This paper aims at documenting the experience of the Environmental Research Center at the Royal Scientific Society in stakeholder participation in greywater management (treatment and reuse) in the rural communities in the northeastern Badia of Jordan. Stakeholders participating in the management process included local people, nongovernmental organizations, community-based organizations, governmental authorities, scientists and experts from universities and research institutions. The local stakeholders committee, NGOs, CBOs and local people have participated in capacity-building programs, data collection, situation analysis, problems identification, selection of types and locations of treatment technologies and construction and operation of treatment units and reuse projects. Experts, scientists and governmental entities contributed to the development of a treatment technology selection matrix and identification the best technology that suits the study area. The study reveals that the incorporation of input from a broad range of sectors and stakeholders during the project insured cooperative management of the greywater resources and enhanced project quality and ownership.
Good political science is about making true and important statements about politics. Its first task is to allow this objective to guide practical research -- and teach how to work. Good political science is not paralyzed by the difficulties of reaching one's own ideals. Nor is it more difficult to achieve those ideals than those of anybody more important. Good political scientists note that difficulties are reflected on them, but never let them reduce involvement in political science tasks. Only by way of exception may good political science consist of a discussion of good political science. Adapted from the source document.
The purpose of this article is to study how Sweden's political parties handled the process of constitutional review from 2004-2008. In particular the analysis examines how parties choose between their office-seeking, policy-seeking and vote-seeking goals and the desire to maintain ultra party agreement. Three expectations are identified: (a) parties' different strategic situations lead them to advocate different long-term goals; (b) different parts' levels will take different stands in order to increase their influence vis-a-vis other levels: (c) party leaderships will try to increase their freedom to negotiate with others by avoiding extensive intra party debates or decisions. The study is based on 30 interviews with representatives closely involved in the constitutional-reform process. The conclusion is that parties have self-interested goals as regards the question of how the political game should be regulated. The conflict between different intra-party levels is also obvious. However, due to party members' disinterest in the constitutional review, party leaders did not need to adopt a variety of strategies to avoid a large scale intra-part debate, It was enough for them to claim that the resulting compromise was actually something of a victory' for each party. Adapted from the source document.
Equal pay for equal work and equal opportunities for promotion, the theme of this study, serves to highlight the conditions for equality in one of the most important areas in most adult lives; work. Why study gender? One answer is that the ability to achieve equality in the social hierarchy, given equal qualifications, is a moral intuition that appears to be a necessary condition for steering a progressive society. Adapted from the source document.
The authors explore the question of whether activity on the part of Swedish authorities aimed at shaping public opinion has shifted from the dissemination of information to the issuing of propaganda. Their project involves four case studies of different agencies. Issues explored are the questions and themes taken up by authorities and which forms of opinion shaping organizations share in common, as well as which forms are unique to a specific type of administration. Adapted from the source document.
This volume describes the "Swedish part" (WP4) of the EU project COMPLEX, which has been dealing with pathways to a low carbon society with the Stockholm-Mälar region in focus. COMPLEX started on 1 October 2012 and ended after four years, on 30 September 2016. The central theme of the WP4 research has been to use the Stockholm-Mälar region as a sort of a "laboratory" for modelling and stakeholder interactions, but also for providing backgrounds, perspectives, tools and suggested policy outlines.
The object of this thesis is to describe, analyze and understand the terms and meanings of the public information and the political communication for local democracy, in today´s media landscape, out of the interaction between the main parties of the local society in Sjöbo and Ystad and from the stand point of earlier research and theories. The study has analyzed the actions performed by citizens, politicians, employees and journalists as well as the scenes for this information and communication. The interplay is a never ending power struggle between the three parties, concerning the accessibility of information and communication, especially to the kind that is given and takes place in informal, nonofficial rooms and channels which are not publicly accessible. Theories by M Weber, E Goffman, Z Bauman, M Foucault, J Habermas etc are being used. Case study method has given rise to three themes. The first describes how the increasing demands of rationalization, are displayed in the everyday practice, how it manifests in the interaction between the three parties, where processes of rationalization undermine the possibilities of dialogue. The second theme describes how the three parties use different strategies in order to obtain or keep the power of the information and the communication and thus the power of the politics, how the definitions of the main parties can be deconstructed and how the power can shift from one actor to another, depending on available power positions. Those in power withdraw themselves from communication with the citizens in different ways,by the use of different power techniques, which leads to a dynamic resistance where both journalists and citizens work out counter strategies. The public speech about the need to revitalize the civic sphere has been prominent for a long time. The third theme thus describes this promising speech of the public information and the political communication, how it has been handled and what the consequences are. The empirical material displays that the holders of the traditional power positions, tend to polish this visible side. The cosmetic considerations have proved to be the most significant ones in the studied practice and do play a significant part in the contemporary discursive practice as well as it terms the public information and the political communication. Those in power try to project the cosmetic democracy and the speech of new opportunities, on democracy, on the importance of communication and information and of participating, have become necessary ingredients in the cosmetic democracy, which is increasing. This does not mean that all democracy being exercised is cosmetic. Nevertheless, the surface and the speech of democracy become more distant from the content, by all the talk of its splendid qualities.
It is argued that political-administrative organizations are becoming increasingly complex with more horizontal governance required. In Swedish municipal administration, there is a group of administrators assigned the task of monitoring and promoting strategic topics that should be integrated horizontally within the organization. Examples of strategic topics are sustainability, safety/security, diversity, children/youth, public health, human rights, and gender equality. In the thesis, these administrators are called cross-sector strategists. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how cross-sector strategists become a part of the political-administrative organization when representing, enacting, and reflecting on values in the undertaking of their formal posts. They are situated between the tradition of vertical governance, with formal procedures and hierarchy as its foundation, and the tradition of horizontal governance, with informal networks and deliberation as its foundation. Previous research has shown that this is likely to give rise to value conflicts, and the question is if cross-sector strategists experience value conflicts, and if so, how they cope with them. The cross-sector strategists are studied in this thesis from the perspective of situated agency – focusing on both the contextual expectations of the cross-sector strategists and on their internal reflections to solve value conflicts – in order to explore their process of becoming a part of the local government administration. A mixed-methods design is applied, containing analysis of job advertisements for cross-sector strategists, public managers, and social workers; in-depth interviews with cross-sector strategists; and a survey of professional networks for cross-sector strategists. The results show that cross-sector strategists are subjects to ambivalent and often-contradictory contextual expectations. Cross-sector strategists use the ambivalence of their work for their strategic purposes, and such ambivalence allows them to reframe their topics, their methods, their arguments, and their identity according to current situation in order to increase the impact of their assigned topics and diminish the inner conflict of wanting to be both a responsive bureaucrat and an active lobbyist. Combining these two dedications requires them to be highly reflexive and flexible actors. The outcome of cross-sector strategists' coping with value conflicts can be interpreted in two ways: 1) as if the cross-sector strategists are a formal tool to safeguard crucial democratic and ethical values due to the cross-sector strategists' method of sneaking the strategic policy areas into the organization. Or 2) as a to democracy risky administrative behavior in the long-term due to the disguising of value conflicts and diminished possibilities to process these value conflicts
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.
Herbert Tingsten's program for the critical analysis of ideologies promised to make political science more useful for understanding current political developments. However, in this article it is argued that these promises cannot be sustained unless normative political analysis is included as well. A point elaborated, is that there is a close analogy between normative political analysis and public policy evaluation. In both cases, the aim is mainly to illuminate the implications and consequences of certain values and ideals -- not to prove them. In this sense, the usefulness of normative research is evident in that it enlarges and deepens our understanding of the values and principles to which we are committed. References.
This article discusses the political relevance of recent proposals on universal basic income to the Swedish welfare state. I explore powerful arguments in favour of such proposals in this particular institutional context & confront them with two dimensions of the objection of political unfeasibility: (a) that basic income implies more fundamental normative & institutional discontinuity than sustainable implementanon allows & (b) that an adequate basic income would be unaffordable. I argue that this objection does not apply to all meaningful basic income schemes. Partial basic income & time-limited basic income promise to bring many advantages of a full basic income without implying a brutal clash with either (a) or (b). References. Adapted from the source document.
The nation is often portrayed as a natural political unit, a bearer of common values facilitating democracy & equality. However, the construction & reproduction of nations is also intimately tied to hierarchies & mechanisms of power, not least gender power. This article shows how nation & gender arc construed simultaneously in ideas & symbols, as well as in everyday practices. The article argues that memory work is a possible way to gain insight into the everyday construction of gender & nation, & to develop new theoretical understandings. An overview of central themes of the discussion on gender & nation is presented. Memory work makes explicit the ambivalent processes by which women as acting subjects are denied agency & turned into objects of the nation. References. Adapted from the source document.
At the centre of this study lies one of the critical questions faced by (late-)modern society, namely that of taking care of the long-lived radioactive waste from nuclear power production. The problems of nuclear waste management are pictured as embracing a complex web of essential issues for society today, in terms of both its capacities and its shortcomings – so called core issues. The principal aim of the thesis is to examine the nuclear waste discourse in Malå, Västerbotten, from a critical discourse analytical perspective, through applying the approach developed by Michel Foucault in The Order of Discourse. During the 1990s, the municipality of Malå played a prominent role as a candidate site for the geological disposal of Sweden's spent nuclear fuel. A five-year process culminated in a local referendum on whether detailed site investigations should be permitted within the community. Following the result no further investigations have been undertaken. The discourse analysis is carried out through a study of opinion formation in the municipality during the period October 1992 to October 1997. Two main types of empirical material have been collected: interviews with opinion leaders (politicians, activists, journalists, information professionals, etc.) and contemporaneous mass media content (the local newspaper and regional television news). In the empirical analysis, a review is made of the workings of the external and internal control mechanisms within the discourse; that is to say, how they serve to set limits on the content and form of the sense-making process concerning nuclear waste management. Important themes in the opinion forming process in Malå include information and expertise, opposition and legitimacy, the centre/periphery relationship and the themes of mistrust, partitioning and rejection. Among other themes identified as being marginalised or absent, one example is the Samish citizens' views on the nuclear question. Four actors play a prominent role as authors of the discourse, namely the nuclear industry, the experts, Greenpeace and the mass media. The voices of resistance groups are also significant. Representatives from authorities and civil servants were most likely to take the commentary role in the discourse, along with journalists. In the concluding analysis of the nuclear waste discourse in Malå, two main types of desire for truth, which form the discourse's main order, are identified. The stronger concerns the will to know, which places the expert with a scientific background as the principal truth-teller. The other is 'ordinary' people's desire, which influences the content and form of the opinion formation. It is also concluded that the mass media institutions play a significant role in this context, not least as mediators. Reflections on contemporary 'core issues' to which the analysis bears witness, such as the crisis of democracy, are also included. In addition, the implications of applying the Foucaultian research programme to a study of the nuclear question have been considered.
This dissertation addresses party-culture in political parties represented in the Swedish parliament. Party-culture is investigated by studying collective self-images and norms in Swedish parliamentary party-groups (PPG). The aim of this investigation is to contribute to understanding of the conditions under which parliamentary work is carried out. In order to expand our understanding of these conditions this dissertation looks beyond the formal processes by which party-groups deliver their political message and make decisions, and instead highlights the cultural aspects of these party organizations in the parliament. The method of analysis is qualitative and the material for the study consists of 53 interviews with members of parliament from all represented parties. The parties studied are thus the Social Democratic, Moderate, Liberal, Christian Democrats, Left, Centre, and Green. In addition, some participant observation for the 1998-2002 mandate period in used. The empirical investigation shows that party-culture is revealed via four basic themes: political ability, feelings of political responsibility, the importance social fellowship, and the party's strength in relation to individual party members. The party's culture based on the four themes noted above provides a theoretical structure for interpretation that combines an Aristotelian idea about basic knowledge types, sophia and phronesis, with cultural theorists Mary Douglas' grid-group-analysis. Based on this interpretation method it is shown that party-cultures distinguish themselves from each other in a way that diverges from the left-right spectrum that dominates Swedish politics. At the same time as the parties demonstrate differences in party-culture, there are also some similarities between the parties, and these similarities suggest that the parties have adjusted themselves to a more general culture within the parliament, most visibly the focus on factual knowledge and a certain requirement for modesty from party members. ; Konverterat ISBN: 978-91-554-5882-9
Authors stress that farm animal welfare (FAW) has become a mainstream contemporary societal demand worldwide, resulting in research conducted with FAW. The most popular type of research are surveys that analyse consumers' attitudes towards FAW, yet, these are limited geographically to the European Union, the United States, and Canada. Very few studies have been done in Latin America, regardless of evidence that suggests an expected increase in the social demand of FAW and its associated products. FAW related knowledge in terms of consumer preferences today, still scarce in Latin American countries, with only Mexico, Chile, and Brazil being the referent countries creating scientific publications that address FAW. Nevertheless, such scientific publications often focus on farmers and slaughter practices, excluding consumers' attitudes and perceptions. Thus, this study acknowledges that the agri-food chain is integrated by different actors, focusing on understanding what FAW is from the consumers' perception perspective. This study aimed to investigate the Mexican respondents' perceptions in their role of consumers of animal-based food when forming a meaning for FAW. Thus, a novel approach was embraced by applying the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) and interpreting the results based on the Means-End Chain (MEC) theory and the Schwartz's personal values theory; this approach, together with the findings, are the study's key contribution. The findings in this research suggest that when attaching a meaning for FAW, the meaning respondents build is complex, being integrated by a set of hierarchical relationships. These relationships are integrated by elements like attributes leading to consequences, to achieve a specific set of values. The study displays them graphically through a Hierarchical Value Map (HVM) representing the first-ever Mexican respondents' mental model when forming a meaning for FAW. By examining such elements, this study discovered that respondents consistently reflected FAW as a set of specific and distinctive characteristics in animal-based food; such characteristics are the attributes free from chemicals, more natural, higher quality, cruelty-free, better taste, ethical and artisan-made. Also, the respondents perceived FAW as a physiological or psychological result happening not to them as a person, but to the farmed animals, taking the form of a set of consequences that were consistently evoked by them and that reflect their thoughts of FAW being no pain/painless life, freedom of movement, free from stress, non-alteration of the animals' development, access indoor/outdoor, access to natural food and water, no overexploitation, dignified life, access to medical care, non-forced reproduction, access to socializing with their own species, access to rest and sleep, dignified slaughter and recognition of farmed animals as sentient beings the recurrent constructs. Finally, when thinking of FAW, the respondents ultimately reach three end-states: being compassionate, wellness, and achievement. The results displayed here might serve as a source of useful knowledge or a guideline when the time comes, and the actors in the agri-food chain -producers, distributors, marketers, and policy-makers- in Mexico decide to listen to the consumer concerns by embracing FAW practices and designing FAW frameworks which goal is the insurability of farm.
