Suchergebnisse

The deliverable D6.1 of the LIFT project explores what types of discourses are used in six European Union (EU) member states' Rural Development Programs (RDP) and other agricultural policy documents and how they incorporate ecological approaches acrossthree Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) periods. This multiple case study highlights similarities and differences in the dominant discourses as emerging from national policy documents in the following selected EU member states: France, Germany (Bavaria), Hungary, Poland, Romania and Sweden. It also demonstrates how discourse analysis can be used to gain understanding about the dominant discourses expressed in these documents in relation to how ecological approaches are defined, the policy rationale for encouraging ecological approaches and the expected consequences of doing so. Conceptually, we focused on two types of discourses identified from the literature: 1) the three CAP discourses: i) neomercantilism; ii) neoliberalism and iii) multifunctionality, and 2) the five socio-political discourses of Rural Development (RD): iv) agri-ruralist, v) hedonist, vi) utilitarian, vii) nature conservation and viii) community sustainability. These types of discourses were together integrated in a model, where each policy discourse depicts agriculture as accomplishing a specific function. The theoretical framework is grounded within a political economy perspective. This means that policy develops because of confrontation between different concerned agents with different interest, pushing for different objectives. The state acts as an intermediary between these agents and aims at ensuring consensus and maintenance of agreement. Policy documents are therefore often the result of competing discourses and contradicting policy objectives. Across EU member states, the results show that ecological approaches are mainly depicted with the multifunctionality discourse with two dominating sub-discourses of nature conservation and agri-ruralism. Nevertheless, we observe an increase in the use of the neomercantilist discourse in the last CAP period. This parallels what the previous literature finds in Commissioners' speeches: a reappearance of the traditional neomercantilist discourse in the CAP agenda 2014-2020. Farming systems (with farming practices) related to agroecology, biodiversity-based and organic farming are among the most commonly mentioned farming systems.

Department of Political Studies ; Report written by Rackman and published by Bar-Ilan University on the subject of theocentricity and its place in Jewish law. ; No date specified

Preliminary Material /Jonas Grimheden and Rolf Ring -- Group Accommodation and the Challenges of Education: Multicultural or Intercultural or a Combination of the Two? /Asbjørn Eide -- The Importance of an Education in Human Rights /M. Arthur Diakité -- The Education of Police in Human Rights a Framework for Human Rights Programmes Forpolice /Ralph Crawshaw -- Human Rights Education in China /LI Baodong -- Human Rights Education and Research in China: the Contribution of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute /Sun Shiyan -- Human Rights Education in the Netherlands /Cees Flinterman and Stacey Nitchov -- The Protection of Civilian Educational Institutions During the Active Hostilities of International Armed Conflict in International Humanitarian Law /David a. G. Lewis -- The Self-reflective Human Rights Promoter /Jonas Grimheden -- Hugo Grotius and the Roots of Human Rights Law /Ove Bring -- Human Rights before International Criminal Courts /Vojin Dimitrijevic and Marko Milanovic -- Never Again? Rwanda and the World /Lennart Aspegren -- The Contested Notion of Freedom of Opinion /Herdís Thorgeirsdóttir -- From Protective Passports to Protected Entry Procedures? the Legacy of Raoul Wallenberg in the Contemporary Asylum Debate /Gregor Noll -- Implementing International Human Rights Law on Behalf of Asylum Seekers and Refugees: the Record of the Nordic Countries /Robin Lööf and Brian Gorlick -- The Legal Position of Asylum-seekers in Austria /Lauri Hannikainen -- Refugees in Swedish Private International Law /Michael Bogdan -- Civil Freedoms and Rights in the Swedish Constitution of 1974: the Process and the Rationale /Carl-Gustaf Andrén -- Various Interpretations of Human Rights for Women Challenges at United Nations Conferences /Elisabeth Gerle -- Implementation of International Conventions as a Socio­Legal Enterprise: Examples from the Convention on the Rights of the Child /Håkan Hydén -- List of Contributors /Jonas Grimheden and Rolf Ring.

This dissertation analyzes the changes in the way Swedish forest policy has been developed and implemented in the past few decades. Its primary focus is on the period from the adoption of new legislation governing forestry in 1993 to date, though the historical antecedents of the more recent developments are also discussed. The dissertation focuses primarily on the interplay between changes in the policy priorities enshrined in forest legislation and the changes in the steering and implementation means and resources available to achieve the aims of the recent forest policies. Various perspectives on public administration/public management are used to analyze the preconditions and opportunities available to state authorities to meet the environmental goals in forest policy. Furthermore, norm theory as developed within the sociology of law is applied to analyze how various categories of forest owners can be motivated to shoulder a greater responsibility for nature conservation and development and environmental activities. The tension between private forest owners? interests and public (both of the state and the public in general) interests, and possible ways around the tension also figure prominently in this study. Central to the opportunities for success in obtaining the more ambitious environmental goals in a ?regulatory? setting characterized by a levelling of the status between authorities and forest owners and decreased resources and coercive capacities on part of the authorities, is the prospects for ?soft regulation.? Here we see an emphasis on bringing new actors into the policy formulation, interpretation and implementation arena, the development of new networks, the role of information and advisement in producing ?enlightened self-interest? and common frames of understanding. Ultimately what is aimed at is ?smart regulation? via the use of various forms of flexible instruments in a context where a greater number of stakeholders are involved. Thus the role of ?regulatory? authorities moves towards becoming a facilitator, or a ?motor? that as a partner promotes collaborative structures and cooperation.

Plant breeding has always relied on progress in various scientifc disciplines to generate and enable access to genetic variation. Until the 1970s, available techniques generated mostly random genetic alterations that were subject to a selection procedure in the plant material. Recombinant nucleic acid technology, however, started a new era of targeted genetic alterations, or precision breeding, enabling a much more targeted approach to trait management. More recently, developments in genome editing are now providing yet more control by enabling alterations at exact locations in the genome. The potential of recombinant nucleic acid technology fueled discussions about potentially new associated risks and, starting in the late 1980s, biosafety legislation for genetically modifed organisms (GMOs) has developed in the European Union. However, the last decade has witnessed a lot of discussions as to whether or not genome editing and other precision breeding techniques should be encompassed by the EU GMO legislation. A recent ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union indicated that directed mutagenesis techniques should be subject to the provisions of the GMO Directive, essentially putting many precision breeding techniques in the same regulatory basket. This review outlines the evolving EU regulatory framework for GMOs and discusses some potential routes that the EU may take for the regulation of precision breeding.

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 ...

Wild animals are used for research and management purposes in Sweden and throughout the world. Animals are often subjected to similar procedures and risks of compromised welfare from capture, anesthesia, handling, sampling, marking, and sometimes selective removal. The interpretation of the protection of animals used for scientific purposes in Sweden is based on the EU Directive 2010/63/EU. The purpose of animal use, irrespective if the animal is suffering or not, decides the classification as a research animal, according to Swedish legislation. In Sweden, like in several other European countries, the legislation differs between research and management. Whereas, animal research is generally well-defined and covered in the legislation, wildlife management is not. The protection of wild animals differs depending on the procedure they are subjected to, and how they are classified. In contrast to wildlife management activities, research projects have to implement the 3Rs and must undergo ethical reviews and official animal welfare controls. It is often difficult to define the dividing line between the two categories, e.g., when marking for identification purposes. This gray area creates uncertainty and problems beyond animal welfare, e.g., in Sweden, information that has been collected during management without ethical approval should not be published. The legislation therefore needs to be harmonized. To ensure consistent ethical and welfare assessments for wild animals at the hands of humans, and for the benefit of science and management, we suggest that both research and management procedures are assessed by one single Animal Ethics Committee with expertise in the 3Rs, animal welfare, wildlife population health and One Health. We emphasize the need for increased and improved official animal welfare control, facilitated by compatible legislation and a similar ethical authorization process for all wild animal procedures.

It may be challenging to see how illegal hunting, a crime that ostensibly proceeds as shoot, shovel and shut up in remote rural communities, at all communicates with the regime. Examining the socio-legal interplay between hunters and state regulation, however, clarifies illegal hunting to be part of a politically motivated pattern of dissent that signals hunters' disenfranchisement from the polity. While few contemporary illegal hunters cut conscientious figures like Robin Hood, their violation of illegitimate law may likewise testify to a profound disjuncture between legality and legitimacy. This is the premise taken in the following research. Here it is observed contemporary Swedish hunters experience the deliberative system pertaining to wildlife and wolf conservation to be systematically stacked against them and unable to serve as a site for critical law-making that provides equal uptake of all voices. One manifestation of their growing disenfranchisement is the establishment of a counterpublic mobilised on the basis of shared semantics for the sorts of deliberative deficits they argue befall them in the present. Within the remit of their counterpublic, hunters undertake and justify illegal hunting along with other forms of disengaging dissent like abstentions, non-compliance, boycotts and conscientious refusals with state agencies. The research captures hunters' dissent in Smith's deliberative disobedience, a deliberative and Habermasian grounded reinterpretation of the more familiar classical theory of civil disobedience. On this perspective, illegal hunting signals a deficit in the deliberative system, which hunters both bypass by taking an alternative conduit for contestation, and draw attention to when they undertake dissent. The dissent in this case study is deconstructed in terms of its grammar—as simultaneously engaging and disengaging with the premises of power—and in terms of its communicative content. Set within the field of Environmental Communication, the dissertation is intended as an empirical and theoretical contribution to a discussion on the boundaries of political dialogue in the context of civic disenfranchisement: it asks whether some of hunters' dissent may be parsed as a call for a more inclusive debate, or as dialogic acts in themselves. Finally, it presents ways toward short-term and longer-term reconciliation of hunters with the deliberative system, drawing on the work of contestatory citizen mini-publics from the third wave of deliberative democracy.

There is a movement away from government governance of farm animal welfare towards more private governance. As a result, many farmers need to comply with both legislation and private standards simultaneously. The overall aim with this project was to study the intentions of different animal welfare regulations, and how effective these systems can be in improving animal welfare. The first study examined the intentions and values of various animal welfare regulations. The second study analysed the content and structure of different sets of Swedish regulations, and the last study focused on controls at the farm level, to identify common remarks and risk factors of non-compliance at dairy farms in official (CAB) and private (Arla) control. We found that the aim of a regulation could be quite vague, and more ambitious than what is included in the detailed requirements. Policymakers had different views on what constitutes 'necessary suffering' and 'natural behaviour'. These differences were seen both between countries, between regulations in a country, and between species in a regulation. The second study illustrated that private standards for dairy cows in Sweden partly covered the same requirements as the legislation, with the exception of the organic standard. However, due to vague wordings and different ways of measuring it was not always clear if the requirements were truly identical between the regulations. In the third study we identified that inspections focused on different areas; dirty dairy cattle being the most common non-compliance in official controls, and dirty cowsheds being most common during Arla audits. The highest risk for non-compliance was, however, similar for CAB and Arla; tie-stalls during winter. Organic farms had a lower risk for non-compliance compared to conventional farms. This project identified the need to clearly define concepts and desired animal welfare outcomes in order to reduce the gaps between intentions, requirements and assessments within a regulation. Also gaps between different animal welfare regulations need to be illuminated with the purpose of either clarifying the differences or reducing the gaps provided that the aims are similar. The presence of both similarities and differences between different regulations and control systems puts extra high demands on transparency, predictability and clarity during inspections.

The size of a country's police force is of great public and political concern. In the 2006 national election campaign the opposition coalition promised that if they would be elected the number of police officers in Sweden would increase from about 17 500 to 20 000 by the year 2010. The coalition was elected and the political goal was achieved. The main question in this report is: What impact will such an increase of the number of police officers have on the crime rate? In this report previous research, mainly from the United States, is reviewed and thoroughly analyses of the relationship between police strength and domestic burglary, robbery, homicide and car related offences in Sweden are made. The data consists of a random sample of 145 municipalities studied between the years 2001 and 2008. A complementary data set consists of all 21 police forces in Sweden between 1995 and 2009. Through panel data analysis it is concluded that an increase of the local police by 10 percent would possibly reduce domestic burglary by 3 to 4 percent. No impact is found on robbery, car theft or homicide, however. More police officers also means that more drug offences are being registered and more crimes in general being cleared-up. The allocation of police officers is also briefly investigated in this study. About 30 percent of all police officers in Sweden are allocated to Stockholm County. This proportion has been fairly stable over the last 15 years. However, the population in this metropolitan area has increase by 20 percent since 1995, compared to about 3 percent in the rest of the country. One consequence is that the surplus of police officers per capita in Stockholm in relation to the number of officers per capita in the rest of the country has decreased substantially.