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Regional politics is changing; it is transforming from being mainly a responsibility of the central state to a concern that is more for the regional or local governments. At the same time, there are signs of a transformation of the political system in general. The development indicates a decreasing hierarchy as the power of the state is challenged and the political agents are increasing in number. This indicates that the political agents are changing but there are also indications that the political forms are transforming. The politics is increasingly characterised by project and process politics, networks, cooperation and partnerships. This transformation is generally described as the transformation "from government to governance". New governance is one of the most frequently discussed issues in contemporary political science literature, and this has led to a wide variety of conceptualizations. Considering the changing regional politics and general changes as the political forms and agents, this thesis studies who governs the regional politics and how regional politics is governed.The purpose of this thesis is to provide empirical contributions in order to increase the understanding of changes in regional politics at the local level. This is done by dividing governance modes into typologies. Four political processes at the local level in the municipality of Åre between the years 1973-2007 are analyzed. The thesis is based on qualitative semi-structured elite interviews. The informants have been selected by snowball sampling. The interviews have also been complemented by documentary studies. The documents that have been studied are the protocols from the municipal assembly from 1973, when the municipality was created, to􀂒􀂟2007. The documents also consist of the parish archives (sockenkrönikor) governmental reports and official documents of the local and state-level government. The material has been analyzed by using process tracing.The main results of the study are that there have been changes in the regional politics at the local level in relation to the political agents and the forms of politics. The 1970s were characterized by strong state power and hierarchy. The political processes have increasingly been characterized by the typology of the new governance. The study has shown that in practice the regional politics in Åre is characterized by both traditional governance and new governance at the same time there has not been a paradigmatic shift. The elements of new governance are increasing but there are still significant signs of the traditional bureaucratic system such as hierarchy and ordered rule. As the signs of new governance increase, the political entrepreneurs play a bigger role in the processes being analyzed. The study also shows that the critique of traditional forms of governance relating to participation and influence has not become irrelevant as the signs of new governance increases.

We are surrounded by narratives about digitalization – in media, in white papers, in policies and in academic discourse. This article aims to dissect policy narratives to unveil the dominant stories associated with digitalization and open a dialogue on their consequences. The empirical material includes policy documents on digitalization at the European Union, national and sub-national levels focusing on the Swedish context. The article argues that these documents not only produce narratives of digitalization that reveal a certain orientation towards reality but also become tangible constructs. Further, despite their neutral language, they should be considered part of the problem formulation. The analysis is carried out by identifying the dominant and taken-for-granted stories, and the results show that digitalization, often portrayed as a modern and innovative concept, is frequently narrated in line with rather traditional perceptions of industrialized modernity. The results indicate that digitalization is trapped in an unambiguous and cramped dramaturgy, and if policies are enacted in the same way in practice, we will face a rather un-resilient digital modernity.

Drawing from the experiences gained from a research project focusing on gender-based violence (GBV) in rural Sweden, this paper focuses on how government policies aimed at addressing GBV against girls and young women are enacted, translated and contested at the regional and local level. In previous studies the regional level is seldom focused on, and we know very little of the connection between the local and regional levels. The paper is based on analysis of interviews with key policy actors at the regional and local levels, including school personnel. Departing from policy enactment combined with institutional ethnography, the paper explores how policies on GBV are translated into prevention activities, but also how the different actors enact the policy in relation to the institutional setting and professional role. The analysis also shows how the enactment is entangled in understandings of gender, race, equality and traditions. The analysis makes the different power relations visible, and the production of power in policy is better understood, as it highlights how some dimensions are given priority in relation to others.

According to narrative trends, digitalization has the potential to deconstruct existing power structures and increase participation and democracy in society; however, we will argue, it is unable to accomplish these changes on its own. Specifically, the deconstruction of existing structures cannot happen through digitalization alone; instead, these results depend on how digitalization is done. It is important to focus on understanding what happens in the digitalization process, what is transformed, as well as when it is done, and by whom. We will, therefore, combine a policy enactment framework with a critical analytical framework of digitalization to create a possibility to address the institutional power aspects of digitalization in a specific setting i.e., cultural heritage. We do this by analyzing how policy enactment, which is a way to understand policymaking as a process of organizational interpretations and translations by diverse policy actors, affects the construction of cultural heritage. The results show how digitalization easily becomes a process that is unable to question, it tends to engulf all other values, and cultural heritage is turned into meta-data, getting 'clicks' on the internet and attracting tourists to the region.

According to narrative trends, digitalization has the potential todeconstruct both power structures and practices of exclusion insociety. What we argue here is that this deconstruction is not theresult of digitalization alone, it is dependent on how digitalizationis done. On the contrary, digitalization has often resulted inreproduction instead of transformation and deconstruction, i.e.digitalization tend to uphold practices instead of challengingthem. Being slightly more provocative, what becomes digitalizedis often what we can easily capture and understand. Similarly,when we open up for an increased participation in the creation ofdigital artifacts (sometimes expressed as demand-driven, citizencentered,or participatory development), those participating indigitalization are often already known; the use of alreadyestablished contact channels making them easy to reach andconnect with. Such logics raise questions about the intersectionsof norms and power and the potential transformative character ofdigitalization. The aim of this paper is to, through a theoreticalframework combining critical information systems, policyenactment and norm critical design, introduce a reflexive designmethod to gently provoke norms. We analyze the need tointervene in the everyday practices of digitalization. This is donein an empirical case study of the making of a regional digitalcultural heritage portal. The results indicate that digitalizationneeds norm critical interventions to change existing practices andprevent norm reproduction. Otherwise, as in this case of thedigitalization of cultural heritage, digitalization runs the risk ofstrengthening existing power structures and excluding practicesinstead of challenging them.

The so-called freedom of movement granted to EU citizens has made it easier for economically deprived EU citizens to seek their livelihood beyond the borders of their homelands and this has created one of our time's most socially excluded groups. In Sweden, over the recent years they have come to be known as vulnerable EU citizens. This article analyses what happens when there are no unified regulations as to how Swedish municipalities should prevent social exclusion among those who are not Swedish citizens. Our purpose is to study how officials and politicians normalize certain beliefs with regard to the (im)possibility of providing support to socially-excluded EU citizens residing in their municipalities. The material used in the study is interviews with officials and politicians in Västernorrland, a region of northern Sweden. The study shows that in the absence of common guidelines the normalization of Swedish citizenship has taken place as the basis of the rights to welfare. It is Swedish citizenship that provides you with access to the community; at the same time, it is this community which must be guarded. Prohibition of EU citizens is commonly legitimized by a concern for the municipality's citizens as if the closing down of the settlements makes social exclusion seize to exist or at least seize to be a problem for the municipalities. This narrative illustrates that it is the settlements and their flaws, rather than the inhabitants' social exclusion in a broader context that are perceived as problematic.

Gender mainstreaming (GM) has been on the agenda of organisations at various levels in Sweden and worldwide since the 1990s. Research has shown that GM is difficult to apply and has yet to be clearly defined, and additionally that organisations are uncertain about how to implement it. Research also suggests that the dominance of the new public management (NPM) approach within organisations has made GM work more challenging. In this article, we examine GM in a medium-sized Swedish municipality that is reorganising itself to become gender mainstreamed while introducing trust-based governance (TBG). This municipality provides a unique opportunity to study how GM is constructed in a municipality at the intersection of NPM and TBG. Applying a critical perspective, this article analyses documents from reorganisation based on Bacchi's (2009) policy analysis. The results demonstrate that GM is mainly translated into TBG-inspired practices and that efficiency becomes an overarching concept that entangles GM, TBG and NPM. GM becomes part of cultural change together with TBG, while NPM maintains its dominance in the structural change of the organisation.

Inclusion in local policy processes through citizen dialogue has been depicted as both the solution to many democratic challenges and a democratic problem in itself. Nevertheless, it has been widely adopted throughout Europe. The hierarchically flat, co-governing setup of these instruments can be expected to clash with representative-heavy political cultures, such as that in Sweden, which raises questions about what role they end up having in this context and whether they complement representative democracy. By conducting a comparative study of two rural Swedish municipalities, we confirmed that traditional, hierarchical governance indeed dominates the studied processes. Our results also suggest that, due to skewed participation and unclear input handling, the studied instrument does not appear to constitute a viable complementary democratic institution in terms of representation. Instead, we argue that, conducted in this way, it may potentially fill a range of different purposes without aspiring to fully complement representative democracy.

In the past decades, many policy sectors within European countries have encountered political reforms of neoliberal character. One of the key shifts has been the reorientation of public employment services that has been enforced, for example, through the establishment of what have been denoted as quasi-markets. Simultaneously with the rise of quasi-markets, welfare policy as a whole, including integration policy, has beenincreasingly oriented toward "activation", with its focus on the individual's obligationsand duties in relation to welfare services. These circumstances pose particular challenges to those charged with the governance of welfare services due to increasingly complex requirements for collaboration and control involving a multitude of actors. The reform is an example of a hybrid system where for- and non-profit actors compete for the"customer", in this case, the newly arrived immigrant. This article focuses on the changes in Swedish integration reform as an archetype of these changes and studies a clearly defined case study. Empirically, this study draws from both documents and interviews. The article illustrates an unregulated and ill-monitored policy containing a model that comprises mixed modes of steering. The governance of the reform bears traits from both centralist and cooperative forms of governance and, thereby, involves competing philosophies of steering.

In the past decades, many policy sectors within European countries have encountered political reforms of neoliberal character. One of the key shifts has been the reorientation of public employment services that has been enforced, for example, through the establishment of what have been denoted as quasi-markets. Simultaneously with the rise of quasi-markets, welfare policy as a whole, including integration policy, has beenincreasingly oriented toward "activation", with its focus on the individual's obligationsand duties in relation to welfare services. These circumstances pose particular challenges to those charged with the governance of welfare services due to increasingly complex requirements for collaboration and control involving a multitude of actors. The reform is an example of a hybrid system where for- and non-profit actors compete for the"customer", in this case, the newly arrived immigrant. This article focuses on the changes in Swedish integration reform as an archetype of these changes and studies a clearly defined case study. Empirically, this study draws from both documents and interviews. The article illustrates an unregulated and ill-monitored policy containing a model that comprises mixed modes of steering. The governance of the reform bears traits from both centralist and cooperative forms of governance and, thereby, involves competing philosophies of steering.

ABSTRACT In the past decades, many policy sectors within European countries have encountered political reforms of neoliberal character. One of the key shifts has been the reorientation of public employment services that has been enforced, for example, through the establishment of what have been denoted as quasi-markets. Simultaneously with the rise of quasi-markets, welfare policy as a whole, including integration policy, has beenincreasingly oriented toward "activation", with its focus on the individual's obligationsand duties in relation to welfare services. These circumstances pose particular challenges to those charged with the governance of welfare services due to increasingly complex requirements for collaboration and control involving a multitude of actors. The reform is an example of a hybrid system where for- and non-profit actors compete for the"customer", in this case, the newly arrived immigrant. This article focuses on the changes in Swedish integration reform as an archetype of these changes and studies a clearly defined case study. Empirically, this study draws from both documents and interviews. The article illustrates an unregulated and ill-monitored policy containing a model that comprises mixed modes of steering. The governance of the reform bears traits from both centralist and cooperative forms of governance and, thereby, involves competing philosophies of steering. Key words: quasi-markets, integration policy, private, public, governance

Kultur är ett värdeladdat begrepp, både gränslöst och begränsande, fint och fult. Det kan uppfattas som oklart och hotfullt och samtidigt erbjuder det utrymme för nya ordningar. Likt ett mellanrum kan det vara svårt att beskriva och bestämma. Vad händer med kulturen om vi sätter den samman med hållbarhet, vad händer med hållbarheten om vi sätter den samman med kultur? Det är i korthet vad den här boken handlar om, en bok som uppehåller sig i mellanrummet, utan avsikt att vare sig börja eller sluta i en definition; istället vill vi med hjälp av kultur utforska om förbindelser mellan olika dimensioner kan tänkas uppstå, till och med mellan de mest motsägelsefulla utgångspunkter. I några av kapitlen närmar sig författarna hållbarhet ur ett kulturperspektiv medan andra snarare närmar sig kultur ur ett hållbarhetsperspektiv. Arton forskare inom sociologi, litteraturvetenskap, biologi, etnografi, genusvetenskap och statsvetenskap diskuterar här frågan ?Kulturell hållbarhet -- vad är det?? Bidragen rör sig från Sápmi till Röda havet, från politiska barnböcker till kommunal vardag, från skrivprojekt inom vården till människans självbild under antropocen: allt i syfte att se nya dimensioner av hållbarheten. "Ett kulturellt perspektiv på hållbarhet pekar också på vikten av att se på exempelvis konsumtionspraktiker som en del av kulturella processer och som något som får betydelse i och genom relationer till andra delar av livet. Det är bara när hållbarhetstankarna uppfattas som meningsfulla, och görbara, i förhållande till livet i stort, som de får genomslag", skriver etnologen Magdalena Petersson McIntyre i förordet