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It may be challenging to see how illegal hunting, a crime that ostensibly proceeds as shoot, shovel and shut up in remote rural communities, at all communicates with the regime. Examining the socio-legal interplay between hunters and state regulation, however, clarifies illegal hunting to be part of a politically motivated pattern of dissent that signals hunters' disenfranchisement from the polity. While few contemporary illegal hunters cut conscientious figures like Robin Hood, their violation of illegitimate law may likewise testify to a profound disjuncture between legality and legitimacy. This is the premise taken in the following research. Here it is observed contemporary Swedish hunters experience the deliberative system pertaining to wildlife and wolf conservation to be systematically stacked against them and unable to serve as a site for critical law-making that provides equal uptake of all voices. One manifestation of their growing disenfranchisement is the establishment of a counterpublic mobilised on the basis of shared semantics for the sorts of deliberative deficits they argue befall them in the present. Within the remit of their counterpublic, hunters undertake and justify illegal hunting along with other forms of disengaging dissent like abstentions, non-compliance, boycotts and conscientious refusals with state agencies. The research captures hunters' dissent in Smith's deliberative disobedience, a deliberative and Habermasian grounded reinterpretation of the more familiar classical theory of civil disobedience. On this perspective, illegal hunting signals a deficit in the deliberative system, which hunters both bypass by taking an alternative conduit for contestation, and draw attention to when they undertake dissent. The dissent in this case study is deconstructed in terms of its grammar—as simultaneously engaging and disengaging with the premises of power—and in terms of its communicative content. Set within the field of Environmental Communication, the dissertation is intended as an empirical and theoretical contribution to a discussion on the boundaries of political dialogue in the context of civic disenfranchisement: it asks whether some of hunters' dissent may be parsed as a call for a more inclusive debate, or as dialogic acts in themselves. Finally, it presents ways toward short-term and longer-term reconciliation of hunters with the deliberative system, drawing on the work of contestatory citizen mini-publics from the third wave of deliberative democracy.

Environmental assessment (EA) is intended to ensure that environmental issues, in a broad sense, are considered in decision making. EA is globally institutionalised through national and international legislation, policies and guidelines, and a field of practice. However, there is a gap between the expectations on EA presented in these regulatory and guiding documents and how it is addressed in practice. This thesis explores the reasons for this gap, focusing on EA practitioners' daily work. The aims of the research are development of theory and generation of new empirical knowledge about how EA practitioners think and act in their daily practice. At the heart of the research is the development of a conceptual framework, space for action, that centres on practitioners' possibilities for influencing practice. The two-dimensional framework is developed iteratively, through empirical and theoretical investigations. The empirical investigations centre on: challenges for practitioners from the multiple perspectives available to apply when deciding appropriate actions; how practitioners think and act when seeking possibilities to influence practice; and, the consultant's role in determining quality. The theoretical basis for the framework integrates and builds on earlier work by planning theorists and elements from frame theory. The first dimension in the framework concerns how practitioners decide on appropriate actions. This process restricts which perspectives practitioners decide to act on and argue for in practice and, subsequently, which perspectives that have potential to be addressed in EA. The second dimension concerns whether these suggestions for appropriate action are enacted and agreed upon in EA processes. These interactions restrict practitioners' possibilities of exerting influence on practice, in terms of both the actual scope of an EA, and how the issues and impacts included are addressed, hence influencing EA quality. The results reveal that these dimensions are important for understanding the gap between expectations of improvements and actual practice. They also reveal a need to recognise the evolving and multi-perspectival character of EA, together with opportunities for advancing the field of practice through critical reflection, reframing and multi-profession collaboration. Overall, this thesis contributes to understanding the important role of practitioners in shaping the field of practice, and provides a new theorisation that strengthens the practitioner focus in EA research.

Assessment tends to be associated with students and learners; however, the term assessment encompasses both teachers and students. To understand the purpose of language assessment instruments, it is key to look for the designers and their preferences. This research aims to characterize 209 assessment instruments created by English teachers. This is a non-experimental and descriptive study that analyzes the types of instruments, the educational level, the language systems and skills, and the type and number of items. Two of the most important findings are related to the preferences Chilean English teachers have towards traditional assessment and the tendency to assess vocabulary and grammar; besides, the participants' preference for tests and fill-in-the gap items.

Recent years have proven formative for the Swedish administration as the disciplinary commission and committee on the Constitution consider proposals whose adaption will have a far-reaching impact on the nation's social organization. As the constitutional changes can impact significantly on government at the local level, research focusing on questions of local government structure is urgently needed. A major strength of local government is political leadership, which is the key to bridging the gap between democracy and management research. The authors note that the influence of political leaders at the local level is often greater than that of their counterparts in the national government. The direction of future constitutional change will determine the extent to which local government and its leaders can preserve their strengths. Adapted from the source document.

In the efforts to explain election outcomes, the interest in the effects of political communication, information & media coverage on political opinions has increased. This includes the effects of political opinion polls in the media. Especially, after 1980, numerous studies about the effects of opinion polls on voters' party preference have been published. However, it seems as if many studies approach the issue with ad hoc constructed models not or only partly guided by the existing literature. Research is little cumulative. One of the reasons for this is probably that no recent comprehensive & systematic overview has been published. This article fills this gap: It presents & systematizes approaches in studies analyzing the effects of opinion polls on voters' party preferences. By discussing theoretical & empirical gains & weaknesses, important questions for future research are highlighted. Tables, References. Adapted from the source document.

The forest is considered a national asset in which many values must coexist. As a consequence, conflicts arise between different interests. Since the 1950s, clear-cutting has been the most common way of forest management in Sweden. Reindeer husbandry is negatively affected when the forest is clear-cut and is therefore in need of the forest to be managed in other ways than today. At the same time, the government wants to increase the proportion of continuous cover forestry. Chequered-Gap-Shelterwood-System is a forestry method that is regarded as a continuous cover forestry. Using a grid pattern, half the area is harvested while the rest is left to be harvested at a later time. This method is currently only available at the experimental level but is said to combine benefits from both clear-cutting and continuous cover forestry. The overall purpose of the study is to map whether Chequered-Gap-Shelterwood-System can reduce the conflict between forestry and reindeer husbandry. Through semi-structured interviews with three reindeer herders and three employees at forest companies, two main issues were studied. One was about their attitude towards the method and the other about how they thought it would be best applied. An interesting result is the perception that the method can benefit the snow conditions and the treelichen's dispersibility in relation to clear felling. The conclusion is that the attitude towards Chequered-Gap-Shelterwood-System is surprisingly positive and the analyse is that the method has the potential to reduce the conflict between the two industries. Application of the method can be used in areas that are important for reindeer husbandry and as a substitute for clear-cutting. The time between the harvests must be at least long enough for the regeneration in the openings to have time to grow above the snow cover. ; Skogen är en nationell tillgång och i den ska många värden rymmas, som en konsekvens uppstår konflikter mellan olika intressen. Sedan 1950-talet har trakthyggesbruk varit det vanligaste sättet att bruka skog i Sverige. Rennäringen påverkas negativt när skogen kalavverkas och är därför i behov av att skogen brukas på andra sätt än idag, samtidigt vill regeringen öka andelen hyggesfritt skogsbruk. Schackrutehuggning är en skogsbruksmetod som räknas som hyggesfritt skogsbruk. Metoden går ut på att skogen brukas i ett rutmönster, där halva arealen avverkas medan resten får stå kvar tills vidare. Denna metod finns idag endast på försöksnivå men sägs kombinera fördelar från både kalhuggning och hyggesfritt skogsbruk. Studiens övergripande syfte är att kartlägga om schackrutehuggning kan mildra konflikten mellan skogsbruk och renskötsel. Genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med tre renskötare och tre anställda på skogsbolag studerades två huvudfrågor. Den ena handlade om deras inställning till metoden och den andra om hur de ansåg att den bäst skulle tillämpas. Ett intressant resultat är uppfattningen att metoden kan gynna snöförhållanden och spridning av hänglav i förhållande till kalhuggning. Slutsatsen är att inställningen till schackrutehuggning är överraskande positiv och metoden har potential att mildra konflikten mellan de två näringarna. Tillämpning av metoden kan användas i områden som är viktiga för renskötsel och som en ersättning till kalhuggning. Tiden mellan avverkningarna ska åtminstone vara tillräckligt lång för att föryngringen i luckorna ska hinna växa upp ovanför snötäcket.

Sustainability reporting has grown in importance and transparency over the years. The reporting has in many countries gone from being voluntarily to become mandatory. This is the case within the EU, which adopted the non-financial reporting directive (2014/95/EU) in 2014. Sweden applied the directive in 2017 in the Annual Account Act. At the same time as the requirements have increased research has showed there is a gap between the content of the disclosed reports and companies' actual sustainability activities. To create a reliable and transparent external sustainability report there is a need to take internal activities into account and collect data for reporting from internal management and control systems. Previous research has also recognised that sustainability needs to be a part of the corporate strategy in order to ensure that sustainability becomes a part of the business operations. In order to contribute to a deeper understanding of any deficiencies between the information provided in sustainability reports and the internal activities the aim of this study is to investigate and explain the implementation of environmental strategies in company's management and controls system. Swedish companies operating in industries with a high environmental impact, the forest-, paper-, mining-, and steel industry, are selected as research objects in this study. A deductive method in combination with a hermeneutic method is applied. Management control systems, corporate sustainability strategy, legal requirements, the Global Reporting Initiative and accounting postulates form the theoretical framework. The empirical result shows there is a gap between the communicated environmental strategies and the implementation in the company management control system in each of the three industries. The result of the study raises questions regarding what the goal is for the communicated environmental strategies and to what extent the strategies are implemented. Another conclusion is that the companies in the three industries do not comply with the GRI framework, when reporting a limited number of environmental performance indicators. In addition, despite of a mandatory regulation for disclosing of non-financial information and the use of a common framework there is no common reporting standard for companies in the studied industries. External stakeholders need to have access to relevant non-financial information to assess companies' impact on the environment. Current legislation and standard frameworks provide a high level of flexibility regarding what to report. In order to achieve a common standard this study shows a need to add a conceptual sustainable framework for accounting and reporting, enforcement mechanisms and regulated common standards to achieve a more transparent and reliable reporting practice.

Why do people engage in high-cost political activities such as forming new political parties? Start-up costs are high. Moreover, rewards are unclear and uncertain. Since political parties are collective goods, people demanding new political parties face a collective action problem. It is therefore somewhat puzzling that new parties emerge. Drawing on theories from economics, sociology and political science, I argue that we, in order to understand the emergence of new parties, need to analytically move in on party-entrepreneurs to elucidate what motivates them. Methodologically inspired by the debate on bridging the gap between deductive and inductive strategies, I process-trace and compare three cases. The case studies identify individual level-mechanisms producing the decision toform a new party. People that voice demands within established parties, and face outright rejection, have experienced bad treatment from established politicians. These experiences contribute to disappointment, anger, and a sense of indignation - i.e. "intense emotions"- that mobilize entrepreneurs. Intense emotions create a lust for revenge, which becomes a psychological selective incentive, and is important for understanding why people engage themselves in high-cost political activities. ; Sociologisk Forsknings digitala arkiv

The new technological advances have brought a revolution on how economic agents interact with society and markets. Nowadays, the use of virtual currencies is more frequent in the financial transactions and bitcoin has been defined as the most important world cryptocurrency due to its high market capitalization and its technological infrastructure. Several studies have been conducted to discuss bitcoin advantages and disadvantages; however, few papers in literature have examined its connection and influence on the stock market. The objective of this paper is precisely cover this gap. Firstly, by providing tools and concepts to understand bitcoin's dynamic, and then determining its relationship with stock market indexes. In that context, this manuscript examines the definition and function of bitcoin in the global world and its presence in Ecuador. Besides, exploratory and visual analyses are provided using the evolution of bitcoin and other market indexes. Finally, a linear correlation is computed between bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies, stock exchange indexes and commodities. The results in this study, employing visual and statistical analyses, demonstrated that bitcoin has: a strong relationship with other cryptocurrencies; a lineal correlation, not as strong as the previous one, with the main stock market indexes; and no linear correlation with commodities.

At the international policy level, there is a clear link between access to information about forests and the work towards sustainable land use. However, involving forests in planning for sustainable development (SuD) at the Swedish local level, by means of municipal comprehensive planning (MCP), is complicated by sector structure and legislation. Currently, there is a gap or hole in the MCP process when it comes to use and access to knowledge about forest conditions and forest land use. This hole limits the possibilities to formulate well-informed municipal visions and goals for sustainable forest land use as well as for overall SuD. Here we introduce an approach for compilation and presentation of geographic information to increase the preconditions for integrating forest information into Swedish MCP. We produce information about forest ownership patterns and forest conditions in terms of age and significant ecological and social values in forests for a case study municipality. We conclude that it is possible to effectively compile geographic and forest-related information to fill the hole in the municipal land use map. Through our approach, MCP could be strengthened as a tool for overall land use planning and hence as a base in SuD planning.

During the 2000s, Sweden has pursued an active foreign and security policy. This has meant participation in several international military operations and has left many Swedish soldiers and officers with combat experience. Thus, the Swedish parliament decided in 2010 on a political reform of the veterans area, with more extensive societal support, war decorations to express the government recognition of personal sacrifices made in the service and a new medal for courage in combat. Considered as a reward system, it functions as an immaterial and emotionally established incentive, in contrast to the financial and bonus reward systems that are otherwise common. From a governance perspective, this setting is fundamentally interesting. The complexity of military operations and the demands for efficiency in armed combat are in contrast with the democratic state's need to guarantee the rule of law, even from a distance and under difficult conditions. Traditional government is not sufficient because the situation is characterized by high contextual uncertainty and therefore requires more situational adaptive control. Organizing in a professional model implies autonomy for military officials, and this means that there is a form of gap in terms of civilian control. In the dissertation, a concept and an analytical model are formulated to understand this phenomenon, entitled soft norm governance, that also form one of the main results. The model combines four levels of analysis to describe the dynamics of the steering mix: organizational metagovernance, rule control, policy work and professional ethics. One conclusion is that professional ethics has a two-way function in the chain of implementation steering, both as a decisive factor for concrete decision-making, but also as an objective for the government's soft norm governance. Thus, this control gap does not mean absence of control, but that other value-based norm systems govern our actions. In this way, soft norm governance also reaches beyond the scope of the law. The theoretical framework is metagovernance, the idea that the modern state is steering at a distance and with subtle methods, such as by organizational measures. It opens for the importance of soft law, social norms and ethics in governmental steering. The case study of the veterans policy and medal of courage contributes empirically to the specification of these theories. Furthermore, new institutionalism adds an explanatory value with a rationality of action for the officials, a so-called logic of appropriateness based on the professional role and on adaptation to the situation at hand and to applicable rules. Theoretically, the thesis contributes by supplementing with a logic of values, which takes into account the profession's ethical and moral rationality of action, which is particularly important in situations such as armed conflict. The methodological approach combines a structural statistical perspective with a qualitative and understanding-oriented perspective and can, with the support of the analytical model, illuminate both pattern and function. The material base is a total selection from the medal preparation of eight contingents in Afghanistan during the years 2008-2012, i.e. FS16-FS23. It consists of the archive material from the nominations as well as in-depth interviews with responsible commanders at the international units and at the national headquarters, including the Commander-in-Chief.

Lithuania and Southern Sweden share similar natural conditions, but differ considerably in forest policies and management; thereby providing an opportune basis for comparative studies. Since the 1990s, Sweden has attempted to reduce the negative impact of its forest management on biodiversity, after decades of intensive production forestry. In contrast, Lithuania has been intensifying forestry practices associated with the post-soviet socio-economic transition. Here we assess the actual outcomes by comparing selected forest structure and composition variables known to be indicators for forest biodiversity; and estimate the prospective trends by scrutinising current forest policies and management. Our results indicate that Lithuanian forests consistently possessed higher rankings in six indices related to tree species composition, stand age, and deadwood quantities that are positively associated with forest biodiversity. The reverse is indicated by those data on stand age and tree diameter that are associated with centennial dynamics in forest utilisation intensity. With respect to policy instruments, Lithuania designates a substantially greater share of forest area to non-timber functions and legislates more severe management restrictions in forests targeting timber production. Concurrently, all estimates of forestry activities indicate more intensive forest management in Southern Sweden, including a higher share of artificial regeneration and shorter rotations. This allows concluding that, if current forest management practices persist, then an increased "biodiversity gap" may be expected between the two countries. The study concludes with discussing to what degree the identified trends are the direct product of targeted policies versus merely by-products of other factors.

Among the literature aimed at students of art science and other image-interpreting sciences are a number of texts that deal with theories and theoretical concepts. However, what is largely missing, and which students often call for, are texts in Swedish that show how theories and concepts can be applied in concrete interpretation situations. The series Theoretical applications in art science aims to fill that gap, with the book Materiality being the fourth in the series.
The book introduces and activates a concept that in recent decades has come to take an increasingly important place in humanistic research. Art scholars - but also archaeologists, anthropologists, literary scholars, ethnologists and other humanistic researchers - are increasingly interested in the material conditions for, and the manifestations of, people's social and cultural life and exchange. But despite its topicality in today's scientific conversation, the concept of materiality can seem elusive and elusive. It moves all the way from the most tangible analyzes of the material components of a cultural artefact, to the somewhat impenetrable theorizations of objectivity, agents and networks that are usually sorted under the label ""new materialism"".
However, the book Materialitet gives concrete examples of how the concept of materiality can open up interpretations of important layers of meaning in works of art and other cultural artifacts. After the initial introduction where different perspectives and conceptualisations of materiality are discussed, six researchers each do their own analysis based on their subject area. The chapters are based on new research and are written specifically for this book. The different chapters together show the multifaceted nature of the concept of materiality, but do not lock it down to a definition, but open the eyes to a number of different interpretive paths.

Source separation of urine for recycling has been applied in small-scale and decentralized wastewater systems in Sweden for the past 25 years and for blackwater for pollution control even longer. The Swedish experience with source separating nutrient recycling systems is relatively well documented; however, few reports have specifically studied the potential for expansion of this practice. The aim of this study is to fill this knowledge gap by assessing the status of source-separating technologies in Sweden based on transition theory. This study uses a multi-level perspective to determine how ready the Swedish wastewater sector is for transitioning to alternative systems. Given the stability of the existing sewage wastewater regime, it seems unlikely that changes within the regime will lead to a quick and large-scale transition to source separation. Instead, the initiative must come from the niche itself, exploiting institutional cracks in the regime and opportunities from shifting trends in the landscape. If source separation is to be mainstreamed in Sweden, it will need to break into markets within the wastewater jurisdictions. In order to do so, further knowledge needs to be developed that will overcome glitches with immature technologies, uncertain legal conditions/status, investigate potential risks, and clearly define complementary system advantages. This may require the use of new perspectives that focus on holistic sustainable use of resources, including other nutrients than phosphorous, and taking into account global issues such as planetary boundaries and effects from climate change, such as water scarcity. This knowledge can then be used to establish guidelines, norms, and standards, as well as clarify the legislative structures that can support such a transition. There is also a strong need to improve knowledge dissemination regarding best-practices for implementing source-separation technologies and supporting organizational structures. Similarly, support for entrepreneurial activities within the niche needs to increase, not least through strengthening social networks and communication platforms.