| 171. |
- von Sydow, Göran, 1975-
(författare)
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Politicizing Europe : Patterns of party-based opposition to European integration
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- European integration was for a long time perceived as an elite-driven project that received public acceptance through what was coined as the permissive consensus. With the expansion of the domain of community actions and capacities, and the turmoil in the ratification processes following changes of the treaties, an increased public contestation over European integration can be observed. European integration now covers policy areas that are more prone to political debate and polarization. The weak public support for the EU has not been matched by electoral support for Eurosceptic parties. Hence, this mismatch increases the political opportunity structures for political entrepreneurs wishing to profit from the public dissent regarding the integration process.This study focuses on the conditions under which European integration is politicized, where politicization refers more specifically to party-politicization. Political parties that oppose the EU and their electoral fortunes are used as a proxy for the politicization of European integration. It is a comparative study over time (1984-2009) and space (14 member states) which assesses the conditional power of a number of enabling and constraining institutional factors that influence the variation in number of Eurosceptic parties, success of those parties, and the success of single-issue Eurosceptic parties over time and space. The analysis demonstrates the importance of the party system features and the use of referendum over European integration for the emergence of party-based Euroscepticism. It also places special emphasis on the combination of factors and their impact on the outcome. The study relates the findings to the democratic credentials of the European Union, with special reference to the role of opposition and representation.
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| 172. |
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| 173. |
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| 174. |
- Walden Laing, Dagmar von, 1933-
(författare)
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HIV/AIDS in Sweden and the United Kingdom : policy networks 1982-1992
- 2001
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The focus of this study is on the development and influence of HIV/AIDS policy networks in Sweden and United Kingdom during the period 1982-92, from the period when the lethal disease which was later named AIDS first appeared in the two countries, to the time when HIV/AIDS policy was integrated into the main policy field of infectious diseases. The networks are defined as structural arrangements between organisations and individuals, who are in frequent contact with one another in order to prevent HIV infection, to reduce the personal and social impact of HIV infection, and to care for those already infected.Actors on different levels of decision making power in the two countries; the formation and development of networks; and the role of these networks in the political processes, leading to established HIV/AIDS policies, are identified and compared. Primary sources such as government papers, parliamentary debates and committee hearings from both countries have been used. Other sources are printed material from regional and local authorities, and NGOs; monographs and articles written by medical historians, sociologists, and political science scholars; and interviews with politicians, experts, and NGO representatives.HIV/AIDS developed into an independent policy sub-sector within the health care sector in both countries, and in Britain also within the social service sector. A large number of actors were involved in the networks. The health services in general have often been described as professionalised networks, dominated by the medical profession. The doctors and other experts were crucial in proposing HIV/AIDS policies and implementing them, but the influence of NGOs representing patients, and groups at risk of infection, grew unusually strong.In Sweden, the National Commission was established in 1985, structured in line with the tradition of parliamentary ad hoc commissions. The Commission became the hub of a national network, involving political parties, central, regional and local authorities, concerned NGOs, and relevant experts. In United Kingdom, the AIDS unit in the Department of Health became the central coordinating point. Civil servants rather than politicians shaped the policy, whilst the influence of NGOs on the HIV/AIDS policy fluctuated over time. The centralized nature of the National Health Service delayed health promotion initiatives.In the study, two network models provide a set of concepts which have proved useful in analysing the policy formation during the first eleven years of the HIV/AIDS crisis. These concepts facilitated the comparison between Sweden and United Kingdom which showed that differences were caused not only by differences in political culture and the main organisational patterns, in this case the national health care systems. The formation of HIV/AIDS policy networks in both countries was also affected by their national combinations of tradition and ideology. Furthermore, the analysis has suggested that when a new policy field is identified around a crisis affecting whole populations, it should also be analysed with reference to other, interfacing policy fields.
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| 175. |
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| 176. |
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| 177. |
- Waltman, Max, 1974-
(författare)
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The Politics of Legal Challenges to Pornography: Canada, Sweden, and the United States
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The dissertation analyzes obstacles and potential in democracies, specifically Canada, Sweden, and United States, to effectively address empirically documented harms of pornography. Legislative and judicial challenges under different democratic and legal frameworks are compared.Adopting a problem-driven theoretical approach, the reality of pornography’s harms is analyzed. Evidence shows its production exploits existing inequalities among persons typically drawn from other forms of prostitution who suffer multiple disadvantages, such as extreme poverty, childhood sexual abuse, and race and gender discrimination, making survival alternatives remote. Consumption is also divided by sex. A majority of young adult men consumes pornography frequently; women rarely do, usually not unless initiated by others. After consumption, studies show many normal men become substantially more sexually aggressive and increasingly trivialize and support violence against women. Vulnerable populations—including battered, raped, or prostituted women—are most harmed as a result.The impact of attempts to address pornography’s harms on democratic rights and freedoms, specifically gender equality and speech, is explored through the case studies. Democracies are found to provide more favorable conditions for legal challenges to pornography’s harms when recognizing substantive (not formal) equality in law, and when promoting representation of perspectives and interests of groups particularly injured by pornography. State-implemented approaches such as criminal obscenity laws are found less effective. More victim-centered and survivor-initiated civil rights approaches would be more responsive and remedial—a finding with implications for other politico-legal problems, such as global warming, that disproportionately affect disadvantaged populations traditionally largely excluded from decision-making.
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| 178. |
- Wendt Höjer, Maria, 1968-
(författare)
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Rädslans politik : våld och sexualitet i den svenska demokratin
- 2002
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis argues that men’s violence, and women’s fear of that violence, constitute a central problem for democracy. Women’s possibilities of participating in society are drastically limited by their bodily integrity being threatened, both in public and in the home. As long as women lack the fundamental right to their own bodies, it makes no sense to speak of a functioning democratic order or equal citizenship for women and men.The thesis seeks to investigate how men’s violence against women has been dealt with in Swedish politics from the 1930s to the 1990s. The raw material consists in the Swedish public record – public inquiries, parliamentary bills,reports and parliamentary debates – from the period in question. The issue of violence against women is limited to two phenomena: physical assaults on women, and rape.An important question concerns what sort of representations of violence and sexuality, of gender and gender relations, dominate political life; and what sort of political measures these representations make possible. The thesis also presents,in terms of power analysis,an interpretation of public policy dealing with violence against women.The thesis claims that it is possible to interpret public policy as partly challenging the gender order. In different ways political barriers are challenged, both in terms of what can be brought into the public arena as a political problem,and the way a problem so flagged comes to be framed. Bit by bit the naturalness and banality of violence is eroded. Violence against women becomes a question on its own terms and demands a direct public answer.But the analysis also shows that public policy to a large extent is characterized by continuity. Two processes that reinforce the existing order are identified.The first process deals with how men’s violence against women is depoliticized. If the problem of violence is to win legitimacy as a political issue, it has to be defined and understood as something other than as part of a gendered order of domination and subordination. The second process that reinforces established gender power concerns how men’s political primacy is upheld in the public treatment of violence.The content and ambit of politics tends to be determined in relation to a male subject. When the male subject symptomatically becomes the departure point and central figure in political discourse – when it is he who sees and defines issues – women are constructed as the other, as the exceptional (even deviant) case.The analysis shows that political discourse to a large extent rejects both the definition of violence in terms of gender power and measures based on that understanding. From the viewpoint that citizenship means equal possibilities to politicize one’s life conditions and situation,women’s citizenship under present conditions must, the thesis suggests, be assessed as highly conditional. In political life women’s practical possibilities are circumscribed by the continuing règle du jeu that their experiences must be capable of formulation as the same as men’s in order to gain political legitimacy.
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| 179. |
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| 180. |
- Westergren, Martin, 1979-
(författare)
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The Political Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions : A Justice-Based Account
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- One of the most prominent political developments in recent decades is the expansion and strengthening of global governance institutions (GGIs). Our lives are increasingly governed by rules for trade, fiscal and monetary standards, intellectual property law, and norms of good governance, developed and overseen by global institutions. An important task for contemporary political theory in relation to this development is to seek to clarify the normative issues arising for and from these institutions. In particular, it is important to clarify how the problem of political legitimacy should be understood in the context of GGIs: if, and in virtue of what, there is a problem of political legitimacy in global governance institutions, what the nature of this problem is, and what political legitimacy should be thought to require in this setting. Traditionally, the problem of political legitimacy is understood as arising as a consequence of the kind of coercive power and authority exercised by the state over its citizens. Coercive power, it is standardly presumed, requires a special defense because it stands in tension with individual freedom and autonomy. As a result, state power is legitimate only if heightened normative demands are satisfied. This thesis advances the view that a similar problem arises in the context of GGIs. Despite that GGIs lack strong enforcements capabilities and coercive powers in a strict sense, and despite that they may facilitate inter-state cooperation and produce benefits for states and individuals that would be lost without them, there are problematic forms of power vested in these institutions that gives rise to demands for special justification. The background conditions in the global political economy creates a situation in which states and individuals find themselves dependent on, and vulnerable to, decisions made in global institutions. In an important sense, these relationships of dependency give rise to constraints on freedom that are prima facie normatively problematic and that require justification, the thesis argues. Thus, a problem of political legitimacy is generated at the global level. The thesis argues that in order to be legitimate GGIs must fulfill duties of justice. Only if the distribution of resources and opportunities that GGIs give rise to through their rules, policies and programs, pass an appropriate justifiability test can the constraints of freedom they give rise to be legitimate. In this way, important duties of distributive justice are generated at the global level as a consequence of the need to justify existing global governance institutions.
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