Suchergebnisse

Welfare, and the role of social democracy in defining its content and meaning, is often described as one of Sweden's distinguishing features. However, in the quest for liberalization and marketization, reforms in past decades have substantially changed the political landscape. These developments have led many to question the viability of describing the main political actors and their attitudes towards the welfare state in terms of left or right. This dissertation contributes to the understanding of ideological convergence and past and current political cleavages by analysing the welfare debate on freedom of choice between the two main political opponents in Swedish politics over three decades. Using a morphological approach, where ideologies are viewed as distinctive configurations of political concepts creating specific conceptual patterns depending on how they are combined, the analysis focuses on the content of the concept of choice by examining the conceptual relationships between political concepts such as choice, the public and the private, equality, equity and need. The analysis reveals a convergence suggesting that the parties have united around a narrower concept of freedom of choice that relates to how it is implemented in welfare services, that is, the choice between different providers of welfare services. However, important differences remain, which are expressed in the parties' differing conceptions of the power resources citizens need to become truly free individuals. These findings suggest that, while freedom of choice has become a central concept in the political debate, it is not central to the parties' ideologies. Instead, the core of the parties' ideologies appears to be articulated in e.g. the political cleavages that remain, which can be described as differing views on the role of politics and competing conceptions of need and equality. It is how these cleavages are translated into policies that will determine possible welfare choices in the future.

Denna rapport behandlar förändringar och förskjutningar i regeringens styrning av Svenska institutet under perioden 1998?2018. Rapporten behandlar tre frågekomplex. Det första handlar om styrningens form, där utvecklingen sätts i relation till allmänna förändringar i svensk myndighetsstyrning under perioden. Det andra handlar om innehållet i myndighetsinstruktioner och regleringsbrev utifrån antagandet att detta är en indikator för hur offentlig diplomati förståtts och omsatts av svenska regeringar under perioden. Utifrån dessa två komplex diskuteras sedan balansen mellan regeringspolitik och Svenska institutets bredare representations- och främjandeuppdrag, det vill säga graden och karaktären hos regeringens styrning av institutet över tid. Andreas Åkerlund är docent i historia och verksam vid Södertörns högskola

Vänstern har hamnat i en utdragen identitetskris. De materiella förhållandena, som var så centrala för Karl Marx, har under ett par decennier tilldragit sig minskat intresse i vänsterkretsar. Samtidigt har idéer om gränslöshet och representation fått allt större utrymme. Paradoxalt nog - eller inte - har detta fortgått samtidigt som frågorna om trygghet och nationell välfärdspolitik har kommit tillbaka på medborgarnas dagordning. Efter finanskris och eurokris spådde många en kraftfull renäsans för vänstern, men hittils har andra politiska rörelser dragit störst fördel av reaktionerna mot de ekonomiska kriserna och mer allmänt mot 1989 års idéer. Nya frågor på dagordningen och nya ideologiska prioriteringar hos vänsterns företrädare har försvagat banden till traditionella kretsar av sympatisörer. Frågan var vänstern befinner sig i dag låter sig inte helt enkelt besvaras. Vänstern finns på flera olika håll - och den rör sig i olika riktningar. Skribenterna i denna bok bidrar med tolv olika perspektiv på vad som hänt och händer och varför det sker

The purpose of the dissertation is to analyze the institutionalization of national masculinity policy in Sweden, focusing on idea and policy development regarding the issue of men and gender equality from the 1980s until the 2020s. Swedish national masculinity policy can be characterized as a delimitable area within gender equality policy that is specifically focused on promoting the development of gender equal men. The dissertation shows Sweden as pioneering in regard to this institutional invention promoting "the new man" and as active in disseminating these ambitions internationally. The main material consists of reports from Swedish governmental working groups and inquiries on men and gender equality during the period, as well as the gender equality policy bills and written communications submitted by the Swedish government to parliament. A methodological approach for an ideational policy analysis in historical perspective is outlined to study the institutionalization process of this policy area over time. The dissertation analyzes the discursive framework that the issue of men and gender equality has been embedded in, how the issue has been addressed at the political level, how it has been problematized in the working groups and inquiries, and finally formally institutionalized by the government. Based on Carol Bacchi's method for policy analysis, the dissertation shows how policy problems regarding men and gender equality have been constructed and represented in different ways during the institutionalization process and what the discursive effects of different policy representations have been. In comparison to previous research on masculinity politics in various men's groups or social movements, the dissertation shows the need to analyze "national masculinity policy" in relation to institutional factors and frameworks. The development of national masculinity policy is discussed in relation to theories of institutional change. The dissertation shows how ideas about men and gender equality that have been developed in research, social movements, and public debate have influenced politics, confirming the assumptions in feminist institutional research that emphasize the importance of ideas for institutional change. This development is described in terms of idea-based incremental institutional change. The dissertation also points to the importance of actors in problem representation processes, using the concept of interpretive repertoire to highlight how the actors who participated in the governmental inquiries on men and gender equality balanced the different perspectives found in their contexts (ideas in public debate, research, and policy). In other words, the dissertation studies the path from idea to formal institution when it comes to the question of the new man in Sweden.

The aim of this essay is to provide an overview of current research on international democratization. I start by discussing the choice of empirical indicators. Given a set of indicators -- Freedom House & Polity, which stand out as the most useful ones -- I make a graphic representation of democratic tendencies in different regions in the world. In this survey one region, North Africa & the Middle East, comes out as exceptional; here no general improvements have been made since the early 1970s. I then make an account of explanatory conditions which have proved in large-n empirical studies to play a role for democratic progress (such as modernization, access to oil, popular demonstrations & the type of authoritarian regime). I end up in a puzzle, which regards the Muslim countries. We can establish, on the one hand, that these countries clearly under-perform democratically. But on the other hand, comparative research has not managed so far to point out why that is the case. We can see a pattern, but we cannot point out an empirically solid explanatory mechanism. Figures, References. Adapted from the source document.

We live in a moment of hardening of nationalist discourses against immigration and racial minorities. In this conservative climate, Canada prevails as a benchmark for multicultural integration. However, there are voices within the nation that question this image of harmony. The case of the Black Vancouver community has not yet been studied in depth in this regard. This article of reflection aims to contribute to the debate on the relations of the nation-state and subaltern groups, and how they manifest themselves in the multicultural city. Vancouver has been chosen as a paradigmatic space because of its transcultural character built on indigenous lands. The object of study was the literature of Wayde Compton author and black activist of the city. Stemming from theories of the socio-spatial dialectic of Edward Soja and Leonie Sandercock, this article analyses the connection between the city, its representation in literature and its effects on social relationships. The work of Compton and its parallelism with the geo-history of Vancouver and subaltern ethnic communities were analysed. The result reaches a reading of Vancouver as a (post)colonial city and space of subaltern multiculturalism, regarding the official Canadian model, and colonialism that has made invisible to the Black Vancouver and the indigenous communities.

Systemet för samhällsskydd och beredskap i Sverige har sedan 1990-talet genomgått en rad förändringar gällande juridik, organisering och ansvar. Framför allt har kommunernas ansvar inom området ökat och systemet har kommit att bli mer beroende av aktörer i lokalsamhället. Dessutom har den enskilde individen fått ett ökat ansvar och är idag en självklar aktör i systemet. De i området styrande principerna om ansvar, likhet och närhet föreskriver att störningar i kommunal verksamhet ska hanteras av de roller som bedriver verksamheten i normala fall. Det innebär att störningar eller kriser i en verksamhet som exempelvis den kommunala omsorgen ska hanteras och lösas av den ordinarie personalen. Systemets ordning i kombination med principerna gör därför att frågor om säkerhet och trygghet för den enskilda omsorgstagaren hamnar i gränssnittet mellan individen och organisationen. Avhandlingens syfte är att fördjupa kunskapen om relationen mellan funktionshindrade personer och kommunens organisation för samhällsskydd och beredskap gällande trygghet och säkerhet. Fyra separata empiriska delstudier från Sverige inkluderas. Den första undersöker kvantitativt vilka riskuppfattningar personer med funktionshinder har och om kan de förklaras av funktionshindret. Övriga tre delstudier är kvalitativa och studerar i tur och ordning: hur risk- och sårbarhetsfrågor manifesteras, erfars och hanteras av funktionshindrade; hur kommuner organiserar för samhällsskydd och beredskap på lokal nivå och vilken roll kommunen har på det lokala verksamhetsfältet för detta; hur en faktisk krisartad situation hanterades på olika nivåer av den kommunala vård- och omsorgen. De två studierna om funktionshindrade visade att tillit är central för hur riskuppfattningen formas och att den vardagsnära säkerheten är viktig. Personerna utvecklar strategier för att hantera sårbarhet genom att undvika vissa situationer, att visa eller dölja sina behov och att lära sig stå ut med att saker och ting tar lång tid. Detta formar ett interpretationsramverk för trygghet och säkerhet där kroppen speglas som objekt och social representation. Därmed kan kroppen likställas med andra sociala representationer och försvaras, riskförebyggas och skademinimeras. Den första kommunstudien visar att den lokala organiseringen av samhällsskydd och beredskap sker på liknande sätt över landet. Däremot har den kommunala funktionen för skydd och säkerhet att hantera olika organisatoriska relationer med distinkt skilda karaktärer. Relationen till den kommunala organisationen i stort är labyrintartad till följd av rationalitetsproblem inom ändamålsenlighet, mål, ansvarsförläggande och uppföljning är oklara eller helt enkelt saknas; relationen till de kommunala förvaltningarna präglas hierarkiproblem genom brist på auktoritet, legitimitet och exekutiv makt; relationen till externa aktörer uppvisar problem med identitet till följd av brist på resurser och tydlig organisation. Den andra kommunstudien visar att den tid-rumsliga inramningen av en störning i det kommunala dricksvattnet skilde sig åt mellan olika organisatoriska nivåer och att störningen hanterades genom en aktiv agens där tillit och handlingsutrymme var avgörande. Avhandlingens övergripande analys utifrån tillitsteori landar i att medan det tidigare systemet för samhällsskydd och beredskap präglades av en instrumentell tillit med vertikalt riktad makt och en problemlösningsförväntan, är dagens system mer beroende av en humanitär tillit med horisontell maktfördelning och med förväntan på att hantera sårbarhet. De tre teoretiska sårbarhetsformerna beroende, oförutsägbarhet och oåterkallelighet föreslås på den lokala samhällsnivån kunna reduceras med de tre tillitsmekanismerna autenticitet, legitimitet respektive transparens. Det är en typ av tillit som är bättre anpassad för det gränssnitt mellan den enskilda individen och organisationen där vi hittar mycket av ansvaret för trygghets- och säkerhetsfrågor idag. ; The Swedish system for civil protection and preparedness has undergone fundamental shifts in legislation, organisation, and responsibility since the 1990s. Most prominently, the responsibility for municipals has increased and the system has become more dependent on actors in the local community. Individuals have also become integral actors in the system with increased responsibility. The guiding principles for this system, formulated by the national authorities, are responsibility, similarity, and proximity. These principles prescribe that disruptions in any regular operations shall be handled by the structure already in place. This means that disturbances or crises, for instance within the local healthcare, should be solved by the regular personnel. The combination of the new location of responsibility and the guiding principles locate the issues of safety and security at the interface between the single individual and the organisation. The aim of this dissertation is to gain knowledge about the relationship between people with disability and the municipal administrative function for civil protection and preparedness regarding safety and security. Four empirical investigations from Sweden are included. The first is a quantitative study investigating the risk perception among disabled people and whether this perception can be explained by their disability. The three remaining studies are qualitative, studying respectively: how risk and vulnerability are manifested, experienced, and managed in everyday life by disabled persons; how local authorities arrange civil protection and preparedness at the local level, and how an uncertain, adverse event was managed at different levels of the local health care. The two studies with disabled persons shows that trust is central to understand how risk perception is shaped and that the safety in everyday life is important. Individuals develop certain strategies in order to deal with vulnerability. The strategies include avoiding certain situations; to show or not to show their needs, and being accustomed to everything taking a long time. These strategies form a framework for interpretation of safety and security where the body is objectified as a social representation. The body thus is comparable to any other social representation and can be subject for defence, mitigation or damage reduction. The first study of local administrations shows that the local civil protection and preparedness is arranged in the same manner all over the country. However, the administrative function for safety and security must deal with distinctly different characteristics in organisational relationships. The relationship with the local administration in general is labyrinthine because of rationality problems regarding adaptation, aims and objectives, assessment and evaluation, and with the allocation of responsibility. The relationship with the different departments within the authority suffers from problems with hierarchy in that the function lacks an authoritative centre, legitimacy, and executive power. The relationship with external entities exhibits problems with organisational identity due to a lack of resources, a distinct organisational character, and autonomy. The second study of local administrations shows that the temporal-spatial framing of a disturbance in the local fresh water system differed between the different organisational levels. Primarily the human agency in terms of trust and a pre-established sphere for action of the personnel was decisive in managing the disturbance. Theories of trust are used to conduct the analysis of the four studies. While the former system for civil protection and preparedness was characterized by an instrumental trust signified by vertical power and expectations of solving concrete problems the present system is more dependent on a so called humanitarian trust signified by horizontal division of power and expectations of managing vulnerability. The conclusion is that at the local level authenticity, legitimacy, and transparency can reduce the three forms of vulnerability: dependency, unpredictability, and irreversibility respectively. This type of trust fits better with the individual-organisation interface in which much of the responsibility for safety and security is allocated today

The constitutional development & the parliamentarianism in Sweden since 1970 can schematically be divided into two periods. The first period was 1970-1990. The second was initiated in 1990. 1970-1990 stands out as a 'classical' period to the new constitution with its unicameral system & exact proportional representation above a 4 per cent threshold. The formation of government was mainly based on blocs with sharp opposition, although in combination with negotiating parliamentarianism in the Riksdag. In their years of parliamentary majority, 1976-1982 & 1991-1994, the right-wing patties introduced considerable constitutional changes which the social democrats in opposing position accepted. From 1990 & onwards, it is above all the disrupting EU dimension which generates new constitutional changes concerning the politico-economic institutions. The European influence in legal matters is regulated, as are the EU-processes between government & parliament. Moreover, the electoral period is extended by one year & an element of personalized voting is introduced. Both the vote of censure & the instrument of consultative referendum attain a partially new constitutional character through the development of praxis. One can also identify a series of minority governments (right-wing 1991-1994 & social democratic since 1994) with prolonged partial coalitions grounded on different issues, & with all the parties of the Parliament involved in different areas. The EU dimension is central in this respect too. The constitutional changes, the new form of parliamentarianism & the EU processes strengthen the government. In this period too, questions can be raised regarding the role of the opposition in Swedish parliamentarianism. References. Adapted from the source document.

After years of various forms of cooperation between the government and various opposition parties, the Swedish parliamentary elections in 2002 resulted in a contact between the Social-democratic minority government, the Left Party, Vänsterpartiet, and the Green Party, Miljöpartiet de Gröna. The political issues included were specified in a 121 points programme, and the cooperation parties established two cooperation offices within the Swedish government administration. The cooperation offices consist of eight full time appointments as political advisors each. There are several reasons to put attention to this developed form of contact parliamentarism. The cooperation offices constitute a new form of coordination between a government and its cooperation parties, which contrasts the norm. In addition, the cooperation offices change the organization of the government administration whereby important aspects of the highly institutionalized culture in the ministries can supposedly have been affected. Thirdly, it is of importance to the representative democracy if parties that are not in a government position, and therefore cannot be held responsible, turns out to have a great deal of influence and many possibilities to affect, or even set, the political agenda. This paper describes how the cooperation offices are organised, and, secondly, discusses the consequences of the establishment of these offices for the government administration as such, but also for the parliamentary chain of governance as a whole. The conclusion is that this form of developed contract parliamentarism can break the parliamentary chain in several ways. The contract has resulted in an increase of resources in terms of economy, information and informal contacts for the two cooperation parties. The cooperation offices have also given the Left Party and the Green Party increased knowledge and experience of the government administration. The contract has, in this sense, given the cooperation parties larger influence than perhaps can be justified by their representation in parliament. ; Regeringskansliet och samhällets organisering

This thesis studies political elites' beliefs about the ideal party leader. This ideal, like other human ideals, is characterized by ambivalence. The thesis explores the ambivalence expressed in party elites' leadership ideal and how it can be understood. The study draws primarily on qualitative interviews with members of the party elites in the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Party in Sweden. Specifically, it analyzes the "life world" of the party leaders, party secretaries, group leaders in the Swedish Parliament, and election committee chairmen. Building on classical and modern research on leadership and political parties, the thesis derives an analytical tool to guide the interviews which covers six aspects of party leadership: Characteristics, Leadership style, Tasks, Freedom of action, Representation, and Status. The empirical analysis shows that the elites' party leadership ideal is ambivalent and different across the two parties. The ambiguities can be summarized as dichotomies, where the ideal leader should encompass both sides of the dichotomy. The Social Democratic Party elites' ideal is represented by two dichotomies: the leader versus the team and the party versus the government. To bridge the ambiguities, the elite resort to the idea of "anchoring". This notion resolves conflicts between the leader and the surrounding team and the party and the government. The ideal of the Liberal Party's elites includes four dichotomies: dogmatism versus pragmatism; idea versus person; appearance (outward-looking) versus action (inward-looking); and free versus constrained. Unlike the case of the Social Democratic Party, it is less evident how the Liberal Party's elites accommodate the ambiguities. However, an emphasis on accountability and maintaining a balance between existing conflicts, partially remedies the dilemma. Also, the idea of leadership within the Liberal Party is less problematic compared to the Social Democratic Party. In sum, while the Social Democrats' ideal resembles the "friendly father figure", the Liberals' ideal is portrayed by the "superficial intellectual". The findings also indicate that the way in which the parties were established, their experience of being in government, size, ideology, and position within the party system affect their beliefs about leadership ideals.

The change in regional governance in Sweden is regularly understood in terms of a shift from 'government' to 'governance', from a redistributive policy to a policy that aims to encourage regional innovation, competitiveness and growth. This shift also includes the adoption of global policy models, such as 'clusters'. In the literature on the global spread of policies it has been argued that a market for global policies has developed. This is not least evident through the expansion of global consultancy firms, international policy organisations as well as a cosmopolitan elite of travelling policy technocrats. Theoretically and methodologically this study contributes to scholarly discussions of how new forms of governance can be analysed, and especially how governmentality studies can be utilised and combined with analyses of the messy political practices of specific policies and programs. The study analyses the discursive shift in regional policy in Sweden: contested elements erased, conflicts concealed and the political order produced. By empirically departing from a 'cluster policy network' lodged within a Swedish region, cluster policy is analysed as an assemblage of global circuits of knowledge, expertise and local relations of power. A broad range of materials for analysis have been generated through interviews, participant observations and documents. The production of policy knowledge is an overarching political rationality of contemporary forms of regional governance, translated into technologies such as benchmarking, regional comparisons, competitions, evaluations and best-practice. Based on the empirical analyses it is argued that the lack of power critique and a hyper-rational representation of knowledge produce an international market for legitimacy. It is further argued that five characteristics of the policy regime ('the regional cluster orchestra') contributes to the reproduction of the policy regime, and relations of domination. ; Baksidestext Avhandlingen tar sin utgångspunkt i vad som har beskrivits som en marknad för globala policymodeller. I Sverige har klusterbegreppet, med ursprung i ekonomisk och geografisk teoribildning, fått stort genomslag i regionalpolitiken. I den samtida regionalpolitiken har också produktionen av olika former av policykunskap utvecklats till centrala styrningsteknologier: benchmarking, best practice, utvärderingar, uppföljningar, mätningar och konkurrensutsatta tävlingar om regionala utvecklingsmedel. Genom kunskap och ständigt lärande ska Sveriges regioner frälsas. I avhandlingen studeras den scen där ett regionalt förankrat policynätverk agerar och den kunskap som produceras. Regionalpolitikens rationalitet innebär att det blir centralt för regionerna att agera som enhetliga aktörer och visa upp en lyckad och framgångsrik fasad. Det argumenteras för att bristen på maktanalys, och en hyperrationell syn på kunskap i regionalpolitiken innebär att regionalpolitikens styrningsteknologier producerar en internationell marknad för legitimitet som i sin tur reproducerar ordningen och döljer dominansrelationer.