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 paper argues that the Swedish 'neo-liberal' party (Moderaterna) has adapted its policies because of the popularity of the 'universal' Swedish welfare state. The party has come to accept that the modern welfare state is irreplaceable. We furthermore argue that the party's moderate electoral platform in 2006 is earnest. In the "short run" the party can only hope to achieve incremental changes & it recognizes this. Simultaneously however, the party in the "long run" wants to gradually change society. Over time the party in its rhetoric & ideological statements has emphasized the short & the long run differently. These differences between the 'neo-liberal' 1980s & 2006 should not conceal that the mechanism of welfare popularity largely remains the same. The party's actual policy proposals tend to suggest incremental changes only in both periods. Adapted from the source document.
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.
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.
The notion of political participation is elaborated. The public sector, & particularly the welfare state, creates many arenas for citizen participation outside of established formal political channels. Stubbergaard outlines a new research project on mothers' experiences in these arenas & how & to what extent the mothers become politically included. 16 References. Adapted from the source document.
Welfare, and the role of social democracy in defining its content and meaning, is often described as one of Sweden's distinguishing features. However, in the quest for liberalization and marketization, reforms in past decades have substantially changed the political landscape. These developments have led many to question the viability of describing the main political actors and their attitudes towards the welfare state in terms of left or right. This dissertation contributes to the understanding of ideological convergence and past and current political cleavages by analysing the welfare debate on freedom of choice between the two main political opponents in Swedish politics over three decades. Using a morphological approach, where ideologies are viewed as distinctive configurations of political concepts creating specific conceptual patterns depending on how they are combined, the analysis focuses on the content of the concept of choice by examining the conceptual relationships between political concepts such as choice, the public and the private, equality, equity and need. The analysis reveals a convergence suggesting that the parties have united around a narrower concept of freedom of choice that relates to how it is implemented in welfare services, that is, the choice between different providers of welfare services. However, important differences remain, which are expressed in the parties' differing conceptions of the power resources citizens need to become truly free individuals. These findings suggest that, while freedom of choice has become a central concept in the political debate, it is not central to the parties' ideologies. Instead, the core of the parties' ideologies appears to be articulated in e.g. the political cleavages that remain, which can be described as differing views on the role of politics and competing conceptions of need and equality. It is how these cleavages are translated into policies that will determine possible welfare choices in the future.
When animals are exposed to a novel situation such as transportation, they react by eliciting certain physiological and behavioural functions in order to cope with the situation. These changes can be measured to indicate how much stress the animal is suffering. Physiological stress indicators often measured in animal transport research include changes in heart rate, live-weight, cortisol levels, and blood composition including electrolytes, metabolites and enzymes (Broom and Johnson, 1993). Animal behavioural stress indicators include struggling, vocalisation, kicking or biting, hunching of the back, urination, defecation and recumbence (Broom et al. 1996; Gregory, 1998). Meat quality parameters post mortem can also help to indicate stress levels in animals (Grandin, 1990; Gregory, 1998). These include incidence of bruising and DFD in all farm animal species and PSE in pigs. Mortality is also an obvious indicator of poor welfare. Combined aspects of transport that contribute to causing stress in livestock include loading and unloading procedures, close proximity to stock handlers, water/feed deprivation, noise, riding in a truck, mixing with other animals and being forced into unfamiliar environments. The responses of stock to these conditions will depend on the animal's genetically controlled adaptability, physical condition and its previous handling experiences (Gross and Siegel, 1993). Factors such as the adequate preparation of animals for transport, controlled prior access to feed and water, minimal disruption to social groups, considerate animal handling skills, adequate handling and transport facilities including good ventilation in trucks, and careful driving technique are major areas that dictate the standard of animal transport. For example, considerations for pigs should include a pre-transport fasting period which balances the requirement to avoid hunger, travel sickness and deaths. Breeding and selecting for more stress-resistant genotypes of pigs can improve the welfare by reducing mortality and the metabolic consequences of transport stress. Other factors influencing animal transport include farm size and country size. For example, livestock transport in Scandinavia involves transport vehicles travelling to more than one farm in order to fill a vehicle. In Australia often one farm pick up can fill a truck, and although the distances may be much longer to the abattoir, it will be more direct. The market demand dictates the type of animals transported. For example the veal trade in Europe demands young live calves to be transported over long distances from northern countries which supply it to the southern countries which demand it. This trade exists in live animals rather than meat because the demanding countries further fatten and slaughter these animals specific to their needs. The industry set up influences the standard of animal transport in different countries. For example in countries where industries are vertically integrated consisting of producer-owned slaughter plant co-operatives (Sweden and Denmark), producers are paid according to slaughter weight and lean meat percentage, therefore there is more consistent quality control measures in place. In Australia the marketing system is such that it provides no economic incentive to reduce losses. Greater public awareness of animal welfare seems to be increasing in western countries, and as a result there is more pressure on the livestock industry to adopt better standards for the farming, handling, transport and slaughter of animals. The transport of livestock in Australia continues to be under increased scrutiny from overseas markets and animal welfare groups. In the European Union (EU), public pressure has been a successful instigator to the drafting and continued improvement of comprehensive legislation for animal transport. EU animal transport laws cover aspects such as minimum design standards for livestock vehicles (including ventilation controls), maximum journey lengths before resting intervals, stocking rates, what animals are considered as fit to travel, and general handling and care requirements of animals in transport. These laws are causing debate between northern and southern countries in areas such as maximum journey lengths and vehicle design standards. Some countries such as the UK have also gone to a great effort to adjust national laws in order to incorporate EU transport laws, but countries such as Spain and Italy have not. Typically it is these countries that more often have poor standards of animal welfare, and the welfare of farmed animals has historically been of low priority (Schmidt, 1995). When and how these countries will adopt the comprehensive EU animal transport regulations, continues to be an unanswered and politically sensitive question between EU member states.
In the quest for individualization and liberalization, policies within the Swedish public sectors have since the late 1980's been marked by market-like reforms. Despite earlier intense debates between Swedish parties on these reforms, parties across the political spectrum currently support the "choice agenda", as the reforms are known. To understand the process of how parties have come to mutually support choice reforms, I analyze the arguments of the Swedish Social Democratic and Conservative parties on private and public, in relation to the question of individual choice, from the late 1970s until today. The analysis reveals that the Social Democrats show continuity in the way that they attribute essential values to the state in regards of the state's capability of guaranteeing the desirable outcome (an equally distributed welfare), but a marked change in the instrumental values assigned to the market. Although the Conservatives show ambivalence regarding the desired functions of the state, it has not had the same impact on the conservative significance of the concept of choice and therefore the conservative ideology can appear as more coherent. For both parties, it seems, however, that the welfare society still requires a welfare state. Adapted from the source document.
The immigration of people from other parts of the world has meant new challenges to the Nordic welfare model and its fundamental idea of social integration and full citizenship. Current policy in Scandinavian countries calls for distributing newly arriving refugees between different regions and housing areas. This article examines the dilemmas created by this policy, and how such dilemmas are perceived and handled in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. With reference to previous related research, similarities and differences between the three countries' policies are analyzed at both national and local levels. The article's authors note that an immigrant policy characterized by the goal of social integration has created tensions between the ideals of integration versus the preservation of ethnic cultures, the individual versus the collective, and egalitarianism versus specialized treatment of immigrants as a group separate from the general population. Sweden, Denmark, and Norway have differed in their handling of these tensions, with Sweden opting for an approach based on a multicultural model, whereas Denmark has adopted a strict integrationist policy, including limits on the immigration of foreign residents' relatives, and Norway adopting a middle position. On the local level, the immigration policies and practices of Malmo, Arhus, and Oslo, as respective representative communities of the three countries under study, are compared. Adapted from the source document.
This article deals with the allez and retour provisions (Claes 2005: 84 f) of the Swedish constitution in relation to IU membership. What are the rules governing the transfer of sovereignty to the Union? And what are the provisions for assessing the constitutionality of the incoming tide of Union law into the domestic legal order? I have three objects in this essay. First, to describe how these two groups of constitutional rules were actually modified in the 2010 revision of the 1974 Instrument of Government. 1 find that neither was changed in any material way. Second, to try to explain the apparent reluctance of the parties involved to clarify the constitutional implications of EU membership. I find that this reluctance is rooted in a belief that European integration is not furthered if the rules contained in the allez and retour provisions are made stricter and more precise. Third, to confront a question conspicuously omitted by the parties in their revision: namely, by what criterion should the allez. and retour provisions be intertwined, if an optimum of hi-level constitutionalism is to be achieved? I argue that, in the end, the underlying issue is whether Swedish citizens want to see the principle of free movement applied as widely as possible. Do they want this principle to be applied across the board? Or would they prefer instead to restrict its application to the case of capital and goods, thus leaving them free to structure the labour market and welfare state as they themselves see fit? Adapted from the source document.
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.
