Over the last couple of decades an increasing use of temporary organizations has been observed in public administration, a development sometimes referred to as projectification. This article explores the political-administrative rationality of projectification by studying the initiation and implementation of a project funding system regarding social investments in a Swedish municipality. In the article it is argued that projectification is driven by the administrative leadership with the aid of devoted civil servants. Projects are also attractive to politicians because of the temporal, forward-looking character of politics itself, i.e. that the time conception of project management and politics is basically similar. The article shows that the critique against projectification in terms of increasing short-termism is somewhat beside the point, since politicians and top managers rather seem interested to introduce more short-termism in public administration. Projectification, however, does not represent a profound organizational change but rather introduces a new mind-set with potential long-term effects.
The European Union (EU) has for a long time had ambitions to achieve some form of ‘Strategic Autonomy’, often understood as a capability to conduct security pol- icy independent of the United States. With the EU’s Global Strategy (EUGS) from 2016, this objective, albeit without a clear definition, is part of the public EU strat- egy. This new level of ambition places high demands on the independent intelli- gence capacities for the member states as well as for the EU at the collective level. at national level as well as for the EU at the collective level. As the world moves towards multipolarity and the geopolitization of the economic sphere, the ambi- tion for strategic autonomy has a broader meaning, such as the ability to conduct an independent trade policy or to choose a supplier of 5G infrastructure. In light of this, this article aims to analyse strategic autonomy as a security policy objective and the various intelligence needs it raises. We analyse autonomy in three different functions, or areas of application: political autonomy, operational autonomy and industrial and digital autonomy. We will then make an overview of how these needs currently are meet and how additional intelligence capacity could be created.
Generalized trust is favorable to a large number of positive effects; from personal well-being to economic growth and democracy. This article analyses the validity of the standard question “Do you believe in general that most people can be trusted or that one cannot be too careful when dealing with others? “ The article builds on unique quantitative and qualitative data collected by the author in seven schools in the municipality of Stockholm. The results show that a relatively large share of the students has a rational understanding of the question: their trust is domain-specific, depends on the situation and on the character of the person they meet, their trust is “street-smart”. Some systematic variation is also observed between different types of schools.
The purpose of the article is to examine financial models for higher education. The economic governance of universities during different time periods is an under-explored area. Three models have been tested in Sweden: “universitetsautomatiken” (1958–1976), “sektorsanslag” (1977–1992) and “grundbulten” (1993–). The models are described, compared and related to overarching savings models for central govern-ment administration. During the first financial model, which was particularly gener-ous, there were no such savings models. However, the less generous funding models implemented after the structural crisis in the mid-1970s interacted with increasingly severer saving models that makes annual deduction of appropriations: “tvåprocen-taren” (1978–1992) and “produktivitetsavdraget” (1993–). A mechanism for resource erosion has been built into the financing system since 1977 according to the main result of the study.
EU membership as a constitutional issue
This article deals with the allez and retour provisions (Claes 2005: 84 f) of the Swedish constitution in relation toEU membership. What are the rules governing the transfer of sovereignty to the Union? And what are theprovisions for assessing the constitutionality of the incoming tide of Union law into the domestic legal order?I have three objects in this essay: First, to describe how these two groups of constitutional rules were actuallymodified in the 2010 revision of the 1974 Instrument of Government. I find that neither was changed in anymaterial way. Second, to try to explain the apparent reluctance of the parties involved to clarify the constitutionalimplications of EU membership. I find that this reluctance is rooted in a belief that European integration is notfurthered if the rules contained in the allez and retour provisions are made stricter and more precise. Third, toconfront a question conspicuously omitted by the parties in their revision: namely, by what criterion should theallez and retour provisions be intertwined, if an optimum of bi-level constitutionalism is to be achieved?I argue that, in the end, the underlying issue is whether Swedish citizens want to see the principle of freemovement applied as widely as possible. Do they want this principle to be applied across the board? Or wouldthey prefer instead to restrict its application to the case of capital and goods, thus leaving them free to structurethe labour market and the welfare state as they themselves see fit?
This study examines whether the development and distribution of public subsidies for Swedish parties from the 1970s and onward tend to support some of Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair assumptions about political parties. The results show that governmental party subsidies can have a negative impact on party membership recruitment, that an increasing proportion of party subsidies is given to the parliamentary groups while less goes to the member’s party organization on the national level, and that the extensive party subsidies from municipalities, counties and parliament may allow an independent development of parties at the municipal, county, and state level.
Changing Conditions for Party Groups of the Swedish RiksdagIn this special issue of Statsvetenskaplig tidskrift, the intention is to study the cartelizationof the Swedish party system based on the party groups of the SwedishRiksdag. Especially if we investigate whether the parliamentary party groups havebecome increasingly similar from the late 20th century to the first decade of the 21th century. This purpose is treated in six distinct sub-studies designed to addressgaps in the theory of cartelization of political parties. Conditions for party changeare related to party finance, gender and medialization. The significance of theseconditions may be different, however, depending on the internal cultures of parliamentaryparty groups: some party cultures may impede while other may facilitatecartelization. Party change is analyzed through a study of the parties’ degree ofpoliticization along with a discussion of cartelization and political representation.
In this special issue of Statsvetenskaplig tidskrift, six articles have, based on hypotheses about cartelization, studied changes in the party groups of the Swedish Riksdag: Are parliamentary party groups becoming increasingly similar from the late 1980s to the early 2010s? When this concluding article summarizes the results from each of the six studies, the simplified answer is no. The relationship between cause and effect, stipulated by the cartel theory, did not occur in our study. Still, public party finance and, to some extent, medialization paved the way for cartelization, and the internal party culture, in this investigation, changed so it could facilitate cartelization. Nevertheless, the increased degree of politicization, did not support the theory of the cartel party, nor did important gender cleavages.
Religiosity and Environmental Opinion in Sweden and the U.S. The article presents a study of religious effects on the environmental opinion among individuals in Sweden and the U.S. in 2000. It is a most different system design, since the comparison is between a
highly secular (Sweden) and a highly religious population (the U.S.). The study uses data representing the adult population in Sweden and the U.S. In Sweden, religious people tend to be more positive than secular people to policies of environment protection. In the U.S., Republicans who belong to Evangelical Churches and people with a literal understanding of the Bible tend to be rather negative to suggestions on environmental care, while others who claim to be “born again” are rather positive towards suggestions on environmental caring procedures.
Evangelicals in the United States and Sweden are similar in terms of theology and spirituality, but differ widely in political preferences. US evangelicals have supported Donald J. Trump while Swedish evangelicals have rejected the right-wing populism of the Sweden Democrats.This article explains the development among US evangelics by comparing them to their Swedish counterparts. In the 19th century, Swedish evangelicals associated them-selves with the Liberal party, and cooperated with the Social Democrats, in a struggle for democracy against the conservative establishment. In the United States, no such alliance took place. Instead the movement was shaped by the idea that the state is an obstacle to freedom, the anti-socialist propaganda of the Cold war and eventually the culture wars. This moved evanglical voters deep into the Republican ranks.Three factors have shaped the development of these movements: The view of the state, identification as minority or majority, and political alliances and conflicts.
Något fack passar han inte i, den gode Eli. Han har ofta förpassats till ett fack; gjorts till symbol för motståndet mot planhushållning och efterfrågestimulerande ekonomisk politik. Hans skepticism mot höga skatter och offentliga utgifter (särskilt efter 1932), betoning på frihandel och stabilt penningvärde, gjorde honom som klippt och skuren för den rollen. Den bilden skapades under perioden från det sena 1970-talet och fram till millennieskiftet. Som historiograf vill jag se denna bild av Eli Heckscher mer som ett uttryck för omsvängningen inom svensk nationalekonomi från keynesianism till monetarism och marknadsliberalism, än som ett uttryck för Eli Heckscher. För sina samtida var han något annat och mer sammansatt.
Kan man mäta om en universitetsutbildning är bra? Och leder försöken att mäta dem till att utbildningarna blir bättre? Enligt en trendrapport från EUA, the European University Association, så toppar dessa frågor om kvalitetssäkring av undervisningen just nu universitetens agendor.
A good decade and a half after the opening of the Berlin wall, the university textbooks on International relations have almost forgotten about the Soviet Union and the European East-West divide – and suddenly, inexplicably, the security situation in Europe is as unstable and dangerous as ever. Russia under Putin is making it clear that the country is not content with the post-Cold War order, and is willing and ready to use deception, bullying and force to have it changed.
Flyvbjerg makes a brave call for social science to invite itself to public debate, setting its own agenda, making social science matter. The transparency and clarity of Flyvbjerg’s line of argument of course makes it easier to pick apart. For example, Flyvbjerg’s critique of Habermas at times bites its own tail. While Foucault claims that “power is everywhere”, Habermas distinguishes between power and rationality in communication. But in his success in improving the democratic process in Aalborg, does Flyvbjerg not rely on the power of the better argument?
If we should succumb to the notion that the political impact of social science rests only on its traditional authority, rather than on the power of the better argument - does this not risk becoming a self-fulfilling profecy? While Habermas’ work is often criticized for being too idealistic, it is seldom appreciated how these types of considerations tie into his particular mode of theorizing.
Replik på Jonas Nycanders genmäle: Kommunikation – inte kontroll – är motorn för kvalitetsutveckling i högre utbildning. Fulltext nedladdningsbar från: http://journals.lub.lu.se/index.php/st/article/view/16247
Den sociala nätverksmodellen för institutionell förändring bygger vidare på March & Olsens nyinstitutionella ramverk, genom att addera en tredje analysnivå. Mellan den övergripande institutionen och den enskilde individen fokuseras det sociala nätverket. En av utgångspunkterna är det som March & Olsen själva skriver - men som sällan uppmärksammats - nämligen att kunskap, koder, paradigmer, tolkningar, värderingar och normer utvecklas och förändras inom institutioner genom att individer diskuterar med och övertalar andra personer som de är vänner med och litar på (s. 118-120). March & Olsens resonemang om vikten av ”interpersonal connections” får mig att länka deras arbete till den omfattande litteraturen om sociala nätverk, och föreslå en modell av socialt-nätverkshandlande, som jag döpt till “the logic of interpersonal trust”. Denna, menar jag, kan hjälpa oss förstå en process där den ”logic of appropriateness” som styr en institution omtolkas och förändras.
This article focuses on the Swedish literary canon debate preceding the Swedish government elections in September 2006. The debate was instigated by an article written by liberal politician Cecilia Wikström, in which she suggested reinstating an official Swedish literary canon. Wikström’s article sparked an inflamed debate that took place in all major Swedish newspapers, stretching over a period of more than two months in the summer of 2006. Due to the article and the debate that followed, questions concerning culture and cultural politics were more prominently featured in the 2006 election campaign than in previous campaigns. In addition to analysing the different positions of the debate, this article also suggests that Wikströms’s article is an expression of an on-going process in Swedish politics towards a more openly instrumental view on (national) culture and cultural expressions.
Recension av avhandling
In this article we discuss government formation after the parliamentary elections in 2014 in a historical and comparative European context, while at the same time connecting our discussion to the research on government formation and duration in parliamentary democracies. The paper raises and tries to answer the following questions: Why did the Social Democrats form a minority government with the Green Party after the parliamentary elections in 2014, excluding the Left party? What can we say about the allocation of ministerial portfolios between the Social Democrats and the Green Party in the new government? And what are the consequences of the so called December agreement between the new government on its ability to govern and survive until the next regular election in 2018?
Rather human than politician? Appropriations of Gunnar Ekelöf during the Swedish general election of 2010
In the extensive media coverage of the general election in 2010, one feature made a particularly lasting impression. Swedish Radio invited seven prominent members of parliament, each prompted to read and reflect upon modernist Gunnar Ekelöf’s 1941 poem “En värld är varje människa”. In an attempt to examine a key aspect of the mutual relation between literature and politics, this article analyses the show and its reception in media, identifying the dichotomization of politics and literature as a central characteristic. Literature – both from a consumer’s and a producer’s perspective – is depicted as independent from, and in every way contrasting, everyday political life. I will thus argue that while Ekelöf isn’t appropriated ideologically in a traditional manner, e.g. using his poems to support a political argument, he (and literature in general) becomes a means to step out of an official position, instead assuming the role of a fellow man. This should in turn be understood as a claim for political legitimacy stemming from the 1800th century European reinterpretation of public relations in intimate terms.
Many intellectuals participated in the nation-state consolidation processes of the19th and 20th centuries when they identified and shaped popular character traits. Important themes were the ethnic group’s common history, culture and territory. The article shows that we are now witnessing a similar academically anchored knowledge production concerning the Sami indigenous people, where important parts of Swedish humanities research on the Sami participate. The article is based on an ideology analysis of two doctoral dissertations and a research strategic document adopted by the Sámi Parliament. The demonstrated ideology production is related to indigenism, a worldwide ideology with roots in decolonization and UN human rights and supported by postcolonial theorizing and indigenous methodologies. The points of departure are partly extra-scientific as I am skeptical of anyethnically defined folk thought, as in the old conservatism, and partly intra-scientific as I believe that researchers should be analytically distanced from the political movement and the social category being studied.
Sartre’s seriality: Existential conceptualizations and an excursus on the Corona crisisIn his Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960) Sartre tried to clarify the dialectic betweendifferent levels of understanding, between theory and existential or factual praxis.Within the material realm of praxis, there are two forms of mediation: the group(oriented by a common interest) and the series. A series is an ordered gathering,such as a queue; but can also be the audience that listens to the radio; or the activityof smuggling gold out of Spain, in the 16th century. Sartre is unwilling to callseriality a concept, and I concur by emphasizing the variability of the phenomenonbut also its usefulness as a political term. I demonstrate that a pattern can befound among Sartre’s examples of seriality: a series can either be active or passive,reflective or unreflective. However, a series which is both active and reflected is ananomaly, since this means that the series transforms into the other form of mediation,the group, or even ”an organized Apocalypse”. In a short excursus I apply theseforms of seriality to the spring 2020 Corona crisis, where the political problem ofchoosing between patience and impatience is touched upon.