| 1. |
- Alnevall, Christina, 1966-
(författare)
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Women’s Discursive Representation : Women as Political Representatives, Mothers, and Victims of Men’s Violence in the Mexican Parliament
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis examines how Mexican women political representatives are constituted through parliamentary language in the national Chamber of Deputies during a time when compulsory electoral gender quotas are introduced. Women’s political representation has increased considerably worldwide, due to gender quotas or laws requiring guaranteed seats for women. Mexico, which is the case studied in the dissertation, is one example where a significant growth in the number of elected female politicians have increased due to an electoral quota law. However, despite this development women parliamentarians are still reported to face obstacles when in office. Drawing on the ‘representative claims’ theory and critical discourse studies, this study seeks to understand how constructions of women hinder as well as provide opportunities for female politicians. The dissertation develops a theoretical and methodological framework that makes it possible to identify and analyze the representative claims and the subject positions that are constituted by these claims.The empirical section analyzes records of debates in the Mexican parliaments from two periods, one before and one after the implementation of the 2002 electoral quota law, which is a major change in the Mexican political system. The construction of the three subject positions women as representatives, women as mothers and women as victims of men’s violence are detailed. Focusing on the constitutive aspects of representation, as the dissertation seeks to understand how the construction of these three subject positions affect what female politicians can say and do in parliament.Previous research on women’s political representation has offered a rich understanding of descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation. This study broadens the field further by introducing the discursive representation approach, which contribute to the understanding of the obstacles women politicians (still) meet. The study uncovers how Mexican women are situated in a political context dominated by men, in which they constantly have to negotiate their presence.
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| 2. |
- 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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| 3. |
- 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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| 4. |
- Furendal, Markus, 1989-
(författare)
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Do Your Bit, Claim Your Share : Justice, Ethos, and the Individual Duty to Contribute
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Contemporary political philosophy primarily conceives of justice as a virtue of major social institutions. Yet, much advocacy of justice is increasingly focused on how well particular individuals live up to its demands, and proceeds by calling out and criticising their unjust behaviour. The institutional focus renders political philosophy unable to inform and evaluate such attempts to change, not legal frameworks, but rather the principles that people find acceptable and act on in their daily lives. To address this shortcoming, this dissertation provides a political philosophical analysis of what justice requires of individuals, and why. It does so by developing and defending an account of contributive justice, which answers the inquiry’s guiding questions of who should contribute to justice and why, as well as what a contribution is, and how individual duties of justice should be enforced. The arguments provided support the conclusion that achieving a just society is not simply a question of designing and complying with the right kind of institutions, but that we all have a pro tanto duty to contribute in our day-to-day lives towards the furthering of a just society, and that relying on informal and decentralised social sanctions is the best way to promote adherence to this duty.The duty to contribute defended in this dissertation differs from existing policies that make access to welfare state services conditional on individuals’ willingness to work or study. It also differs from prominent existing philosophical defences of similar positions, centred around the ideas of equality, reciprocity, and fairly sharing burdens. Critically analysing these accounts, the dissertation shows that, although each account can justify a duty to contribute, their specific answers to the guiding questions are ultimately unsatisfactory. For instance, they are unable to explain both why it is unjust to opt out from doing your bit of the labour necessary to meet the demands of justice, and why individuals who cannot contribute should nevertheless be able to claim the share that they are due.These shortcomings can be avoided, however, by combining concerns about equality, reciprocity, and fairly sharing burdens into a hybrid account. This generates a two-part pro tanto duty to contribute whereby, firstly, everyone has a duty to contribute towards making sure that everyone receives what they are due as a matter of justice. If and when this level is reached, everyone then has an obligation to benefit others, conditional upon them benefitting from the work of others. While it is unjust to refuse to contribute in the first way, the hybrid account leaves room for people to reject additional benefits and thereby absolve themselves from having to contribute further. Furthermore, the pro tanto nature of this duty means that it could be outweighed by other morally important considerations. Although demanding, it will hence not crowd out all personal pursuits.The dissertation also suggests that adherence to this duty should be enforced not through state action, but rather by individuals responding to and upholding a system of social sanctions. Contrasting this so-called ethos of justice with similar systems of social control, such as peer-to-peer online monitoring and sanctioning, and the Social Credit System currently being implemented in China, arguably shows that the informal and decentralised nature of the ethos allows it to avoid the potentially freedom-curtailing effects of the similar systems.
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| 5. |
- Ramström, Gustav, 1984-
(författare)
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The Case for Causal Individualism in Social Science
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Social science has, from its very beginnings, been characterized by debates over the true nature of society and about how to best understand and explain it. At the heart of these discussions lies the question of the causal structure of the social world. Two overarching positions on this issue can be identified: causal individualism and causal holism. While causal individualism argues that we can account sufficiently for the types of causal relationships of interest to social scientists simply with reference to processes involving actions, interactions and mental properties on the part of individuals in physical settings, causal holism argues that social causation also involves higher level phenomena and/or entities, such as “macro social organisms”, “structures” or “institutions”. This compilation thesis makes the case for the former perspective. More specifically, the thesis aims to do two things: 1) To provide a clear account of causal individualism based on an explicit social ontology; and 2) To defend this position against the most influential versions of causal holism. It is argued that contemporary embodiments of causal holism in social scientific meta-theory (e.g. the notion that there are micro-macro mechanisms in the social sphere, the idea that social phenomena may be “micro realization robust” and the belief that social macro entities can have a downward causal effect on individuals) all stem from one and the same more fundamental error, i.e. that of treating the analytical micro-macro relationship in social science as if it were empirical.
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| 6. |
- Robertsson, Magna, 1973-
(författare)
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Personligt mod : Om krigsdekorationer som mjuk normstyrning under insatsen i Afghanistan åren 2008-2012
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- During the 2000s, Sweden has pursued an active foreign and security policy. This has meant participation in several international military operations and has left many Swedish soldiers and officers with combat experience. Thus, the Swedish parliament decided in 2010 on a political reform of the veterans area, with more extensive societal support, war decorations to express the government recognition of personal sacrifices made in the service and a new medal for courage in combat. Considered as a reward system, it functions as an immaterial and emotionally established incentive, in contrast to the financial and bonus reward systems that are otherwise common.From a governance perspective, this setting is fundamentally interesting. The complexity of military operations and the demands for efficiency in armed combat are in contrast with the democratic state's need to guarantee the rule of law, even from a distance and under difficult conditions. Traditional government is not sufficient because the situation is characterized by high contextual uncertainty and therefore requires more situational adaptive control. Organizing in a professional model implies autonomy for military officials, and this means that there is a form of gap in terms of civilian control.In the dissertation, a concept and an analytical model are formulated to understand this phenomenon, entitled soft norm governance, that also form one of the main results. The model combines four levels of analysis to describe the dynamics of the steering mix: organizational metagovernance, rule control, policy work and professional ethics. One conclusion is that professional ethics has a two-way function in the chain of implementation steering, both as a decisive factor for concrete decision-making, but also as an objective for the government’s soft norm governance. Thus, this control gap does not mean absence of control, but that other value-based norm systems govern our actions. In this way, soft norm governance also reaches beyond the scope of the law.The theoretical framework is metagovernance, the idea that the modern state is steering at a distance and with subtle methods, such as by organizational measures. It opens for the importance of soft law, social norms and ethics in governmental steering. The case study of the veterans policy and medal of courage contributes empirically to the specification of these theories. Furthermore, new institutionalism adds an explanatory value with a rationality of action for the officials, a so-called logic of appropriateness based on the professional role and on adaptation to the situation at hand and to applicable rules. Theoretically, the thesis contributes by supplementing with a logic of values, which takes into account the profession's ethical and moral rationality of action, which is particularly important in situations such as armed conflict.The methodological approach combines a structural statistical perspective with a qualitative and understanding-oriented perspective and can, with the support of the analytical model, illuminate both pattern and function. The material base is a total selection from the medal preparation of eight contingents in Afghanistan during the years 2008-2012, i.e. FS16-FS23. It consists of the archive material from the nominations as well as in-depth interviews with responsible commanders at the international units and at the national headquarters, including the Commander-in-Chief.
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| 7. |
- Zakhour, Karim, 1982-
(författare)
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While We Wait : Democratization, State and Citizenship among Young Men in Tunisia's Interior Regions
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation has sought to develop new ways of understanding democratization, and by extension democracy, by attempting to capture the experience of democratic transitions. The thesis has investigated the Tunisian democratization processes that followed the overthrow of Ben Ali in 2011. This transition, while on many levels successful, has also been hampered by widespread frustration and disappointment, particularly among the young. More specifically, the study has looked at young men in Gafsa and Kasserine, Tunisia's historically marginalized, interior regions. The study is the result of fourteen months of fieldwork in Tunisia between 2015 and 2019.Building on the work of French political thinker Claude Lefort, the study understands democracy as a destabilizing of certainty on the level of symbolic power. It treats democratization as a heightened experience of this breakdown of symbolic power, and posits that the democratic dissolution of certainty is more visible, pronounced and perilous in transitional periods. Symbolic power comes to be articulated as political imaginaries, which are formed and informed by the past and current relationship between the state and its citizens. During democratization processes, the emergence of a free public space opens up for new political imaginaries. Through participant observation this thesis has sought to capture the quotidian aspects of young men's lives, looking at public space, particularly cafés, as important spaces of waiting. Such waiting, the study argues, makes the expectations of the democratization process visible. The study shows that, for the young men, the Tunisian political imaginaries are informed by expectations of a state that can provide the basics of (male) citizenship, understood primarily in terms of state-employment. The inability of the state to provide, tied to both neoliberal and demographic factors, was a major motivator behind the 2010-2011 Tunisian revolution. These unfulfilled expectations also come to impact the young men’s experience of the democratic transition, centered on a continued demand for “bread and dignity”. Democratization has given rise to vibrant public spaces, spaces that have simultaneously allowed for the articulation of frustrations. The general experiences of democratization that are expressed in these public spaces is one of chaos, loss of personal and economic security, as well as a sense of collapse in national solidarity. Democratization is, in many ways, understood to amplify a neoliberal logic premised on state-retreat, which leaves the young men to their own devices. This has led to a large-scale epistemological crisis, understood as falling away of meaning-making frameworks. This epistemological uncertainty has spawned attempts by the young men to recover a meaningful interpretive framework, whether democratic or not.
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| 8. |
- Ördén, Hedvig, 1983-
(författare)
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Securing Judgement : Rethinking Security and Online Information Threats
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The contemporary debate in democracies routinely describes online information threats such as misinformation, disinformation and deception as security-issues in need of urgent attention. Despite this pervasive discourse, policymakers often appear incapable of articulating what security means in this context. Turning to EU policy and previous research on cybersecurity, this dissertation empirically unpacks, critically interrogates and theoretically rethinks the meaning of security in relation to online information threats. In so doing, the articles elucidate a new ‘referent object’ implicitly guiding securitization. Contemporary interventions can be seen as grounded in assumptions about the protection of human judgement. Using Hannah Arendt’s writings on ‘political judgement’ as a point of reference for critically evaluating contemporary policy, the dissertation points to several problems with existing approaches to security in a democratic context where free debate constitutes a legitimizing element of political authority. The rethinking of security departs from this problematic and shows that treating human judgement as a ‘referent object’ – if firmly grounded in the interplay between independent human communicating subjects – can better address some problematic questions about legitimate authority and political community currently haunting security interventions in cyberspace.
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