This article deals with how President Barack Obama has related to American exceptionalism, and how he developed a distinct version of the concept. We begin by discussing the background and meanings of American exceptionalism, making a distinction between its academic and political use. Based on three of his major speeches, we then discuss Obama’s relationship to the concept, arguing that his initial skepticism to American exceptionalism, which was met by criticism, notably from American conservatives, was replaced by a greater acceptance, especially with regard to foreign policy. We also argue that even though Obama embraced exceptionalism he also changed and expanded it, especially with regard to American history.

The Left Party: Instigator of Change or Pragmatic Support Party This article investigates the Left Party in the Swedish elections of 2014. In the electoral arena the party faced competition from several other Left-Wing parties, and in particular lost votes to the Feminist Initiative. The party did not suffer from any large conflicts in the internal arena, despite the party achieving neither the increase in electoral results nor the government participation it had hoped for. In the parliamentary arena, the party was able to gain some influence over the budget, since the new coalition government needed to negotiate with the Left Party in order to gain the necessary votes. The article argues that the party’s position in the party system is largely dependent on the attitude that other parties, particularly the Social Democrats, take towards it.

The purpose of this article is to study how Sweden’’s political parties handled the processof constitutional review from 2004-2008. In particular the analysis examines howparties choose between their office-seeking, policy-seeking and vote-seeking goalsand the desire to maintain intra party agreement. Three expectations are identified: (a)parties’’ different strategic situations lead them to advocate different long-term goals;(b) different party levels will take different stands in order to increase their influencevis-a-vis other levels; (c) party leaderships will try to increase their freedom to negotiatewith others by avoiding extensive intra party debates or decisions. The study isbased on 30 interviews with representatives closely involved in the constitutional-reformprocess. The conclusion is that parties have self-interested goals as regards thequestion of how the political game should be regulated. The conflict between differentintra-party levels is also obvious. However, due to party members’’ disinterest inthe constitutional review, party leaders did not need to adopt a variety of strategies toavoid a large scale intra-party debate. It was enough for them to claim that the resultingcompromise was actually something of a victory for each party.

This article sketches the historical development of collegial decision-making bodies at Swedish Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) within the broader political context, showing that the development of current decision-making structures at Swedish HEIs was part of a more general trend towards democratization within government agencies. Further, it traces various kinds of impact that the deregulation of the decision-making process has had on different parts of the university system, and argues that the reforms of the last decades have resulted in a growing differentiation in governance structures and forms in the supposedly unitary system of Swedish higher education. In this historical trajectory, the notion of collegiality is transformed from collective expert governance into procedures for consultation with employees by management.

The mediatization of politics denotes a long-term process through which politicalactors have become increasingly dependent on news media, the key mechanismbeing the adaptation to news media and news media logic by political actors. Oneaspect of this is related to how political parties communicate during election cam-paigns, and how important they perceive different communication channels to be.Against this background, the purpose of this study is to explore the assessment ofdifferent communication channels in election campaigns by political parties overtime. This study analyses the ways in which political parties value the importanceof traditional news media, social media and traditional methods for communica-tion with voters during election campaigns. The empirical material covers the 2010,2014 and 2018 Swedish national elections, enabling us to make comparisons withinthe same national context as well as to explore their development over time. Theresults indicate that news media is still considered the most important communi-cation channel, although social media is levelling the field.

The Reparliamentarization of Sweden? The Use and Relevance of Parliamentary Resolutions to the Government In contrast to the theory of deparliamentarization amongst parliamentary democracies, this article points to the Riksdag’s use of so-called resolutions (tillkännagivanden) to the Government as a sign of growing reparliamentarization. Resolutions in the Swedish context are constitutionally non-binding but politically coercing. From this first study of a hitherto uncharted parliamentary instrument some preliminary conclusions materialise: Resolutions are more complex nowadays than 15–20 years ago requiring more effort from the Government. Parliament’s use of resolutions has, broadly pictured, evolved from unanimous or bipartisan demands on often technical issues to an increasingly politicized tool of reiningin minority governments. In some exceptional cases even issuing a few so-called negative resolutions which essentially seek to infringe the Government’s executive powers. Resolutions may offer a complementary measurement of a government’s parliamentary strength and provide additional insights into the workings of Swedish (and potentially other countries) parliamentarism given additional research.

The Relevance of Fascism: History as analogy and contrast

Politicians, intellectuals, journalists, and scholars in several different countries have used the concept of fascism to describe political developments during recent years. Right-wing populist parties and extremist movements have gained ground in national elections, while political leaders worldwide have challenged democratic norms and institutions. Is the concept and history of fascism useful as a tool for understanding this situation? Or does it obscure the novelty and specificity of what is going on? This article analyzes various answers to this question, gathered from proponents and critics of the utility of the concept of fascism for understanding contemporary politics in Sweden, the USA, France, Spain, and Germany, during the past ten years. In countries where fascism has played a central role in national history, a nostalgic embrace of the memory and history of fascism, although not its political program, has accompanied the ascent of right-wing populist and extremist parties. In other countries, such as Sweden and the USA, historians and intellectuals have dismissed using the concept of fascism as a label for the Sweden Democrats or Donald Trump as historically incorrect. Although such critique can indeed adduce a long list of differences between historical fascism and contemporary politics, it also contributes to making the history of fascism into a politically useful past in the present.

Departing from Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine in 2022, this article analyses the OSCE-based security order that prevailed since the Cold War and that later was formalised in the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The first conclusion is that the OSCE-based European security order was successively weakened, and at the longest can be said to have functioned until 2014. The second conclusion is that this security order will not reappear even if the OSCE survives the consequences of the war. The article then analyses the partially parallel development of the EU as a security actor in Europe, and the potential of the EU to become a node in a new European security order. The third and fourth conclusions are that the EU has the potential of being a node in a new European security order, but that it will also need to become a node in a larger global order.

In this article the Swedish public management during the Covid 19 pandemic 2020- 2021 is analyzed in the light of previous identified challenges for Swedish civil defense. Such challenges are in the article contextualized in the light of contempo- rary research with the move from government to governance, but also through pub- lic inquiries and public debate concerning the future Swedish civil defense. The chal- lenges identified are network governance, multi-level governance and public-private partnerships. The rationale behind this study departs from the idea that the identi- fied challenges for the development of a modern civil defense could be expected to be manifested during a severe civil crisis like the pandemic. If these challenges are occurring in the management of the pandemic, then they are likely to be relevant to be addressed as Sweden move forward to reestablish the planning for a modern civil defense to be used during future severe crisis or even during war. The results from the study of the experiences of relevant actors during the public management of the pandemic confirm that at least two of the identified challenges are relevant to address further, namely multi-level governance and network governance.

In this article, ideological tranformations within the Swedish Christian Democratic party throughout the past years is analysed. This is done in comparison with previous research on the ideological character of the party from the 1960’s to the early 2000’s. The party´s ideology is analysed with a two dimensional model, i.e. universalism – par- ticularism and confessionalism – secularism. These two dimensions are derived from the ideological debate within the Dutch CDA during the 1990’s, a party that has op- erated in a similar context as the Swedish Christian Democrats have. Based on the two dimensions speeches and op-ed articles by the party leadership is analysed. The con- clusion is that the Swedish Christian Democrats has moved from a position of a strong Christian inspiration to a more secular direction, and that the party also has moved from strong universal beliefs to less universal and more particularistic beliefs

A Mediatized Swedish Parliament? Media Adaption among Swedish MPsThe purpose with this article is to investigate if and how the members of the Swedish Parliament adapt to media. Do they adapt to media in line with cartel the-ory and its expectations on elite control and homogenization? Or, do they adapt in line with Kitschelts’ expectations on individualization and fragmentation? In the article, based on mediatization theory, we study how the MPs have adapted to media over time, from 1985-2010, with a special focus on 2010.The results indicate that there is an elite among the MPs, who perceives an increasing influence of media and who also uses and adapts to traditional media to an increasing extent. This perception is prevalent among all ‘elite’ MPs in all parties. The MPs in the top use media-related activities to an increasing extent; while the other MPs use them to a lesser extent.

Handelshögskolan i Stockholm (ofta benämnd Handels kort och gott) är en på många sätt unik institution i det svenska högskolelandskapet. Den är den enda självständiga handelshögskolan i Sverige, tillsammans med Jönköping University och Chalmers Tekniska Högskola ett av tre icke-offentliga lärosäten i en i övrigt starkt offentligt dominerad högskolesektor och den i förhållande till sin storlek viktigast bland institutioner som förbereder för näringslivets ledande positioner. Sett till studentrekrytering är dess ekonomiutbildning en av de svåraste utbildningarna i landet att komma in på och den kan i många avseenden räknas som en elitutbildning.

One of the most basic conditions for Swedish universities is the funding they receive for conducting research and education. This is a dimension of the higher education system that is extremely underexplored. For the government, it is one of the most central instruments and funding is a crucial prerequisite for academic freedom. When the relations between the higher education institutions and the research funders are analyzed with correspondence analysis, four clear dimensions emerge, where the higher education institutions’ positions primarily can be understood in relation to their set of faculties. This implies firstly that there are very large diffe rences in the conditions and resources of higher education institutions, so great that the idea of higher education institutions as a unified category seems directly misleading. But it is also possible, secondly, to question the idea of the university as a clearly cohesive unit.

The organization and the financing of higher education under negotiation. Position-takings on the main report of the Swedish Commission of Inquiry on Governance and Resource

In recent decades, Swedish higher education and research have undergone significant changes and seen a rapid growth. In parallel, more attention has been given to higher education institutions as strategic actors and the function of the higher education insti-tutions is currently under renegotiation with an increased number of actors demand-ing a say in its development. The Commission of Inquiry on Governance and Resources was set up to address a broad range of issues in higher education and research. Its work resulted in the report A Long-term, Coordinated and Dialogue-based Governance of Higher Education (SOU 2019:6). The article presents an analysis of referral responses to the report by constructing two related spaces: a space of position-takings and a space of referral organisations. Our conclusion is that the referral organisations’ position-takings are clearly related to their overall positions in the higher education sector as well as their more specific positions in the field of research and the field of higher education. This is also clearly visible in the argumentation of specific actors for certain standpoints.

The municipalities provide the bulk of the welfare services in Sweden and depend on local council decisions to be made for the function of the welfare provision. Since the outbreak of the global covid-19 pandemic, the local governments have been forced to find new digital forms for making decisions in a covid-safe manner. In this article, we focus on the municipal council level and explore how they have dealt with the pandemic to be able to make decisions and what implications that might have for the democratic arena and local leadership of municipal councils. From March to November in 2020, we conducted 41 interviews with council chairmen, vice-chairmen and local party secretaries. We found that the municipal councils used different strategies to cope with the pandemic including decreasing municipal council size, de-prioritizing matters of political nature, moving to larger meeting rooms and introducing digital meeting participation tools. The introduction of digital meeting tools has according to the interviews challenged the democratic processes in several ways. We found the ability to participate is conditioned by individual competence to handle digital tools and there are differences in individual competences as well as local municipal capacity for digital support. Our conclusion is that there is a need to further support municipalities competences and resources to lead with digital tools. In addition, the study shows demands for more national guidelines and norms on how to manage digital council meetings and sustain local democracy in a digital era. 

Review of Krantz Lindgren, Petra: Att färdas som man lär? : om miljömedvetenhet och bilåkande. 2001

This paper explores the impact of the performance audits of a national audit office, Sweden’s Riksrevisionen, on the public administration it audits. It does so by investigating how the auditee perceives their relationship with the auditor in terms of accountability and consulting with the aim to explore the role of the national audit office as an agent of change in the entities of the public administration. Riksrevi- sionen is found to take a consulting approach in their performance audits and the stronger the relationship is perceived as consulting, the higher the propensity to change. The same relationship is found with regard to the accountability relationship when the accountability pressure is perceived internally in the organization. When the accountability pressure is external no relationship with change can be corroborated. 

Political scientists are often asked to make public assessments about strategic events.The tendency to rely on historical analogy is problematic as method, while academicmethod proper is to slow, and the problem addressed in this article is how to improveanalytical assessments in strategic affairs. I use and develop an analytical frameworkintroduced during the Cold War by Sovietologist Michael MccGwire in order to systematizeexpert assessments. In the empirical section I illustrate it with an inquiry into theprelude to the escalation in Ukraine 2022. The inquiry shows that the Russian actionsto subordinate Belarus in the Spring of 2021 is key to the understanding of the ensuingmilitary and diplomatic events that often was mistaken as Russian coercive diplomacy.The empirically grounded assessments show that the framework could have improvedprecision in assessments in the run-up to the approaching war.

[Lines and voter turnout in the 2022 Swedish general election] Studies of whether long lines at polling stations may impact voter turnout are scarce, and hitherto none has analyzed a high-turnout proportional electoral system. We investigate whether problematic election-day lines at polling places during the 2022 Swedish general election contributed to the considerable decline in turnout. Our analyses combine data on polling stations’ closing times in the 20 largest municipalities with survey data on poll workers in three municipalities. The results suggest that precincts with line problems on election day saw lower turnout than comparable precincts. Interestingly, this effect appears to have been partly offset by some voters instead casting their ballots in an advance voting polling station on election day. Although the line problems were not widespread enough to explain more than a fraction of the overall decline in turnout, congestion risks are important to consider in future elections to avoid a higher and more unequal cost of voting.

In this essay, we conduct a genealogical inquiry, shedding light on the classical social political problem concerning the mobility of people living in poverty. The aim is to problematize the contemporary debate about poverty and mobility by genea-logically tracing the contemporary category of marginalized EU-migrants, relating this to how the so-called gypsy-issue was formulated in the 1950s and the vagrancy debate in the 1920s. Empirically we focus governmental reports from these time periods. Our main findings are that the mobility of poor people today and in the 1920s are understood from a moralizing standpoint, positioning the poor as not belonging to the Swedish national welfare state. In contrast, this issue was in the 1950s understood as a welfare concern for the expanding state. The political solu-tion in the 1950s was inclusion by assimilation, whilst today and in the 1920s, the solution is a will to exclusion.

Crisis management research is a young academic field, and organisational crisisinduced learning has been relatively neglected in the literature. Based on previous research and Moynihan’s conceptualization of inter- and intracrisis learning, this essay aims to discuss factors that affect public sector organisations’ ability to learn from crises in general, and the Swedish government’s lesson drawing from the COVID-19 pandemic in particular. Internal disagreements regarding the objectives of the response strategy and polarisation on how to handle the crisis has limited Swedish public sector organisations’ ability to learn from past experiences (intercrisis learning). Although instances of organisational learning during the crisis (intracrisis learning) have been observed, interorganisational cooperation difficulties and politicisation of the crisis management initiative as a whole seem to be affecting the learning process. There is a risk that both inter- and intracrisis learning processes in the wake of COVID-19 are impacted negatively due to the national and international politicisation of Sweden’s management of the pandemic.

Power displacement and recapture: A qualitative study of regional duty officers in government agency interaction

This study highlights and discusses challenges organizations face when collaborating in the field of crisis management. We study how Swedish County Council duty officers experience collaboration with external government agencies. Our interview study is based on thirteen interviews with duty officers from six County Councils. In the analysis we discuss our results from a gender perspective. Furthermore we lay the foundation for an analytical model that can be used to better understand problems with collaboration in the field of crisis preparedness and management.

Previous research shows that the Swedish Armed Forces’ communication is dominatedby market communication, and that this may impact on how the organizationis anchored in society. By adopting a neo-institutional perspective to the studyof agency communication, this article aims to deepen the analysis of the ArmedForces’ communication. Our analysis, based on interviews and official documents,demonstrates both risks and opportunities with marketization of the Armed Forces’communication. On the one hand, market communication may lead to the neglectof alternative values and images of the Armed Forces. Also, the rushed changes incommunication strategies identified risk providing an image of a complex organizationthat is difficult to comprehend, which may undermine the Armed Forces’legitimacy. On the other hand, the Armed Forces’ enhanced role as an employer andcomprehensive use of social media has led to more transparency and to the fosteringof values corresponding to values in society at large. How the Armed Forces, itsleadership, management, and communicators relate to these opportunities andrisks will be crucial for the organization’s future legitimacy.

This essay aims to describe and analyze the movement for gay rights – later LGBTQ rights – in Russia from its inception in the late 1980s until the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The study is guided by theoretical concepts from social movement studies, and is based on previous research as well as inter-views with activists conducted by the author. The essay outlines a complex trajec-tory, where the building of a more professional and well-organized movement has occurred alongside increased state repression and stigmatization of LGBTQ activ-ism. While the findings are not directly generalizable to other civil society move-ments, they allow us to make broader reflections about the dangers of a too-linear view on democratic transition, about the relation between a movement’s visibil-ity and its success, and about how a state’s geopolitical orientation impacts civil society.

After the EU Membership – New Strategies in Swedish Foreign Politics?After becoming a member of the EU in 1995 Sweden has been governed by theSocial Democrats (1995–2006) and by a Centre-Right coalition (2006–2014) led bythe Moderate Party. Has the EU-membership conserved the tradition of consensusamongst the political parties regarding the foreign policy or has it provided anew platform allowing the parties to express their different ideological preferencesalso in this field of politics? The aim of this article is to shed light on the foreignpolicy of the Social Democrats and the Moderate Party 1995–2014. By analyzing thedebates in the Swedish parliament, Riksdagen, it is concluded that the two partieshave similar strategies regarding the means and the ways of the foreign policy butdifferent approach regarding the views on the international settings and the endsof the policy. A potential explanation to the findings is the resurrection of Realismin the Moderate Party’s approach.

Hidden or Forgotten? – Realism in the Swedish Parliamentary DebateThe spoken word of politicians creates expectations for subsequent action. Thelanguage used when formulating security, foreign and defense policies can thusprovide an indication what measures the politicians are prepared to take in orderto promote their national interests. In international relations theory the use offorce is primarily associated with realism. The use of realist concepts in the politicalcommunication could thus serve as an indicator of the politicians’ views on the useof force. In this article the use of realism in the parliamentary debate in Sweden isexplored. The findings indicate differences between the political parties as well asbetween the topics of the debate.

The limits of unity: Consensus or confrontation in shaping Swedish defence policy

How encompassing is the consensus among the political parties represented in the Swedish parliament when it comes to the military threat from Russia, the relations with NATO and the design of the Swedish Armed Forces? This article aims at answering this question by exploring the Swedish defence policy from the Russian war against Georgia in 2008 to the ongoing war in Ukraine. Our results indicate that the consensus among the parties increases with the escalation of the tensions in the international relations. Hence, we disagree with some results of previous research on Swedish security politics. We conclude that the tipping point regarding the Swedish application for NATO-membership was the existential dimension of the current Russian aggression. When the internal efforts to defend Sweden against a potential Russian attack was perceived not being enough, applying for membership was considered a necessity, not an option, among a majority of the parties.

The political economy of human nature – Kropotkin’s application of the theory of evolution on society

This paper presents a rational reconstruction of Kropotkin’s view on human nature, institutional change and economic development. Kropotkin shows that mutual aid among animals as well as in human society is far more important than recognized by contemporary individualist interpretation of Darwinism on society. His major contribution to political economy is that he offers an endogenous model of why institutions exist. However, his biological determinism and ethical naturalism imply that he disregard historical context, which leads him to de facto apply the perspective of historical idealism. The rise of the modern state, for example, he explains by the spread of the “idea of the state” and not by the economic development.

The purpose of the article is to study the intellectual background and practicalimplementation of the so called ”feminist foreign policy” of Sweden since thegeneral election in 2014. Where did it come from and what sort of policies does itinvolve? The article thereby covers the description and analysis of a number of policyprogrammes, as well as an early analysis and discussion of their consequences,using strategic theory as a framework for analysis. The article finds that there isplenty of continuity in the feminist stance, but that the announcement of a feministforeign policy has added both emphasis and new implementation programmesand approaches. The biggest difference might however be in the external interpretationof Swedish foreign policy, indicating that feminism may be a much sharperinstrument, and of greater impact, than anticipated in policy circles.

Why did the Swedish Government fail to act earlier against the Covid-19-virus in the light of the many foreshadowing outbreaks in China and in Italy and other EU Member States? With the help of the concept creeping crisis (smygande kris), this article analyses the tardiness with which the Swedish authorities acted to prevent the spread of the virus in the early stages of the pandemic (January – February 2020). The term refers to the phenomenon of belated measures despite extensive knowledge of slow-acting threats with sudden outbursts such as pandemics and global warming. The article explains the procrastination of Swedish actions as a result of psychological repression (“it couldn’t happen here in our country”), as well as cognitive delays that meant that understanding the threat evolution in the abstract did not spur action in proportion to the insight (“we saw it coming, but didn’t act until we felt it in our everyday life”). It ends by discussing possible ways to create more practically and temporally informed knowledge (“know-how”, “know-when”) of creeping crises for the generation of timely action able to stop these before they explode into acute crises.

This article confronts some general methodological issues involved when analyzing 'euroscepticism,' ie., opposition to European integration. Reviewing the literature on party-based & public euroscepticism, the article proceeds with a presentation & critical examination of conceptual frameworks & models suggested in previous research on public attitudes towards the EU. Drawing on eg., the Eurobarometer surveys, the strengths & weaknesses of different analytical frameworks arc demonstrated. The article concludes with a discussion about measurement issues related to empirical analyses of public opposition to European integration. Adapted from the source document.