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AbstractOver the past 25 years, Sweden has gone from having one of the most generous unemployment benefit systems among the rich democracies to one of the least. This article advances a multi-causal explanation for this unexpected outcome. It shows how the benefit system became a target of successive right-wing governments due to its role in fostering social democratic hegemony. Employer groups, radicalized by the turbulent 1970s more profoundly than elsewhere, sought to undermine the system, and their abandonment of corporatism in the early 1990s limited unions' capacity to restrain right-wing governments in retrenchment initiatives. Two further developments help to explain the surprising political resilience of the cuts: the emergence of a private (supplementary) insurance regime and a realignment of working-class voters from the Social Democrats to parties of the right, especially the nativist Sweden Democrats, in the context of a liberal refugee/asylum policy.

THIS ARTICLE ATTEMPTS TO SHOW THAT THE CONCEPTS OF PLURALISM AND OF THE VANGUARD HAVE BEEN SYNTHESIZED IN NICARARGUAN THEORY AND PRACTICE IN A MANNER THAT DOES VIOLENCE TO NEITHER OF THEM. FURTHER, IT HOPES TO SHOW THAT SUCH A SYNTHESIS CAN YIELD VALUABLE THEORETICAL INSIGHTS WHICH CAN GO BEYOND THE PARTICULAR CONTEXT OF CONTEMPORARY NICARAGUA, THE DYNAMISM OF CONTEMPORARY NICARAGAUN LIFE IS PARTIALLY DERIVATIVE OF THE COMBNATION IN PRACTICE OF TWO APPARTENTLY CONDICTORY NOTIONS. THIS EXAMPLE DEMONSTRATES THAT A CREATIVE APPROACH TO THE COMBINATION OF OLD POLITICAL IDEAS CAN YIELD PRACTICAL REALITIES THAT GO BEYOND OLD EXPECTATIONS.

One of the major principles of the Nicaraguan constitution is that the state guarantees the existence of political pluralism (Article 5). One clear aspect of such pluralism is the maintenance of a multiparty system. Yet it is also clear that the FSLN as the vanguard party sees its function as guiding the revolution. In this article, the author's concern is to show that the concepts of pluralism and of the vanguard have been synthesized in Nicaraguan theory and practice in a manner that does violence to neither of them

An opportunity exists to assess the limitations in building long-term peace in post-conflict states, particularly given the extent to which negotiated settlements incorporate demands for democratic mechanisms. By assessing how post-conflict governments construct new majorities through policy tools as well as assessing how they are constrained by the structural realities of negotiated settlements, we gain some purchase on the reasons why some post-conflict state projects succeed while others fail. This has potentially transformative implications for our understanding of how social contracts, and their attendant issues of consent, dissent, and legitimacy, operate in the modern world and the ways they impact such critical discussions as democratic transition, post-conflict reconciliation, and nation-building. We use the case of post-apartheid South Africa to analyse how post-conflict states are limited in terms of forging social contracts among citizens and between citizens and governments. Of specific interest is the way that post-conflict social contracting compels nation-builders to eschew the uncertainties of viable electoral democracy in favour of dominant party regimes or electoral authoritarianism. We suggest that this tension is less a result of pecuniary interest on the part of nation-builders and more a consequence of the imperfections of the modern social contracting process. Adapted from the source document.

This paper re-examines the idea of political vanguardism—long consigned to the dustbin of defunct scientific socialist ideology—to shed light on the theory of democratic representation. The discussion connects the use of the term "vanguard" by two prominent early socialist thinkers to what it terms the "cosmological" dimension of their writings. It shows how each author figured vanguard agency as fomenting different visions of the intellectual progress required for representative government, and that these visions were sustained by analogies to the origin and development of astronomical objects. The "utopian" socialist Henri Saint-Simon (1770–1825) first invoked the vanguard metaphor to describe a way of thinking about scientific progress that would naturalize a new governing elite. The revolutionary communist Auguste Blanqui (1805–1881) then appropriated the vanguard idea to reimagine scientific authority in a way that would preserve and expand citizens' capacities to hold their representatives accountable. The article pursues three goals. First, it provides a revisionist history of well-known scientistic attempts to stabilize mass democracy in the nineteenth century, revealing how claims to scientific authority were contested from within a socialist republican tradition usually seen as complicit in such agency-inhibiting ideologies. Second, the concept of vanguardism it reconstructs from this history, as a response to the "usurpation" of a vigilant attitude between citizens and office holders, offers new resources for theorizing democratic representation. Finally, it draws attention to the importance of cosmological rhetoric in the history of modern republican and socialist political thought.

Democratic Vanguardism explores the origins, development, and implication of the United States' policy after 9/11 to promote democracy by force and thereby advance its national security. It explores disputes among political theorists, elected statesmen, and public intellectuals to help enrich our understanding of this most fraught period in American foreign relations, and it provides a novel account on the discourse of historical teleology that underpinned the Bush Doctrine.

The Sandinista Revolution is arguably the most significant event in Nicaraguan history. Because of its historical importance and distinctive socio-cultural context, the Sandinista Revolution offers significant opportunities for scholarly inquiry. The literature on the Sandinista Revolution is substantial. However, little is known about the organization Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and how it evolved into the leader of the movement which sought to overthrow the 45-year Somoza dictatorship. In revolutionary literature, the concept of revolutionary vanguard or vanguard party is common. However, the notion of vanguardism as a process and what constitutes a vanguardist organization is yet to be explored. This study aims to provide such an investigation, through an examination of the insurrectional period (1974-1979) leading up to the Sandinista Revolutionary Victory in 1979. Grounded in Scott's (2008) institutional framework, this study describes the evolution of the FSLN into the vanguard of the anti-Somoza movement, identifying relationships between institutional elements involved in the FSLN's institutionalization process and progression into "leader" of the movement. Data from interviews, newspaper articles, and video documentaries were scrutinized in search of answers to the question: How do mechanisms, carriers, and agency as elements of institutions explain vanguardism in the case study of the FSLN? This research reveals critical mechanisms, carriers and agency in the vanguardism of the FSLN, and explains how these elements supported this process. In this sense, this research reveals distinctive characteristics in vanguardism as an institutional process, which differentiate vanguardism from other processes. This research presents an opportunity to learn about the FSLN-a vastly unique politico-military organization. Additionally, there is an opportunity to broaden our observational lens, taking a neoinstitutional approach, to illustrate new ways in which organizations evolve, change and adapt to their environments. Lastly, this study hopes to pave the way for future studies in organizational vanguardism. ; Ph. D.