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Sustainable development aims at addressing economic, social, and environmental concerns, but the current lack of responsive environmental governance hinders progress. Short-term economic development has led to limited actions, unsustainable resource management, and degraded ecosystems. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) may continue to fall short of achieving significant progress without a better understanding of how ecosystems contribute to achieving sustainability for all people. Ecosystem governance is an approach that integrates the social and ecological components for improved sustainability and includes principles such as adaptive ecosystem co-management, subsidiarity, and telecoupling framework, as well as principles of democracy and accountability. We explain the importance of ecosystem governance in achieving the SDGs, and suggest some ways to ensure that ecosystem services are meaningfully considered. This paper reflects on how integration of these approaches into policies can enhance the current agenda of sustainability.

This article identifies four main problems with existing research on symbolic politics. Symbolic politics is poorly defined, resulting in theoretical vagueness. Typologies of different kinds of symbolism are lacking. The connection between symbolic politics & mainstream political science is unelaborated. Finally, there are methodological problems establishing symbolic aspects of politics. Possible solutions to the four problems are suggested. Symbolic politics can be given a negative definition -- as noninstrumental motives behind a political decision. Four different kinds of symbolic politics are identified: classifications, principles, examples, & expressions. Using these four concepts, it is demonstrated how symbolic variables can enhance theories on public policymaking, exemplified by Baumgartner & Jones' punctuated equilibrium theory. The problem of establishing symbolic politics cannot be solved conclusively, but some provisional methods are suggested. 1 Figure, 81 References. Adapted from the source document.

Confidence and corruption in Swedish municipalities Corruption in public institutions can seriously undermine trust and cooperation. Corruption prevention requires an understanding of the mechanisms which cause individuals to engage in corrupt behavior. Against this background there is a need to determine which types of institutions can stop confidence and cooperation from degenerating into distrust and corruption. Traditionally Sweden and its institutions have been seen as relatively free of corruption. In recent years, increasing media coverage and expert reports suggest that corruption in Sweden is increasing, but how accurate is this perception? Greater empirical knowledge is needed concerning the scope and nature of corruption as well as the extent, if at all, it is increasing. Many corruption studies have focused on countries in transition from a non-democratic to a democratic form of government. Literature has therefore focused on how trust and cooperation can arise out of situations characterized by the opposite. However, a useful corruption theory ought to be able to account for how corrupt behavior can vary over time. It has been pointed out that researchers lack a commonly accepted theory that would explain both how trust and cooperation arise and how they break down. The article's authors describe how, in their upcoming project, they propose to address this question. Adapted from the source document.

Citations, productivity measures & rankings have become reality in modern university life. Many of the bibliometric reports presented by ranking institutes & non-professional bibliometricians are flawed due to methodologically unsound procedures. This article discusses three important methodological problems involved in bibliometric studies: 1) number of personnel at university departments; 2) counting of articles from these departments; & 3) counting of citations to these articles. Relating to earlier research (Hix, 2004) it is shown that the counting of personnel -- a very important reference value -- can be conducted in several different ways. Following Dale & Goldfinch (2005) we discuss the limitation to political science journals proposed by Hix. There is a large influx of non political scientist to the area & a similar outflow of political scientists to other journal categories (eg, environmental studies). Therefore, the proposed limitation is questioned. Implementing advanced methods for field normalized citation scores (van Raan, 2004) we conclude the article with an analysis of Swedish university departments in political science during the period 1998-2005. The result is a promising 33 per cent better citation scores than the world average, but the downside is a low number of articles per researcher. Adapted from the source document.

In a review of Mikael Sundstrom's Connecting Social Science and Information Technology. Democratic Privacy in the Information Age, Sundstrom's account of a theoretical framework that may serve to simplify information technology environments, with a particular emphasis on the importance of privacy (as defined in liberal democratic societies) is critiqued on the grounds that it is reductive in some ways: the concept of a 'grand base' for information technology innovation that attends to access time, information sequentially, interactivity, pervasiveness, real-time transfer, recipient anonymity, sender anonymity, recipient transfer cost, recipient enabling cost, recipient verification of sender authenticity, & search & retrieve ability, while laudable, is not matched by an attention to practicality or cost of implementation. In his response, Sundstrom claims that he has been misunderstood, particularly in his account of the 'grand base,' whereas the author, in his reply, disputes this. 4 References. A. Siegel

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (1) Theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge. (2) One cannot generalize from a single case; therefore the single case study cannot contribute to scientific development. (3) The case study is most useful for generating hypothesis, while other methods are more suitable for hypothesis testing & theory building. (4) The case study contains a bias towards verification. (5) It is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. The article explains & correct these misunderstandings one by one & concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, & that a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of more good case studies. 1 Table, 59 References. Adapted from the source document.

Most theories on the fall of communism focus on non-ideological factors. An approach with a potential to make visible also the ontological crisis of Marxism-Leninism is the study of communist regime legitimacy. This paper reviews Max Weber's & David Beetham's respective theories on the legitimition of power. It presents the mainly Weber-inspired research on political legitimacy that was conducted by Western scholars of the communist world & goes onto argue that the Weber-typology has very little to offer if one wants to render intelligible the ideological aspects to the demise of communism. With Beetham's theory as a point of departure, & with references to other students of Marxism-Leninism, the paper tries to show how ideology can be seen as a manifest, active & limiting factor in the former communist systems & that it is possible to study the fall of communism focusing on ideology & political legitimacy. 44 References. Adapted from the source document.

In a comparative perspective, Sweden is a society with high social trust, corruption, law and high political trust. Research shows that the presence of social trust in society is crucial for economic growth, corruption, law and functioning democratic institutions. A society with high levels of trust leads to positive effects of increased security, more economic equality, more tolerance, better health and increased ability to solve social problems of various kinds. Adapted from the source document.