| 21. |
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| 22. |
- Blomdahl, Mikael, 1970-
(författare)
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The Political Use of Force : Beyond National Security Considerations as a Source of American Foreign Policy
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In addressing the question of what explains the tendency of the presidents of the United States to use military force on many occasions to solve international problems the realist perspective has been strongly dominant in political science. This study sets out to address and challenge whether what may be called realist privilege still qualifies as an understanding of this American phenomenon. The key research question is to investigate whether or not the understanding of the U.S. use of force can be reduced to international factors solely. This study presents the argument that perspectives or theories that do not consider and cover domestic political processes and factors in their explanations must be regarded as incomplete. Two frameworks based on realism and domestic politics are developed and used in order to answer why U.S. presidents use military force at the international level. The author applies a decision-making approach derived from foreign policy analysis in order to compare and examine the U.S. missile actions against Libya in 1986, Iraq in 1993 and Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998. This study finds clear support for the significance of domestic political factors for the understanding of the U.S. use of force. This work concludes that since domestic political factors matter, even at times of heightened concern about national security, this contradicts and poses a serious challenge to realists’ assumptions regarding the motives of states. When using a decision-making approach that opens the so-called black box, the book demonstrates that domestic political factors, such as the U.S. Congress and American public constrain presidents when authorizing the use of force. To reduce the understanding of the U.S. use of force to international factors solely is, therefore, to overlook significant contributions from the U.S. domestic political context as a source of the presidential use of force.
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| 23. |
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| 24. |
- Bremberg, Niklas, 1978-
(författare)
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Exploring the Dynamics of Security Community-Building in the Post-Cold War Era : Spain, Morocco and the European Union
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis aims to make a theoretical as well as an empirical contribution to the debate on the security community concept in International Relations (IR) by way of conducting a study of the European Union (EU) as a security community-building institution in the case of Spain and Morocco. The security community concept originally sought to define the conditions under which the threat of inter-state war would be mitigated through social transaction and expectations of peaceful change between societies and states. However, in the post-Cold War era, the challenge is rather to understand how security communities emerge and expand at a time when armed conflicts among states have become less frequent compared to other non-military threats and trans-boundary risks (e.g. terrorism, failed states, organized crime, pandemics, climate change). The argument of this thesis is that the role of international organizations and the changing notion of security need to be taken into account when re-thinking the concept. Drawing on constructivism in IR, especially the notion of communities of practice, the thesis suggests a framework to study how security communities work in the post-Cold War era focusing on the mechanisms of crisis management, transgovernmental networks and multilateral venues. The framework is used to study the EU as a security community-building institution in the case of Spain (member state) and Morocco (non-member), and in the fields of trade, security and defence and civil protection. The main finding of the thesis, which carries broader implications for the debate on security communities in IR, is that the EU has contributed to broadening the repertoire of cooperative security practices between Spain and Morocco, not necessarily through fostering collective identity but by supporting the development of communities of practitioners whom increasingly share a notion of military and civilian crisis management to counter non-military threats and trans-boundary risks.
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| 25. |
- Britz, Malena, 1972-
(författare)
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The Europeanization of Defence Industry Policy
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Drawing from both European integration theory and new institutional organisation theory, this study investigates the Europeanization of the defence industry policy area from 1989-2001, with a special focus on developments in Sweden. Among other things, the study shows how a European defence industry market has begun to emerge as an industrially-led but politically-sanctioned process, made possible through a re-structuring of the defence industry at the same time as European rules have been created in order to facilitate the common production of defence equipment. Increased integration of this policy area has been possible because of a change of the dominant norms, where the defence industry has more and more come to be seen as an issue of economy than before. It also shows how the issue of the supply of defence equipment emerged as a political issue in Sweden in the mid-1990s and that there was a slight change in the view of how security can be obtained: not only through self-sufficiency in defence equipment production but also through collaboration. The relationships between the actors in the traditional “Swedish model” changed, as some actors developed in a more European context than others; and where actor identities could no longer be taken for granted. The Swedish Defence Materiel Administration has undergone several re-organisations in the time period studied, partially as a consequence of a Europeanization of the policy area, but more as a consequence of a more general trend of “marketisation” of the state administration. This trend, which was not unique to Sweden, appears to have worked as a mediating factor, enabling the increased integration of the policy area. This also implies a very close connection between European integration and Europeanization, where Europeanization in this case has enabled a more formal integration process.
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| 26. |
- Bäck, Henry
(författare)
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Den utrikespolitiska dagordningen : makt, protest och internationella frågor i svensk politik 1965-1973
- 1979
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Protest activity is studied as a part of the political decision-making process. A theoretical framework which emanates from research into how political issues are placed on the so-called agenda of the political system is developed. Two hypotheses concerning how the protest arena is related to other political arenas are derived from this theoretical framework. According to the first, the "static" hypothesis, the substantive political content in the protest arena can be distinguished from the content in other arenas in a systematic and specified manner. According to the second, the "dynamic" hypothesis, the activities related to a given substantive issue appear first in the protest arena and then in the other arenas in a specific temporal sequence. The empirical testing of the hypotheses is carried out by means of content analysis of the substantive political content in the protest arena as well as in discussions in the press, at political party conventions, and in the Parliament. The study is limited to international issues. For the analysis of the dynamic-oriented hypothesis a further limitation is made to three issue areas: Indochina, Biafra, and conditions within and between the socialist states. The static hypothesis is supported by the data. Results of the analysis of the dynamic hypothesis are more difficult to interpret. One reason for this is the restricted temporal scope. However, the results suggest that protest activity tends to occur early in the decision-making process and that discussions in the press have greater significance for the foreign policy agenda than anticipated by the hypothesis.
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| 27. |
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| 28. |
- Carbin, Maria, 1972-
(författare)
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Mellan tystnad och tal : Flickor och hedersvåld i svensk offentlig politik
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis examines the contestations around the question of how violence against young women from ethnic minorities was articulated in Swedish public policy debates from 1995-2008. One core question investigated in this study is how the “new” problem of co called honour killings is categorised and understood within gender equality policies against violence and policies of immigrant integration. The thesis explores how different discourses compete and negotiate to make sense of the violence and try to stabilise meaning. Another aim of the thesis concerns the construction of available subject positions for young women, and the potential effects in terms of possibilities and restrictions for subjects to speak politically. The research material consists of parliamentary debates, major government documents, official government inquiries into integration and gender equality, as well as documents from the Swedish Integration Board and the County Administrative Boards. The analysis draws upon discourse theory and feminist postcolonial theory to explore what positions are made available to young women in policy discourses. Four competing discourses are identified: a multicultural discourse, a discourse of value-clashes, a discourse of structural discrimination and finally a gender power-discourse. However, in policies against honour related violence the violence is primarily understood as originating in a cultural and value-based heritage of certain immigrant communities. This study furthermore illustrates how girls are required to speak and make testimonies on their situation. The ways the stories of the girls are used make them into boundary markers between Swedish and non-Swedish. It is argued that letting the girls speak and listen to them might make it possible to understand some of the potential problems they face. Nevertheless, it might not form an agenda for changing the bigger political picture.
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| 29. |
- Chahboun, Naima, 1980-
(författare)
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Art of the Possible? : Feasibility and Compliance in Ideal and Nonideal Theory
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the past decade, the value of so-called ideal theory has become a major point of dispute among political theorists. While critics of ideal theory accuse this approach of “idle utopianism”, its advocates fault the critics for conceding to “cynical realism”.This dissertation examines two charges against ideal theory. The demandingness charge states that ideal theory fails to acknowledge the constraints on justice set by the empirical conditions that prevail in our world, and that it therefore produces invalid principles. The uselessness charge states that ideal theory, even if it tells us what justice would require under exceptionally favorable circumstances, offers no information valuable for guiding action in the nonideal circumstances characteristic of today’s societies. The two charges target the idealized assumptions made in ideal theory, in particular the assumption of full compliance. By assuming full compliance, the critics argue, ideal theory ignores the way real-world agents’ motivational limitations render the pursuit of its proposed principles infeasible or undesirable.In four free-standing articles, I examine when and why noncompliance due to motivational limitations puts constraints on justice, and how this affects the status and usefulness of ideal theory. I argue that motivational limitations constrain justice in ideal theory if we hold that justice is action-guiding in the sense that it confers actual duties on individual agents, and that the distribution of collective duties to individuals requires reasonable expectations of others’ compliance. In nonideal theory, adopting an actualist standpoint will lead us to conclude that not only the noncompliance of others, but also our own foreseeable noncompliance constrains what justice can demand. I further argue that how this affects the usefulness of ideal theory depends, on the one hand, on how we interpret crucial concepts such as “action-guidance”, and, on the other, on which task we expect political theory to perform. My findings shed new light over the complex conflict lines that underlie the current dispute, and urge debaters to render explicit and argue for the assumptions upon which they rest their judgments about ideal theory.
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| 30. |
- Christiansson, Magnus, 1973-
(författare)
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Defence transformation in Sweden : The strategic governance of pivoting projects 2000-2010
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis investigates the political control of the Swedish defence transformation in the second decade after the end of the Cold War. It focuses on high-level political and administrative processes and methods used in governing the Swedish Armed Forces. The existing understanding of political control in civil-military relations theory has two main shortcomings: it confuses the unique role of the military as sui generis with an exceptional(ist) theory for higher government, and its view of higher government is limited/partly misleading. The thesis presents a more elaborate conceptual framework -- strategic governance -- based on contemporary governance theory. The latter features two governance dimensions, organizing and microsteering, which are investigated in three within-case studies of “pivoting projects” for defence transformation: 1) the EU’s Nordic Battle Group 08 under Swedish leadership; 2) the development of a market-based acquisition system; and, lastly, 3) the governance of Sweden’s contribution to Afghanistan. An important finding of the thesis is that higher government in Sweden is not a hierarchical “machine” as depicted in civil-military relations research, but that military and civilian officials alike should be viewed as “servants”, or officarius. In fact, military officers and civilians often work under a "hands-off" mandate without direct supervision. Another finding is the ability of the Swedish Armed Forces to act according to the norms of higher government, rather than in conformity with military professional skills. Since neither reliance on military expertise nor active political involvement is a crucial factor for control, the theoretical implication is that other case studies should employ a governance approach rather than civil-military relations theory. The normative challenges that follow from the research include a) the need to develop a skill set adjusted to higher government in the military officer corps; b) the problem of identifying distinct areas of responsibility/accountability in strategic governance; and, ultimately, c) the necessity of improving coordination between different sectors relevant for national security, as the Swedish model for higher government in some respects is incompatible with strict requirements for generating a “grand strategy”.
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