Suchergebnisse

This thesis is about the conflict between participation and bureaucracy. This conflict is illustrated by a case study within the Swedish Armed Forces under the activity that preceded the 1996 Resolution on Defence. More closely it focuses on the decision-making process that led to the Swedish Armed Forces report that were handed over to the Government in March 1996. In this decision-making process the Supreme Commander tried different ways to create participation among all the high- ranking officers, from local up to Headquarters level, to make them participate in the process. The thesis answers the question if it is possible to create participation in a bureau­cratic organisation such as the Swedish Armed Forces, and the conclusion that I draw is that participation is hard to establish. First there is a conflict within the bureaucratic form itself, since a bureaucracy implies a diversification of assignments and responsibilities in different functions and at different levels in a hierarchy. Every level has its own task to fulfil and this states how reality is to be understood. In the Swedish Armed Forces the bureaucratic structure is reinforced by the fact that the officer is promoted to a higher rank after his or her military training. Both the bureaucratic structure and the military training will lead to a differentiation between individuals, and they will be placed in different skills and status levels within the organisation. Besides this, individuals will gather information mostly from their own level, which will further fortify the difference between the levels. Furthermore there are also individual factors connected to the bureaucratic structure that have shown to complicate participation. For example individuals choose not to participate since they experience that they lack necessary competens for the task, that they do not have time, that they have not been consulted or that they consider the task to be solved at a higher level. So even if the military decision-making model encourages and advocates partici­pation, there is a big difficulty to break the bureaucratic design. Leaders often show inability to go from a bureaucratic leadership style to a democratic one. At the same time the subordinate support their leaders when they act as a traditional leader. ; digitalisering@umu

In recent years, ideas of conscience and the liberty of conscience have become ever more salient in public discourse. Historically, these concepts have been used to mark out a certain scope of freedom and protection in moral, political and legal conflicts. In our time, individual conscience is frequently used to legitimate objections to, for instance, military service and medical interventions like abortion and vaccination. So too in Sweden – a country widely described as one of the most modern and secularized societies in the world. In this volume, a group of researchers in history, human rights, law, ethics and sociology of religion address some of the most central issues around conscience and the liberty of conscience in Sweden from the middle ages to the present. By situating conscience and liberty in wider intellectual, social and political settings, the essays provide alternative ways of thinking about the most intractable problems surrounding these concepts – the relationship between law and morality, the tension between individual and collective freedom, as well as the role of religion in public affairs. This volume will create new avenues of research for scholars and students interested in challenges related to conscience and liberty: both those in ethics, politics and law seeking a historical perspective, and those in history who want to tie their studies to the present.