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- Högström, John, 1969-
(författare)
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Quality of Democracy Around the Globe : A Comparative Study
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study deals with the quality of democracy, and its purpose is to examine which factors affect the varying levels of the quality of democracy in the stable democracies in the world. The research question posited in the study is: what explains the varying levels of the quality of democracy in the democratic countries in the world, and do political institutions matter? Theoretically, the quality of democracy is distinguished from other similar concepts employed in comparative politics, and what the quality of democracy stands for is clarified. The quality of democracy is defined in this study as: the level of legitimacy in a democratic system with respect to democratic norms such as political participation, political competition, political equality, and rule of law. In total, four dimensions of the quality of democracy are included that are considered to be very important dimensions of the quality of democracy. These dimensions are political participation, political competition, political equality, and the rule of law. To explain the variation in the quality of democracy, an explanatory model has been developed. The explanatory model consists of five different groups of independent variables: political institutional variables, socioeconomic variables, cultural variables, historical variables, and physical variables. Methodologically, a large-n, outcome-centric research design is employed and statistical analysis is used to examine what effect the five groups of independent variables have on the four dimensions of the quality of democracy. Empirically, the results show that cultural variables and political institutional variables outperform socioeconomic, historical, and physical variables in relation to their effect on the quality of democracy. Consequently, cultural and political institutional variables are the two most important groups of variables when explaining the variation in the quality of democracy in the democratic countries in the world. In relation to the other groups of variables, historical variables are slightly more important than socioeconomic variables when explaining the variation in the quality of democracy. The physical variables constitute the group of variables that has the least importance out of the five groups of variables when explaining the variation in the quality of democracy. In summary, the findings from the study show that the best way of increasing the level of the quality of democracy may be to choose political institutions such as parliamentarism as the executive power system and a proportional system as the electoral system. To put this clearly, to increase the possibility of democratic countries achieving a high level of the quality of democracy they should avoid majority electoral systems and presidential or semipresidential executive systems.
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- Nyhlén, Jon
(författare)
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Styrideal och konflikt : Om friskoleetablering i tre norrländska kommuner
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- During the last decades, the public sector in Western democracies has undergone drastic changes. These changes have meant privatization and a more diverse service provision. Because of privatization, activities that were previously reserved for the public sector can now be conducted by the private sector. This has led to the traditional hierarchical model to be challenged by a new governing style throughmarket mechanisms, which was introduced during the 1980s. Both the hierarchical model and market model have since been supplemented by the network model that was introduced in the 1990s. The new organization has meant that steering is currently done in a complex environment with varying outcomes. In the foreground of the theoretical concepts that captures the development describedearlier is governance. The starting point of the governance perspective is that the traditional bureaucracy model for governing is challenged by new forms of organization and steering. In the early 1990s, it became possible, due to a change in legislation, to startindependent schools with public funding. This legislation change has had a major impact on the Swedish school system in terms of organization and steering issues. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the ideals of hierarchy, market andnetworking appear in the municipal steering of the local school system, and how these ideals affect the development and the intensity of the conflicts in the surveyed municipalities. The focus of the empirical study is three municipalities from the northern parts of Sweden, which are equal in terms of population, number of school pupils, the number of independent schools and with the samepolitical majority. The overall result of the thesis is that different governing ideals affect the levels of conflict in different ways. The municipality governed by marked ideals exhibit thehighest degree of conflict and the municipality governed by the network ideal exhibit lower levels of conflict. The municipality governed by the hierarchical ideal in the middle of the conflict scale.
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- Vamstad, Johan, 1977-
(författare)
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Governing Welfare : The third sector and the challenges to the Swedish Welfare State
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall issue addressed in this thesis is the challanges to the Swedish welfare state. This topic has been the subject of several different interpretations in the academic as well as political debate in Sweden over the last decade. The first of two questions raised in this thesis is therefore what the main challenges to the Swedish welfare state are. It is concluded that the main challenges are the challanges to the representative democracy that originate in measures to meet the economic challenges to the Swedish welfare state by making it more efficient and rational. The main challenges to the Swedish welfare state are, therefore, a mix of interrelated economic and democratic challenges. A specific factor is tested for its possible impact on these challenges and that factor is third sector provision of welfare services. The second of the two research questions is therefore in what way and to what extent the third sector can influence how the identified challenges affect the welfare state. Childcare is selected as an example of a welfare service where there are a considerable proportion of third sector providers, primarily parent and worker cooperatives. The diversity, level of participation and service quality of different types of childcare is analysed with regard to how they affect the here presented challenges to the welfare state. It is concluded from this analysis that there are democratic benefits in the third sector provision of childcare that can act complementary to the challenged representative democracy. It is also concluded, however, that not all Swedish childcare can be provided by the third sector and that its democratic benefits therefore also should be produced by other types of childcare by imitating the third sectors active participation, small scale and independence. This study shows that Sweden is rapidly moving towards a greater diversity in its delivery of welfare service and that there are no policies or institutions for facilitating a more diverse service provision. An additional conclusion is for this reason that the outcome of the economic and democratic challenges varies with the direction of this diversification, which tells us that such policies and institutions are desirable. The Swedish welfare state will be getting a more diverse provision of welfare services regardless if there is any readiness for it or not and the results from this thesis show that the third sector is the non-public type of welfare provider that best facilitate the values and morals of the welfare state.
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- Widenstjerna, Thomas, 1969-
(författare)
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Vem väljer vem och varför? : Om betydelsen av homosocialitet och personliga kontakter i partiers nomineringsprocesser
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis was to study Swedish intra-party nomination processes for political appointments at the municipal, regional and national levels. This was accomplished by studying whether, and if so how, nomination processes are affected by identification and the existence of personal contacts and networks, based in part on homosociality and network capital. Homosociality proceeds from the assumption that people who are perceived as being similar are preferred at the expense of those perceived as different. Network capital is based on the premise that personal contacts and networks are a form of capital that can be accumulated and spent to achieve set goals, such as being nominated for a political appointment. The empirical material comprises 32 semi-structured in-depth interviews with members of nomination committees (selectors) in the Västernorrland region of Sweden that participated in nomination processes in connection with local, regional and national elections in 2010 and 2014. The respondents were selected through snowball sampling and were asked during the interviews how they believe their personal views on candidates and personal networks affect the selection processes of nomination committees. The analysis shows that nomination committees preferred candidates whom they perceived to be similar to them, in ways including socioeconomic factors, age, gender, or geographical origins. The analysis also shows that access to personal contacts often determined whether or not a candidate was nominated. This was partly because personal contacts worked as references for new politicians that were used to ameliorate the risk of nominating individuals who might be perceived as unsuitable and partly because people in the networks of selectors or those of their friends and family were often regarded as more credible. Another observation was the central role of the local level in the parties’ recruitment and nomination activities. The analysis also showed that long-term political experience at the local level was usually required of the people who stood as candidates for regional or national political appointments. Lacking local experience, the opportunity to be nominated for these appointments was virtually nil. As well, the analysis showed that homosociality can promote the formation of network capital, as people who perceive that they are similar each other are attracted to each other and form networks that become part of overall network capital.
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