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For democracy to be something more than an empty shell and the work of a modern society, citizens have the opportunity to attend meetings where decisions are emerging. This means that there must be arenas in which citizens and elites are able to converse among themselves and with each other. Civil society can, under certain circumstances play a critical role in facilitating such conversations. The talks at these venues should also be based on relevant experience and skills that participants reflect on together. Adapted from the source document.

The overarching purpose with this study is to contribute to the discussion on realignment along political cleavages in Swedish politics. Civil society organizations, active in the wolf debate in Sweden, are investigated to unfold their strategic interest in mobilizing along the cleavages Urban-rural or Centre-periphery. Interviews have been conducted with persons active in hunter's and environmentalist organizations. The results show that the cleavage Centre-periphery has a mobilizing potential, while the cleavage Urban-rural has a more limited potential. Adapted from the source document.

In addition to traditional established types of entities i.e., government, the marketplace, and civil society there has been a growing trend in recent years toward partnerships between organizations in the public and private spheres. Organizations can form partnerships but at the same time remain separate, autonomous entities. The manner in which such partnerships are organized and regulated is examined. For data-gathering purposes, plans are underway to conduct comprehensive interviews of private and public actors. Adapted from the source document.

Two main arguments are presented in this article. First, when alternatives for the future of local government is debated, two questions need to be addressed simultaneously: (a) "how many & how big municipalities ought we have?", & (b) "how strong & well secured ought the principle of local self government be in the constitution?". Second, by using these questions as guides for the analysis, we argue that there are instrumental reasons to guarantee a strong local self-government in the constitution. However, such a reform needs to be complemented by a politically neutral body of regulations that, under given conditions, secures geographically concentrated minorities a right to secede. Adapted from the source document.

In a famous article from 1959, David Easton claimed that political anthropology has nothing to tell a political scientist, since it does not treat the state as a separate sphere. To make such a claim, Easton had to assume stability in the distribution of functions between the Westphalian state & the co-existing society, similarity between European Westphalian states, & likeness between the European state & all other states in the world. Fifty years later it seems to be clear why Easton was mistaken, & why state comparisons that do not problematize the historical & sociological conditions of every single state formation have failed. If one wants to understand the state in the age of globalization, the point of departure must be to ask how the relationship between state & society continuously changes, not if it does. As Easton points out, this is exactly what political anthropology mainly has focused on. The article gives an overview of how this has been done, from Lewis Henry Morgan to James C. Scott. It calls on political scientists to study the state empirically to a higher degree, as an endogenous part of the analysis or a dependent variable, rather than treating it as either a given starting point, an exogenous part of the analysis, or an independent variable. 44 References. Adapted from the source document.

Social capital has been conceptualized both as a contextual property of communities & as a property of individuals. Two of the building blocks of the notion of social capital are social participation & trust. High levels of social participation & trust are reciprocally reinforcing with two-way causality, according to the literature. However, this mutual relationship is highly dependant on the quality of the social participation. During the last decades, membership & activity levels have decreased in traditional political parties, unions, & other organizations, while social participation in the form of Internet chats, single-issue movements, etc. probably has increased. At the same time the number of persons with a high level of generalized trust has sharply decreased in many Western countries, even though the trend is not apparent in Sweden. A high level of social participation in programmatically smaller networks & organizations with low trust has been called "miniaturization of community" by Fukuyama. The miniaturization of community & its implications for political science research are discussed, as well as the institutionalism perspective as an approach to study the causes of the miniaturization of community. Tables, Figures, Appendixes, References. Adapted from the source document.

The objective behind this article is to study the proliferation of the politics of information technology (IT) in Sweden, 1994-2003, based on a discourse analysis. The article argues that the Swedish IT political discourse is characterised by a guiding rule according to which there exist an autonomous & inevitable historical path towards the "information society." Swedish citizens are defined as dependent subjects, without any means to influence the advent of this new society. Instead they have to comply with new requirements in terms of swift social adaptation & life-long learning. In addition, the IT-political discourse is distinguished by nationalist optimism, as well as democratic ambitions. This also gives rise to peculiar contradictions within the discourse, for instance in the educational arena where there is a clash between individualist pedagogical doctrines & collective compliance to the information society. The author concludes that Swedish IT politics have hitherto mainly focused on affecting definitions & perceptions through the persuasive use of a model of steering which the author labels "visionary governance," ie, the establishment of an authoritative definition of the future by certain experts or "visionaries." Discursive power within such a model consists in making all actors addressing the political issue unanimously. 24 References. Adapted from the source document.

Takes as a starting point Aristotle's cross-tabulation of forms of government, which combines the size of the governing body (one, few, many) with the purpose of the governing (in the governors' interest or in the interest of all). Among the six possible combinations, the discussion rules out those which are unrealistic &/or undesirable. This exclusionary process selects two governmental forms for comparison: government by experts (the equivalent of Aristotle's "aristocracy," ie, government of few in the interest of all) & democracy. The comparison counts both intrinsic & instrumental value of these governmental forms. Expert government's instrumental & intrinsic values are circumscribed. Democracy's instrumental value is overrated. The intrinsic value of democracy is theoretical equality of its citizens to influence their government. While this equality may be flawed in practice, no alternative form of government seems better than democracy. 18 References. Adapted from the source document.

In a comparative perspective, Sweden is a society with high social trust, corruption, law and high political trust. Research shows that the presence of social trust in society is crucial for economic growth, corruption, law and functioning democratic institutions. A society with high levels of trust leads to positive effects of increased security, more economic equality, more tolerance, better health and increased ability to solve social problems of various kinds. Adapted from the source document.

Katarina Eckerberg, Chairperson of the Society of Political Sciences, informs members of the new Borad of Directors, & exhorts all members & students to actively participate in the coming activities of the Society. Promises to organize the website, to publish more regularly, to improve the political science debate in general. A. Barral

This article raises the issue of 'industrial relations' in the public sector, ie, how employer-employee relations are conceptualized in liberal democratic political theory. The historical & theoretical legacy of this conceptual apparatus can help explain why the welfare workers (employed in publicly financed health care, social service, education, elderly care, & day care for children) are hardly mentioned in the liberal democratic scheme. The liberal democratic state traditionally focuses on political subjects as if they all were citizens/cohabitants (in the civil society), when in fact roughly 20% of the Swedish electorate at the same time are citizens/co-workers (in the local welfare state). The issue of rights & duties in direct & indirect relations between the local state & the citizenry is therefore heavily biased in favor of the citizen-as-cohabitant/consumer. If both these roles of the citizenry were adequately handled in political theory, this would possibly cast a new light on New Public Management as well as the current Swedish focus on freedom of choice ('exit rights') for welfare consumers. It is argued that there is nothing inherent in liberal democratic political theory that could block the application of the idea of a neutral & benevolent state to the citizen-as-coworker. A coherent application of the Marshallian scheme of civil, political, & social rights therefore means the inclusion of social rights to citizens-as-co-workers. 55 References. Adapted from the source document.

This paper presents a rational reconstruction of Kropotkin's view on human nature, institutional change and economic development. Kropotkin shows that mutual aid among animals as well as in human society is far more important than recognized by contemporary individualist interpretation of Darwinism on society. His major contribution to political economy is that he offers an endogenous model of why institutions exist. However, his biological determinism and ethical naturalism imply that he disregard historical context, which leads him to de facto apply the perspective of historical idealism. The rise of the modern state, for example, he explains by the spread of the "idea of the state" and not by the economic development. Adapted from the source document.