Suchergebnisse

Political participation is promoted as a central component in a democracy. But what specifically is it that makes participation valuable and how do different forms of participation differ in regard to outcomes? A central aim of this study is to understand why different forms of participation produce different kinds of effects. The argument developed is that participation can be understood as having two fundamental dimensions ? a conflictual and an institutional. These dimensions are used as tools for creating a typology of participation consisting of conflictual and non-conflictual, and by the institutional dimension, integral, semi-integral and non-integral types. Analysing and comparing participation forms from the perspective of these types and through the lens of political equality helps us to understand the effects of participation on both a structural and individual level. Political equality is a central normative value that forms of political participation must be related to. However, if we are to take political participation at the local level seriously the idea of political equality should be related to the character of the political issue and focus should be on equality within political processes. The analysis shows that the differences in outcomes are substantial and varied. The character of the different types and their usefulness for different political issues means that they should be regarded as complementary and overlapping rather than mutually exclusive.The study's empirical analysis shows that even though a lot of effort has been put into including citizens in local Swedish politics, the results have been somewhat disappointing. In understanding why this is the case it is important to consider the over-arching democratic context. This is also found to be important is explaining the rather uneasy cooperation between citizens and public decision-makers such as local politicians and civil servants. This suggests that the limited impact of new forms of participation can be understood in relation to their relative strength (or lack of it) in the discourse of mainstream politics. This suggests an evolution towards one of two possible futures. The first is a position where the reforms successively gain legitimacy and evolve into participatory institutions where participants hold substantial power and are able to determine the outcome of decisions. Alternatively a position may emerge where the lack of genuine interest in wider participation leads to scepticism and disillusion about the possibility to democratise local politics. At present there are signs of both of these developments.

This article investigates the public debate on the politics and voters of the Swedish neo-nationalist partySverigedemokraterna (SD) as it is manifest in the media coverage from the elections in September 2006 toMay 2007. We firstly aim to identify ideological positions manifest in the public debate of SD-politics andtheir voters in the fields of democracy and culture. Secondly, we aim to abstract the results of this inquiryto a general level of societal reconfigurations of European societies. Methodologically, we use ideologyanalysis to (1) identify manifest messages articulated through different positions in the public debate and to(2) scrutinize rhetorical figures, which inadvertently or deliberately, sustain the messages and provide themwith a certain degree of credibility. Even if representatives from the established parties seek to maintain adichotomy between SD and the rest, the analysis of the usage of rhetorical figures reveals a net of identityrelations rather than a mere distinction between "Us" and "them". SD endeavours to act at the margins ofthe European Grammar, which conveys, on the one hand, common values of democracy, rule-of-law andhuman rights and, on the other hand, a politics of fear based on a perception of the outside world asultimately dangerous. Our findings suggest that processes of Europeanization not only indicate increasedconvergence between various post-national or cosmopolitan views. On the contrary, the Europeanization ofneo-nationalism, somewhat paradoxically, shows proof of how also xenophobic nationalist movementshave benefited from, or at least profited on the European Integration process.

In the 2010 Swedish general elections the nationalist party Sverigedemokraterna (SD) crossed the threshold and entered parliament. The other parties in parliament reacted with strong antagonism; the mainstreaming of the "radical right" had finally come to Sweden. This article analyses the media coverage of the SD following the 2006 elections, when it emerged as a high-profile party in the public arena. The presence of the SD in Swedish politics encourages both SD allies and opponents to emphasize their views on what constitutes social cohesion in Sweden. We see the public debate surrounding the SD as a rhetorical struggle between different nationalist claims. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractIn the 2010 Swedish general elections the nationalist party Sverigedemokraterna (SD) crossed the threshold and entered parliament. The other parties in parliament reacted with strong antagonism; the mainstreaming of the 'radical right' had finally come to Sweden. This article analyses the media coverage of the SD following the 2006 elections, when it emerged as a high-profile party in the public arena. The presence of the SD in Swedish politics encourages both SD allies and opponents to emphasize their views on what constitutes social cohesion in Sweden. We see the public debate surrounding the SD as a rhetorical struggle between different nationalist claims.

Organisational actors in the public sector are often characterised as path-dependent and tendingto reject or translate change in accordance with institutional norms, while management change isoften interpreted as emanating from "above" (international organisations, governments, thinktanks).In this article we present, inspired by Dunleavy's bureau-shaping approach, acomplementary understanding of incremental changes which goes beyond the existingexplanations. Our claim is that incremental changes often are caused by 'pull-factors' inside theorganisation. Based on an in-depth study of five Swedish public agencies 1980-2005 we presentan inductively-derived typology of organisational change. In the five organisations considered, itis shown that the management level has been able to influence changes which emanate from"push-factors" in the environment (such as streamlining, cost reduction and symbolicadaptations). But the paper also highlights more gradual changes – "small but significant steps"- such as increased hiring of social scientists and managerialisation as important features in theprocess of reconstructing the agencies as policy-making, rather than operational, units, in linewith Dunleavy's general argument. A conclusion to this is that improved policy-making capacity,paradoxically, may reduce Swedish public agencies' ability to steer.