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- Bågenholm, Andreas, 1969
(författare)
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Understanding Governmental Legislative Capacity. Harmonization of EU legislation in Lithuania and Romania
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Governmental legislative capacity is a crucial ability for any government that wishes to fulfil intended goals. Without this capacity, there is a great risk that the decision making system will be paralyzed. This study enhances the understanding of governmental legislative capacity by examining the legal harmonization to EU legislation in Lithuania and Romania, prior to their accession to the European Union. The legal harmonization in candidate countries opens unique opportunities to study governmental legislative capacity comparatively, firstly because the legislative agenda is very similar and secondly because the governments in the candidate countries provide detailed information on how and when the EU legislation is to be transposed. Such information is generally lacking in previous research, but this study argues that the intentions of the government constitute an essential component when studying governmental legislative capacity. The results show that the Lithuanian governments have had a higher legislative capacity than their Romanian counterparts. They have transposed a higher share of the scheduled laws according to timetable; the delays that do occur are less severe and the quality of the adopted legislation is higher. In both countries there is a distinct capacity increase between 2000 and 2001. By applying a modified version of the veto player theory, the analysis shows that the number of veto points in the parliamentary decision making structure is the main reason why the process in Romania has been slower than in Lithuania, whereas the impact of the veto players is very limited, as they all agree on the merits of EU membership. It is however the governments in both countries that bear the main responsibility for the delays that occur, as they tend to submit their legislative proposals to parliament with very small margins or even after the deadlines have expired. The more parties participating in government, the more the proposals tend to be delayed.
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- Dahlberg, Stefan, 1975
(författare)
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Voters' Perceptions of Party Politics - A Multilevel Approach
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Modern representative democracies are often described as government by the consent of the governed rather than government by the people. Elections play a central role in this context and several theorists of modern democracy have struggled to determine the circumstances under which effective political representation can exist. One thing that is clear is that voters’ perceptions of parties’ policy positions are essential, since these views are important determinants of the outcomes of electoral processes and thus the extent to which voters are meaningfully represented in a political system. This book focuses on the agreement in voters’ perceptions of party positions and circumstances under which high levels of perceptual agreement can be obtained. The book contributes to existing research by addressing three sets of research questions. Firstly, the project draws the electoral and institutional context into the research on perceptions and perceptual agreement. Secondly, the research brings the political parties into the equation and thirdly, the study investigates how factors related to both individual voters and political parties interact with the institutional context and so affect voters’ perceptual agreement. The book draws on election study data from 34 countries in a total of 58 elections and is one of the most comprehensive comparative studies of voters’ perceptual agreement hitherto. Whereas earlier studies of the causes of perceptual agreement argued that perceptions of party positions among voters result mainly from endogenous individual level factors such as education, party sympathy and the ideological distance between parties and voters, this study shows that voters’ perceptions also are also affected by exogenous factors related to the electoral systems and the political parties. The book concludes that political representation, as defined by the responsible party model, seems to work best in multiparty parliamentary systems with proportional representation and a strong left-right dimensional structure, in which parties maintain stable and divergent policy positions.
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- Duus-Otterström, Göran, 1978
(författare)
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Punishment and Personal Responsibility
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- What justifies punishment? What are the features of a justified penal regime? Answers to these questions often centre on punishment’s capacity to change unwanted behaviour, either by deterring would-be rule breakers or addressing their criminal motivations through various forms of rehabilitation. This book instead defends (a version of) the retributive theory of punishment, according to which punishment should aim to give rule breakers what they deserve. Why should desert play such a role in penal justice? The book dismisses the controversial notion of intrinsic-good retributivism, and instead proceeds to identify two merits of a penal regime that aspires to give rule breakers what they deserve. On the one hand, such a regime is in better alignment of central principles of justice, such as principles against punishing the innocent and taking pre-emptive action against potentially dangerous individuals. On the other hand, retributive punishment conveys attractive symbolic messages, which serve to validate rule breakers as personally responsible agents whose choices warrant respect. Having defended the retributive theory on normative grounds, the book then discusses a formidable factual criticism that hits all desert-sensitive theories: starting by questioning the alleged difference between scientific explanations and excuses, the book challenges the factual plausibility of the notion of personal responsibility and entertains the possibility of hard determinism being true. While hard determinism is a stronger position than one may think, a pragmatic argument can be made against it: given that libertarian free will is “worth wanting”, and given the epistemic uncertainty surrounding it, it is defensible to bet that determinism is false and that people indeed can be personally responsible for their actions. Punishment and Personal Responsibility may be understood as a defence of “prescientific” morality in the age of science.
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- Ekman, Tiina, 1958
(författare)
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Demokratisk kompetens: Om gymnasiet som demokratiskola
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Aktivt medborgarskap är ett ledord i svensk demokratipolitik. Jämlikt deltagande i politiken är ett annat. Skolan anförtros en viktig politisk roll i detta avseende. Läroplanen påbjuder att alla ungdomar på ett likvärdigt sätt skall förberedas till ett aktivt samhällsliv. Oavsett valet av gymnasieprogram ska alla förberedas till en samhällsroll som "ansvarskännande individer som aktivt deltar i yrkes- och samhällslivet", bland annat genom att läsa samma obligatoriska kurs i samhällskunskap. Men räcker det för att göra ungdomar jämlikt aktiva? Från tidig ålder socialiseras de enligt olika normer i sin uppväxtmiljö. De har dessutom olika intressen och talanger. De har också större möjligheter än någon tidigare generation att välja utbildning efter egna preferenser. I "Demokratisk kompetens. Om gymnasiet som demokratiskola" undersöks 2684 18-åriga gymnasisters inställning till aktivt medborgarskap. Utifrån analysen tecknas en bild av ungdomars demokratiska kompetens, som avslöjar stora skillnader mellan elever som valt olika utbildningsvägar i gymnasiet. Dessutom presenteras nya rön om hur två olika dimensioner av demokratisk kometens - politisk självförtroende och demokratikunskaper - påverkar synen på olika former av politiskt deltagande.
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