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The Swedish Sami Parliament is both a representative body elected by the Indigenous Sami people and a government agency under the Swedish state. Since its inception, this construction has been critiqued by the Sami people and Swedish governmental commissions alike: the Sami Parliaments dual roles are seen to be in fundamental conflict with one another. This article provides the first empirical study of the political and practical consequences of these conflicting roles. Using in-depth interviews with politicians and civil servants at the Sami Parliament, representatives of Sami organisations, and civil servants at the Swedish ministries, we analyse the extent to which the Sami Parliament is able to perform its role as a government agency. We argue that the dual roles of the Sami Parliament create problems not only for the decision making powers of the Parliament as a government agency, but also constitute a structural obstacle to Sami self-determination. Adapted from the source document.

Today we are all photographers. Self-portraits are everywhere and snapshots of our lives are circulated and shared frenetically on various social media networks. Distinctions are blurred, not only between the private and public spheres but also between professional and amateur photographic practices. This calls for increased knowledge about the performative characteristics of digitised and networked visual communication. What are the limits of automation and what is the potential of virtuality? 'Auto' investigates how the everyday digital photography of our times challenges notions of autobiography, interactivity, and democracy.0

The relationship between the state and municipalities has for the recent decades become increasingly complex, strained and infected. The education policy has for several decades been surrounded by different governing logics and conflicts where the conflict between the state's pursuit of national equality and the local self-determination is prominent. This study examines how this conflict affects the municipal official's approaches to the state's control of the municipal compulsory school through aimed government grants. The study consists of a qualitative interview study of six municipalities with 23 respondents. In each municipality, I have conducted interviews with municipal officials, principals and municipal politicians. The findings show that the aimed government grants should be seen in the field of tension between state and municipality and between politics and professions. Conflicts arise between the municipalities' different conditions as well as their local needs and the state's pursuit of national equality between schools. The municipal officials are assigned significant power regarding how the state and municipal governance is to be put into practice and are therefore given a coordinating central position where they must balance between state requirements, local requirements and school's requirements. The findings indicate that they seem to prioritize the state's target of national equality in favor of the local target of self-determination. The relationship between the state and the municipalities gets exposed through the role conflicts of the municipal officials, which both compete and cooperate. The conclusion is that the municipal officials should be regarded as the state's extended arm, or as "state municipal officials". They possess a double loyalty to the state and local government and must, with this double loyalty, be the guardians of the local and national democracy at the same time. There is a risk that the municipal officials' double democracy loyalty demonstrates that the local democracy ...

In his famous essay On Liberty, John Stuart Mill divides individual acts in two categories; acts that only harm the acting individual himself, & acts that harms other individuals. The former is called 'self-regarding acts' & the latter is called 'other-regarding acts'. There has been a long debate between famous scholars about how to interpret Mill at this point. Some argue that Mill permit that (1) only other-regarding acts could be punished, & other argue that Mill support that (2) even self-regarding acts could be punished. I argue that Mill could not hold both of the positions at the same time, & if he does he must be guilty of a severe inconsistency. The analysis shows that interpretation (3) is most reasonable. One conclusion that follows is that Mills liberalism is not "radically individualistic," it is instead a perfectionistic form of political liberalism, including both radical & communitarian ideas. Tables, References. Adapted from the source document.

This dissertation addresses party-culture in political parties represented in the Swedish parliament. Party-culture is investigated by studying collective self-images and norms in Swedish parliamentary party-groups (PPG). The aim of this investigation is to contribute to understanding of the conditions under which parliamentary work is carried out. In order to expand our understanding of these conditions this dissertation looks beyond the formal processes by which party-groups deliver their political message and make decisions, and instead highlights the cultural aspects of these party organizations in the parliament. The method of analysis is qualitative and the material for the study consists of 53 interviews with members of parliament from all represented parties. The parties studied are thus the Social Democratic, Moderate, Liberal, Christian Democrats, Left, Centre, and Green. In addition, some participant observation for the 1998-2002 mandate period in used. The empirical investigation shows that party-culture is revealed via four basic themes: political ability, feelings of political responsibility, the importance social fellowship, and the party's strength in relation to individual party members. The party's culture based on the four themes noted above provides a theoretical structure for interpretation that combines an Aristotelian idea about basic knowledge types, sophia and phronesis, with cultural theorists Mary Douglas' grid-group-analysis. Based on this interpretation method it is shown that party-cultures distinguish themselves from each other in a way that diverges from the left-right spectrum that dominates Swedish politics. At the same time as the parties demonstrate differences in party-culture, there are also some similarities between the parties, and these similarities suggest that the parties have adjusted themselves to a more general culture within the parliament, most visibly the focus on factual knowledge and a certain requirement for modesty from party members. ; Konverterat ISBN: 978-91-554-5882-9

The primary aim of this study is to provide a deeper and more complete understanding of why the great municipal amalgamation (storkommunreformen) during the 1940s became the political solution to the problem that the Government believed many of Sweden's municipalities had in satisfactorily providing for a local welfare society. The study also describes the results of this large-scale reorganization process. The events examined include the political decision-making process at the national level that took place during 1939-1949, as well as the regional/local realization of these decisions during 1946-1952. The parliamentary treatment of the municipal division issue should be viewed as a good example of what researchers have termed a Swedish decision-making model. One clear manifestation of this was the fact that the national commission that investigated the question primarily formulated the principles for the reform. The committee's proposal received strong endorsements in the reports from the reviewers of the proposal. The government authorities and many of the municipalities felt that a new division of municipalities was justified. Opposition that did occur came mostly from rural municipalities with small populations. Many of these municipalities believed that the present municipal divisions functioned well as they were. Of those municipalities that were affected by amalgamation, 39 percent of them did not agree with the decision. The majority of these could agree to merge with other municipalities, but not with the municipalities stipulated by the authorities. Considering the fact that the then current divisions were based on a long tradition, demands for retaining independence could have been greater. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that 66 percent of all larger municipalities were formed using some level of force. This still indicated a relatively widely distributed opposition to the amalgamation decisions, however.

Two main arguments are presented in this article. First, when alternatives for the future of local government is debated, two questions need to be addressed simultaneously: (a) "how many & how big municipalities ought we have?", & (b) "how strong & well secured ought the principle of local self government be in the constitution?". Second, by using these questions as guides for the analysis, we argue that there are instrumental reasons to guarantee a strong local self-government in the constitution. However, such a reform needs to be complemented by a politically neutral body of regulations that, under given conditions, secures geographically concentrated minorities a right to secede. Adapted from the source document.

De senaste åren har sjukförsäkringen utvecklats i en åtstramande riktning utan att någon ändring av socialförsäkringsbalken har skett. Tidigare forskning har fokuserat på regeringens styrning mot ett sjukpenningtal på 9,0 som förklaring till Försäkringskassans förändrade tillämpning. Inom ramen för denna förklaring har även aktiveringspolitikens påverkan på styrningen lyfts fram. I denna artikel argumenterar jag för att det inte endast är regeringens styrning och aktiveringspolitiken som påverkat Försäkringskassans interna styrning, utan också en självideologi hos myndigheten som ligger i linje med ett ämbetsmannastatligt etos. Artikeln undersöker detta genom att göra en åtskillnad mellan enkelt respektivekvalificerat handlingsutrymme hos förvaltningen. Artikeln driver tesen att förändringen inom sjukförsäkringen har sin grund i en kombination av en ämbetsmannastatlig idé om relationen mellan politik och förvaltning (utövandet av ett kvalificerat handlingsutrymme) och en aktiveringspolitisk idé om relationen mellan stat och individ. ; Since the first two decades of the 21st century the Swedish social insurance system has evolved in a more restrictive direction without any corresponding change in the law. Previous research has mainly focused on the government's steering towards a sickness benefit ratio of 9.0 as an explanation to the changed enforcement of the system. Within the framework of this explanation, the activation policy has also been highlighted as a form of meta-ideology that has influenced the governance. This article argues that it's not only the government's control of activation policy that governs the actions of the Swedish social insurance agency, but also a specific ethos of the bureaucracy which consist of the self- ideology that the agency is the lord of the welfare state, not the server. In order to explore this, the article make a distinction between two types of discretion of the bureaucracy, and argue that the change in the Swedish social ...