Politicians as well as entrepreneurs are surrounded by random preconceived notions, some that when you look closely turn out to be incorrect and others that turn out to be rather close to the real picture. In the rather widely debated issue of contempt towards politicians the traditional politician has been described as a person who says one thing but does another. The entrepreneur on the other hand is described by many as curious, creative, independent, devoted, optimistic and visionary.
This paper will put the entrepreneurial politician in focus and study if and how the political evolution is affected when the politicians act more according to the stereotype of an entrepreneur than that of a politician. It will put the entrepreneurial political into context.
The empirical material will be constituted by the study of a number of municipal politicians active in two municipalities in Norway (Lierne and Røyrvik) and parts of two municipalities in Sweden (Frostviken and Hotagen). These study objects were chosen due to the fact that there is an ongoing project in the region in question where the four entities together are involved in a cross-national attempt to solve rather traditional peripherality issues. What separates these politicians from other politicians in demographically and economically challenged municipalities is how they have made an attempt to think “outside of the box”. They have used a different rhetoric and an unconventional way of thinking about problem solving. These politicians are visionaries, dreamers and acteurs who have decided to take the measures necessary to stop the downward spiral of development in their home regions.
In the cases that will be examined it has also been possible to find actors that directly or indirectly have opposed the work in progress or have regarded it with scepticism and/or indifference. But who will have the last laugh? Will it be the entrepreneurial politician who sees his home district rise above its difficulties or will it be the sceptical spectator?
In 1918, the Spanish flu pandemic killed an estimate number of between 50 and 100 million people worldwide. 40 years later a new influenza pandemic, the Asian flu spread throughout the world. The Asian flu hit a large proportion of the world’s population but the case-fatality rate was lower and an estimated number of 2 to 4 million people died in the pandemic. In order for today’s governments to formulate good preparedness plan for future influenza pandemics, studying previous pandemics can give better understanding of how the community might be affected. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of the Asian flu pandemic on the Swedish military forces. By seeing if the regiment was affected by the Asian flu one can then assume that the whole society was affected. Data from Swedish regiments has been collected from the Defence Medical Administration Service at the National Archives and processed trough SPSS. The findings show that there where an increase of the amount of sick as well as the number of sick leaves during 1957 compared to previous and later years. Because of the increase in sick leaves one can draw the conclusion that the society has a great risk of being influenced. Hence, a preparedness plan will be even more important. Conclusion: The community is affected by influenza pandemic in both an economical and a societal level. The effects are short in time since infected recover quite quick. However, there are effects which could be better handled if the government is prepared and has conducted a plan for when the next pandemic influenza strikes.
This chapter discusses the association between political trust and political self-efficacy in Finland. Finland has among the highest levels of political trust in the world, but simultaneously the levels of political self-efficacy are comparatively on a much weaker level. As previous research has shown higher political trust and higher political self-efficacy to be associated at the individual level, this is somewhat unexpected. The findings in this chapter show that in the Finnish context a higher political self-efficacy, indeed, predicts lower political trust, adding support to the notion of well-informed citizens withdrawing their trust if they feel that the system is not acting according to their normative expectations. This chapter ends with a discussion about what the findings imply for the status of Finnish democracy, concluding that the findings should not necessarily be seen only in a negative light.
Vad betyder samiskt självbestämmande för den samiska väljarkåren? Mellan vilka partier rör sig väljarna? Var i Sverige ökar valdeltagandet? Dessa frågor och många andra diskuteras i denna bok, som presenterar resultaten från den andra väljarundersökning som genomförts i samband med val till Sametinget i Sverige. I fokus står frågor om kontinuitet och förändring mellan valen 2013 och 2017 i fråga om t. ex. valdeltagande, politiska skiljelinjer och väljarkårens förtroende för Sametinget. Boken tar också upp tre nya teman med utgångspunkt i väljarnas åsikter: samiskt självbestämmande, förvaltningen av naturresurser inom Sápmi samt valrörelserna.
Hybrid regimes combine elements of both democratic and authoritarian governance, with potentially flawed democratic processes, suppressed civil liberties and uneven political playing fields. Increasingly, scholarship signals the longevity and resilience of hybrid regimes, especially within broader discourses on rising authoritarianism and democratic decline around the world. The lack of gender perspectives in hybrid regimes research is notable. This oversight largely neglects women's roles and their impact in such regimes and fails to focus on the potential implications these regimes may have on women's opportunities for effective participation. However, recent research has increasingly highlighted the gendered aspects of policymaking in hybrid regimes, such as shrinking and changing civic space and democratic backsliding. Moreover, women also face challenges in hybrid regimes that are tied to contested norms and less access to important social networks.This dissertation explores women's political participation (WPP) in hybrid regimes. It proposes a framework that conceptualizes WPP as occurring in two interconnected dimensions, civil society and formal political institutions. Therefore, it draws on three previous and emerging research fields: feminist institutionalism (FI), women's organizing research, and gender and democratization research. Each of these perspectives solely and taken together provide entry points to conceptualize the mechanisms that illustrate how women participate in and across both dimensions – despite and because of the challenges to WPP experienced in hybrid regimes. The dissertation asks the following research questions: first, what is the association between women's political participation in formal institutions such as parliaments and civil society across different hybrid regimes and over time? Second, what opportunities for political participation in formal political institutions and civil society do women perceive in hybrid regimes? Finally, what obstacles to their political participation in formal political institutions and civil society do women experience in hybrid regimes? In this article-based dissertation, a mixed-methods approach is employed to study the dimensions of WPP, combining a quantitative study of hybrid regimes over time with three qualitative studies focused on the empirical case of contemporary Turkey. Turkey is a typical example of a hybrid regime with both democratic and authoritarian characteristics, and the incumbent government's strategic targeting of gender politics and its actors makes Turkey a significant case to better explore challenges and opportunities for women's political participation in hybrid regimes. The dissertation's findings suggest three main aspects of women's political participation and political influence in hybrid regimes. First, exploring women's political participation across civil society and formal political institutions illustrates the interlinked nature of both dimensions and the relevance of these linkages for women's opportunities to participate in hybrid regimes. Second, hybrid regimes pose complex contexts for women's political participation, where opportunities to exert influence may change but where incumbent government actors retreat to different strategies targeting women and (anti-) gender equality claims. Hence, women's political participation across both dimensions must be dynamic to adapt and resist such changing circumstances. Last, the dissertation illustrates the importance of exploring how informal structures, such as norms or gendered practices, interfere with women's political participation in hybrid regimes. In sum, the dissertation advances gender perspectives in hybrid regime research and illustrates insights from the Turkish case that are relevant for other regime settings.
This study examines the link between women’s representation in national parliaments and their possibility to participate in civil society. Utilizing panel data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset, covering 1975–2019, we investigate how the presence of women in parliaments influences the possibility for women to participate in civil society, especially in non-liberal democratic settings. The results indicate a positive association post-1990, coinciding with an international emphasis on civil society and a rise in women’s parliamentary representation in both liberal democracies and autocratic regimes. The study however highlights that in hybrid and autocratic regimes, increased female representation can also be used to project a gender-equal image without genuine democratization intentions. These findings suggest a correlation between the increase in women in parliaments and greater opportunities for their participation in civil society, but do not imply that the results reflect processes towards democracy. The findings contribute to understanding women’s possibilities in non-democratic regimes and underscores the need for further qualitative analysis to fully grasp the implications of these trends.
This paper examines the problem of corruption in the Latin American countries. Latin America is a region with a severe problem of corruption but there are also countries in the region that diverge by having a relatively low level of corruption. The aim of this study was to examine which factors can explain the differences in the extent of corruption in the region. On the basis of a number of theories and previous research regarding the causes of corruption, this study examines which effects democratization, the stability of democracy, decentralization, state intervention and social capital have on the level of corruption in the Latin American countries. A quantitative method with simple linear regressions was used to find out if there are any significant linear relationships between these variables and the level of corruption. The results of the study show a significant negative relationship between democratization and the level of corruption in the Latin American countries. Countries with a more developed democracy tend to have lower levels of corruption. The other variables can not significantly explain the variance in the level of corruption in Latin America.
With its growing dependence on electricity, modern society faces the risk of cascading failureof interconnected societal functions. To protect societal functions during an event of power shortage,Sweden has implemented a multi-level planning process called STYREL, which involves national-, regional—and local-level actors. As part of the Swedish crisis management system, the regional body operatesas a co-ordinator that organises co-operation and interaction between private and public actors. Thisstudy examines the role of the regional hub in STYREL and the collaboration and co-operation betweenplanning levels. It focuses on the co-ordinator’s perspective and presents evidence from interviews and asurvey among planners at County Administrative Boards, entrusted with the supervision and executionof STYREL within their regional area of responsibility. This paper indicates that the regional co-ordinatorlacks the awareness, knowledge and resources to fulfil its core function in the national planning for criticalinfrastructure protection.
I västerländska samhällen lyfts demokratiteorier som direkt deltagande, deliberativ och deltagardemokrati lyfts allt oftare fram som en möjlig åtgärd på problemet med medborgarnas minskade politiska deltagande. Syftet med uppsatsen är att ta reda på om kommunernas satsningar på ökad medborgardemokrati leder till ett ökat medborgerligt deltagande i det politiska livet, samt om deltagandet påverkas av hur kommunerna valt att satsa på demokratiåtgär. Uppsatsen är en triangulering av kvalitativ och kvantitativ metod.
Slutsatserna visar att fördelningen för antalet traditionella gentemot medborgardemokratiska åtgärder är relativt jämn, något högre andel medborgardemokratiska åtgärder. Vidare visade resultatet att vilka eller hur många demokratiåtgärder en kommun satsar på inte leder till ökat valdeltagande. Slutligen visade resultatet att vissa demokratiåtgärder är väl fungerande och genererar ett stort medborgerligt deltagande, medan andra inte lockar särskilt många medborgare att delta alls.
"The power of cyber in hybrid conflicts” was a hot topic at the recent European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE) – “Cyber Power Symposium 2021” in Helsinki, Finland on November 10, 2021. This exclusive symposium brought together international experts to discuss critical subjects and share their insights about ways to counter hybrid threats. Research findings of “Countering Hybrid Threats and Securing Global Supply Chain with Help of AI” were presented to this group of global experts.
The discussants – with a large group of practitioners, i.e. naval officers et al. in the group - agreed that there is concern when it comes to hybrid threats in the maritime arena, especially the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean. The report from the group will follow the steps in WPR analysis (What’s the Problem Represented to be (WPR approach to policy analysis) C. Bacchi and S. Goodwin (2016) Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice.
Identifying a crisis for representative democracy in Western European party systems, this essential book studies the widening gap between political parties’ ideological economic Left–Right rhetoric. Combining in-depth theoretical analysis with empirical research, it addresses whether political party ideologies are converging or diverging, and whether these changes are initiated by the parties themselves, aligned with voter demand, or forced by economic globalization.
The data described in this report were collected for the DIPAC-project: Decreased Ideological Polarisation and Conflict in Western Europe? This report describes DIPAC Citizen data set. The first part of this report gives information on the project as a whole, including discussions of case selection and core concepts. Following this, there are a technical report the DIPAC citizen data set.
The purpose of this essay is to examine the Swedish relations to Nato and by doing so see on what terms the cooperation is executed and why. However, Sweden is not a member of Nato and is thereby not seen as an ally of the organization but even so Sweden has a close cooperation with Nato. The theories used in this essay is The Rational Actor Model and The Organizational Behaviour Model by Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow. To this a number of additional theorises are used as to complement these two main theories. The aim with these theories is to see which one gives the most satisfying explanation of the Swedish strategy to cooperate with Nato and still not be a member of the alliance or if all theorises are needed. A qualitative approach is used with a case study and qualitative text analysis of the Swedish military defence strategy. To form this essay a number of documents are used from the Swedish government and its defence committee where explanations are given to the cooperation with Nato. The documents that are used in this essay span from 1995 to 2009 and the reason to why this time period is used is because Sweden prior to the end of The Cold War had a strict defence strategy that was very neutral. After the end of The Cold War Sweden has opened up more to international cooperation, among others the membership of the EU and the sister organization Partnership for Peace by Nato. Further on, this essay also gives an explanation of the Swedish analysis of the security aspects in the world since this helps give an understanding to why Sweden form its defence strategy the way it does. The result of this essay is that the actions of Sweden are rational in its cooperation with Nato on the basis of the security conditions Sweden face. The military neutrality is one aspect Sweden chooses to preserve, and to do so and still cooperate with Nato Sweden is a member of the Partnership for Peace by Nato. In this organization Sweden chooses in which operations they participate. The defence strategy of Sweden is to preserve peace in the world around oneself and by doing so make sure peace is secured for oneself. To reach this goal international crisis operations are performed through cooperation with Nato in the Partnership for Peace. One explanation to why Sweden does not apply to be members of Nato is because of its organizational structure concerning defence strategy. Sweden only cooperate with Nato through Partnership for Peace because the goal of the Swedish organization is to keep the country military neutral. The reason for this is its standard operational procedures which the organization has when it comes to defence strategy. A Swedish membership in Nato could however also be seen as a rational choice since Sweden most unlikely would stand by and do nothing if another EU-country would be attacked. Many countries in the EU are members of Nato which means that Sweden would also defend that alliance. Thereby it would be seen as Sweden is prepared to contribute defensively if a member is attacked.
This dissertation examines the journalistic discourse surrounding health care reform debates in Sweden and the US in the early 1990's. It found that in both countries, the challenging value (i.e. collectivism in US, individualism in Sweden) was treated less favorably than the dominant value both in the journalistic text and in the choice of actors allowed to speak through the media. Journalists in both countries protected their own dominant value and helped to resist core value change, although they tended to allow actors to express challenging values more loudly than they themselves would do. Study based on qualitative and quantitative content analysis of New York Times, USA Today, Dagens Nyheter and Expressen 1992-1995.
Acdademic paper exploring Sweden as case study of national coverage of cross-border crime in general and human trafficking in particular
The dramatic event that the great migration in the summer of 2015 entailed changed the migration policies of various countries. Substantial amendments were hastily made in a policy field in which already tense state-local relations struggled to manage coordination, responsibilities, and funding. Sweden, recognized as a final host country of the massive flows of refugees and asylum-seekers, was no exception. In Sweden, autonomy in terms of local refugee reception was circumvented in 2016. Municipalities’ remaining discretionis above all concentrated to one of the most crucial spheres of refugee reception:the outline of local housing policies. We argue that housing may be perceived as a tool of resilience that local governments may use to maintain far-reaching influence over the settlement of migrants with a refugee background by selecting restrictive orgenerous policy options. In this paper, we conduct a theoretically grounded analysis of local housing policy for refugees among Swedish municipalities. To capture the intrinsic dynamic, we propose a generic typology applying the dimension of either a liberalor a restrictive housing policy and relate it to theoretical notions of refugee policy as characterized by either a rights-based or a more restrictive approach. Our findings show that local governments in Sweden pursue a wide array of policy stances that appear to be correlated with factors originating from prior experiences of refugee reception, conditions in the labor and housing markets, and political circumstances. Based on this, we argue that local housing policy has offered municipalities a tool to exert a form of intentional, or unintentional, migration control despite national efforts to impose a more just system of refugee reception.
Swedish migration policy has undergone dramatic changes and has moved from being one of the most generous policies to the minimum EU level. Traditionally refugee reception has been a policy area with a strong tradition of collaboration between national and local government with decentralized decision-making. The role of local government has, however, altered in the face of greater centralization and harder national government steering. This chapter provides a broad picture of Swedish local government’s responsibilities, the changing nature of the role it has played and is playing with regard to refugee reception and integration policies and the challenges it currently faces.
This study compares three indexes of democracy, the EIU, Freedom House, and Polity IV, and their classifications and ratings of the level of democracy in 157 countries in 2010. The comparison is based on dichotomous, trichotomous, and continuous measures of democracy. The findings show that the three indexes have discrepancies in all comparisons applied in this study. As a consequence, researchers and others who use democracy indexes should be aware that the indexes reach different conclusions concerning their classifications and ratings of democracy. Scholars also should be aware that the indexes favor and disfavor different countries and regions of the world in their ratings of democracy.
This article investigates whether two different measures of democracy generate the same empirical results. The Freedom House and Polity IV measures are used as the dependent variables. The result shows that statistical significance and explanatory power for different independent variables differ greatly, depending on which democracy index is used as the dependent variable. The results also indicate that Freedom House and Polity IV rate many countries’ levels of democracy differently. It is worrying and problematic for comparative studies of democracy that empirical results differ so much according to which measure of democracy is used.
This study deals with the quality of democracy, and its purpose is to examine which factors affect the varying levels of the quality of democracy in the stable democracies in the world. The research question posited in the study is: what explains the varying levels of the quality of democracy in the democratic countries in the world, and do political institutions matter? Theoretically, the quality of democracy is distinguished from other similar concepts employed in comparative politics, and what the quality of democracy stands for is clarified. The quality of democracy is defined in this study as: the level of legitimacy in a democratic system with respect to democratic norms such as political participation, political competition, political equality, and rule of law. In total, four dimensions of the quality of democracy are included that are considered to be very important dimensions of the quality of democracy. These dimensions are political participation, political competition, political equality, and the rule of law. To explain the variation in the quality of democracy, an explanatory model has been developed. The explanatory model consists of five different groups of independent variables: political institutional variables, socioeconomic variables, cultural variables, historical variables, and physical variables. Methodologically, a large-n, outcome-centric research design is employed and statistical analysis is used to examine what effect the five groups of independent variables have on the four dimensions of the quality of democracy. Empirically, the results show that cultural variables and political institutional variables outperform socioeconomic, historical, and physical variables in relation to their effect on the quality of democracy. Consequently, cultural and political institutional variables are the two most important groups of variables when explaining the variation in the quality of democracy in the democratic countries in the world. In relation to the other groups of variables, historical variables are slightly more important than socioeconomic variables when explaining the variation in the quality of democracy. The physical variables constitute the group of variables that has the least importance out of the five groups of variables when explaining the variation in the quality of democracy. In summary, the findings from the study show that the best way of increasing the level of the quality of democracy may be to choose political institutions such as parliamentarism as the executive power system and a proportional system as the electoral system. To put this clearly, to increase the possibility of democratic countries achieving a high level of the quality of democracy they should avoid majority electoral systems and presidential or semipresidential executive systems.
Since the inceptions of the democratic election system in Sweden the Sweden Democrats is the only party which has shown a continuously increasing numbers of voters. The aim of this essay is to try to identify the causes of the success of the Sweden Democrats.
In doing so, the thesis will apply historical-institutionalism, refrigeration theory and diffusion theory to this historical event. It will also analyze both endogenous and exogenous factors outlined by Professor Jens Rydgren with reference to the party's precedent history.
The result shows that the Sweden Democrats since its foundation in 1988 has had a clear and planned strategy which has been constantly adjusted to the size of the party.
Many Swedish municipalities are in crises. How does a municipality act in crises and how can this action be explained? That is the question this case study deals with in the sparsely populated municipality Berg in the county of Jämtland. The case study findings consist of about 40 interviews and other evidence. The findings were analysed in an iterative explanation building process. Seven different theoretic perspectives were used in the process. Leading theories in the field of policy analyses largely failed to explain the situation and acting. Through a new theoretic governance perspective the analyses went further to the field of democratic theory, which was more fruitful. The main problem emerged under the surface of the empiric findings. It consisted of two completely different views of what a municipality really is � a unit in public production of services or a way for people to locally and together try to realize what they regard as common good. The explanation was found in a conflict between real structural forces and actual conditions which results in a conflict oriented discourse and a non-action situation. The future holds two possible courses: A new period of creating fewer and larger municipalities´or a new road toward local participatory democracy.
This is a Minor Field Study (MFS) which is a scholarship financed by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). It was conducted in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa in 2007/2008. The purpose of this study is to understand the role of the political representative in the system of political representation and it will test the different theories of political representation based on interests or identity. This study is concerned with the function of the political representatives as they are the link between the system of representation and the electorate. Since the election system is designed for political representation based on interest and the voting in South Africa suggests voting based on identity/race the representatives must balance these different signals.