Suchergebnisse

The gambling business entails geo-economic opportunities for islands, especially in times of online gambling. However, it also involves risks like ill mental health, debt, and social problems. Furthermore, a heavy reliance on gambling revenues involves great moral dilemmas, especially when the gambling provision is operated within a not-for-profit public regime. This study concerns how these aspects are negotiated in the public discussion in Aland Islands, an autonomous group of islands situated between Finland and Sweden. By ruling of its regional parliament and the Finnish Lotteries Act, the Aland-based gambling monopoly company Alands penningautomatforening (Paf) has the right to provide onshore gambling on the Islands, on the Internet, and on cruise ships trafficking the Baltic Sea. The study examines Paf's role as a pillar of the local community, and the ways in which this position is sustained and contested. By analyzing a corpus of 862 online texts from local newspapers and public radio services from 2006-2018, this study demonstrates how Aland depends on an incongruous public construction of Paf as a responsible actor that is simultaneously criticized for not exercising greater transparency and responsibility, highlighting a contradiction between the provision of harmful gambling products and economic benefits for the community. ; Peer reviewed

Finland has one of the last fully monopolistic gambling sectors in Europe. Unlike in most Western European countries, the monopoly is also consolidated and enjoys a wide support as opposed to license-based competition. This paper analyses whether this preference for monopoly provision is due to the particularities of the Finnish society or rather to those of the Finnish gambling sector. We do this by comparing public discourses in media texts (N=143) from 2014 to 2017 regarding monopolies operating in alcohol retail, rail traffic and gambling sectors. The results show that gambling appears to be special even in the Finnish national context. While the Finnish alcohol retail and railroad traffic markets have been liberalised during the study period, the gambling monopoly has been concurrently strengthened despite similar political and international pressures towards dismantling. The discussion suggests that the differing outcomes reflect the varying positions of monopolies, their stakeholders and the justifications put forward. Intertwined stakeholder interests in the gambling sector appear to amplify consensus politics and set gambling apart from the other cases.

Finnish state monopolies have been in a state of change during the mid-2010s. This paper focuses on the developments of the alcohol retail, railroad and gambling sectors during this period by analysing media texts (N=143) from 2014 to 2017 and with the concepts of Kingdon's Multiple Streams Framework (MSF). Results show how the convergence of politics, policies and problematizations opened policy windows for government initiatives to liberalize alcohol retail and railroad traffic markets while consolidating the gambling monopoly. The differing outcomes are surprising given that they all took place under the same liberal right-wing government, as well as under obligations to dismantle monopolies in the European Union and in accordance with international commerce treaties. The explanation unfolds by looking at the stakeholders and their justifications. Differing outcomes also reflect the varying trajectories through which the policy processes proceeded, although they seem to conclude with consensus and at least a semblance of agreement between the different parties when a decision is reached. The study gives insight into how state monopolies are negotiated in contemporary Europe. ; Peer reviewed

"Governing Human Lives and Health in Pandemic Times looks into the instruments and the type of reasoning involved when large-scale social control strategies were implemented worldwide in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The repertoires of institutional and administrative governance tools used during the pandemic are studied in their unique institutional, socio-geographic and cultural settings, in order to form an understanding of the political climates and the values inscribed in current societal contracts. The book is intended for academic audiences interested in policy research, health governance, and civil societal issues. It will be of great relevance and use for a wide audience of policy-makers, public officials and health care planners as well as students in a broad range of disciplines"--

This study is concerned with the Finnish government's political programmes (N=42) from the 1950s to the present. Its objective is to examine how conceptions of the welfare state have changed over the past 65 years. The analysis concentrates on the social and health care sectors as indicators of the content and nature of the ambitions set for the welfare system by the highest political leadership. The programmes were examined for their aims, character and concepts. The governments' changing position towards its welfare political mandate emerges in three distinct periods: 1) 1950 through the 1970s, when the welfare state was being constructed; 2) the 1980s and 1990s, as the concept was further developed and internally synchronized; and 3) 2000 to 2015, a time of increasing estrangement from universal notions. The study shows that as late as 2014, the welfare state's aims of inclusion and universalism were dramatically toned down to an absolute minimum in the government programmes. The article shows that in contemporary times, the coalition government system may have strengthened the welfare state ethos. This is a finding of great significance for a structural-political perspective on the support of welfare state ideas.

This study is concerned with the Finnish government's political programmes (N=42) from the 1950s to the present. Its objective is to examine how conceptions of the welfare state have changed over the past 65 years. The analysis concentrates on the social and health care sectors as indicators of the content and nature of the ambitions set for the welfare system by the highest political leadership. The programmes were examined for their aims, character and concepts. The governments' changing position towards its welfare political mandate emerges in three distinct periods: 1) 1950 through the 1970s, when the welfare state was being constructed; 2) the 1980s and 1990s, as the concept was further developed and internally synchronized; and 3) 2000 to 2015, a time of increasing estrangement from universal notions. The study shows that as late as 2014, the welfare state's aims of inclusion and universalism were dramatically toned down to an absolute minimum in the government programmes. The article shows that in contemporary times, the coalition government system may have strengthened the welfare state ethos. This is a finding of great significance for a structural-political perspective on the support of welfare state ideas.