first world war, post-second world war and post-cold war periods. For every period three cases are analyzed; one foreign politics initiative, one association to an international organization and one defence politics decision. In the post-first world war period the focus is on the Swedish intervention of the Åland archipelago, the association to the League of Nations and disarmament decision in 1925. In the post-second world war period the focus is on the association of Sweden to the United Nations, the Swedish initiative to a Scandinavian defence alliance and the defence decision of 1948. In the post-cold war period the focus is on the Swedish association to the European Union, the Swedish participation in the NATO led IFOR operation in Bosnia and the defence decision in 1996. The main conclusions of these investigations are that small states, like Sweden, both are restricted in their foreign and security politics by international structures and able to use the same structure to promote their interests. Time is a key element for analyzing both structural and actor based aspects of a small states capacity. Also, in the case of Sweden, there tends to be a tension between an idealistic dominated politics and a realistic dominated politics when it comes to foreign and security politics, and that idealism seems to have increased in the latter period.

The change in regional governance in Sweden is regularly understood in terms of a shift from 'government' to 'governance', from a redistributive policy to a policy that aims to encourage regional innovation, competitiveness and growth. This shift also includes the adoption of global policy models, such as 'clusters'. In the literature on the global spread of policies it has been argued that a market for global policies has developed. This is not least evident through the expansion of global consultancy firms, international policy organisations as well as a cosmopolitan elite of travelling policy technocrats. Theoretically and methodologically this study contributes to scholarly discussions of how new forms of governance can be analysed, and especially how governmentality studies can be utilised and combined with analyses of the messy political practices of specific policies and programs. The study analyses the discursive shift in regional policy in Sweden: contested elements erased, conflicts concealed and the political order produced. By empirically departing from a 'cluster policy network' lodged within a Swedish region, cluster policy is analysed as an assemblage of global circuits of knowledge, expertise and local relations of power. A broad range of materials for analysis have been generated through interviews, participant observations and documents. The production of policy knowledge is an overarching political rationality of contemporary forms of regional governance, translated into technologies such as benchmarking, regional comparisons, competitions, evaluations and best-practice. Based on the empirical analyses it is argued that the lack of power critique and a hyper-rational representation of knowledge produce an international market for legitimacy. It is further argued that five characteristics of the policy regime ('the regional cluster orchestra') contributes to the reproduction of the policy regime, and relations of domination. ; Baksidestext Avhandlingen tar sin utgångspunkt i vad som har beskrivits som en marknad för globala policymodeller. I Sverige har klusterbegreppet, med ursprung i ekonomisk och geografisk teoribildning, fått stort genomslag i regionalpolitiken. I den samtida regionalpolitiken har också produktionen av olika former av policykunskap utvecklats till centrala styrningsteknologier: benchmarking, best practice, utvärderingar, uppföljningar, mätningar och konkurrensutsatta tävlingar om regionala utvecklingsmedel. Genom kunskap och ständigt lärande ska Sveriges regioner frälsas. I avhandlingen studeras den scen där ett regionalt förankrat policynätverk agerar och den kunskap som produceras. Regionalpolitikens rationalitet innebär att det blir centralt för regionerna att agera som enhetliga aktörer och visa upp en lyckad och framgångsrik fasad. Det argumenteras för att bristen på maktanalys, och en hyperrationell syn på kunskap i regionalpolitiken innebär att regionalpolitikens styrningsteknologier producerar en internationell marknad för legitimitet som i sin tur reproducerar ordningen och döljer dominansrelationer.

In Norway, 2005 was a year of celebrations, linkel, first & foremost, to the fact that 100 years had passed since the peaceful dissolution of the personal union between Norway & Sweden. Despite the absence of broad popular support for the idea that this should merit any celebrations, government & media spent considerable resources on high-profile promotion of the 1905 story, including the side-events leading up to or following the famous 7 June Declaration of the Norwegian Storting (Parliament). In the context of nation-building, historical milestones tend to take on a flavor of history-building, -- the stuff that national myths are made of. In the saga of Norwegian nation-building, 1905 had come to play a perhaps surprisingly inflated role. Thus -- less surprisingly -- in the interpretation handed over to a contemporary audience, the various events of 1905 have been suffused with a series of myths, some of which have assumed the character of national dogmas. In particular, the author explores the myths surrounding the referendum of 12-13 November 1905, & demonstrates how vested interests have been instrumental in consolidating the popular (but false) interpretation that the real issue of the referendum was Norway's constitution (monarchy vs. republic) & not the conditions set forth by Prince Carl of Denmark for accepting the offer made by the Norwegian Government & its parliament to assume the Norwegian throne. In fact, employing devious tactics, prime Minister Michelsen succeeded not only in winning a comfortable victory for prince Carl's candidacy (whereby the prince became King Haakon VII of Norway), but he also managed to entrench the notion that the referendum above all was a resounding confirmation of a (continued) monarchical constitutional order. The long-term effect (which is still very much a defining feature of Norway's political self-image) was to give the country's republicans (who, at the onset of 1905 were a dominant force in the Norwegian political discourse) a permanently marginalized position as a fringe movement of eccentrics & certified losers. References. Adapted from the source document.

This dissertation analyzes the concept of democracy as it was used in the official rhetoric of the Swedish SocialDemocratic Party (SAP ) between 1919 and 1939. Theoretically, the dissertation relies on German Begriffsgeschichte, as put forward by Reinhart Koselleck, and Michael Freeden's theory of ideologies. Together, by supplementing each other, these theories offer a perspective in which concepts are thought of as structures that are under contestation and change due to socio-political circumstances. However, the formulation of this change takes place in relation to the linguistic praxis of each time-period, and renegotiates the relative constraints of established relations between concepts in language. The analysis shows that the profound changes in society provided impetus for a continuous renegotiation of meanings, allowing concepts to retain their explanatory power under changing circumstances, at the same time the SAP needed new ways to express what kind of society the party strived to realize. The SAP had been one of the leading forces in the struggle for universal suffrage, and when the bill, giving universal suffrage to men andwomen, was passed in the Parliament 1919 this meant a temporary cessation to a long and intensive political debate. However, the SAP did not consider the introduction of suffrage reform as the end of full societal democratization. Rather than seeing the reform as a terminal point, the SAP saw it as the starting point for the struggle for full democracy. The SAP did not limit itself to only one concept of democracy but instead used a number of composite concepts, such as political democracy and economic democracy. The use of composite concepts can be understood as a changing temporalization of democracy. Since parliamentarism and suffrage were seen as central components in democracy, the realization of these institutions meant that the concept of democracy lost its future dimension. Thus, the usage of composite concepts should be seen as a re-temporalization of democracy. The composite concepts pointed forward in time, toward political goals that the SAP envisaged realizing in the future. Concepts should not be thought of as having cores but rather, as suggested by Freeden, ineliminable features. An ineliminable feature is not of logical nature but has a strong cultural adjacency. By analyzing the ineliminable components of the concepts of democracy that the SAP used, it is possible to discuss whether the composite concepts should be understood as subsets of a whole or as separate concepts. The analysis shows that the composite concepts that the SAP used during the first half of the 1920s shared a number of ineliminable features, but that the commonality of these features started to disintegrate during the latter half of the decade, leading to a rather diversive concept of democracy. During the 1930s the disintegration ceased as the party was faced with new circumstances, for example the growing threat of international war and national clashes between different social groups. There has always been a close relation between language and society. However, the relationship does not follow a simple and clear-cut logic but a complex mixture of various factors at different levels, both within language itself and of society. When society develops, language also has to change if the ongoing process is to be understood. As this study shows, new circumstances require new argumentsand thus revised concepts.