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All around the world the COVID-19 pandemic is having an enormous impact on people’s lives. Contrary to many other countries, Sweden has opted against lockdown. The Swedish Government has put trust in its people and has advised them to be responsible and follow the recommendations and guidelines of the Public Health Agency of Sweden. Using the Interest Theory of Rights, this article discusses the impact of the Swedish response to COVID-19 on three different Swedish communities, and considers the implications of such a strategy on social development. Data was collected from different national and international media sources as well as from Swedish authorities’ websites. A qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the data with the help of ATLAS-ti.8.4. The findings section discusses how three community groups in Sweden—the elderly, immigrants from marginalised areas and prisoners—are having their rights altered during this pandemic period. It also outlines different social development approaches being used in Sweden for tackling the challenges relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. This article concludes that a strong democratic state is vital in managing a pandemic such as COVID-19. It also argues that the strength of a state largely depends on its citizens’ willpower to take ownership of responsibilities—both individually and collectively.

This chapter explores the “theory of action” underlying the Swedish government’s national school improvement program called Cooperation for Better Schools. We discuss particularly the assumptions about the roles and responsibilities of key stakeholders, including schools, school districts, and universities. Our analysis focuses on the issue of institutional capacity for sustained system improvement. In this regard, our approach draws on the perspectives associated with contemporary policy analysis, which includes greater attention to qualitative and interpretive methods to understand the complexity of policy-induced change in contemporary society. We start by describing the project structure and our method. Thereafter, we analyze the government’s understanding and arguments for why it is important to help underperforming schools, before we give examples about how involved actors define problems and solutions in project documents. In the conclusion, we highlight strengths and deficits in the improvement process.

In 2014, the Swedish Government proclaimed that it would pursue a Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP). This initiative illustrates Sweden’s role as a norm entrepreneur, challenging predominant normative ...

For a long time, the Swedish government has tried different reforms to counteract declining student results. One action was to implement a salary-lift for teachers perceived as especially skilled. However, changes within socially complex systems tend to create tensions and resistance among the staff. In this reform, a majority of teachers were excluded from the payroll raise, which led to a renegotiation of roles, rules and commitments within the faculty. In this study, the principals’ perception of the teachers’ initial reactions and responses to the implementation is the focus. The data for this study contain four narratives from principals who implemented the salary lift within their organizations. The analysis shows that the reform challenged the principals as heads of the organizations. They stated that the salary lift created conflicts and insecurities among the teachers related to their motivation, sense of trust and self-efficacy. These conflicts and insecurities seemed to fuel a spiral of mistrust within the schools in the wake of the reform.

The Swedish government’s efforts to meet the needs of women subjected to violence have intensified since 2007 when it adopted an Action Plan for combating men’s violence against women. The aim of this study was to analyze how women are discursively framed from an intersectional perspective in five of the Action Plan’s study guides. A critical discourse analysis revealed three overall discourses. First, women are divided into various categories, which is likely to lead to an understanding that it is specific groups of women that become victims of violence. Second, women are framed in a heteronormative and a gender-equal context. This neglects nonheterosexual violence and underlines the otherness of ethnically categorized women. Third, the definition of women as agents stresses both their responsibility and their lack of agency. The absence of an intersectional analysis risks an interpretation in social work practice that some social division have a greater impact on violence in some specific groups of women. When women’s individual situation and needs are not taken into account, women risk being given inadequate help and support, which might put victims of violence in danger.

The physical environment in early childhood education and care is crucial. This paper examines the Swedish government’s vision of preschool design in the welfare state of the 1970s and the concepti...

This issue of lambda nordica began from a familiar framing in these times: What is “new” in queer studies? As editors, we eagerly awaited submissions in the form of surprising, interesting, bold, and new research from queer scholars. The present issue, as long and late in it’s making as the Swedish government, is the outcome and it presents a number of emerging scholars and topics that are being pursued in PhD theses and postdoctoral projects in a range of disciplines, as well as reflections on new queer art. In this editorial, we want to briefly reflect on the past year and on what we, with José Esteban Muñoz’ words above, might call the “mess we are in” tells us about queer studies and the politics of newness. Do we need to bracket queer in order to let queer do new work?

During the financial crisis of 2008–2010, governments have had varying success in containing the fiscal costs of stabilizing their financial sectors. This article challenges the existing literature that attributes these differences purely to national factors and contends that the international dimension affects a government’s capacity to share the costs across borders. Specifically, if a country shares a leveraged creditor with other countries, concerns about regional contagion will drive decisions by outside actors to participate in or prevent external burden sharing. A comparison of the role of the Swedish government during the financial crisis in Latvia and the ECB’s influence on Ireland shows that these decisions can both facilitate or prevent international burden-sharing. While Latvia benefited both from maintained exposure by Swedish banks and an internationally coordinated response to its crisis, the Irish government accumulated losses because foreign banks reduced their exposure and the European Central Bank vetoed “bailing in” bondholders of bankrupt banks. Future research on financial stabilization should therefore more explicitly consider possible contagion effects from bailing in foreign creditors.

The Swedish government has said that it will strengthen laws on academic freedom after a leading Swedish academic announced that he was quitting his work on covid-19 because of an onslaught of intimidating comments from people who disagreed or disliked his research findings. Jonas F Ludvigsson, a paediatrician at Orebro University Hospital and professor of clinical epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute, published a research letter online in the New England Journal of Medicine on 6 January presenting data which showed that relatively few children in Sweden became ill from covid-19 during the first wave of the pandemic.1 Sweden was one of the few countries to keep schools and preschools open during spring 2020, so the data were among the first collected on the risks to children. The study found that, from 1 March to 30 June 2020, 15 children aged 1-16 in Sweden were treated in an intensive care unit for covid-19 or for multi-inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), which has been linked to …

Background: Synaptic proteins are increasingly studied as biomarkers for synaptic dysfunction and loss, which are early and central events in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and strongly correlate with the degree of cognitive decline. In this study, we specifically investigated the synaptic binding partners neurexins (NRXN) and neuroligins (Nlgn), to assess their biomarker’s potential. Methods: We developed a parallel reaction monitoring mass spectrometric method for the simultaneous quantification of NRXNs and Nlgns in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of neurodegenerative diseases, focusing on AD. Specifically, NRXN-1α, NRXN-1β, NRXN-2α, NRXN-3α and Nlgn1, Nlgn2, Nlgn3 and Nlgn4 proteins were targeted. Findings: The proteins were investigated in a clinical cohort including CSF from controls (n=22), mild cognitive impairment (MCI) due to AD (n=44), MCI due to other conditions (n=46), AD (n=77) and a group of non-AD dementia (n=28). No difference in levels of NRXNs and Nlgns was found between AD (both at dementia and MCI stages) or controls or the non-AD dementia group for any of the targeted proteins. NRXN and Nlgn proteins correlated strongly with each other, but only a weak correlation with the AD core biomarkers and the synaptic biomarkers neurogranin and growth-associated protein 43, was found, possibly reflecting different pathogenic processing at the synapse. Interpretation: We conclude that NRXN and Nlgn proteins do not represent suitable biomarkers for synaptic pathology in AD. The panel developed here could aid in future investigations of the potential involvement of Nlgns and NRXNs in synaptic dysfunction in other disorders of the central nervous system. Funding: HZ is a Wallenberg Scholar supported by grants from the Swedish Research Council (#2018-02532), the European Research Council (#681712), Swedish State Support for Clinical Research (#ALFGBG- 720931), the Alzheimer Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF), USA (#201809-2016862), the AD Strategic Fund and the Alzheimer's Association (#ADSF-21-831376-C, #ADSF-21-831381-C and #ADSF-21-831377-C), the Olav Thon Foundation, the Erling-Persson Family Foundation, Stiftelsen for Gamla Tjanarinnor, Hjarnfonden, Sweden (#FO2019-0228), the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 860197 (MIRIADE), and the UK Dementia Research Institute at UCL. KB is supported by the Swedish Research Council (#2017-00915), the Alzheimer Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF), USA (#RDAPB- 201809- 2016615), the Swedish Alzheimer Foundation (#AF-742881), Hjarnfonden, Sweden (#FO2017-0243), the Swedish state under the agreement between the Swedish government and the County Councils, the ALF-agreement (#ALFGBG-715986), and European Union Joint Program for Neurodegenerative Disorders (JPND2019-466-236). The funders had no role in data collection, analysis, or decision to publish. EC received support from Gamla tjanarinnor, Stohnes stiftelse, Demensfonden and Emil och Maria Palms stiftelse. AV is supported by Fondation Ophtalmologique Adolphe de Rothschild, Fondation Chatrier and AAIHP association. Declaration of Interest: HZ has served at scientific advisory boards for Eisai, Denali, Roche Diagnostics, Wave, Samumed, Siemens Healthineers, Pinteon Therapeutics, Nervgen, AZTherapies and CogRx, has given lectures in symposia sponsored by Cellectricon, Fujirebio, Alzecure and Biogen, and is a co-founder of Brain Biomarker Solutions in Gothenburg AB (BBS), which is a part of the GU Ventures Incubator Program. KB has served as a consultant or at advisory board for Axon, Biogen, CogRx, Lilly, MegQu, Novartis and Roche Diagnostics. OH has acquired research support (for the institution) from Roche, Pfizer, GE Healthcare, Biogen, Eli Lilly and AVID Radiopharmaceuticals. In the past 2 years, he has received consultancy/speaker fees (paid to the institution) from Biogen and Roche. All other authors have nothing to declare. Ethical Approval: The use of these patient samples was approved by the Ethics Committee at the University of Gothenburg (EPN 140811).

The objective of this study is to explore whether the green recovery packages issued by the Swedish government are aligned with the work of the construction and building industry to become climate-neutral by 2045. We have interviewed heads of sustainability of some of the largest companies in the industry and surveyed companies that have signed the Roadmap for a fossil-free construction and building industry1. Our results show that market-related challenges constitute the most important challenges to the environmental and climate work of the companies in our study. To better respond to these challenges, they require policies that reward frontrunners, primarily green public procurement, and tougher standards and norms. They also requested investments and policies that support the transition to a circular economy. We conclude that while green public procurement is not among the policies and investments included in the recovery packages, other parts are well aligned with the challenges encountered, requested investments and policies, and on-going work. This is particularly true for the above-mentioned investments related to the transition to a circular economy. Further, the study enables us to conclude that it is important to consider the long-term effects of green recovery packages and their potential for return-on-investment in terms of reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per SEK. Such packages will also have a better effect if they support on-going environmental and climate work, initiate new actions, and are designed with a systems perspective that facilitates joint action between different companies along the entire supply chain. Rewiew:This report is reviewed by four scientific reviewers.

Sweden, like many other countries, faces increasing problems related to mental ill-health. To address this problem the Swedish government developed a new mental health policy in 2015. This study ai...

From 1st January 2022, Swedish government plan to introduce the climate declarations as a legal requirement for new buildings. LCA is a method that could be used to quantify buildings’ climate impact. The climate declaration in the Swedish building code expects to create interest in LCA among stakeholders. This study aims to identify and understand the challenges and opportunities of using LCA by stakeholders during the early stage of construction process. The study is based on responses from six building professionals to a questionnaire. The policy implications of the study findings are discussed.

In market economies production and consumption are dependent on exchanges between market actors providing and using resources. We argue, in line with the “whole-of-government” perspective, that interaction between market actors and policy actors are crucial to achieve sustainable development goals, in our case climate mitigation. Technical, economic and policy innovations are needed for the market to be able to perform fossil-free market exchanges. We use “roadmaps” emanating from a non-traditional Swedish government committee named “Fossil-free Sweden” (FFS) and the government’s climate action plan as empirical focus. The roadmaps for specific industries/sectors are developed by market actors and submitted by FFS to government. With the aim of furthering the knowledge of how interaction between government and business promotes sustainable market exchange, we adopt a conceptual model that identifies three categories of market practices; representational, normalizing and exchange practices; that are interlinked by translation. Our policy practice approach refers to a “whole of government” perspective. We analyse one of the roadmaps, “Construction”, in terms of how policy innovations, as identified in the climate action plan, may promote technical and economic innovations and development of fossil-free market exchanges.

In recent years, we have learned that forced global migration pose a serious threat to international peace and societal values. Despite the many warnings and refugee crises across the world, most national governments have insufficiently addressed this threat. In this chapter, we try to explain this lack of action. The chapter explores possible explanations such as the denial mindset of “it probably won’t happen here (and if it does, it won’t affect my family and community)”. The chapter focuses on the border management crisis in Sweden in 2015. The Swedish government did not address the situation as a crisis until the refugees, who had been on the Mediterranean Sea and traversing north over the continent for months, ended up in Malmö in the south of Sweden in September 2015. This predictable set of events caused chaos for the unprepared Swedish police and the border and migration authorities who had to handle the situation under conditions of urgency and apparent uncertainty.

Background: Perivascular spaces (PVS) have an important role in the elimination of metabolic waste from the brain. It has been hypothesized that the enlargement of PVS (ePVS) could be affected by pathophysiological mechanisms involved in Alzheimer's disease (AD), such as abnormal levels of CSF biomarkers. However, the relationship between ePVS and these pathophysiological mechanisms remains unknown. Objective: We aimed to investigate the association between ePVS and CSF biomarkers of several pathophysiological mechanisms for AD. We hypothesized that ePVS will be associated to CSF biomarkers early in the AD continuum (i.e., amyloid positive cognitively unimpaired individuals). Besides, we explored associations between ePVS and demographic and cardiovascular risk factors. Methods: The study included 322 middle-aged cognitively unimpaired participants from the ALFA + study, many within the Alzheimer's continuum. NeuroToolKit and Elecsys® immunoassays were used to measure CSF Aβ42, Aβ40, p-tau and t-tau, NfL, neurogranin, TREM2, YKL40, GFAP, IL6, S100, and α-synuclein. PVS in the basal ganglia (BG) and centrum semiovale (CS) were assessed based on a validated 4-point visual rating scale. Odds ratios were calculated for associations of cardiovascular and AD risk factors with ePVS using logistic and multinomial models adjusted for relevant confounders. Models were stratified by Aβ status (positivity defined as Aβ42/40 < 0.071). Results: The degree of PVS significantly increased with age in both, BG and CS regions independently of cardiovascular risk factors. Higher levels of p-tau, t-tau, and neurogranin were significantly associated with ePVS in the CS of Aβ positive individuals, after accounting for relevant confounders. No associations were detected in the BG neither in Aβ negative participants. Conclusions: Our results support that ePVS in the CS are specifically associated with tau pathophysiology, neurodegeneration, and synaptic dysfunction in asymptomatic stages of 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 Health Department of the Catalan Government (Health Research and Innovation Strategic Plan (PERIS) 2016–2020 grant# SLT002/16/00201) and the Universities and Research Secretariat, Ministry of Business and Knowledge of the Catalan Government under the grant no. 2017-SGR-892. All CRG authors acknowledge the support of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities to the EMBL partnership, the Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa, and the CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya. NV-T is funded by a post-doctoral grant, Juan de la Cierva Programme (FJC2018-038085-I), Ministry of Science and Innovation– Spanish State Research Agency. MS-C 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). EMAU is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities—Spanish State Research Agency (RYC2018-026053-I). OGR is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (FJCI-2017–33437). JDG is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (RYC-2013–13054). KB is supported by the Swedish Research Council (#2017–00915), the Alzheimer Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF), USA (#RDAPB-201809–2016615), the Swedish Alzheimer Foundation (#AF-742881), Hjärnfonden, Sweden (#FO2017-0243), the Swedish state under the agreement between the Swedish government and the County Councils, the ALF-agreement (#ALFGBG-715986), and European Union Joint Program for Neurodegenerative Disorders (JPND2019-466–236). HZ is a Wallenberg Scholar supported by grants from the Swedish Research Council (#2018–02532), the European Research Council (#681712), the Swedish state under the agreement between the Swedish government and the County Councils, the ALF-agreement (#ALFGBG-720931), the ADDF, USA (#201809–2016862), and the UK Dementia Research Institute at UCL.

A commonly assumed reason for the delegation of authority from a legislature (politicians) to bureaucracies is that the bureaucrats have an information advantage over the politicians, including knowledge of cost–benefit analysis (CBA). But it is reasonable to assume that the bureaucrats use their information advantage by taking all relevant aspects of policy into account? We model the use of CBA using a delegation model and then test the theoretical predictions with empirical data collected from five Swedish government agencies. The empirical results lend support both for the hypothesis that risk aversion concerning the environmental outcome, the bureaucrats’ environmental attitudes, and the cost of taking CBA information into account have a considerable impact on the probability of using information from a CBA. Hence risk averse and bureaucrats with strong environmental preferences are less likely and bureaucrats with low cost of doing a CBA more likely than other bureaucrats to use CBA information. Finally, a binding governmental budget constraint may positively influence a bureaucrat’s choice of using CBA information. A tentative conclusion is therefore that it may be possible to increase the use of CBA by making the budgetary consequences of policies much clearer and demanding due consideration of costs.

Taking our point of departure in securitization theory the aim is to analyze how the Lutheran Church of Sweden responded when the Swedish Government in late autumn 2015 made a sudden halt to a previously generous posture towards refugees. Applying the concept of counter-securitization we demonstrate how the Archbishop, and other Church leaders, strongly contested this official policy shift, legitimating their standpoint by referring to a radical, cosmopolitan reading of the gospel. Employees and lay members were mobilized to support immigrants through protest, everyday service, consultation and lobbying. Articulating a view that securitization should not be reserved for cases of a perceived existential military threat is highly relevant for the debate about the role of religion and secularism. Securitization and counter-securitization appear as two complementary approaches, where the Church may stand up as a bulwark defending immigration rights in contradistinction to retrotopian and xenophobic interpretations of the gospel. We contribute to this field by illustrating how research should not be caught in a one-dimensional reading of security and securitization, but has to be interpreted within a non-linear, non-binary framework, with a sensitive ear to different political, cultural, social and religious contexts, not forgetting the time dimension.

In March 2017, the Swedish government decided to introduce digital competence - including programming - in primary school. As a consequence, every math and technology teacher in grades 1-9 in Sweden is expected to integrate programming in their teaching. Furthermore, the Swedish school law requires that teaching is based on scientific evidence and proven experience. In addition to professional development for teachers, it is hence crucial to also conduct research on different aspects of programming in the classroom. In this paper, we describe the process of developing a scientifically grounded instrument for assessing students' programming skills, as part of a longitudinal research project investigating how students in primary school learn programming. We also present the main findings related to the suitability of the instrument based on a pilot study conducted in spring 2019, collecting data from 310 students.

Part 1: eParticipation Developments; International audience; Like all forms of collaborative governance, new forms of citizen participation include risk-taking and therefore depend on mutual trust between the collaborating actors. While there is a huge body of research on citizens’ trust in governments, public officials’ trust in citizens has received very little scholarly attention. In order to address this gap, this paper draws on a recent survey of a representative sample of public managers in local Swedish government (N = 1430). Do public managers think that citizens are trustworthy? Does trust in citizens impact which forms of citizen participation public managers prefer? Even though public officials are more trusting than the general populous, we show that not every public official do trust citizens. Furthermore, the results show public managers’ trust in citizens influences their attitudes towards new forms of participation. Just as citizens’ political trust has a positive impact on some forms of participation, but not on others, managers’ trust in citizens matters more for some forms of participation than others.

In its modern form, injury prevention is about 60 years old.1 2 For all of this time injury prevention has been a leader in the field of academic public health. Injury prevention has led the way in multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary thinking, has been an early adopter of technologies supporting the data revolution and has pioneered the development of implementation science to achieve population-level improvements. In the 1960s, Haddon was explicitly linking the principles of engineering to those of epidemiology, in defining kinetic energy as the causal agent of injury (which he recommended be managed using a host-agent-environment/primary-secondary-tertiary prevention model).3 In the 1980s, authors in the USA were describing trauma deaths as a system performance issue,4 and in the 1990s the Swedish Government was articulating a systems solution to the escalating problem of road crash injury.5 With its …

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the promise of #MeToo movement for reporting and preventing sexual harassment (SH). The article engages with definitions of SH and theories of whistleblowing dialogue with illustrative #MeToo narratives to discuss why reports of SH take long time to surface and why they may remain unreported and unaddressed. The empirical illustrations were gathered from Swedish newspaper articles, social media, radio, and television programs beginning autumn 2017. To set the stage, we begin with short presentations of sexual harassment and whistleblowing processes followed by three short illustrative cases. Our tentative findings show that when considering SH, organisation leaders have important roles in the whistleblowing process as they communicate organisational expectations, values and norms about acceptable behaviour. In the Swedish context, the explicit political stance to #MeToo taken by Swedish Government and Discrimination Ombudsman were crucial in starting and sustaining initiatives to support employees and their organisations in these efforts.

The Swedish system for determining fairway dues at the national level is acknowledged as being unique in attempting to consider the environmental performance of vessels. Between 1998 and 2014, vessels could get a SOX discount and between 1998 and 2017 a NOx discount, both based on certificates. In 2018, the Swedish government initiated a new system comprising more environmental impacts requiring operators that want to benefit from it, to register their vessels for a score in the Clean Shipping Index (CSI). The CSI covers performance in five categories: NOX, CO2, SOX/PM, Chemicals and Waste. Based on received scores, vessels can get 10%, 30% or 90% discount. In this paper, the short-term outcome of the new system is analysed and compared to the old NOX-based system. The comparison is based on revealed preferences of the involved vessel operators. Vessel specific data about the discounts and scores are analysed as well as the regional distribution of discounts and impacts on different vessel types. The paper shows that the Swedish Maritime Administration has succeeded in creating a system that attracts more vessel types and encompasses more environmental categories, but that the incentives to reduce NOX emissions have been reduced. Ex-post cost-benefit analyses of the earlier certificate-based systems have proven them beneficial to society. However, it is unclear how the outcome of the new system will be. The paper suggests that there are efficiency gains in harmonising the system SMA has introduced with the different systems for environmentally differentiated port fees in Sweden.

Malmö University was granted the status of full university by the Swedish government from 2018. In June 2018, the University Board gave its Vice-Chancellor the task to carry out an external assessment of the quality of research at the University. The assessment should:(a) be in alignment with the overarching goals expressed in Malmö University’s Strategy 2022, (b) be performed at three levels (research unit, faculty and university levels), (c) use assessment by international experts. In accordance with these conditions, the External Research Assessment 2019 (ERA19) was conducted through peer-review, based on documentation and a site visit at the end of November 2019 by five international panels consisting of 32 distinguished scholars from10 countries and 26 different universities. This report contains an introduction to Malmö University, a description of the methods and process for ERA19 and the evaluation results. All panels’ reports (22 in total) have been analysed and integrated into a synthesised summary that presents results of the assessment of the research, recommendations of development areas and proposals for how the quality of research at Malmö University can be further improved.

In 2011, the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB) applied for a permit to construct a disposal facility. The Swedish government is expected to make a decision in 2020. Three surveys have been conducted to investigate how informed the Swedish Members of Parliament (MP) and the citizens are in these issues. The first study with the MPs was done in 2013, the second in 2016 and the one with the citizens was conducted in the winter of 2018/2019. The results show that most MPs and half of the citizens were aware of the ongoing permission process. Rather surprisingly, there were more politicians and citizens who knew about the suggestions to use copper canisters, than knew the suggested location. In general, nuclear waste was seen as an important issue by all respondents. A majority of the MPs and the citizens believed that Sweden can dispose the waste in a safe manner. Among the citizens, the trust in politicians’ decisions on where and how to build a final repository were low and more trust was put into scientists and experts. Half of the citizens wanted to see a phase out of nuclear power, over half of the MPs meant that the repository should be designed so that the withdrawal of nuclear waste can be done.

Swedish central government is usually described as dualistic, where ministries are few and small and where the bulk of government activities are handled by a large number of semiautonomous agencies ...

En el año 2015 el gobierno sueco dio un giro radical en sus políticas migratorias: cambió las leyes de asilo y protección de refugiados e introdujo el control permanente de las fronteras con el fin de reducir la inmigración de refugiados a Suecia. En este artículo, discutimos estos cambios desde la perspectiva de los estudiantes de trabajo social. Nuestro estudio se basa en material cualitativo recopilado durante una investigación realizada en el marco de un proyecto internacional, con el objetivo de desarrollar buenas prácticas para la recepción de refugiados recién llegados a Europa. Los estudiantes discutieron las respuestas de las autoridades suecas, expresaron sus inquietudes y preocupaciones sobre el impacto del cambio de política en los solicitantes de asilo, en la sociedad en general y en su propio entorno. Sus reflexiones expresan incertidumbre e impotencia, así como temor cuando constatan la creciente normalización del racismo, tanto en el espacio público como en su entorno inmediato. Identificamos los procesos descritos por los estudiantes como una pérdida creciente de identidad comunitaria. Los estudiantes sufren de esta pérdida al mismo tiempo que reducen sus interacciones sociales, contribuyendo de esa manera al reforzamiento de los mismos procesos que critican. Así, a pesar de que se posicionan en contra de las políticas de rechazo a los refugiados, cuando discuten la formación académica impartida en trabajo social en relación con la migración, mantienen la distancia entre los nacionales y los migrantes y refuerzan la división entre "nosotros" y "ellos".

In 2015, a national Commission for Equity in Health was appointed by the Swedish Government. In this paper, some key lines of thought from the three reports published by the Commission are summarised. First, the theories and principles for the Commission’s work are outlined, in particular regarding the views taken on how health inequalities arise. Second, the importance of process is discussed in relation to cross-sectorial efforts to reduce inequalities in health. More specifically, this brings up some of the proposals made for how to redesign the public health policy framework for cross-sectorial work. Third, the proposed content of cross-sectorial work for more equal health is presented in three steps, namely: (1) overarching recommendations, (2) more equal conditions and opportunities, and (3) general problems of governance. Regarding people’s conditions and opportunities, the Commission submitted a number of proposals for the general direction of work that needs to be taken in order to reduce health inequalities, as well as some examples of more specific policy changes or reforms on the basis of each of these general directions, which are summarised here. Finally, some challenges and difficulties that may prevent Sweden from taking the next step towards more equity in health are discussed.

This study determined the effect of relocating workers from traditional to activity-based offices on objectively measured sitting patterns. Office workers (n=493) from five office-sites within a large Swedish government agency were included in a controlled study of a natural intervention (2015-2017). At four sites, traditional offices were replaced by activity-based offices, while workers at one site with no relocation acted as controls. Sitting, standing and walking were measured objectively for 5-8days in a sub-sample (n=110) using accelerometry (Actigraph). Total sitting time (% of working time) and time spent in short (5min), moderate (5-30min) and prolonged (30min) uninterrupted periods in sitting were determined. Intervention effects were determined at 3- and 12-month follow-ups using linear mixed models adjusted for baseline age, gender and office type, and stratified by office-site (referencing controls). The relocation to activity-based offices did not result in an overall effect (across sites) on occupational sitting time (all p0.05), while walking time had increased significantly by 1.4% of the working time at 12months compared with controls. Heterogeneous results were found across offices after 12months on total sitting time compared with controls (estimated change -18.3% time-1.4% time), prolonged sitting (change -18.3% to -3.8%), walking (change 0.5%-3.5%) and standing (change -1.4%-13.9%). In conclusion, relocation to activity-based offices had a limited overall effect on occupational sitting patterns in the studied organization, but differed considerably between office sites. Site-specific determinants of sitting behavior in activity-based offices need be identified.

This article addresses the causes and motives behind the Soviet decision to hand over the Vyshinskii note to the Swedish government in August 1947. In this note, signed by Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Ia. Vyshinskii, it was falsely claimed that the whereabouts of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who had been arrested by the Soviet military counterespionage death to the spies (Smersh) on 17 January 1945, were unknown to the Soviet government. Wallenberg had presumably, the note laid down, died during the battle of Budapest in January 1945. On the basis of Soviet and Swedish documents, including recently declassified Soviet encrypted cables, this article examines the chain of events that preceded the decision to hand over the note. New findings among the Soviet encrypted cables suggest that the note may have had no link whatsoever to Wallenberg’s purported death on 17 July 1947. Instead a series of incidents, in particular a crisis in the relations between Sweden and the USSR following the disclosure in late July and early August 1947 of two cases of suspected Soviet military espionage in Sweden, may have been of critical importance for the decision to hand over the note. (Less)

Since 2009, the Swedish Government uses an ‘audit’ agency – the Swedish Schools Inspectorate – to monitor and assess the accuracy with which teachers grade student responses on national tests. This ...

Since 2008, the Swedish government has launched occasional offers of funding for graduate schools aimed at practising teachers. The fundamental purpose of this initiative is to enhance quality in the Swedish school system by implementing what is stated in the Education Act, namely that education at all levels should be based upon scientific knowledge and evidence-based experience.

Reindeer Gains : For centuries, the Swedish government has regulated herding and education as a way of controlling the Native Sami population

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.

As in many other countries, the Swedish Government have decided to digitalise the school system with programming as an important component. The implementation of programming in the Swedish school s ...

Since 2002 University West, Sweden has had a mission from the Swedish government to develop methods for work integrated learning (WIL). WIL is thus a “trademark” of the university and the university is continuously developing teaching models to enhance a synergy between theory and practice with the goal to improve education and students’ lifelong learning. A challenge in such work is a decreasing engagement among students to participate in seminars at campus, especially during periods of internship. In the study underlying this paper we therefore explore a new teaching and learning method that aims to stimulate students to come to campus and to discuss their experiences with peer students and teachers during their internship.The internship and the seminars are organized as a ‘WIL course’ in the fifth semester of the candidate program ‘Digital Media’. As part of the course the students spend four days a week in a workplace where they contribute substantially to the work at the workplace. One day a week they spend at campus to reflect, write and discuss topics related to the work and organization at the workplace e.g. organizational culture, how a work day is organized, how design work is organized, and how the workplace treats its customers. The students and teachers meet once every second week for a seminar where they discuss the above-mentioned themes. The reflections made at the seminars and the conversations are important for the learning goals at the course. However, the teachers experience a moderate interest from the students’ side to participate and the students tend to be ill prepared.To increase the value and learning for the students, a new approach for better structure and engagement has been introduced, where students in beforehand writtenly reflect on questions about their workplace in relation to the theme of the week. They write in open and shared documents so that all students before the seminare can take part of each others reflections and as such come to the seminar with a wider perspective on the particular theme. The seminar is then held at the campus where the themes are discussed and workplaces compared with help of a shared matrix where the students can place their workplace regarding level of structure, formality, creativity etc . As such the seminar has a ‘flipped’ character and the ICT tools for learning used are open and editable over time for all participants.The empirical material is based on 24 hours participant observations, 10 students’ written reflections and the course curricula. The findings show that the flipped and open approach to the seminars has made the students more engaged in reflections about their workplace, not only during the seminar at campus but also during their work at the workplace. The shared document stimulates reflections of differences between workplaces that has not been so clear before, and the matrix has helped the students to take the reflections to a higher level by reflecting over organizational culture and workplace conditions. By comparing each other’s experiences from a spectrum of different aspects/themes they get a more nuanced picture of the skills and competences needed in the workplace, and they get more strengthened in their professional role. The recurrent discussions over time during the course therefore contribute to make the students more experienced than they would had been by only having got the experience from their own workplace.