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Power is the key concept within political science. The majority of political scientists argue that power should be defined in behavioral terms as a relation of coercion between human agents. The traditional view confines power to human behavior & directly observable actions & reactions. Drawing on modern sociological, structuration theory, it is possible to generate a concept of structural power that goes beyond the behavioral perspective. Power is coercion, but the concept of power also refers to agents' structural capabilities. In a fundamental sense the concept of structural power directs attention to the unequal resource agents derive from their structural positions within the societal system. Moreover, structural power is intimately linked to other key notions, such as anticipated reactions & enduring relations of control. Finally, the structuralist perspective on power is highly illuminating of permanent barriers to full democratization in modern society. Unequal resources & social inequality represent major obstacles to the realization of the principles of political equality. 3 Figures, 1 Skema, 31 References. Adapted from the source document.

This thesis deals with questions of governance, control and discretion in state agencies. It is grounded on a case study of the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket), from its prelude in the late 1980s, to its start in 1991, through several governments, seven ministers and four direktor generals, up tp 2014. The empirical part of the thesis follows the periods of the four director generals. The study is based on a vast number of documents, supplemented with interviews. For the analysis, a model of governance and control was condensed from the literature. This model attempts to cover both the political governing of agencies and the internal organizational control of agencies. This model was furthermore developed into three ideal type control styles: Old public management/ Agency, New public management/ Actor, and New public governance/ Arena. Analysis showed that Skolverket started out as a new type of agency, resembling the ideal type of NPG/ Arena, but over time, with an increasing pressure from the political level, it gradually turned into a more "normal" state agency, at one period resembling the ideal type of NPM/ Actor but finally becoming more similar to the ideal type of OPM/ Agent, however with still strong internal traits of an Arena. Further analysis showed that the actual governance and control featured several crucial characteristics that proved to be of importance for the amount of discretion left for the directors and officials of the agency. These characteristics were the degree of 1) unified or plural value systems, 2) partial or comprehensive use of control "tools", and 3) high or low degree of specificity. These three characteristics were combined into eight different types of roles, each with a specific type and level of discretion, from the most restricted ("Authoritarian") to the most unrestricted ("Laissez-faire") and six other roles in between. It is proposed that this scheme of roles form a novel way of analysing the level and distribution of discretion in agencies.

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.

The literature highlights how climate change might challenge the definitions of wine geographical indications (GIs) in Europe. The central issue addressed in this thesis is whether European GI viticultural systems could tackle climate change via initiating adaptive institutional change processes to relax the constraints imposed by GI production standards. To do so, drawing from institutional economics theory and literature on cooperatives and collective brand, we developed a novel agent-based model (ABM) representing an abstract GI wine production system in the European Union (EU). Using illustrative data, our model allows testing different impact scenarios driven by climate change, spatial heterogeneity, and alternative institutional settings (i.e., voting mechanism). We used the model to explore individual and collective components of climate resilience and the relationship between economic agents and their environment. We compared the average output of 100 simulations for each of the 12 different climate-landscape-institution scenarios. The inclusion of endogenous institutional change led to considerable variations in all target variables, including the emergence of complex/chaotic behaviours. It enabled the system to reduce farm exits, increase profitability and collective brand value. We showed how landscape heterogeneity has a twofold role in the climate resilience of the system. It increases individual adaptability but obstructs collective adaptive capacity through institutional change. The two different voting mechanisms considered (i.e., relative and absolute majority) did not produce any discernible result. The study highlights the importance of policies oriented to strengthening investments in intangibles and facilitating GI rule amendments, especially in sectors where cooperatives predominate due to poor intangible investments capability and other issues connected to member heterogeneity.

This thesis explores the human-environment interaction within the climate-sensitive socio-ecological system of Lake Chilwa in Malawi. It uses the livelihoods framework to analyse various coping strategies to resource scarcity due to lake recessions. The main aim is to understand the processes by which decision-making takes place and the influence of various agents of change on coping with environmental shocks, i.e. water recessions. Lake Chilwa undergoes periodic water recessions with up to twelve incidents recorded between 1900 and 2012. While the lake and its wetland is an economic aquatic agriculture system in between recessions, it is unclear how households around the system survive during the periods of water recessions. Qualitative and quantitative studies were conducted between March 2012 and December 2013 on Chisi Island of Lake Chilwa to evaluate the coping strategies and their major drivers in responding to the periodic lake recessions. Using interpretive analysis, the findings show that people from the Lake Chilwa socio-ecological system have lived in anticipation of periodic environmental shocks due to their deep historical knowledge of the lake level and its fluctuations. This knowledge has been passed from generation to generation. Results further show that the main coping strategies that have stood the test of time for every recession are based on reciprocity and redistribution. These include sharing through kinship ties, hunting wild birds and farming. In many cases coping strategies for each specific recession are driven by political, social and economic factors prevailing at that particular period. Given these conditions, different agents (individuals or communities) make choices designed to maximise their own interests as they scramble to access scarce resources. Although natural resources in these systems are fundamental assets in rural livelihoods, accessing them in times of scarcity requires better governance systems that consider social, political and economic contexts.

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.

The aim of this thesis is to understand the decision-making processes concerning ice-breaking along the coast of Norrland, with the specific aim to analyse the activities of regional interest groups in the Norrland region and government agents at different administrative levels at the key stages of the decision-making processes: initiation, drafting and decision-making. The thesis also explores how institutional factors at different administrative levels affected the agents that were involved at those stages of the decision-making processes. As navigation along the northern Swedish coast must negotiate winter conditions which causes ports to freeze over, the government ice-breaking service functions as an instrument to compensate the export firms in Norrland for these constrains. Year-round navigation in the north Swedish coastal waters was achieved through a series of decision-making processes that took place during the period from 1940 to 1975. These decision-making processes are important to study since ice-breaking was an integrated component of the expanding heavy basic industries in Norrland and thereby for the rapidly growing exports during the 1950s and 1960s. This period is the decisive point in the economic history of the Norrland region regarding how the natural resources should be exploited and how exports should be advanced. This study concludes that the decision-making processes were initiated by government agents at different administrative levels. Official investigatory commissions were set up at several occasions to deal with issues related to the government ice-breaker service by the ministries responsible for ice-breaker policy. It is also demonstrated that the decision-making processes concerning ice-breaker investments were initiated by the government boards that were responsible for the operation of the ice-breaker service. In this respect, the study concludes that the government activities during the initiation stages should not be confused as a sign of regional interest group passivity on these issues. The activities of the interest groups during the initiation stages were primarily intended to draw attention to the problems caused by winter to regional shipping, in order to put the issue on the political agenda. As the decision-making processes proceeded into the drafting stages, the participation from regional interest groups was much more significant as the government offered interest groups forums and procedures for structural consulting through various organisational arrangements. The regional interest groups that participated in those arrangements were industrial firms in the heavy basic industries sector. In those cases other regional interest groups participated, they would promote the interests of those firms. As a result, the final drafts from committees and government bodies included arguments that favoured an expansion of ice-breaking to promote the growth of the heavy basic industries in the Norrland region. The analysis of the decision-making stages suggests that a combination of institutional factors at different administrative levels contributed to the outcome of the decision-making processes. One result is that the general aims of macro policy such as trade policy, growth policy and regional development policy were favourable towards an expansion of the government ice-breaker service, which would benefit the export industries in the Norrland region. Another result is that the sectoral organization within the government maritime bodies contributed significantly to the outcome of the decision-making processes. Large-scale planning and operational experimentation was allowed to take place within the ice-breaker service, which convinced the government that ice-breaking and winter navigation was a feasible transport alternative.

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.

Hermann Kappner var Nazitysklands viktigaste inflytelseagent i Sverige, men han hoppade av och fick den tyska legationen efter sig ? de ville röja honom ur vägen. 00I Tyskland såg man ?den nordiska rasen? som Västerlandets räddning och var därför särskilt intresserade av länderna i norr, inte minst Sverige. Nazisterna arbetade via svensk-tyska föreningar. Man bojkottade Nobelpriset när man ansåg att det gick till ?fel? pristagare och Den tyska akademien (Deutsche Akademie) betraktades som en Gestapo-filial. 00De svenska universiteten hölls under nazisternas uppsikt ? och sågs ofta som motståndsnästen. Även vanliga svenska skolor blev föremål för nazisternas infiltration. Man nyttjade också medicinen i rasbiologins tjänst och inbjöd svenska barnmorskor och läkare till Tyskland. Kulturutbyten stod också på Nazitysklands agenda med musik, film, teater och idrott. 00Birgitta Almgren undersöker sambanden ur denna synvinkel mellan språk, kultur och ideologi, mellan kulturklimat och tankemönster. Kappner blir ett exempel: anställd på Skolöverstyrelsen och samtidigt agent/spion åt Nazityskland. Han hoppar av, för att efter kriget återanställas av SÖ. 00Almgren undersöker vad tidsandan, händelserna, kulturklimatet och den polariserande verkligheten innebar för människorna. Mycket av källmaterialet har Almgren hittat i tyska arkiv, ej tidigare använt av svenska forskare. 00Birgitta Almgren är prof.em. vid Södertörns högskola och uppmärksammad forskare och författare till ? särskilt ? Stasi-böcker: Inte bara Stasi (två upplagor), Inte bara spioner och Dröm och verklighet. Hon har också utgivit 'Drömmen om Norden'

In May 1856 the EFS (the Swedish Evangelical Mission Society), influenced by the new evangelism-movement, was established as an "internal mission" within the Church of Sweden. During the same period the "new evangelism" revival movement established regional organizations in order to coordinate the movement in different parts of the country. These regional organizations consisted of the movement's local mission societies in a province or part of a province of Sweden. This study will focus on democracy and theological identity in the EFS through an analysis of how the regional organizations acted, what role they played, how the EFS was influenced by them and how the EFS decided to establish its own regional organization. One result of the earlier tensions between the regional mission organizations and the EFS was the establishment of the independent organizations Mission Covenant Church of Sweden (Svenska Missionsförbundet) (1878-) and Mission Society of Bible faithful Friends (Missionssällskapet Bibeltrogna Vänner) (1911-). This investigation looks into 17 of 36 regional mission organizations that existed. The time frame of the investigation is from the establishment of the EFS in 1856 to the establishment of the regional structure of the EFS in 1922. The EFS changed over time. The change of society and wishes from the movement's local mission societies and regional mission organizations were agents in this transformation. An important result of this research is that this transformation of the EFS proceeded at a slow pace and with the preservation of the EFS's theological identity.

The purpose of this dissertation is to describe, explain and understand how slowness appeared when some decisions were made in the area of welfare policy and how this slowness was eliminated. The study focuses on major changes. It is argued that such changes follow another logic than small gradual adjustments. Four breaking points have been selected for a deeper analysis: the pension policy decisions of 1913 and 1994 and the housing policy decisions of 1935 and 1992. These decisions led to the emergence of fundamentally new institutional structures concerning the relation between the central government and the citizens. The study shows that an established institutional structure within a welfare policy area generated mental constructs and decision rules that governed political decision-making. This governance resulted in slowness in the form of lengthy decision-making processes. The fundamental institutional structure was being altered only when the mental constructs were broken down. A common feature was that the decisions were first made when discontent with the prevailing order became so strong that it overwhelmed the fear of a new institutional structure. The general tendency was also to shape the fundamental changes in relation to the citizens so that the changes could be portrayed as small. The established mental constructs are the determining explanation for slowness. The interest organizations played a secondary role, as their interests are shaped in accordance with the mental constructs. Their resistance was declined at the same time when the mental constructs were broken down. The individuals – agents of change – that constantly worked for the change of system in reality appear to be significantly more interesting than hindering organization. Their influence showed a recurring pattern.