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The 'socioenvironmental state' conceptualisation probes how contested, shifting, emergent boundaries of the state contain the possibilities for transformative change in the Anthropocene. The paper outlines a research programme capable of addressing the questions: who becomes authorised to govern change, who is required to make changes on the ground, and what subjectivities and pathways emerge in the context of rapid rate change? The conceptualisation unpacks three boundaries: state– society, its socionatural emergence, and the relationships between boundary-making and belonging to address these questions and better account for the successes and failures of attempts at governing an uncertain, rapidly changing world. In this analysis, 'environmental change' arises as a stochastic, relational becoming – ecologies and resources are emergent with the social-politics of governing them – suggesting that more analytical attention is required on how 'environmental challenges' and their 'drivers of change' are conceived and delimited. Together, these theoretical insights help reveal the way that the micro-politics of local resource use and the contradictory acceptance and refusals of authority and subjection are not only products of, but also productive of, larger scale political economies, socionatures, governance, and political struggles. The aim is to contribute towards a reimagination of political authority that begins to capture the complex interplay between our attempts at governing a changing world and the inadvertent authorisations, inclusions, and exclusions that we produce in those efforts. The paper partially illustrates the conceptual ideas with an account of forestry and climate change in Nepal. In a context wherein programmes to govern resources have become of global concern, probing the implications of these points is crucial. It is not only that states govern resources with particular consequences for 'environmental change' or 'sustainability', but also that the act of governing resources (re)produces the socioenvironmental boundaries of the state with profound implications for how future transformations can unfold.

A world government based on democratic principles would be ideal, but this is unlikely to come about any time soon. However, the mere impossibility of immediately implementing an idea does not make that idea wrong. Meanwhile one can work through existing institutions such as the UN and European Union to improve accountability in the arena of world politics. Adapted from the source document.

This thesis aims to explain how small states, in this case Sweden, security politics adapts to new circumstances after great conflicts in the 20th century. The analytical model is built by a combination of the opposite theories of international politics, realism and idealism, combined with actor based and structure based perspectives and thus creating a four field analytical matrix. The empirical foundation constitutes of three post conflict periods; post-first world war, post-second world war and post-cold war periods. For every period three cases are analyzed; one foreign politics initiative, one association to an international organization and one defence politics decision. In the post-first world war period the focus is on the Swedish intervention of the Åland archipelago, the association to the League of Nations and disarmament decision in 1925. In the post-second world war period the focus is on the association of Sweden to the United Nations, the Swedish initiative to a Scandinavian defence alliance and the defence decision of 1948. In the post-cold war period the focus is on the Swedish association to the European Union, the Swedish participation in the NATO led IFOR operation in Bosnia and the defence decision in 1996. The main conclusions of these investigations are that small states, like Sweden, both are restricted in their foreign and security politics by international structures and able to use the same structure to promote their interests. Time is a key element for analyzing both structural and actor based aspects of a small states capacity. Also, in the case of Sweden, there tends to be a tension between an idealistic dominated politics and a realistic dominated politics when it comes to foreign and security politics, and that idealism seems to have increased in the latter period.