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2444Ch16 3/12/02 16 2:06 pm Page 369 Karl Magnus Johansson Sweden: another awkward partner? Introduction: reluctant yet faithful Scholars of the European Union must lift the lid off the ‘black box’ of domestic politics to understand the behaviour of Member States in the integration processes. In this chapter, we will move inside the Swedish polity by analysing domestic constraints and institutional characteristics. The overarching aim is to capture the fundamentals of Sweden as an EU member, thereby identifying the primary actors involved in the
Swedish crime fiction became an international phenomenon in the first decade of the twenty-first century, starting with novels but then percolating through Swedish-language television serials and films into English-language BBC productions and Hollywood remakes. This book looks at the rich history of Nordic noir, examines the appeal of this particular genre, and attempt to reveal why it is distinct from the plethora of other crime fictions.
Sweden is seen as a forerunner in environmental and ecological policy. This book is about policies and strategies for ecologically rational governance, and uses the Swedish case study to ask whether or not it is possible to move from a traditional environmental policy to a broad, integrated pursuit of sustainable development, as illustrated through the ‘Sustainable Sweden’ programme. It begins by looking at the spatial dimensions of ecological governance, and goes on to consider the integration and effectiveness of sustainable development policies. The book analyses the tension between democracy and sustainable development, which has a broader relevance beyond the Swedish model, to other nation states as well as the European Union as a whole. It offers the latest word in advanced implementation of sustainable development.
office and neutrality became more principled, activist, and internationalist. Social Democratic ideals of solidarity, equality and reform were played out through Sweden’s active neutrality policy. Sweden developed a distinct profile on the international stage through its UN membership, commitment to solidarity with the developing world, pursuit of disarmament, peacekeeping and mediation, and criticism of
THE DEVELOPMENTS of the 1970s and 1980s set in train a series of challenges to the Social Democratic institutions and norms established since the post-war period. During these two decades, core assumptions about the Swedish Model were questioned, and the ability of the SAP to realise the utopian society it envisaged ideologically was not only hampered but in some respects
3 The Swedish model: state-supported agency Introduction This chapter makes a case for a distinct Swedish world of fatherhood. The Swedish model stands in contrast to the American model through the pioneering introduction of father-friendly parental leave in 1974. Similar developments occurred across the Nordic welfare regimes but Sweden stood out as the exemplar EU welfare state for father-friendly parental leave policies (Fusilier, 2009:252). The second contrast with the American model was the way Swedish social policy individualised child maintenance
Neutrality as a concept and practice has long been conceptualised in IR theory as problematic. Broadly seen as the tool of small and weak states with dubious moral credentials, a limited understanding of neutrality has persisted from the Peloponnesian War to the ‘war on terror’. Furthermore, as globalisation and non-traditional security problems animate international politics, neutrality is seen as a policy of the past. This book argues that neutrality has been a neglected and misunderstood subject, limited to realist understandings of war and viable statecraft, and in doing so aims to uncover the normative strands of neutrality that mesh with identity, security and alternatives to the anarchic international order. Using Sweden as a case study, it explores the domestic roots of neutrality via a constructivist analysis, examining how neutrality is embedded in ideas of self, and part of a wider Social Democratic vision of active internationalism. Identity, however, is malleable and subject to change, and this analysis also considers the impact of globalisation and European integration, the end of bipolarity, and new security threats such as global terrorism on neutrality as an idea and a practice.
6 A new Swedish model? Swedish social democracy at the crossroads Dimitris Tsarouhas Introduction Sweden has for a long time been viewed as a paradigmatic case for progressive politics. Swedish social democracy, to which the progressive character of such politics was attributed, could legitimately claim to have mastered the historic task of the revisionist Left: building a societal coalition around the goal of enhancing social welfare for all, while safeguarding the profitability of business and delivering economic growth. When economic crisis hit home in the
This book tells the story of how modern environmentalism emerged in postwar Sweden. It shows that the ‘environmental turn’ in Sweden occurred as early as the autumn of 1967 and that natural scientists led the way. The most influential was the chemist Hans Palmstierna, who was both an active Social Democrat and a regular contributor to the nation’s leading morning paper. Thus, he had a unique platform from which to exert influence. Drawing on his rich and previously untapped personal archive, the book explores how popular environmental engagement developed in Sweden. The book also highlights the journalist Barbro Soller, who in the mid-1960s became Sweden’s – and indeed one of the world’s – first environmental journalists. Moreover, it demonstrates how the pioneering historian Birgitta Odén, in collaboration with the Swedish National Defence Research Institute, sought to launch an interdisciplinary research programme based in the humanities and the social sciences as early as 1967–1968. An important conclusion of the book is that environmentalism emerged in Swedish society before there was an actual environmental movement. However, from 1969 onwards new social movements began to alter the dynamics. Hence, by the time the United Nations arranged the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in June 1972, environmental knowledge had become a source of conflict between rival interests. The environmental turn in postwar Sweden is the first full-length study to emerge from the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge (LUCK), and demonstrates how its specific take on the history of knowledge enhances historical scholarship.
AS THE PREVIOUS chapters have shown, the link between domestic and foreign policy is a deeply intricate one. Swedish neutrality has been part of the development of the modern Swedish state, and in the postwar period, neutrality was an explicitly Social Democratic project, tied to the ideals of the Swedish Model and the metaphorical imagery of the folkhem and solidarity