| 1. |
- Agné, Hans, 1970-
(author)
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Democracy Reconsidered : Britain, France, Sweden, and the EU
- 2004
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether some positions in democratic theory should be adjusted or abandoned in view of internationalisation; and if adjusted, how. More specifically it pursues three different aims: to evaluate various attempts to explain levels of democracy as consequences of internationalisation; to investigate whether the taking into account of internationalisation reveals any reason to reconsider what democracy is or means; and to suggest normative interpretations that cohere with the adjustments of conceptual and explanatory democratic theory made in the course of meeting the other two aims.When empirical methods are used, the scope of the study is restricted to West European parliamentary democracies and their international affairs. More particularly, the focus is on the making of budget policy in Britain, France, and Sweden after the Second World War, and recent budget policy in the European Union. The aspects of democracy empirically analysed are political autonomy, participation, and deliberation. The material considered includes parliamentary debates, official statistics, economic forecasts, elections manifestos, shadow budgets, general election turnouts, regulations of budget decision-making, and staff numbers in government and parliament budgetary divisions. The study reaches the following conclusions among others. (i) The fact that internationalisation increases the divergence between those who make and those who are affected by decisions is not by itself a democratic problem that calls for political reform. (ii) That international organisations may have authorities delegated to them from democratic states is not sufficient to justify them democratically. Democratisation still needs to be undertaken. (iii) The fear that internationalisation dissolves a social trust necessary for political deliberation within nations seems to be unwarranted. If anything, views argued by others in domestic budgetary debate are taken increasingly serious during internationalisation. (iv) The major difficulty with deliberation seems to be its inability to transcend national boundaries. International deliberation at state level has not evolved in response to internationalisation and it is undeveloped in international institutions. (v) Democratic political autonomy diminishes during internationalisation with regard to income redistribution and policy areas taken over by international organisations, but it seems to increase in public spending. (vi) In the area of budget policy-making there are no signs that governments gain power at the expense of parliaments during internationalisation. (vii) To identify crucial democratic issues in a time of internationalisation and to make room for theoretical virtues like general applicability and normative fruitfulness, democracy may be defined as a kind of politics where as many as possible decide as much as possible.
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| 2. |
- Ahlbäck Öberg, Shirin, 1964-, et al.
(author)
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Exit riksdagen
- 2007
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Book (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Varför lämnar riksdagspolitiker sina uppdrag? Har avhoppen blivit vanligare? Hur påverkar detta riksdagens arbete och politikens utformning?I den här boken argumenterar författarna för att avhoppen indikerar en genomgripande förändring av svensk demokrati. Från att under lång tid ha kännetecknats av att vara en utpräglad partidemokrati, håller Sverige på att omvandlas till en ublikdemokrati. Utmärkande för publikdemokratin är att den befolkas av den politiske entrprenören som politikertyp. Den politiska entreprenören ser som sin uppgift att bryta ny mark - och har, till skillnad från den trogna partiarbetaren, en egen agenda.
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| 3. |
- Ahlbäck Öberg, Shirin, et al.
(author)
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Projektsamhället och hoten mot akademin
- 2016
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In: Det hotade universitetet. - Stockholm : Dialogos Förlag. - 9789175042992 ; , s. 9-26
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)
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| 4. |
- Andreasson, Jörgen
(author)
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Organizational preconditions and supportive resources for Swedish healthcare managers. : Factors that contribute to or counteract changes
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Swedish Healthcare managers’ organizational preconditions and supportive resources are important for their ability to work with planned change in a sustainable way. This thesis further investigates these factors together with an output measure, healthcare process quality (HPQ).The overall aim was to investigate how healthcare managers’ organizational preconditions and support contribute to or counteract managers’ work with planned change in order to implement process development in a sustainable way. Specific aims were: to improve knowledge of managers’ views of and approaches to increasing their employees’ influence on and engagement in models for improving care processes (study I); to investigate relationships among managers’ organizational preconditions, support, and work to improve quality of care and HPQ over time (study II); to investigate whether managers’ coaching style, preconditions, implementation strategy, appraisal of change, and clinical autonomy are associated with HPQ (study III ); and to assess the influence of support from superiors, colleagues, external sources, subordinates, and private life on managers’ own health (study IV ).The data for Studies I – III came from five hospitals collected over a three-year period. The data were collected by means of interviews (Study I, qualitative analysis) and annual questionnaires (Studies II and III, quantitative and mixed-method analyses). The data for Study IV were based on questionnaires administered to first- and second-line managers in municipal care, twice during a two-year period.The results revealed that the healthcare managers were key actors in implementing planned change, but were dependent on their employees’ engagement in order to succeed. Managers’ appraisal of work with planned change became more positive with strong support from other managers, employees, and the organization as well as with long managerial experience. Support from private life and networks, as well as the managers’ attitudes towards their managerial role, predicted their own health. For new managers or managers with many employees, organizational support predicted their health-related sustainability. Managers practising a more distanced style of coaching (e.g., clearly delegating responsibility for implementation work to employees) were associated with better HPQ outcomes than were managers who were more involved in implementation. In conclusion, implementation of planned change are facilitated by, engaged managers, employees with knowledge of implementation work and of the healthcare system, as well as organizational structures that support the managers. Strong support from various sources as well as managerial experience are important for managers’ appraisal of work with planned change. Strong managerial support and a more delegated leadership style are both important factors related to higher estimated HPQ.
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| 5. |
- Andreasson, Jörgen, et al.
(author)
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Professional Bureaucracy and Health Care Managers' Planned Change Strategies: Governance in Swedish Health Care
- 2018
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In: Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies. - : Det Kgl. Bibliotek/Royal Danish Library. - 2245-0157. ; 8:1, s. 23-41
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- To increase efficiency and quality, process development has been implemented in many Swedish hospitals. These hospitals are usually organized as professional bureaucracies in which health care managers have limited decision control. The new governance principles has been implemented without removing bureaucratic elements. This study analyzes how managers implement planned change in these professional bureaucracies, considering if managers coaching style, organizational preconditions, implementation strategy, appraisal of change and clinic autonomy, is associated with health care process quality (HPQ). The study is based on interviews with health care managers and longitudinal assessments of HPQ. The results revealed significant differences between coaching style, organizational preconditions, and HPQ over time. The conclusion is that leadership and preconditions is of importance for the health care manager's ability to work with planned change, as that the health care managers understand how management methods, governance principles, and professional bureaucracies work in practice.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Bennich-Björkman, Li, 1960-, et al.
(author)
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Dags för Lemne att lämna
- 2015
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In: Upsala Nya Tidning. ; march 13
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Journal article (pop. science, debate, etc.)
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| 8. |
- Bergner, Petter, 1981-
(author)
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Med historien som motståndare : SKP/VPK/V och det kommunistiska arvet 1956-2006
- 2013
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation concerns Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti (SKP) [the Swedish Communist Party] – in 1967 renamed Vänsterpartiet kommunisterna (VPK) [the Left Party – the Communists] and in 1990 renamed Vänsterpartiet (V) [the Left Party] – and the Party's process of coming to terms with history and its communist legacy. The aim of the study is to describe and analyse the SKP/VPK/V's process of coming to terms with history for the period 1956-2006, and to set out and problematise the driving forces and constraining mechanisms of this process. The theoretical framework of the study consists of Gunnar Sjöblom’s theory about party strategies of political parties in multi-party systems and Michael Freeden’s conceptual approach to ideology analysis. During the period of study the SKP/VPK/V has, like no other political party in Sweden, been ascribed historical guilt regarding its own party history but also regarding the effects of world communism. The Party has thus found itself in a situation where it has had history as an adversary. The process of coming to terms with history has mainly revolved around three issues: independence (1956-1977), international ties (1977-1989) and a broadening beyond the communist tradition (1986-2006). The internal debate within the Party has linked these issues to calls for change aimed at ridding the party of what is considered undesirable elements of the Communist legacy. By analysing the arguments pursued in favour of these calls, it is possible to pick out a number of the driving forces behind the Party's process of coming to terms with history, namely an ambition to obtain vote maximisation, programme realisation and maximisation of parliamentary influence. The urge to distance the Party from certain aspects of its communist past has thus been related to fundamental goals that political parties in multi-party systems seek to obtain. The results of the dissertation show that it is possible to pick out five main constraining mechanisms in the Party's process of coming to terms with history. 1) The safeguarding of Party cohesion. 2) The safeguarding of the distinctive character of the Party. 3) The need to resist external pressure. 4) The desire to avoid unfair apportioning of blame. 5) The safeguarding of the right to define the substance of one's own ideology. The existence of these constraining mechanisms help to explain why the process of coming to terms with history lingered on for several decades, and also why it seems to have been a process of such complexity for the Swedish Communist and Post-Communist Party.
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| 9. |
- Bäck, Hanna
(author)
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Explaining Coalitions : Evidence and Lessons From Studying Coalition Formation in Swedish Local Government
- 2003
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to better understand coalition formation. To date, a vast number of theories have been presented with the goal to explain coalition outcomes. For example, early coalition theories assumed that parties were motivated solely by the goal of attaining the power and prestige that come with being in office, and predicted that minimal winning coalitions would form. Later coalition theories are instead often based on the assumption that parties are interested in implementing a policy program.Three problems with much of the existing coalition research are identified and solved in this study. First, many coalition theories have only been evaluated on the data set of Western European national governments despite the fact that these theories often emerged from consideration of this same data set, which implies that these theories have not been subjected to proper evaluations. In this study, a new data set consisting of a large number of formation opportunities in Swedish local government is used to evaluate coalition theories. Second, few empirical investigations have focused on comparing alternative coalition explanations using careful controls. In this study several different statistical techniques are used to evaluate the relative importance of a number of important coalition variables. Third, coalition researchers have not focused on giving adequate causal explanations to coalition formation in terms of measuring both the causal effects and the causal mechanisms underlying these effects. In this thesis, a large-n statistical study is combined with in-depth case studies, which makes it possible to measure and isolate effects, and to investigate the mechanisms that explain these effects.The analyses performed here indicate that when explaining coalition formation we should take into account that parties are neither pure office-seekers nor pure policy-seekers. Instead, parties are driven by multiple goals. The results also indicate that we should consider that parties are concerned with the effects that coalitional choices may have on future election results. The results found here show that parties should not be treated as unitary actors, and that some parties may be less likely to be in government due to the fact that they use highly democratic decision-making procedures, or because they are highly factionalized. Another conclusion drawn here is that when explaining coalitions, we should consider that the history of interaction between parties matters and that parties are concerned with minimizing the transaction costs with forming a coalition. Many other theories are either backed up or discredited by the evidence.
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| 10. |
- Davidsson, Lars, 1974-
(author)
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I linje med partiet? : Maktspel och lojalitet i den svenska riksdagen
- 2006
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The preconditions for Swedish MPs’ (Members of Parliament) loyalty to their parliamentary party groups have been modified by two recent constitutional changes: the introduction of preference voting in the electoral system in 1998, and the 1997 reorganisation of the national budgetary process. The main purpose of this thesis is to determine the impact of these reforms on Swedish MPs’ inclination to defect from their party group’s interests. A theory is developed and its propositions empirically tested on the case of the Swedish Parliament. The theory states that the tasks of forming and upholding the party line are delegated from the party group to an elected leadership, and then re-delegated back to individual MPs. The party group leadership acts as a principal, monitoring the adherence of MPs as agents to party group interests in the fulfilment of these tasks. The nature of the interaction varies with the type of parliamentary activity, and the monitoring capacity of the leadership. This theory is strongly supported by Swedish data, and a comparative overview indicates that the theory may also be useful for analysing party loyalty in other parliamentary systems.The thesis uses a mixed methodology design, combining data from a survey study, an interview study, and a document study of Private Member Initiatives.The preference vote reform has increased MPs' willingness to defect, as well as actual defections from their party group’s interests. The effect is, however, mainly limited to electorally vulnerable MPs, who after the reform need to build a personal political profile. The budget reform has decreased defection on budgetary issues, but from a fairly low starting level. A third effect on party loyalty is found, in that the youngest generation MPs are significantly more prone to defect than their colleagues of older generations.
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