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Introduction: The biological pathways involved in the preclinical stage of the Alzheimer's continuum are not well understood. Methods: We used NeuroToolKit and Elecsys® immunoassays to measure cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) amyloid-β (Aβ)42, Aβ40, phosphorylated tau (p-tau), total tau (t-tau), neurofilament light (NfL), neurogranin, sTREM2, YKL40, GFAP, IL6, S100, and α-synuclein in cognitively unimpaired participants of the ALFA+ study, many within the Alzheimer's continuum. Results: CSF t-tau, p-tau, and neurogranin increase throughout aging only in Aβ-positive individuals, whereas NfL and glial biomarkers increase with aging regardless of Aβ status. We modelled biomarker changes as a function of CSF Aβ42/40, p-tau and p-tau/Aβ42 as proxies of disease progression. The first change observed in the Alzheimer's continuum was a decrease in the CSF Aβ42/40 ratio. This is followed by a steep increase in CSF p-tau; t-tau; neurogranin; and, to a lesser extent, in NfL and glial biomarkers. Discussion: Multiple biological pathways are altered and could be targeted very early in the Alzheimer's continuum. The project leading to these results has received funding from “la Caixa” Foundation (ID 100010434), under agreement LCF/PR/GN17/50300004 and the Alzheimer's Association and an international anonymous charity foundation through the TriBEKa Imaging Platform project (TriBEKa‐17‐519007). Additional support has been received from the Universities and Research Secretariat, Ministry of Business and Knowledge of the Catalan Government under the grant no. 2017‐SGR‐892. MSC received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under the Marie Sklodowska‐Curie action grant agreement No 752310, and currently receives funding from Instituto de Salud Carlos III (PI19/00155) and from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Juan de la Cierva Programme grant IJC2018‐037478‐I). JDG is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (RYC‐2013‐13054). NVT is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities—Spanish State Research Agency (FJC2018‐038085‐I). OGR is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (FJCI‐2017‐33437). ASV is the recipient of an Instituto de Salud Carlos III Miguel Servet II fellowship (CP II 17/00029). EMAU is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities—Spanish State Research Agency (RYC2018‐026053‐I). CM was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (grant n° IEDI‐2016‐00690). KB holds the Torsten Söderberg Professorship in Medicine at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and is supported by the Swedish Research Council (#2017‐00915); the Swedish Alzheimer Foundation (#AF‐742881), Hjärnfonden, Sweden (#FO2017‐0243); and a grant (#ALFGBG‐715986) from the Swedish state under the agreement between the Swedish government and the County Councils, the ALF‐agreement. HZ is a Wallenberg Academy Fellow supported by grants from the Swedish Research Council (#2018‐02532), the European Research Council (#681712), and a grant (#ALFGBG‐720931) from the Swedish state under the agreement between the Swedish government and the County Councils.

Adaptive management’, which has been defined as the repeated iteration between management action, scientific assessment and revised management action, leading to a strengthened foundation for management, is required by Swedish law to be incorporated into the management of large carnivores. We have evaluated whether the size and/or trend of the brown bear Ursus arctos population in Sweden corresponded to management-decided national objectives during five management regimes during the past 70 years (1943–2013). We found that the objective had been met in only one period, when it had been worded very vaguely. During the last period studied (2008–2013), when management was carried out on the county level and adaptive management was required by the Swedish Government, four of six counties met their trend objectives, but only one of six met the population objectives, although one was close to meeting them. Sociological studies have documented major problems in communication among the members of the county delegations responsible for the management of large carnivores. As adaptive management apparently never has been implemented successfully in brown bear management in Sweden, we recommend that the Delegations for Game Management be mandated to integrate up-to-date, scientifically documented biological information into their decisions. This is not done consistently today. Researchers should be involved in the process to inform about relevant, available information, design testable scientific ‘experiments’ based on the predicted results of management decisions, and evaluate the results in relation to the predictions, perhaps as members of a ‘boundary organization’ consisting of researchers, managers and stakeholders. This would require a new management paradigm, because many in Sweden seem to be skeptical to the idea of involving researchers in management.

This article seeks to explain why the media affect some governmental agencies more than others. We develop a measuring instrument for the mediatization of agencies; gauging how they adapt to the media. We analyse the effects of six potential explanations of mediatization: media pressure, organizational size and task, salience, geographic location, and management structure. The analysis is based on a comprehensive quantitative contents analysis of policy documents from all governmental agencies in Sweden. The results show that agencies' propensity to adapt to the media is mainly determined by their management structure rather than, as could have been expected, by media pressure. Organizations managed by career managers invest more in media management than those led by field-professionals. Our results suggest that agencies have substantial agency in terms of how they cope with the media and that mediatization refers to much more than passive adaptation by organizations.

This article reviews the performance of the Swedish government whilst holding the European Union Council Presidency for six months during 2009, and thus has the opportunity to 'lead' the European Union. The article is published in the JCMS Annual Review, the Yearbook/special issue of the Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS): the world's leading academic peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of European integration and the European Union, and the official journal of the University Association of European Contemporary Studies (UACES), Europe's largest academic organization of EU scholars and practitioners

In its final report, a Swedish Government Commission has argued that representative democracy should be complemented by a high degree of local participation. The Commission argues that user-boards and citizen panels, for instance, are tools for vitalising democracy by educating people about democratic principles. This argument rests on two assumptions: (a) about the effects of participation in terms of a learning process at the individual level, and (b) about certain specific organisational circumstances that facilitate the learning processes. However, despite having long been evident in democratic theory, the assumptions lack empirical support. Thus, each of the Commission's assumptions poses an interesting empirical challenge: First, does local participation give rise to an individual democratic learning process? Second, does the link between local participation and representative democracy co-vary with the individual learning process? This article presents results from a process-oriented comparative study of two Swedish municipalities that introduced user-boards in the school sector. The article shows that participation in user-boards gives rise to various degrees of learning processes about democracy for individuals. It also shows that a relation between local governments and user-boards, characterised by dialogue and cooperation, increases the possibility that participation in user-boards will give rise to these learning processes.

Some relationships in modern politics may intuitively be more difficult to understand than others. This article deals with what might be referred to as a case of strange bedfellows, i.e. the French–Swedish cooperation on alcohol control in the European Union (EU). The French government has actively supported the Swedish government on several occasions in discussions and disputes over alcohol control policy issues at the EU level, and this article presents and discusses three different interpretations of this support. It is concluded that, rather than reflecting current economic calculations or matching policies, the French support should be viewed in relation to an institutional perspective emphasising the importance of historical paths and inefficient histories.

Rather than manage the government administration in a systematic fashion, the Swedish Government reacts to all sorts of unsystematic information. Thereby, it ignores the decision-model that it has decided to employ. This situation has been criticised, and a coupling of practice to the decision-model has been recommended. However, while the political leaders have not found arguments to renounce a management approach to government, neither have they found means to employ it. In this article, it is suggested that a situation with two decision-models – one that is discussed but not used, and one that is used but not discussed – is a functional solution to this dilemma. Frequent criticism of this situation may help sustain it.

This paper examines a new budgetary process (the cuke-slice) for government services in Sweden, and compares and contrasts it with its predecessor (the cheese-slicer). It explores how this new model was used by Swedish government agencies, ministries and the Swedish parliament, the Riksdag. The cuke-slice was presented as a more elaborate and sophisticated management tool. But the cheese-slicer might have been underrated - as a management tool it was rigid and flexible at the same time.

In 1987, the Swedish government requested a unique investigation of the consequences of a 50% reduction of permissible exposure levels (PEL) for organic solvents. As a result, 29 solvents were investigated and for 25 of them a reduction--if not to 50%--was suggested. For 13 of the solvents, there existed scientific arguments for a reduction of the PEL. For 12 solvents, no specific biomedical information was available. Presumed interactions between solvents may have influenced the decisions, but technological/economic feasibility criteria may also have been used by the regulators. This suggests that the use of technological/economic feasibility criteria can give lower PELs than health criteria. This is within the intentions of the Swedish Work Environment Act.