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How responsive are democratic governments to business demands for tax cuts? We research this question in comparative case studies of cuts in corporate taxes and inheritance taxes in Austria and Sweden. We find that governments, regardless of partisan composition, are responsive to business demands, but that fiscal and electoral goals attenuate responsiveness. In both countries, the limited revenues generated by inheritance taxation and greater alignment of business demands with middle‐class voter interests resulted in governments heading business demands for an abolition of this tax. Goal conflict were larger for corporate tax cuts. In both countries, governments tried to minimize these goal conflict by adopting compensatory policy measures, specifically measures to broaden the tax base and simultaneous tax cuts for low‐income groups. The findings suggest that the policy output of business‐friendly tax cuts reflect a balancing of conflicting goals, rather than outright business dominance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Alternative perspective on "propaganda" in the public relations historiography. • Propaganda was a term that was still in use during the late 1960s. • One of Sweden's largest communication achievement during the 20th century. This article presents an alternative perspective regarding the concept of "propaganda" in the historiography of public relations. Recent scholars of public relations have rightly criticized early attempts to write the field's history as a linear progression, from propaganda to excellence. At the same time, however, the same recent scholars have come to accept a linear conceptual change, and that "propaganda" became an impossible term in liberal democratic countries in the 1960s. By using the empirical case of the massive communication efforts initiated by the Swedish Commission on Right-Hand Traffic, which was assigned to implement right-hand traffic in 1967, this article shows that the concept of "propaganda" both occurred frequently and was used in a neutral sense. To deepen the understanding of this alternative perspective, the article both presents how the historical actors conceptualized their work, and describes how the communication work of the Commission was performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significant increase in the number of refugees entering the European Union and the low employment rates among them remain pressing issues across Europe. While previous research has mainly focused on refugee integration prospects from the policymakers' point of view, we shift the analytical focus to how refugees perceive the introduction programme experience, examining the case of Syrian refugees to Sweden. Drawing upon semi‐structured interviews with Syrian refugees, our results suggest that the quality of language training, the complexity of the validation process for educational qualifications and the lengthy administrative procedures are perceived as important barriers hindering the access of refugees to the Swedish labour market. These barriers are differently perceived, especially by those with differing levels of education. This highlights the utility of an intersectional approach, and the continued need to explore the diversity of migrant experiences when assessing integration policies and programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand why support for anti-immigrant policies is on the increase in Sweden, we need to think about Muslim demands for parity within the country. In this context, the adhan (Muslim call to prayer) is best understood as a practice, not merely as an expression, and as all practices it forms a part of a certain way of life. The real question is whether or not other, non-Swedish, forms of life should be allowed in Swedish society. To this question all Swedish politicians, not only the Sweden Democrats, currently give a negative answer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tax evasion is a problem everywhere, but it is a much bigger policy problem in some countries than it is in others. The Italian government estimates that it loses more than 27 percent of total tax revenue to evasion, whereas the Swedish government estimates their "tax gap" to be less than 9 percent. What explains this variation? We test for the importance of culturally based attitudes and institutionally structured rules for taxes and benefits through a unique set of cross-national experiments and attitudinal surveys done in multiple locations across Italy, the UK, the United States, and Sweden. Participants in each location were presented with identical conditions based on institutional variations (tax rates, redistribution regimes, benefits) and asked to complete a survey afterward concerning their attitudes toward a number of social and political issues. A mixed-model analysis of the 2,537 subjects in our study reveals consistent influence of institutional scenarios and three attitude scales measuring pro-redistributive ideology, fiscal responsibility, and perceived government competence. Country effects, however, are more mixed and inconsistent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the September 9, 2018 election for the Swedish Riksdag, particularly focusing on turnout and the performance of the various Swedish political parties including the red-green bloc of the Social Democrats, Greens, and Left Party and the Alliance bloc comprised of the Moderates, Centre, Christian Democrats, and Liberals.

Is Sweden a failed state in the making or a paradise on earth? Neither. Sweden is a functioning democracy but it faces serious challenges. This article attempts to make sense of them. It considers issues of law and order and the emergence of parallel structures of power. It shows that Sweden, following an unprecedented wave of immigration, is experiencing an ongoing struggle to define the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the political condition in Sweden as of September 2018, with topics including the parliamentary election held on September 8, 2018, the history of social democracy in the country, and the socio-economic Counter Reformation in the early 1980s.

Democratic theories expect citizens to be able to accurately evaluate fulfilment of parties’ election pledges. We use specifically designed survey items from the Swedish National Election Study to compare citizens’ perceptions of the fulfilment of specific party pledges with actual fulfilment and assess circumstances that lead to correct evaluations. We find that political knowledge triumphs partisan attachments to incumbent parties when it comes to explaining why voters are correct. The results are interesting in light of common knowledge about the importance of partisan attachment in evaluations of general government performance: We argue that when specific election pledges are being evaluated, personal heuristics, such as attachments to incumbent parties, play a lesser role for judgements. Instead, the specificity embedded in the evaluation encourages citizens to engage in a more knowledge-based evaluation of whether pledges are fulfilled or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To paint a fuller picture of economic voters, we combine personal income records with a representative election survey. We examine three central topics in the economic voting literature: pocketbook versus sociotropic voting, the effects of partisanship on economic evaluations, and voter myopia. First, we show that voters who appear in survey data to be voting based on the national economy are, in fact, voting equally on the basis of their personal financial conditions. Second, there is strong evidence of both partisan bias and economic information in economic evaluations, but personal economic data is required to separate the two. Third, although in experiments and aggregate historical data recent economic conditions appear to drive vote choice, we find no evidence of myopia when we examine actual personal economic data. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The main purpose of this study is to examine political competition on the local level in Sweden and to empirically test two theories of political competition, namely whether the size of the unit affects the variation in political competition and whether socioeconomic standards affect the variation in political competition. The findings support the suggested causal mechanism between socioeconomic standards and competition. Accordingly, units with higher socioeconomic standards have a higher level of political competition. Some empirical findings also support the suggested causal mechanism between the size of the units and the political competition. The findings show that population size is a robust determinant of competition and that a larger population size affects competition positively. The findings show also that area size is a relatively robust determinant of competition and that area size has a negative effect on competition. However the negative effect is contrary to the expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I argue that the project, a governmental technology that is now widespread and accepted throughout the public sector, is not a neutral tool for implementing policy and conducting politics. Rather, my argument is that this form is intrinsically political in so far as it produces disruptions and sets boundaries for how any given task is to be performed. By mobilizing a set of optical metaphors from feminist theory of difference, I examine organizations that work for gender equality in Swedish regional development and illustrate how the governmental technology ofthe projectreflects, refracts, and diffracts the practices associated with this work. Thus, I argue that if one wishes to understand contemporary gender-equality work, it is reasonable to consider the specific effects that are produced as it passes through the project form. The short empirical illustrations given here indicate, among other things, how the project form functions in some respects as a mirror, andreflectsaspects of gender-equality work that are commonly experienced regardless of form or setting, such as encountering resistance. In other respects, the project formrefractsgender-equality work, bending it into new directions so that, for instance, securing funds and coming up with new innovative project plans takes precedence over the actual work that respondents feel they should be doing. Finally, the intersection of gender-equality work and the project form also producesdiffractioneffects, such as the emergence of hybrid consultants. These multi-faceted figures function as evaluators, controllers, activists, and disseminators of knowledge, which makes them simultaneously important to and disdained by the respondents in this study. Thus, it is concluded that the disruptive effects of the project form should be recognized as political and studied more extensively in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, Sweden is used as an example of how organised politics has changed quite dramatically in the last couple of decades. The paper argues that there are a number of points that has recently changed Swedish organised politics in rather fundamental ways. These changes entail a new actor constellation in Swedish politics and policy-making, decreased visibility of political processes and the emergence of a strong feedback loop between inequality, participation and public policies. What this amounts to is a very different form of elite-driven policy-making than the old corporatist structures. An amorphous and quite invisible but still highly elite-driven process has emerged, in which inequality has increased dramatically, and the impact of money on politics has become stronger even in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this analysis of how electoral rules and outcomes shape the internal organization of political parties, we make an analogy to primary elections to argue that parties use preference-vote tallies to identify popular politicians and promote them to positions of power. We document this behavior among parties in Sweden's semi-open-list system and in Brazil's open-list system. To identify a causal impact of preference votes, we exploit a regression discontinuity design around the threshold of winning the most preference votes on a party list. In our main case, Sweden, these narrow “primary winners” are at least 50% more likely to become local party leaders than their runners-up. Across individual politicians, the primary effect is present only for politicians who hold the first few positions on the list and when the preference-vote winner and runner-up have similar competence levels. Across party groups, the primary effect is the strongest in unthreatened governing parties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent decades, the history of childhood and history of education have gained status as political concerns through the establishment of numerous truth commissions and inquiries into historical institutional child abuse. This article discusses the methodological and ethical dilemmas that arise when writing the history of abused children with the objective of both recognising and redressing the victims as well as offering an account of ‘what really happened’. Comparing how inquiry commissions in Ireland, Sweden and Denmark evaluate and approach victims’ oral testimonies and written records from child welfare agencies, the article explores the acts of balancing between different epistemological approaches to the concept of ‘truth’. The results suggest that while inquiries have to address and convince several audiences simultaneously, empiricist positivist methods of inquiry have dominated the approaches to ‘truth’. However, this approach has not been without ambivalence, and there are examples of constructivist approaches as well. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Though more than 100 countries have adopted gender quotas, the effects of these reforms on women's political leadership are largely unknown. We exploit a natural experiment—a 50–50 quota imposed by the national board of the Swedish Social Democratic Party on 290 municipal branches—to examine quotas’ influence on women's selection to, and survival in, top political posts. We find that those municipalities where the quota had a larger impact became more likely to select (but not reappoint) female leaders. Extending this analysis, we show that the quota increased the number of women perceived as qualified for these positions. Our findings support the notion that quotas can have an acceleration effect on women's representation in leadership positions, particularly when they augment the pool of female candidates for these posts. These results help dispel the myth that quotas trade short-term gains in women's descriptive representation for long-term exclusion from political power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Organizational reform has become a recurring solution to problems of social exclusion and unemployment. In Europe, and other parts of the world, there is a trend towards policies of 'activation' in employment and social policy. The idea of flexible, individualized and tailor-made services is coupled with managerial and market-based reforms as well as collaborative governance. In these complex structures of service provision, coordination and inter-agency co-operation have become key concerns. Based on a study of a recent reform of programmes for newly arrived refugees in Sweden (Etableringsreformen), this article seeks to contribute to the literature on governance of 'activation' by examining the consequences of mixed modes of governance (market and collaborative) on local inter-agency co-operation. Drawing on data from in-depth case studies in two municipalities, it is demonstrated how the coupling of managerial practices and quasi-markets with existing collaborative arrangements has created barriers for inter-agency co-operation. The results indicate that institutional tensions between governance forms represent an important factor for explaining governance failure in this policy area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine the implications of Sweden's reformed national pension system and how this policy reconfigures the state-citizen relationship. By applying the methodological approach of 'studying through,' the study depicts a shift in responsibility from a state level to an individual level. More specifically, I here shed light on how politicians, technocrats, and bureaucrats work to educate and foster the general public into responsible, hard working and financially literate citizens. The article further reveals that such attempts are not readily accepted or adopted by the citizens at the receiving end of the pension policy and so, instead of providing stability and security, this social security policy invokes a sense of insecurity in Swedish citizens. [Pension System Reform, Anthropology of Policy, Sweden, Studying Through] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Swedish parliamentary elections of September 2014, focusing on how pluralism in the party system works to polarize the political climate. The former strength of the Social Democrat party is discussed, as is the role of the Alliance formed by the centre-right parties, the Moderates, Liberals, Centre Party and Christian Democrats. The Social Democrats' coalition with the Greens and the Left Party is mentioned and the implications of the election are discussed.

The article looks at Russian military activity in Sweden and in the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia). Particular focus is given to military readiness in these nations and to the effects of the Georgian war of 2008 and the 2014 separatist conflict in Ukraine on their foreign and military policies. Details on the Baltic states' participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and on NATO's military presence in the region are presented. Other topics include Finland's defense policies and the defense of the Swedish island of Gotland.

The demise of the solidaristic wage policy, followed by the introduction of individual wage setting, is one of many similar changes in the Swedish welfare regime in recent decades. These changes were often demanded by employers and then eventually accepted and implemented by parts of the labour movement, i.e. Social Democracy and its related trade unions. Ever since its introduction in 1993, however, individual wage setting has created much controversy within Kommunal (the Swedish Municipal Workers' Union), the largest trade union in Sweden. In this light, it is interesting to examine the arguments that convinced a majority of the delegates at the decision-making congresses. Two main arguments in favour of individual wage setting have been put forward by union leaders, namely that the new wage system is appreciated by members and that increased wage dispersion increases productivity, which in turn leads to higher wages. This article reviews these arguments. It is found that member surveys suffer from flaws in methodology and that the productivity argument is ill-founded. The reason for the insistence on individual wage setting must be sought elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, industrialised societies are frequently confronted with new warnings delivered by experts about risks associated with anthropogenic substances. Such warnings are typically not related to any definitive consequences but rather to admissions of great uncertainty about effects, and thus they contrast sharply to political promises of non-toxic environments and a highly regulated production of chemicals. It is the argument of this article that the high uncertainty surrounding chemicals allows for the proliferation of radically divergent and paradoxical images of chemicals regulation and its functionality. The article analyses the rationality underlying the system of chemicals control in Sweden, a country often priding itself on having one of the most progressive legislations in the world. The regulation and control performed by the two central agencies involved in the control of chemicals are studied through text analysis and interviews, and the concluding discussion frames chemicals regulation by theories on post-politics and post-ecologism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the necessary conditions behind the decision made by the Government of Sweden to participate with fighter jets in the monitoring of the no-fly zone over Libya in March 2011. The article identifies five explanatory factors whose presence was necessary for Sweden's military contribution: a feeling of moral obligation to intervene on the part of the government; the international legal foundation for the operation; strong leadership provided by NATO; broad parliamentary support; and the availability of military capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

More than 200 years since the inception of the ombudsman, it seems appropriate to re-examine where the institution stands today. This article asserts that the contemporary ombudsman is not merely or exclusively an administrative oversight body as so often assumed, and neither does it complete human rights-related tasks as an accompaniment or add-on. The ombudsman is as much a human rights institution as any other and has progressed beyond the parameters of an administrative oversight body. Clearly, this expanded role signifies an important reformulation of the “traditional” role of the ombudsman. However, this is not just a necessary response to the changing realities and demands of modern society but also a vital and natural evolution of the ombudsman to enable it to better fulfil its core functions. The article emphasizes the pressing need to fully integrate this new thinking into the study and operations of ombudsman offices around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The link between parties’ campaign messages and government action is essential to theories of representative democracy. This article offers the first evaluation of how different empirical approaches alter results regarding the fulfilment of mandates by governments. Three commonly used operationalisations of the notion of election promise are applied to the case of Sweden. The conclusion is that results are not significantly altered depending on the approach that is taken. By studying only certain subsets of promises in election manifestos, overall government fulfilment of election promises can be estimated. By performing the analyses on the case of Sweden, the study also gives focus to two cabinet formations that have received little scholarly attention but are common in the European context – namely minority single-party cabinets and coalitions formed pre-election. The article argues that such cabinet situations are particularly efficient when it comes to election pledge fulfilment, no matter how the notion of election promise is defined. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses a number of questions with regard to Sweden's economic and political development: • How did Sweden become rich? • What explains Sweden's high level of income equality? • What were the causes of Sweden's problems from 1970 to 1995? • How is it possible that Sweden, since the crisis of the early 1990s, is growing faster than most EU countries despite its high taxes and generous welfare state? These questions are analysed using recent insights from institutional economics, as well as studies of inequality and economic growth. The main conclusion is that there is little, if any, Swedish exceptionalism: Sweden became rich because of well-functioning capitalist institutions, and inequality was low before the expansion of the welfare state. The recent favourable growth record of Sweden, including the period of financial stress (2008–10), is a likely outcome of a number of far-reaching structural reforms implemented in the 1980s and 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, I address the role organisations and networks play in mobilising for the rights of undocumented migrants and in setting agendas for their inclusion and social membership. I compare two societies with different frameworks of welfare and migration regimes. The empirical material used in this article consists of 44 interviews with actors involved in the processes I define as negotiating social membership in Stockholm and Barcelona: policy-makers, immigration officials, trade unions, NGO activists and the undocumented migrants themselves. In both Sweden and Spain, mobilising groups have been important for the recognition of undocumented migrants. Until recently, undocumented migrants were largely invisible in the Swedish context, often living in extreme marginalisation and precariousness. In Spain, where the informal labour market is more extended and boundaries between the legal and the illegal are less pronounced, migrants have had greater opportunities to settle and to some degree integrate into society. The political opportunities for mobilised actors vary in relation to both the welfare and migration regimes, the structure of the labour market, and more subtle factors as receptiveness for claims-making at a certain time, tolerance for informality in society, and choices of individual actors in crucial positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses the authors' chapter "Insider-Outsider Politics" in the book "The Age of Dualization," evaluating the electoral fate of the Swedish Social Democratic Party (Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetareparti) from 1994 to 2010. Topics include the influence of insiders and outsiders on center-left political parties, the impact of unemployment and the labor market on Swedish politics, and the relation of economic issues to political campaigns in Sweden.

How can one explain the transformation of elected assemblies like national parliaments? In this study it is argued that much can be gained from taking the assumption of political generations more seriously when trying to explain transformations of the political agenda - for example, of themes and topics brought up in the parliamentary process. More specifically, the article expands on previous research in three ways: first, it launches the concept of 'parliamentary political generation' where the core element is the combination of an influx of large numbers of newcomers into the elected assembly and an electoral context that is formative - that is, that exhibits characteristics that distinguish the election from other elections. Second, an empirical test is conducted where other factors such as party affiliation and social background characteristics are controlled for. Finally, the test on the impact of parliamentary political generations is conducted in a context - the Swedish Riksdag - where parliamentary party groups are strong. The data used is the Parliamentary Surveys 1985-2010 conducted at the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The political generation in focus is the ' Class of 94'. The results show that the Class of 94 distinguish themselves by being more feminist than their senior colleagues and other groups of newcomers in Swedish elections. This is the feminist generation in Swedish politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of European integration, Sweden and Finland are frequently seen as natural allies. Based on a number of perceived similarities, their shared Nordic heritage, established historical ties and their concurrent accession to the European Union ( EU), they are rarely seen as competitors or proponents of diverging points of view. Their alignment within the EU, over sub-regional issues surrounding Northern Europe in particular, is often rather taken as a given. By focusing on the specific conduct of Sweden and Finland as regional stakeholders in the Baltic Sea Region ( BSR) and the way they have played this role within the EU, this article seeks to challenge these common assumptions. It shows that Sweden and Finland do not converge in their positions, also in matters concerning the EU's Northern Dimension - that is, a policy that distinctly furthers regional core issues whose promotion within the EU could be in both states' interest. Instead of pooling forces to attain greater leverage within the EU, Sweden and Finland rather compete with each other in this regard. Using the example of the Finnish Northern Dimension initiative, this article shows how Sweden and Finland have promoted sub-regional matters through different political and organizational channels, keeping bilateral cooperation to a minimum and leaving potential avenues of pooled action at the EU level aside. The article thus concludes that the concept of a Swedish- Finnish tandem within the EU needs to be looked at more critically when it comes to explaining or predicting their conduct as Member States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Welfare state research tends to assume strong and enduring public support for welfare state institutions. We challenge this assumption and show that in times of economic crisis, positive welfare state attitudes are confronted with conflicting preferences for improvement of labour market performance. We argue that such movements in public opinion have led to issue competition among major political parties and subsequent radical reform of unemployment insurance in two least-likely cases. In both Germany and Sweden, incumbent governments were losing voters' confidence as a result of high and persistent unemployment. In Germany, the social democratic government saw falling competence ratings at the same time as the issue of unemployment was highly salient among voters. In order to win back confidence, the party shifted its policy stance and introduced reforms which reshaped the unemployment insurance system. In Sweden, the situation was similar with falling ratings for the social democratic government and high levels of salience for the issue of unemployment among voters. When the government did not introduce reforms, the opposition moved in and won issue ownership, and subsequently the election, on an agenda of radical reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Swedish monarchy is often regarded as a purely symbolic institution. Since the constitutional reforms of the mid-1970s, the head of state has lacked formal political power, and rules of succession have been gender-neutral since 1980. This article examines how the monarchy is constitutionally negotiated and the consequences this has for representations of nation and gender. I argue that the constitutional underpinnings of the Swedish monarchy naturalize the idea of a national community. This analysis elucidates the specific dynamics by which political discourse, such as constitutional texts, successfully establishes a supposedly apolitical domain. I also demonstrate the consequences, in terms of norms and ideals regarding gender, sexuality, and family life, of the present constitutional design. The analysis is based on official political documents and debates from the post-war period. Following a section on the evolution of the current regulations surrounding the monarchy, the paper analyses political discourse on the form of government in light of the boundary problem, namely, on what basis can a legitimate people (demos) be affirmed? I demonstrate that the monarchy gives Swedish democracy a national foundation; a legitimatedemosis established through the idea of a pre-political national community, personified by the royal family and codified in the hereditary order of succession. In relation to nation and gender, the monarchy connects Swedish nationalism to representations of “blood” and genetic descent. One important conclusion is that the way the Swedish monarchy is constitutionally upheld works against attempts to challenge politically and discuss Swedish nationalism and its relationship to conservative gender norms. Another conclusion is that the monarchy's hereditary principle runs the risk of obstructing free and unfettered discussion of constitutional issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article nuances the picture given in current research of Swedish policy implementation and planning as consistent and predictable, and Norwegian policy implementation and planning as more unpredictable and fragmented. It does so by adding a discussion of the sources of legitimacy in each of the two national settings, arguing that each system has its distinct pros and cons. The Swedish planning system and local plan practices rest more firmly on a hierarchical mode of governance which is strong on operational efficiency, but suffers from a weaker sense of ownership to the plan outcome among private and civil society actors. In the Norwegian planning system and local plan practices, a combination of hierarchical and interactive governance measures, boasts a broader anchorage and resource division among public, private and civil society actors. However, this system experiences a lower operational efficiency due to the willingness to reconsider former decisions in order to find a viable compromise among different stakeholders in local plan processes, as well as stronger fragmentation due to the privatization of Norwegian detail planning. The empirical basis of the article is: a comparison of the two countries' plan legislation in terms of the inclusion of non-public actors in plan provision and plan formulation; and four case studies of planning processes concerning the future use of an urban green area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a framework for analysing party-organisational culture, with a special focus on the elite level. The framework is based on an interpretation of Mary Douglas' Grid/ Group model, and is empirically supported by an extensive study of the seven party groups in the Swedish parliament. The model identifies two fundamental cultural dimensions: the level of submission by individual group members to the group as a collectivity; and the principle that dictates the distribution of status and prestige within the party (a distribution here correlating with views on knowledge). The study shows that the parties distribute themselves on the cultural map in ways that do not coincide in any straightforward way with other well-known variables of party politics, such as ideology, origin or size. The methodological innovations presented in this article pave the way for a new framework for analysing party politics in which hitherto neglected aspects of party organisation are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The developmental model of voter turnout posits that the propensity to vote (or abstain) is a habit acquired during the period of a young adult's socialisation to the electoral process. Once acquired, the habit tends to persist and the individual becomes fairly 'immune' to the potential influences hypothesised to affect turnout. In particular, Franklin proposes that electoral context will have a strong impact on those who have no or little experience of voting (or abstaining) in democratic elections but virtually no impact on those whose 'electoral experience' is more substantial. Tests of the above crucial hypothesis have focused mostly on the heterogeneous effects of electoral competitiveness (election closeness) on turnout. I follow the same route but also point to potential drawbacks of the tests performed so far. At the same time, I propose what I claim is a superior test of experience-conditioned impact of closeness on turnout. My test - utilising data on sixteen Swedish elections conducted between 1956 and 2006 - yields suggestive results supporting Franklin's hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the changing level of participation of voluntary organisations in the policy process between 1964 and 2009 and its implication for the role played by voluntary organisations to the state. Drawing on data from the remiss procedure - one of the most understudied parts of the Swedish policy-making process - the results implicate a reduced role for voluntary organisations in formal arenas for policy making. While the number of participating voluntary organisations has remained stable, the relative share of participating organisations has declined and an increasing proportion of organisations have abstained from participating. In addition, the shares of conflict-oriented and member-benefit-oriented organisations have decreased while consensus-oriented and public-benefit-oriented organisations appear to have increased slightly. These findings are discussed in the context of changes in the coordination and implementation of public policies, implying that over time the role of voluntary organisations as arenas for deliberation and mediators of individual interests tend to have gradually lost ground in relation to the state while the share of organisations taking direct welfare responsibility has slightly increased. Although it may be premature to speak about a shifting role of voluntary organisations from input to output in the political system, the result suggest an emerging trend in that direction. Further research is needed to clarify whether this changing pattern of participation is evident in other arenas for policy making in Sweden or is an isolated feature explained from the outset of the remiss procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last twenty-five years, housing policy in Sweden has radically changed. Once forming a pillar of the comprehensive welfare system, abbreviated the “Swedish model,” neoliberal housing politics have established market-governed housing provision with a minimum of state engagement. This shift has had consequences on the social geography of housing conditions. The research reported here analyzes social geographic change in Sweden's three largest cities—Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö—between 1986 and 2001, relating observed patterns of gentrification and filtering to cycles of accumulation and to neoliberalization of housing policies. First, we outline the neoliberalization of Swedish housing policies. We then present an empirical analysis of gentrification and filtering in the three cities, spanning two boom periods (1986–1991, 1996–2001) and a bust period (1991–1996). The data reveal social geographic polarization manifested in the growth of supergentrification and low-income filtering. The analysis also introduces the concept of ordinary gentrification, supporting the move in gentrification research toward a broad generic conception of the process. Political reforms after 2001 are summarized and we argue that these underlie the continued increase in inequality and that the social geographic polarization mapped between 1986 and 2001 has probably intensified during this decade. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents research about politics and government in Sweden in 2010. Topics include the parliamentary election, changes in the positions of government officials, and the political leadership under the Alliance coalition government. The article also discusses the effect of the 2008 global financial crisis on the country, economic recovery in the labour market, and political and constitutional reforms in the country. A chart is also presented about political party representation in the parliament elections with parties such as the Social Democratic Party, the Left Party, and the Green Party.

Surveillance is an important governance technique of modern societies and is linked to particular governmental rationalities. This article examines the Swedish policy on camera surveillance, using the analytical framework of governmentality, the art of government, in advanced liberal societies as its theoretical framework. The focus is on three features that characterise current developments in the Swedish policy. These are labelled situational prevention, generalisation of distrust and the significance of the informed citizen. The study shows how prevention, i.e. situational prevention, was successfully introduced as a main rationale for monitoring only after the technology had been in place for some years. Monitoring as a form of general situational prevention, the congruent generalised distrust that affects the public and the Swedish requirement to inform citizens about cameras are viewed as elements of a governmental rationality based on the notion of the autonomous, free and self-responsible subject. Accordingly, the popular idea that camera surveillance is an indicator of an expanding security state must be modified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large, area-based metropolitan development initiative (MDI) was launched in Sweden in 1999 as part of a new metropolitan policy. The Swedish government and seven municipalities invested about 400 million Euros in 24 of the most deprived urban neighbourhoods in the Stockholm region, Gothenburg and Malmö. The overall aim was to promote integration and combat unemployment, low achievement in schools, poor health, criminality and low democratic participation. The idea of urban governance was highlighted as one of the distinguishing hallmarks of the policy. Elementary schools were, after various labour-market projects, the largest receivers of MDI funding. Drawing on empirical findings as well as on secondary literature, this article describes and analyses how local school stakeholders—most notably heads of local education departments, principals and teachers—implemented the MDI with particular focus on the policy’s urban government principle. It is argued that local school stakeholders, as a well-organised group with strong professional identity, captured the idea of urban governance and manipulated it to fit their own particular interests. Some effects of this process include schools becoming further isolated from their local communities, students and parents becoming further isolated from the decision-making processes within schools and money being spent on projects that are exclusively defined by the educators and the administrators, rather than by the communities they serve. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Numerous studies show that education has a positive effect on political participation at the individual level. However, the increase in aggregate levels of education in most Western countries over the last decades has not resulted in a corresponding increase in aggregate levels of political participation. Nie et al. (Education and democratic citizenship in America, ) propose the relative education model as a possible solution to this paradox. According to this model, it is not the skills promoted by education that have positive effects on political participation. Rather, education influences individuals' social status, which in turn influences political participation. The relative education model expects that the individual-level effect of an additional year of education will decrease as the mean level of education in the environment increases. This article evaluates this theory using Swedish election surveys (1985-2006) and it thus provides the first in depth evaluation of the relative education model outside the US. On voting and political participation related to political parties, support is found for the relative education model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1999, Sweden passed a law criminalizing the purchase of sex and decriminalizing the prostituted person. The law was part of an omnibus bill against violence against women, recognizing prostitution as related to such violence. This article analyzes the reasons for the Swedish law and documents the law's impact, concluding that the law has significantly reduced the occurrence of prostitution in Sweden compared to neighboring countries. In addition, it addresses some important remaining obstacles to the law's effective implementation and responds to various common critiques of (and misinformation about) the law and its effects. Finally, this article argues that, in order to realize the law's full potential to support escape from prostitution, the civil rights of prostituted persons under current law should be strengthened to enable them to claim damages directly from the tricks/johns for the harm to which they have contributed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why is 'the immigration issue' rarely polemical for the Swedish mainstream when it divides parties across Europe? Several factors suggest fertile ground for conflict, yet parties hesitate to capitalise on anti-immigration cues. Based on interviews with Swedish MPs, the article discusses two interlinked issues. First, immigration crystallises conflicting ideological streams: market liberalism vs. value conservatism (for the centre-right) and international solidarity vs. welfare state/labour market protectionism (for the centre-left), and stressing the 'wrong' stream detracts attention from parties' core competencies. Second, since competition, when present, revolves around issue ownership, parties that are less trusted on immigration will divert attention to areas of higher competence. Whether immigration becomes politicised is not necessarily dependent on electoral grievances or a radical right presence but on parties' ability to handle and negotiate these conflicting streams and issue priorities. An appreciation of the party politics of immigration is thus central to understanding when, and why, immigration becomes an 'issue'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sweden is no longer a negative, exceptional case regarding the presence of radical right-wing populist parties. The Sweden Democrats has continually grown stronger, and in 2010 they won seats in the Swedish parliament. However, their electoral support varies considerably across Sweden. This study analyses their electoral support in 290 Swedish municipalities in order to explain this variance. Support is found for the social marginality hypothesis: electoral support for the Sweden Democrats tends to be negatively correlated with the average level of education and with the Gross Regional Product per capita, and positively correlated with the unemployment rate. The ethnic competition hypothesis, that there is a positive correlation between the proportion of immigrants and electoral support of the Sweden Democrats, is also supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sweden, where some 20 per cent of the population is either foreign born or second generation, has long been known internationally as the model of a tolerant, egalitarian, multicultural welfare state, which extended substantial citizenship, welfare and labour rights to all within its borders, including immigrants. However, under the twin pressures of neoliberalism and the EU’s commitment to ‘managed migration’, this Swedish exceptionalism has been, and continues to be, substantially eroded. The shortcomings of the earlier multicultural settlement of the 1960s and 1970s, a growing extremist populism, the growth of an unprotected, semi-clandestine sector of the labour market, combined with high levels of youth unemployment and urban segregation, have led to unprecedented rioting and violence in Swedish cities. The voices of minority ethnic youth, many of them Muslim, should be heeded as rejecting the exclusivism of current political trends. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article raises questions about how best to assess the performance of radical left parties participating in coalition governments. Drawing in part on interviews (see Appendix 1), it covers parties that have participated in coalition government (Cyprus, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Norway), or have acted as ‘support parties’ (Denmark, Sweden), or are debating the ‘pros and cons’ of coalition participation (Netherlands). It undertakes a comparative analysis of how radical left parties themselves evaluate the measure of their achievements and failings in coalition government — a critical exercise for such parties that can influence their tactical and strategic decisions about future government participation, as well as the ability of the parties to survive political and electoral setbacks. The approach we adopt is one that takes the policy, office and votes triad developed by political scientists seriously, but also factors in the principles, political outlook and goals of the parties themselves. It concludes that the experience of coalition government for radical left parties is far from encouraging to date. Their few achievements have to be set against many potential pitfalls. Whilst there may be no alternative to government participation if these parties wish to be taken seriously as actors, a more strategic and cautious approach to coalition formation seems advisable in many instances. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]