| 1. |
- Eriksson, Arita, 1974-
(författare)
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Europeanization and Governance in Defence Policy : The Example of Sweden
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis explores the Swedish Europeanization process with respect to defence policy with the help of analytical tools from policy analysis. The time period studied is 1999–2004. Europeanization is defined as embeddedness, that is, linkages between the national and the European policy processes, and these linkages are conceptualized as participation, problems and solutions. The thesis seeks to analyse the modes of governance that characterizes the Europeanization process and discusses its results in relation to Europeanization mechanisms and the concept of European governance. It also elaborates on the implications of Europeanization for Swedish defence policy.Europeanization of participation is found with respect to a number of forums—decision making, implementation and external relations. Participants in the Europeanization process are identified as well as a reorganization of some of the patterns of participation in the Swedish defence policy process. The Europeanization of problems found is at first focused more on security policy issues than defence policy issues, but gradually the latter also become Europeanized, a process which is made visible in the political language of the defence policy bills studied. The main solutions identified in the Europeanization process are the creation of an EU military capability, the establishment of decision-making structures, capability requirements and capability development.The Europeanization process in the area of defence policy is found to be characterized by a mix of modes of governance. Various parts of the process contain elements of bargaining, hierarchy and facilitated coordination. The modes of governance may co-exist and change over time.
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| 2. |
- Sjögren, Anders, 1968-
(författare)
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Between Militarism and Technocratic Governance : State Formation in Contemporary Uganda
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- State-civil society relations in Africa have during recent decades been transformed in the context of economic liberalisation and state reform. This study explores state-civil society relations in contemporary Uganda, from 1986 to the present, in order to illustrate and explain the scope for and capacity of different social forces to create access to and democratise the state. The study interrogates state-civil society relations under the present National Resistance Movement government as these are expressed through forms of interest representation and conflict regulation in different political arenas. It analyses the theoretical problem through an empirical study of the health sector at both national and local levels. Changes in the health regime - the rules and practices that regulate health politics - are analysed by a historical reconstruction of how different health regimes evolved from demands from social forces on the colonial and post- colonial state, in relation to broader patterns of political change. The ruling political coalition from 1986 has promoted a model for capitalist development based on donor-driven economic growth, institutional reform and political monopoly – what is referred to in the study as technocratic governance. Throughout, however, the technocratic tendency has been shaped in relation to the political economy of militarism as a more openly repressive form of authoritarian rule. The study argues that limits to democratisation of state- society relations within the health sector and of Ugandan politics at large are best explained by relations of domination in society, within the state and among external political forces. The main finding is that democratisation of the state has been resisted by ruling groups, and therefore restricted.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Agné, Hans, 1970-
(författare)
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Democracy Reconsidered : Britain, France, Sweden, and the EU
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)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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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Ahmedi, Idris, 1979-
(författare)
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The Remaking of American Strategy toward Iran and Iraq : Outline of a Theory of Foreign Policy Change
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study sets out to develop a realist-constructivist theory of foreign policy change. The theory claims that whenever policymakers believe that the distribution of power favors an expansive grand strategy or necessitates retrenchment, they will act accordingly. Similarly, when policymakers revise their images of other states – that is, whether they view them as hostile or friendly – change in existing strategy will follow.The historical record of the (re)making of American strategy toward the Persian Gulf lends support to the theory. After having relied on pro-American Iran to balance Iraq in the region in the 1970s, Washington “tilted” toward Iraq to prevent post-revolutionary Islamic Iran from achieving victory in the ensuing war between the two regional powers in the 1980s. This offshore balancing strategy during the Cold War bipolar distribution of power gave way to the simultaneous containment of these regional adversaries in the post-Cold War unipolar era. However, some years after the adoption of this new strategy, it underwent a shift. Whereas concerted efforts were made to normalize relations with Iran after the presidential victory of a “reformist” candidate, Mohammad Khatami, the Clinton administration eventually adopted regime change as official policy toward Iraq. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on American soil, the George W. Bush administration endorsed a strategy of forcible regime change and democracy promotion, leading to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.Over time, U.S. strategy toward these two regional powers has become more expansive – from offshore balancing limited to checking their outward expansion, to containment aimed at facilitating alteration in their policies, to outright regime change policy. However, with the erosion of unipolarity and the superpower’s retrenchment in the Middle East, we may witness a return to offshore balancing in combination with containment of a perceived hostile Iran.
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
- 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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| 9. |
- Alpay, Sahin
(författare)
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Turkar i Stockholm : En studie av invandrare, politik och samhälle
- 1980
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The present study which is a product of the research project "Political Resocialization of Immigrants (PRI)" carried out at the Political Science Department of the Stockholm University is based primarily on interviews in 1976 with Turkish immigrants in the 18—67 age group domiciled in the Stockholm municipality. The questions this study addresses itself are: — Which pre-migration and migration characteristics of Turkish immigrants in Stockholm are of special importance with respect to their political resocialization? — What are the living conditions of Turks in Stockholm and what are their perceptions and subjective evaluations of these conditions? — In what ways and to what extent do Turks participate in politics in Sweden? — What are the consequences of Turkish immigrants' background characteristics, living conditions and subjective evaluations of these conditions for their political resocialization? The study consists of nine chapters. The first three provide an introduction to this field of research, a discussion of theoretical points of departure, and an account of methods of data-collection. Next two chapters give background information on emigration from Turkey and immigration to Sweden and Stockholm. Chapter six presents data on the Turks' living conditions. They appear to be highly concentrated in the unskilled manual occupations and certain residential areas. Their social contacts are largely limited to relations with fellow countrymen, and they display very poor knowledge of the Swedish language. Chapter seven gives data on the Turks' perceptions and subjective evaluations of their living conditions. Results reveal a relatively high degree of satisfaction primarily with the material welfare they have attained in Sweden, and a rather strong attachment to Turkish culture and identity. Chapter eight discusses the political-cultural background of Turks and provides data on their political participation in Sweden. Findings indicate lower levels of political information, exposure, interest and activity among the Turks as compared to other immigrant groups under study in the PRI-project. The final chapter summarizes the results of the study which show that the political resocialization of Turkish immigrants has so far made little progress. Their political-cultural background characteristics and their living conditions in Stockholm are closely related with their political relearning.
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| 10. |
- Andersson, Catrin, 1970-
(författare)
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Tudelad trots allt : dualismens överlevnad i den svenska staten 1718-1987
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- On May 1, 1720 the Swedish Riksdag took a seemingly peripheral decision which would however prove to have great and enduring consequences for the organization of the country’s central state administration. The model adopted then is today often referred to as the ‘dualism’ of the Swedish state. In international comparison this dualism – expressed primarily in the organizational division between a set of quite small ministries and a large number of autonomous government agencies in combination with the constitutional prohibition of individual ministers to issue authoritative orders to the agencies – is probably unique.This dualism has been characterized as “one of the great mysteries of Swedish political life” and one aspect of this mysteriousness concerns its very longevity. The main research question of this thesis is why this model has been able to survive for such a long period despite the heavy and recurring critique that has been levelled at it. Through analyses of the public debate on the issue of the dualist character of the Swedish state during four selected periods (1809-1829, 1905-1920, 1963-1972 and 1983-1987) when the critical voices have been particularly loud and articulate, a systematic picture is provided of both the participants and the argument of the debates. It is shown that critics of dualism have blamed it for being “anti-democratic”, “antiquated”, and “a threat against the rule of law” while defenders of dualism have often portrayed it as “modern”, “effective”, and “a guarantee for the rule of law”.The answer to the main research question of why the political institution of dualism has persisted for so long may briefly be summarized in the statement that it has survived by changing. In theoretical terms the thesis is inspired by historical institutionalism, a tradition which has so far mostly contributed to our understanding of institutional stability. Recently, however, theoretical developments in historical institutionalism have rather aimed at an improved analysis of change. This thesis appropriates these new ideas, especially those developed by political scientist Kathleen Thelen, in the analysis of Swedish dualism. In particular the two concepts of institutional conversion and institutional layering are tested. In the thesis it is argued that the new analytical tools were indeed instrumental in understanding and explaining institutional change but also that further elaboration of them seems necessary. Using a both longitudinal and process-oriented approach focussing on the arguments of the actors this thesis has contributed to such an elaboration of the tools for the analysis of change within the tradition of historical institutionalism.
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| 11. |
- Andersson, Monica, 1948-
(författare)
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Politik och stadsbyggande : Modernismen och byggnadslagstiftningen
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this dissertation is to describe, understand and explain the role of modernism in Swedish urban planning, and analyze if modernist urban planning ideas influenced building legislation in ways that can explain the structural changes of our cities during post-war period. Earlier epochs were characterized by intense construction of working-class housing in garden cities and large courtyard housing blocks with double-sided lighting in residences. The dissertation has been carried out within the tradition of historical institutionalism with a counterfactual approach. It covers the time from 1928 to the present with a focus on the period 1928-1975. The object of study is the formal regulations in building legislation. The central analytical instruments are formative moments and path dependence. A formative moment should be characterized by uncertainty, significance and unpredictability. Path dependence is studied with the help of theories of experience-based learning and the power of bureaucracy. The dissertation shows that modernist ideas were written into the building code of 1931 in accordance with functional partitioning and a diagram by Walter Gropius from the 1920s calling for relative distances between houses, the longer the higher houses, and direct sunlight on facades, permitting one-sided lighting in residences. Instead of prevailing praxis, cities were built in conformity with principles of buildings-in-the-park with slab blocks. These regulations were gradually tightened over time and also guided redevelopment policy. In the sixties higher slab blocks and tower blocks began to be frequently built and functional partitioning assumed a unique guiding role in traffic policy and urban planning. Starting in the middle of the 1970s, modernist ideas gradually were dismissed in government policy. Leading modernist architects where driving forces in the formative moment, supported by the Association of Property Owners. Their colleagues could, in the path dependent process, augment the modernist ideas by virtue of their profession. They led state agencies, participated in commissions on building legislation and wrote referral comments on proposals, as well as sitting on building committees together with building contractors, entrepreneurs and construction workers.
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| 12. |
- Angerbrandt, Henrik, 1976-
(författare)
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Placing Conflict : Religion and politics in Kaduna State, Nigeria
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Decentralisation and federalism are often said to mitigate conflict by better meeting the preferences of a heterogeneous population and demands for limited autonomy. But it is argued in this thesis that this perspective does not sufficiently address the ways in which conflict-ridden relations entangle processes across different scales ‒ local, regional as well as national. The aim of this thesis is to explain how it is that while decentralisation may contribute to national stability, it may simultaneously generate local conflict. This problem is analysed through a conflict in Kaduna State in north-central Nigeria where there have been outbreaks of violence between Hausa-Fulani Muslims and Christians of different ethnicities since the 1980s. Christian ethnic groups claim to be excluded from state benefits, while Muslim groups claim that Christians have undue influence over the state bureaucracy. The conflict feeds off ethnic and religious mobilisation. Expanded local political space further fuelled the conflict following the decentralisation that came with the shift from military to civilian rule in 1999. Decentralisation in Nigeria implies that the authorities should be associated with the majority ethnicity or religion in a specific territory. A localisation of politics accordingly raises the stakes in identity-based conflicts, especially as control of local institutions is necessary for inclusion in wider political processes. In Kaduna, this has led to demands for separating the state on a religious and ethnic basis. Actors make use of “scalar politics” to conform to or challenge boundaries set by the state. Social relations are associated with different boundaries. Accordingly, decentralisation triggers conflicts on an identity basis, involving contestation over the hierarchy of scales. While national struggles between ethnic and religious groups may be subdued, conflicts play out locally as decentralisation in Nigeria makes religion and ethnicity a powerful tool for political mobilisation.
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| 13. |
- Bartonek, Leo
(författare)
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Der Topos "Nähe" : Ernst Blochs Eintrittsstelle in die Sozialwissenschaften : ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der modernen Gesellschaft
- 1992
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The present age is a time of major societal change in which the social sciences are again faced with three key problems: the relationship between the social science and societal reality, the elaboration of a meaningful concept of human agency, and the need to incorporate a temporal dimension into theories of the interaction between institutional structures and human agents.Against this background I discuss in the first part of the thesis the work of three theorists - Jiirgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu, and Anthony Giddens - who all share the ambition to overcome traditional dichotomies In social and political thought: the social versus the individual, the static versus the dynamic, objectivism versus subjectivism, freedom versus determination. None of the three, I argue, succeeds in providing a satisfactory solution to these key problems. In particular, they fail to account adequately for the time factor.In the second part of the thesis I present an alternative point of departure for grasping reality, one based on Ernst Bloch’s ontology in which the notion of time holds a central position. This permits us to launch our conceptual strategy from a specific point in history, the present, which is the crucial point in the continual process of social becoming. Thus social reality, understood as a process, is constantly produced and reproduced through everyday human practice. Based on this ontological foundation, the concept of social context, the relation between structure and human agency, is an essentially open one and for this reason, it is possible to explain both social change and stability.
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| 14. |
- Bedford, Sofie
(författare)
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Islamic Activism in Azerbaijan : Repression and Mobilization in a Post-Soviet Context
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Post-Soviet Azerbaijan is often portrayed as a very secular country. Thus the mobilization of mosque communities in the late 1990s and their conflictual relationship with the authorities came as a surprise. The main aim of the dissertation is to shed light on this mobilization, focusing on the Sunni Abu Bakr and the Shi’ite Juma mosque communities in Baku. On the premise that Islamic mobilization may be interpreted as a “social movement”, internal, contextual and interactional aspects of mobilization have been studied. The analysis is chiefly based on interviews conducted in Baku in 2004/2005 with Imams, worshippers, religious and secular authorities. The study finds that young people looking for new approaches to religion have been drawn to these communities, where they encounter an independent, educated, conscientious clergy and, indeed, a “new” religion. This “sovereign” Islam does not go down well with authorities who fear politicization of religion. The Soviet heritage has provided them with a view of religion as something that should not be publicly displayed and with the institutions to control religion. Another key feature whose impact on state policy towards religious organizations cannot be underestimated is the fear of imported radicalism. A look at Islamic mobilization in North Caucasus, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan reveals many similarities, yet one momentous difference is the harsher repression in these contexts, which decreases the chances of a non-radical mobilization. The thesis concludes that the role of the state in mobilization processes in non-democratic contexts is crucial but counterintuitive, as the regimes’ efforts to stop the mobilization of movements actually leads to its intensification. In Azerbaijan, official pressure brings community members closer together and strengthens their resolve, rather than putting an end to mobilization. It also puts a spotlight on these communities which lights up the way for others in search of something new.
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| 15. |
- Behnke, Andreas, 1960-
(författare)
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Re-presenting the West : NATO’s Security Discourse after the End of the Cold War
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this thesis is a critical investigation into the discursive processes through which the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has re-produced a geopolitical order, or nomos, after the end of the Cold War and the demise of its constitutive enemy, the Soviet Union. The thesis examines both the ontological as well as the epistemological aspects of these processes. It seeks to understand what new security relevant identities and spaces are defined in NATO’s discourse, as well as from what epistemic vantage point this new security political order is mapped and inscribed. More specifically, this thesis is based on the assumption that the continued existence and political relevance of the Alliance rests on its ability to re-produce ‘the West’ as a geo-cultural space that serves as its security referent object. The thesis concludes with a critical evaluation of NATO’s post-Cold War geopolitical order and the meta-theoretical commitments underlying its conception of security.
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| 16. |
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| 17. |
- Bergström, Hans, 1948-
(författare)
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Rivstart? : om övergången från opposition till regering
- 1987
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- En ingående granskning och jämförelse av regeringsskiftena 1976 och 1982 samt en redovisning av de borgerliga förberedelserna inför ett regeringsskifte 1985.
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| 18. |
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| 19. |
- Birnbaum, Simon, 1977-
(författare)
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Just Distribution : Rawlsian Liberalism and the Politics of Basic Income
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Should liberal egalitarians endorse the idea of an unconditional basic income for all? This thesis defends a politics of unconditional universalism, offering a liberty-respecting and non-perfectionist basis for maximin-guided policies. The argument starts off from a Rawlsian justification of basic income in the context of institutional ideal theory. This view is based on the aim of maximising the prospects of the least advantaged in ways consistent with a robust protection of people’s effective freedom, the social bases of self-respect and access to meaningful activities at each stage of their lives.The thesis then moves on to specify such a position in response to objections based on ideas of fair cooperation and strong reciprocity. Linking John Rawls’ arguments on property-owning democracy to Philippe Van Parijs’ case for ‘gift-equalisation’, the study defends the view that a basic income is not inherently exploitative or beyond the scope of justice. To the extent that unconditional universalism is tied to the idea of sharing gift-like resources, it is just a matter of distributing wealth to which nobody has a justified prior claim, not an unfair redistribution of labour income.Introducing a problem of feasibility, however, the thesis also argues that unconditional wealth sharing may fail to meet liberal commitments and to counter structural exploitation unless constrained by other requirements of justice. The latter include a minimal autonomy constraint on maximin-objectives and the set of in kind transfers and social infrastructure needed to foster the activities and virtues on which the stability of this ideal relies. The thesis concludes with a study on the application of such standards to real-world conditions. It is argued that policy options combining a modest basic income with work-based social insurance and universal access to social services are more promising than strategies where a high basic income would replace core components of the welfare state.
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| 20. |
- Björsne, Roland
(författare)
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Populism och ekopolitik : framväxten av en ekopolitisk ideologi i Norge och dess relationer till ett mångtydigt populismbegrepp.
- 1979
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the end of the 1960's the word "populism” began to be used in Norway to designate a policy for preventing the depopulation of the countryside and coastal areas and for stimulating a development in the existing local communities. As time went on, it even included political ideas concerned with structural and environmental questions in a wider perspective. From an ecological perspective, the solution to democratic, resource, allocational and environmental issues is seen in terms of a system structured in local communities. For this reason, and others, the designation was changed to ecopolitics. The purpose of the dissertation is to analyze how Norwegian populism developed into ecopolitics if it can be said to be a special political ideology, and how it compares to other populistic movements within the Nordic region and also to those movements outside of this region. In the first part of the dissertation, the methodological basis is stated and a description of how an ecopolitical ideal model can be constructed on the basis of different theoretical works is given. The ideal model is subsequently related to the political parties and groups which, in varying degrees, embrace populistic/ecopolitical ideas. The conclusion is that the ecopolitical ideology existing in Norway differs from the traditional ideologies in a number of ways. In the second part of the analysis, the application of the populism concept in various contexts i described. The conclusion is that the concept can, to a certain extent, be justifiably defined in several different ways and that general definitions of the concept are not precise enough. In the third part of the dissertation, the populistic ant. ecopolitical movements within the Nordic countries are related to different definitions of populism. Fundamental similarities are found to exist between ecopolitics and the Russian populism especially with regard to the structure of the society in local communities. The objectives are compatible with both socialistic and non-socialistic strategies. The dissertation is written in Swedish with a summary in English.
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| 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)
-
Mellan tystnad och tal : Flickor och hedersvåld i svensk offentlig politik
- 2010
-
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
-
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)
-
Defence transformation in Sweden : The strategic governance of pivoting projects 2000-2010
- 2020
-
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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| 31. |
- Cisneros Örnberg, Jenny, 1975-
(författare)
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The Europeanization of Swedish Alcohol Policy
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this dissertation is to study the Europeanization of Swedish alcohol policy from 1995-2006. It analyses the development of Swedish and European alcohol policy and answers the following research questions: How has alcohol policy developed on the national and the EU level during this period? What are the Swedish alcohol policy initiatives on the EU level? What does the interplay between Swedish and European policy processes look like? Of interest for this dissertation is also how the Swedish view on alcohol policy has been received on EU level.The dissertation comprises four related articles and an introductory chapter. In the articles official documents and interviews are analyzed in the context of the literature on Europeanization, using the concepts framing, narrative and new modes of governance. Article I explores the history of negotiations between Sweden and the EU on the traveller’s allowances question. Article II and III analyse how Swedish authorities, first through research and later through formal policy-making during the Swedish Presidency, tried to reframe alcohol on the EU-level. Finally, the fourth article is a comparative analysis of the Nordic retail monopolies, analyzing how the monopolies have developed and reacted to national and international pressures on their activities.The dissertation shows that Swedish authorities have influenced the EU level by putting alcohol on the agenda, and offered pressure and economic support to make sure that alcohol as a public health question has become and been kept as a prioritized question. This development is, however, nested inside the changing scope and emphasis of the EU. The emergence of a European alcohol policy as a public health-oriented process has been made possible through a new focus on the EU level, with increased cooperation between member states and a trend toward harmonization of policy and frames when it comes to alcohol.
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| 32. |
- Cricenti, Pasquale, 1950-
(författare)
-
Mellan privilegier och fattigdom : om italiensk demokrati och socialpolitik ur ett välfärdsstatsperspektiv
- 2000
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation analyses the development of democracy and the pension system in Italy in relation to the goals of a welfare state. The aim of the thesis is to determine whether Italian democracy and social policy (through the study of a specific case: the pension system) have moved towards greater equality or whether old privileges and inequalities still remain.The thesis examines the development of democracy in relation to three models - exclusive, semi-inclusive and inclusive democracy - and of the pension system in relation to three models of social policy - marginal, meritocratic (or corporative) and universal social policy. Of these, inclusive democracy and universal social policy contain the prerequisites of a welfare state. The framework of this thesis is based on the power-resources approach with a corrective borrowed from the Gramscian theory of class hegemony.An intra-regional (within the sphere of an intra-national context) comparative method is adopted with an emphasis on class and gender both within and between regions. With this method it is possible to determine the degree of equality in the country with respect to class and gender and to confirm whether this is due to regional differences in economic development or to a special type of politics.In both scholarly and political contexts it is often claimed that, owing to the ideology of the Christian Democratic Party and the Catholic Church, the Italian welfare state is a conservative one, and further that this party has used social policy to develop strong patronage structures and a political clientele.This study concludes that democracy and the pension system in Italy have not moved towards the ideals of a welfare state, that class and gender inequality are still strong, and that these inequalities cannot be explained by regional economic differences. The findings do not confirm that the existing state of affairs in Italy can be attributed solely to the long period of Christian Democratic governance but show that the Italian left - the socialist parties and the Italian Communist Party - are co-responsible for the development of politics towards privilege and patronage and consequently for pension schemes.The political traditions and institutions of the nineteenth century are still in force in Italy. The study concludes that, in spite of formal political rights, the Italian democracy is still a backward one; political power is monopolised and used as a system of patronage to create a political clientele by the same social forces within the bourgeoisie as at the beginning of democratic development. With respect to political rules, the labour market and the development of the pension system, the findings show that class inequalities and corporative and patriarchal relations still predominate in Italian society.
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| 33. |
- Dahl, Svend, 1975-
(författare)
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Efter folkrörelsepartiet : Om aktivism och politisk förändring i tre svenska riksdagspartier
- 2011
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The relationship between a party leadership and party activists is often illustrated by the use of John May’s "Law of curvilinear opinion structures in political parties", i.e. the idea that mid-level party activists are assumed to be more radical than both party sympathisers and the party elite. This tension between party leadership and party activists can be assumed to lead to a restriction on the party leadership’s freedom of action. However, in recent years we have seen a number of examples where political parties have made major realignments of their own policies without any substantial internal conflicts. Given the role assigned to conditions for involvement in the formulation of May's Law it appears reasonable to look in that direction when trying to understand these changes. This study covers the Moderate Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Green Party in Sweden. The offer made by the parties to their members can be understood in terms of collective goods, such as ideological and political community, and selective goods, such as elected offices. This thesis shows how the political involvement for the interviewed party activists is intimately linked to selective goods. This finding can help us to understand ideological and political changes in present-day parties. If, as a party activist, one is attracted by the opportunities to become an elected representative or the opportunities to exercise political power, it is reasonable to imagine that one will be more inclined to support actions that increase the opportunity to enjoy these goods. Since both the party leadership and the party activists are attracted by the selective goods offered by the party organisation, the conflict between these groups decreases, as both groups are focused on winning elections and exercising political power. The result of this study therefore provides grounds for questioning the ideas of a tension between party activists and party leaderships.
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| 34. |
- Dahlberg, Lena, 1970-
(författare)
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Welfare Relationships : Voluntary organisations and local authorities supporting relatives of older people in Sweden
- 2004
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Sweden is often described as a country with a strong welfare state and little voluntary work. This is as would be expected according to substitution theory, in which extensive welfare systems are assumed to crowd out voluntary activity and thereby limit the potential for voluntary work – there is an inverse relationship between voluntary and statutory activity. A second perspective is welfare pluralism, which is siginified by a purposive duplication of activity by different actors resulting in increased choice for service users. A third perspective is offered by complementarity theory. In this theory, different actors are assumed to have different characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses, which make them suitable for performing different tasks.The purpose of the thesis is to examine the variation in welfare service provision by voluntary organisations and local authorities in Sweden. This includes determining whether there is a statistical association between voluntary and statutory service provision. The thesis also explores the interaction between voluntary organisations and local authorities, that is how they are related in terms of collaboration, competition, support, and influence, and the actors’ own views on roles, responsibilities, motives etc. The thesis is based on two national surveys and on in-depth interviews. Questionnaires were sent to 358 Swedish voluntary organisations in 1999, and 365 organisations in 2002. At the same time points, 80 local authorities were also surveyed. In 2001, 55 representatives of voluntary organisations and local authorities were interviewed.Analysis of the surveys showed no negative relationship between voluntary and statutory service provision cross-sectionally or over time. This was true for both the total amount of activity and when considering individual services. In other words, no evidence for substitution processes was found. Although there was an increase in support for relatives in the period studied and a positive relationship between voluntary and statutory activity in 2002, no positive correlation was found within individual support activities. This means that voluntary and statutory activities tended to be of different kinds at a local level. Only rarely could users choose between different service providers, and the situation could not be characterised as indicative of welfare pluralism. Voluntary organisations and local authorities were described in terms of different characteristics by interviewees, as would be expected by complementarity theory. Nevertheless, there were overlaps in service provision, questioning the validity of complementarity theory with its emphasis on matching of characteristics and tasks. However, at a local level voluntary organisations and local authorities rarely carried out similar tasks. There is thus extensive complementarity at a local level. It is argued that this complementarity is due to the strong ideology that voluntary organisations should complement local authorities, rather than due to the different characteristics of the actors.
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| 35. |
- Daléus, Pär, 1979-
(författare)
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Politisk ledarskapsstil : Om interaktionen mellan personlighet och institutioner i utövandet av det svenska statsministerämbetet
- 2012
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation examines key characteristics and factors shaping the leadership style of Swedish Prime Ministers (PMs). Based on the research of the American presidency, an interactionist framework is developed which draws upon institutional theory and political psychological theory. The analysis is advanced by exploring multiple sources and is based on four cases of leadership styles: two single party Social Democratic PMs, Ingvar Carlsson and Göran Persson, as well as two center/right coalition PMs, Thorbjörn Fälldin and Carl Bildt. Leadership style is studied through a focused comparison of the PMs’ performance of four functions. Thus, the four PMs are studied as staffers and organizers of the cabinet and the Government Offices, decision makers, communicators and crisis managers. The results indicate that the office of the PM is elastic, accommodating a wide-ranging variation of leadership styles. The Social Democratic PMs display the most uniform leadership styles, but, rather surprisingly, they also have the most dissimilar leadership styles among the four cases. The center/right PMs’ approaches differ to a great extent from one another, displaying mixed forms of leadership styles. The analysis explains how the PMs’ leadership styles are shaped based on the interaction between their distinct personal characteristics and surrounding institutions. Thus, the dissertation concludes that leadership theories developed in a presidential setting are largely applicable in a parliamentary setting and that political behavior is not dictated by institutions such as formal structures or norms. The results encourage a reassessment of how personality, as an explanatory factor, is applied in mainstream political science. Furthermore, the analysis highlights the need for reconsidering the presidentialisation thesis and the notion of dominant leadership as there are alternative pathways to prime ministerial influence which are disregarded in the debate.
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| 36. |
- Doeser, Fredrik
(författare)
-
In Search of Security After the Collapse of the Soviet Union : Foreign Policy Change in Denmark, Finland and Sweden, 1988-1993
- 2008
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this study is to explain the evolution of foreign policy in Denmark, Finland and Sweden with regard to Western security cooperation between 1988 and 1993. The study sets out to test two theoretical perspectives on the security cooperation policies of these three small states. The external political perspective is based on the idea that foreign policy is determined by the challenges of a state’s external political environment. The domestic political perspective is based on the idea that phenomena at the domestic level of the state have an impact on how governments cope with external constraints. The primary theoretical ambition is to integrate the findings from these two analyses in order to further an understanding of the mechanisms of foreign policy change in small states.In order to study the relationship between the environment and foreign policy change, the author applies a perceptual approach, which means that his intention is to explain foreign policy action on the basis of the perceptions actors have of the environment.The author draws a number of conclusions with regard to the mechanisms of foreign policy change. First, a perceptual approach is needed in order to analyze a state’s specific responses to international political change. Second, domestic factors are not only important for foreign policy in general but also for the evolution of security cooperation policy in small states under conditions of fundamental shift in the international system. Third, it is possible to attribute some degree of relative explanatory power to external factors and to assign a range of different roles to domestic factors. Fourth, governments of Western democratic small states pay relatively equal attention to external and domestic considerations when making their foreign policies. However, depending on the situation, the relative potency of external and domestic factors can vary.
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| 37. |
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| 38. |
- Edling, Max, 1968-
(författare)
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A revolution in favour of government : the American constitution and ideas about state formation, 1787-1788
- 2000
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation analyses the debate over the ratification of the American Constitution between the Federalists, who supported the Constitution's adoption, and the Antifederalists, who opposed adoption. It challenges the traditional interpretation of the Federalist persuasion as primarily concerned with limited government and minority rights. Instead, it reveals a neglected aspect of Federalist thought by placing it in the context of early modern state formation. Far from being concerned with limits to government, the Federalists aimed to create a potentially powerful national state. With the adoption of the Constitution the central functions of the early modern state, i. e. war making and resource extraction, were transferred from the states to the national government. The fiscal and military powers of the new government were in every important respect unlimited and the institutional impediment made up by the state legislatures was removed. The Constitution created a state which held all the powers of the contemporary European 'fiscal-military states' in reserve. Yet it also created a state very different from the states of Europe.The political traditions and institutions of eighteenth-century America were averse to strong centralised government. In the debate over ratification this aversion was expressed by the Constitution's opponents. To provide an argument in support of the adoption of the Constitution, the Federalists had to show that it was possible to create a state that was both powerful and able to respect popular aversion to government. An important step towards the solution of this dilemma was federalism, which allowed the centralisation of only certain specified powers. Federalism would create a state focused on the fiscal-military sphere, but it said nothing about how to extract resources without exerting unacceptable pressure on the citizens. Here the solution offered lay in statecraft, which would create a national government that was both light and inconspicuous. It would be light in the sense that its demands would not press too heavily on the people and it would be inconspicuous in the sense that its actual physical presence would be limited. In short, the Federalists promised the benefits of government without its costs.
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| 39. |
- Ehn, Peter, 1954-
(författare)
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Maktens administratörer : ledande svenska statstjänstemäns och politikers syn på tjänstemannarollen i ett förändringsperspektiv
- 1998
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall theme for this dissertation is the position of higher Swedish civil servants in the borderland between politics and administration and between flexibility, loyalty, impartiality, and autonomy. An important assumption is that the attitudes and beliefs are especially significant in a system such as the Swedish, where civil servants may act under conditions of substantial autonomy. The dissertation is based on interviews with higher civil servants and a sample of members of the Swedish parliament. Among the civil servants the study is limited to the higher echelons in the national public administration - undersecretaries of state, assistant undersecretaries of state, and director-generals of administrative agencies. The study is comparative - comparisons are made between 1971/73 and 1990. The central instruments of analysis consist of three role conceptions of civil servants. They are constructed from three fundamental coordinating principles and are designated the judicial, the political and the market-oriented civil servant roles. In a second step, the theoretical role typology is adapted to "the practice" which is manifested in the Swedish public administration's development in a longer perspective.How the role of the civil servants in the political system was perceived, as well as the political positions, was found to be dependent on the positions of the interviewees in the politico-administrative system. This meant that the undersecretaries, irrespective of role perception, found themselves farthest to the left among the studied groups, then followed by the assistant undersecretaries and farthest right the director-generals. An exception to this rule was the politically-oriented director-generals, who were left of all the assistant undersecretaries irrespective of role perception and even to the left of the judicially-oriented undersecretaries. An important observation was that the market-oriented role of civil servants had strengthened its position over time. It could also be observed in 1990 that the undersecretaries were clearly different from their colleagues in 1971 through applying more of a political perspective of the civil servant role. The analyses showed that among the non-political civil servants - the assistant undersecretaries - the political role model had a strong position at both interview occasions. Furthermore, both politicians and civil servants showed a more negative attitude to politics and the administration. The higher civil servants had begun to waiver somewhat in their belief in themselves and the capacity of the state. The analyses of the role perception of the MPs showed that their opinions were closely connected with their political affiliation. Among social democrats and members from the Left Party (the former Communist party), the political role conception was dominating at both times and among non-socialists the judicial. An important observation when dealing with the views of the members of parliament was how surprisingly unfamiliar politicians were with the work of the public administation.
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| 40. |
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| 41. |
- Ekholm, Kalle, 1989-
(författare)
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Radical Right Success - Shaped by the Mainstream?
- 2022
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Radical right parties have changed the political landscape throughout Europe. These parties are challenging the very idea of a modern and liberal European continent. Scholars, and society as a whole, have tried to understand the success of this party family for decades. In this dissertation I argue that we need to analyze not only the number of votes radical right parties receive on election day in order to assess their success. In addition to electoral performance, success of the radical right is in this dissertation defined as sympathy among voters, policy impact and representational ability. In addition to adopting a broader definition of what determines success I argue that mainstream parties play a vital role in shaping the trajectory of radical right parties. Following this notion, an overarching argument in this dissertation is that the interaction between the radical right and mainstream parties is vital to take into consideration order to understand and explain the success of the former. This interaction, and how it shapes radical right success, is studied in different ways in the four articles. The first study looks at how mainstream party signaling affects voter sympathy towards the Sweden Democrats. By using an experimental design, the results suggest that when mainstream parties signal that they are willing to cooperate with a radical right party they challenge societal norms thus making people more likely to sympathize with the radical right party. The second study focuses on if and how mainstream parties facilitate the radical right through their positioning on the issue most closely related to the radical right, immigration. This study finds that mainstream right parties play a key role in this interaction. When mainstream right parties support a stricter immigration policy, voters are more likely to support the radical right. The third article studies the policy impact of the radical right. By studying municipal refugee reception in Sweden this article finds that radical right parties have impacted policy both directly and indirectly. The fourth study is concerned with the role of radical right parties in our representative democracy. This article finds that voters who support the radical right are poorly represented by mainstream parties, in terms of opinion congruence. Radical right parties, on the other hand, are only more congruent with these voters on the issue of immigration. In sum, this dissertation shows that if we truly want to understand the success of the radical right, we have to incorporate the mainstream in the analysis.
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| 42. |
- Ekström, Linda, 1978-
(författare)
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Jämställdhet – för männens, arbetarklassens och effektivitetens skull? : En diskursiv policystudie av jämställdhetsarbete i maskulina miljöer
- 2012
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Issues concerning gender equality are today an integral part of Swedish society. Because of this, even traditionally male-dominated actors are forced to incorporate a focus on gender equality. What kind of tensions may this provoke, and how are these tensions visible in the gender equality policy making of traditionally male-dominated organizations? Against this background, the aim of this dissertation is to analyse how issues of gender equality are “problematized” by three organizations that originate from masculine environments; Män för jämställdhet, IF Metall and Rikpolisstyrelsen. I wish to analyse the meaning that these actors incorporate into the issue of gender equality and from which discourses these meanings are derived. This focus entails a specific theoretical standpoint. Thus, another aim of the study is to discuss the advantages of a post-structuralist approach to the study of public policy. More specifically, I want to develop the use of a range of discourse analytical modes of analysis and to evaluate their utility in capturing the dynamic of problematization processes.The empirical focus of the dissertation is on the years between 2000 and 2008. The research material consists of both formal and informal documents.The analysis shows that questions of gender equality can be problematized in a number of ways. Issues concerning gender equality can be tied to issues of men’s hegemony, men’s gender-specific problems, class-based problems and organizational problems. This wide array of problematizations also illustrates ways in which there still seems to be an underlying conflict over the meanings tied to the concept, even though nobody openly challenges the importance of gender equality reform efforts. I call this situation a “conflictual consensus” and point to the importance of deconstructing this supposed unity and illuminating the kind of power relations that lay hidden beneath it.
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| 43. |
- Elm-Schulin, Viktor, 1989-
(författare)
-
Do the Ends Justify the Means? : On the Justifiability of Statistical Discrimination
- 2023
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- While statistical discrimination comes with similar objections as other types of discrimination it may also lead to a number of beneficial and important consequences, thereby leaving us with conflicting intuitions regarding the right course of action. This study investigates whether there is any superior account of statistical discrimination that can explain when and why such a practice can be defended; i.e., when it is justified. Employing four desiderata — i.e., requirements — for a successful account of statistical discrimination, this study sorts out a number of popular but inadequate accounts and is left with three main contenders: the demeaning account, the consequentialist accounts, and the ex-ante contractualist account. The study notes several challenges with each of these main contenders and tries its best to answer them given the tools available for each account.This study concludes that the ex-ante contractualist account is superior to the other two main contenders given these four desiderata. In contrast to consequentialist accounts, it can more fully account for the reasons we typically hold against discrimination in a plausible way, and in contrast to the demeaning account, it can avoid the indeterminacy that seems to follow from relying, mainly or solely, upon demeaning treatment. Furthermore, it is argued that ex-ante contractualism’s emphasis on the need to discount uncertain burdens leads to intuitively appealing distinctions and implications. This conclusion gives new fuel to the idea that demeaning treatment is an important wrong of discrimination and offers a refined idea of what it means to take the consequences of statistical discrimination seriously.
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| 44. |
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| 45. |
- Enroth, Henrik, 1971-
(författare)
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Political Science and the Concept of Politics : A Twentieth-Century Genealogy
- 2004
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation is a historical investigation of the concept of politics in twentieth-century political science. It is set against the backdrop of the comprehensive rethinking of political concepts we are witnessing today in debates about forces like globalization, individualization, multiculturalism, and postcolonialism, and it seeks to account for the apparent difficulties in rethinking politics in similar terms today. Whereas core concepts like people, nation, state, society, and a host of related concepts have recently been reconsidered in light of these forces in the world, the concept of politics seems resistant to such rethinking, instead causing considerable uncertainty about the conceptual identity of politics and, by implication, about the disciplinary identity of political science in a changing world. The dissertation argues that this is largely because modern political thought has long rested on the assumption that politics is only possible and conceivable on the basis of something prior to itself, while all the entities politics has conventionally been thought to be prior to are today in question. Against this contemporary backdrop, the dissertation investigates historically how conceptualizations of politics in twentieth-century political science have consistently both sustained and been sustained by this assumption, by being premised on various descriptions of modern society. Tracing a number of such descriptions of society and related conceptualizations of politics from the early years of the twentieth century to our own day, the dissertation concludes by reconsidering the apparent difficulties in rethinking politics today. Arguing that such a rethinking would mean transcending the assumption that politics is only possible and conceivable on the basis of something prior to itself, the dissertation ends by briefly outlining what would be involved in such a rethinking, and what it would entail for the conceptual identity of politics and the disciplinary identity of political science.
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| 46. |
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| 47. |
- Erlandsson, Magnus, 1971-
(författare)
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Striderna i Rosenbad : Om trettio års försök att förändra Regeringskansliet
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation examines the last thirty years of internal reforms in the Swedish Government Offices. Analysis of the evolution of personnel politics, the formation of one agency and the attempts to introduce a collective activity planning model, show that the immediate problems of the early 1970’s – an over dimensioned staff, territory battles and unclear division of responsibility for personnel and organisation – remains to this day, notwithstanding the many reforms to approach them. One principal explanation behind this is that the key players for successful reorganisations – the politicians – do hardly ever partake. Instead, and on the basis of the perspective of bureaucratic politics, this dissertation demonstrates that the internal development of the Government Offices should be explained as the result of struggles between different bureaucratic actors, with diverse views on problems and their solutions, and with various prospects and strengths to affect the outcome. Due to the choice of politicians to leave this policy field open to bureaucratic politics, the policy is essentially shaped and decided within a bureaucratic context. The dissertation ends in a conclusion that there is an almost constant bureaucratic battle behind internal organisation of the Government Offices, a conflict where tradition, values and strong bureaucratic actors play an important part, and where institutional change is exceptional, since the preserving powers in these processes have the upper hand. But politicians can change – in spite of these traditions, values and bureaucratic agents – if they have the determination. The theoretical aim of this dissertation, through a critical assessment of the bureaucratic politics perspective – an evaluation motivated by the empirical data and inspired by two challenging and related theoretic models; sociological and historical institutionalism – is to display the qualities and shortcomings of the bureaucratic politics model, to develop and improve the original model of bureaucratic politics, and making it more expedient for future studies of institutional change in central political organisations.
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| 48. |
- Erman, Eva, 1971-
(författare)
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Action and Institution : Contributions to a discourse theory of human rights
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the theoretical rights discourse rights are commonly analyzed in terms of two themes,negative and positive rights, on the one hand, and individual and collective rights, on theother. We witness similar themes in the empirical rights discussion held by the UnitedNations’ Commission on Human Rights (the CHR). There is a tendency in both the theoreticaland empirical rights discourse of not including one kind of rights, namely, political rights.Political rights are either not mentioned at all or only in terms of negative rights, that is, asrights we are assigned through a ballot-paper.The purpose of this thesis is to problematize the absence of political rights in the humanrights discourse from a deliberative perspective. The thesis takes part in the debate of how tounderstand and legitimize human rights, one presumption being that if we cannot define orjustify any natural rights another possible way to go is to start out from a substantive actionrelatednotion of political rights and a problematization of the relationship between politicalrights and other rights. More specifically, the aim of the thesis is to make a contribution to adiscourse theory of human rights and apply it to a global rights institution, the CHR, bystarting out from and at the same time criticizing Jürgen Habermas’ discourse theory of lawand democracy.A discourse theory of human rights links democratic processes with rights and opens thedoor for new ways of defining traditional democratic concepts such as representation andparticipation. Facing one of the most urgent problems on the international political arena, i.e.,how to democratize the United Nations, this thesis is a contribution, albeit a small one, to howthis could be done, viz. by finding ways to make the international human rights discoursemore legitimate than it would otherwise have been.
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| 49. |
- Eto, Mikiko, 1951-
(författare)
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Women and Politics in Japan : A Combined Analysis of Representation and Participation
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Notwithstanding the country’s socio-economic advancement, Japanese women’s presence in politics lags far behind many less developed countries. They are politically silent as their demands hardly reach the centre of political decision-making. The purpose of this compilation thesis is to find answers to the following questions: why Japanese women’s political status remains low; how they tackle their under-representation; and what difficulties they face in their struggles for political involvement. Focusing both on their presence in legislatures and on their participatory activities within civil society, the thesis attempts to elucidate what impedes Japanese women from entering politics and the obstacles to their political activities. Specifically, the thesis attaches importance to the interplay between women’s representation and feminist movements; that is, women’s collective efforts to demand more women representatives are necessary to significantly improve their representation. The Japanese case demonstrates the inharmonious interplay between these two facets. It sheds light on a negative example, which illustrates that having only lukewarm women’s movements calling for more women representatives contributes to women’s on-going under-representation, which, in turn, discourages women from becoming more involved in these activities. Women’s representation plays a symbolic and substantive role in developing democracy. In other words, with a well-functioning democracy, all members of the political community share power equally. Throughout this compilation, it is suggested that the vicious cycle of under-representation and lukewarm feminist activism is not only detrimental to Japanese women but it also impedes Japanese democracy from progressing further. The thesis is composed of six parts. The first part, as the introduction, aims to give a theoretical framework to the thesis, theorizing the interplay between electoral representation and participatory activities and putting forward my approach in the thesis. The subsequent parts comprise five previously published articles. Although each article has been published separately in different journals, each of them includes Japanese case studies, as well as general perspectives.
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| 50. |
- Fonseca, Max, 1980-
(författare)
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Your Treatment, My Treat? : On Lifestyle-Related Ill Health and Reasonable Responsibilitarianism
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- How should the costs of unhealthy lifestyles be distributed between individual citizens and the state? This study approaches this question by investigating the justifiability of the responsibilitarian idea that people who are responsible for their lifestyle-choices should also be held responsible for the costs that these lifestyle-choices generate.Two main conclusions come out of this investigation. The first is that the basic justification of responsibilitarian health policies can be found in what is called the Civic Blame approach to responsibilitarianism. This approach builds upon a moralized conception of responsibility, accountability responsibility. On this conception, the moral quality of contemporary imprudent people’s behaviour is the essential starting point for establishing that they ‘are responsible’. Consequently, what justifies responsibilitarian health policies on this approach is not that imprudent people cause their own ill health or that they exercise sufficient control over their lifestyle-choices, but that they breach reciprocity-based civic obligations through their health-risking behaviour.The second conclusion is that the emphasis on fairness of blame/differential treatment inherent in the Civic Blame approach imposes two important justificatory constraints. The first is that the response to the breaches of civic obligations must be properly proportional and context-sensitive in order to be fair. This constraint can most likely be handled however, since a response of the right kind can be found by holding imprudent people responsible via Sin-Taxes (rather than via harsher policies). More problematic for responsibilitarians is the second constraint: to show that contemporary imprudent people’s behaviour is morally problematic to begin with, and, thereby, to show that contemporary prudent people’s reactive attitudes to health-risking behaviour are fair.Thus, although the Civic Blame approach outlined in the study provides the basic theoretical building blocks for the justification of responsibilitarian health policies, this approach also provides the tools for critically questioning the justifiability of contemporary health policies of responsibilitarian kind.
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