The purpose of this dissertation is to study the Europeanization of Swedish alcohol policy from 1995-2006. It analyses the development of Swedish and European alcohol policy and answers the following research questions: How has alcohol policy developed on the national and the EU level during this period? What are the Swedish alcohol policy initiatives on the EU level? What does the interplay between Swedish and European policy processes look like? Of interest for this dissertation is also how the Swedish view on alcohol policy has been received on EU level. The dissertation comprises four related articles and an introductory chapter. In the articles official documents and interviews are analyzed in the context of the literature on Europeanization, using the concepts framing, narrative and new modes of governance. Article I explores the history of negotiations between Sweden and the EU on the traveller’s allowances question. Article II and III analyse how Swedish authorities, first through research and later through formal policy-making during the Swedish Presidency, tried to reframe alcohol on the EU-level. Finally, the fourth article is a comparative analysis of the Nordic retail monopolies, analyzing how the monopolies have developed and reacted to national and international pressures on their activities. The dissertation shows that Swedish authorities have influenced the EU level by putting alcohol on the agenda, and offered pressure and economic support to make sure that alcohol as a public health question has become and been kept as a prioritized question. This development is, however, nested inside the changing scope and emphasis of the EU. The emergence of a European alcohol policy as a public health-oriented process has been made possible through a new focus on the EU level, with increased cooperation between member states and a trend toward harmonization of policy and frames when it comes to alcohol.

The digitalisation of society decidedly affects public administration. Swedish public administration has long worked with information technologies for an effective and improved management of public services. But new and increased use of information technologies in society poses new challenges. New demands on information security are increasing, while accessibility and transparency are important priorities in policies on digitalisation in public services. However, the central government’s ambitions and expectations with regard to digitalisation face a slow and hesitant implementation in local governments. There are important differences between municipalities in priorities, local needs, and implementation mechanisms in connection with e-government. In this thesis, I argue there is a need to reconsider the role of governance mechanisms in e-government. There is a need to understand local translations of national policies and technological developments in relation to the goals of more effective and legitimate public administration. The main purpose of this thesis is to analyse tensions that emerge in the implementation of egovernment in local public administration. On the basis of a constructivist and interpretivist approach, I have undertaken two empirical studies. One focuses on municipal administration of education in Linköping. The other focuses on a governance network on digitalisation policy in Östergötland. The studies are presented in four papers. The issues addressed in the papers are further analysed with a focus on four fields of tension, using network governance theory and translation theory. This shows that the implementation of e-government in local public administration is a tension-laden process. The four fields of tension relate to: different logics and dilemmas for adoption and implementation; concerns and ambiguities in a context of unclear organisational and institutional arrangements; concerns and resistance from professional users; and a reassessment of the meaning of security as a reference for the interpretation of information security. I contend that established managerial and evolutionary models of e-government leave important process-related aspects out of the analysis of change in public administration. The contribution of this thesis lies in its description and analysis of the four identified fields of tension. One significant implication of my analysis is that reassembling current  governance mechanisms in local public administration is crucial. / Samhällets digitalisering påverkar tydligt den offentliga förvaltningen. Svensk förvaltning har länge arbetat med datorer för effektivisering och förbättrad administration. Men idag ställs nya krav då digitala verktyg för informationshantering och kommunikation används allt mer i samhället och på nya sätt. Kraven på säker informationshantering ökar, samtidigt som tillgänglighet och transparens är viktiga ledord i policyer kring digitaliserad förvaltning. I Sverige är det tydligt att regeringens ambitioner med digitaliseringen av förvaltning inte går i linje med vad som sker och implementeras i kommunerna. Skillnaderna ligger i hur e-förvaltning prioriteras, förankras i lokala behov och implementeras. Därför krävs både förbättrad styrning och tydligare möjligheter att lokalt översätta nationella policyer och internationell teknikutveckling för en effektivare och mer legitim digital förvaltning. Syftet med avhandlingen är att analysera implementering av digitalisering i kommunala förvaltningar utifrån nätverksstyrning (governance) och översätts av olika aktörsgrupper.Studiens konstruktivistiska och tolkande ansats baseras på två empiriska studier. Den första handlar om kommunal utbildningsadministration och den andra om den regionala digitala agendan i Östergötland. Studierna  presenteras i fyra artiklar. De övergripande slutsatserna pekar på spänningar som uppstår när digitaliseringen blir en del av den kommunala förvaltningspraktiken. Spänningarna har identifierats i relation till medarbetarnas varierande kompetenser, informationssäkerhet samt kommunernas olika resurser och kompetenser vilka betingas av dess storlek och förutsättnignar. Bidraget visar att etablerade  managementmodell och evolutionära perspektiv är otillräckliga för att tolka och förklara hur digitaliseringen förändrar kommunal förvaltning. Istället framhålls betydelsen av att skapa förståelsen för hur digtalisering översätts i olika sammanhang. Analyserna pekar på behovet av att öppna för nya sätt att styra och organisera digital offentlig förvaltning.

This thesis is rooted in the research tradition known as coalition politics, where governments, political parties and political institutions are the central focus. The main emphasis here is on government instability and the question of why governments in modern parliamentary democracies often come to an end before the next regular election. In five distinct but interrelated papers, the thesis explores the issue of early government termination and how it is affected by public support, economic developments and the functioning of the state apparatus. The studies included in this thesis generally take a quantitative approach and make use of a dataset that contains 640 governments in 29 European democracies. Their joint goal is to improve our understanding of when early termination happens by introducing and testing new explanatory factors as well as by improving how previously identified factors are modelled. The first paper focuses on Central and Eastern Europe. It shows that the stability of governments in that region is affected by slightly different factors than those that impact on governments in Western Europe. In particular, ideological factors and political institutions are found to be less important in Central and Eastern Europe while the formal power basis of the government and the country’s economic performance matter more. In the second paper, co-authored with Professor Torbjörn Bergman, the state is brought into government stability research. The paper shows that countries with a lower quality of governance and a less efficient public sector have less stable governments. This is mainly because government parties struggle to achieve their policy goals when the state apparatus is inefficient and corrupt. Paper 3, co-written with Associate Professor Johan Hellström, looks at how different types of governments respond to economic challenges. In particular, this paper demonstrates that the same changes in economic circumstances (e.g. increases in unemployment or inflation) have different effects on cabinet stability depending on which type of government is in charge. Single party governments are better equipped to deal with economic changes, because they are better positioned to devise new policy responses without having to compromise with other parties. Coalition governments, in contrast, become significantly more likely to terminate early when the economy takes a turn for the worse. Finally, over the course of two papers I first explore new techniques for analysing polling data and then use them to empirically test whether governments sometimes choose termination as a way to cope with bad poll numbers. Most of the existing techniques for pooling polls and forecasting elections were explicitly designed with two party systems in mind. In Paper 4, I test some of these techniques to determine their usefulness in complex, multiparty systems, and I develop some improvements that enable us to take advantage of more of the information in the data. In the final paper, I combine the two themes of polling and government stability by looking at how changes in government popularity affect the likelihood of premature dissolution. I find that governments, particularly single party governments, do, in fact, use terminations as a strategic response to changes in their popularity among the public. When support is high, governments tend to opportunistically call an early election, whereas they tend to abandon or reshuffle the government when support is low.

The rarity of a disease can give rise to challenges that differ from conventional diseases. For example, rarity hampers research and development of new drugs, and patients with severe, rare diseases have limited access to qualified treatments. When drugs are available, clinical evidence has higher uncertainty and the drugs can be very expensive. When setting priorities in the healthcare sector, treatments aimed at patients with rare diseases, so called orphan drugs, have become a source of concern. Orphan drugs seldom show solid evidence of effectiveness or cost-effectiveness. Still, treatments for rare disease patients, available on the European market, has increased rapidly since the adoption of a regulation offering incentives for research and development of orphan drugs. The question arises as to whether the publicly funded health care system should provide such expensive treatments, and if so, to what extent. This doctoral thesis aims to investigate healthcare priority setting and rare diseases in the context of orphan drug reimbursement. Priority setting for orphan drugs is located at the intersection of economic, ethical and psychological perspectives. This intersection is explored by studying the public’s view on the relevance of rarity when setting priorities for orphan drugs, and by examining how orphan drugs are managed when making reimbursement decisions in practice. Papers I and II in this thesis employ quantitative, experimental methods in order to investigate preferences for prioritising rare diseases, and the extent to which psychological factors influence such preferences. Papers III and IV employ qualitative methods to further explore what factors (apart from rarity) influence priority-setting decisions for orphan drugs, as well as how decisions regarding orphan drugs are made in practice in England, France, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods has provided a more comprehensive understanding of the topic explored in the thesis, and the methods have complemented each other. Paper I shows that there is no general preference for giving higher priority to rare disease patients when allocating resources between rare and common disease patients. However, results show that preferences for treating the rare patients are malleable to a set of psychological factors, in particular “proportion dominance”. Paper II shows that the identifiability of an individual has no, or a negative, influence on the share of respondents choosing to allocate resources to him/her (compared to a nonidentified individual). Paper III confirms that rarity per se is not seen as a factor that should influence priority-setting decisions (i.e. accept a greater willingness to pay for orphan drugs), however, other factors such as disease severity, treatment effect and whether there are treatment alternatives were seen as relevant for consideration. Paper IV explores the challenges with and solutions for orphan drug reimbursement, as perceived by different actors in five European countries. Perceived challenges are related to the components involved when making reimbursement decisions, to the reimbursement system, and to the acceptance of the final decision. Solutions are either specific for orphan drugs, or general measures that can be used for orphan drugs as well as for other drugs. In conclusion, priority setting for orphan drugs is complex and requires particular attention from decision makers. There are many factors to consider when making reimbursement decisions for orphan drugs. The consequences of a decision are potentially severe (both for rare disease patients and for common disease patients, depending on the decision) and psychological factors can potentially influence decisions.

This study is conducted with the purpose to unfold hidden sides of the EU – Russian energy cooperation and to shed a light on possible reasons for existing problems that have rarely been voiced before. This study provides an alternative view on the role of the Baltic Sea region in the overall EU – Russian energy dialogue and its current situation. In this research the historical observation of the energy interdependence regime development is examined and the crucial turning points in the energy interdependence like the EU enlargement 2004, the gas cut offs 2006 and 2009, and crises 2014 are reconsidered. The energy security policies of the EU and Russia are analyzed by adopting the realist approach and applied to the case of the Baltic Sea region. Furthermore, based on the regional complex security theory and interdependence theory, the way how interstate gas relations in the Baltic Sea region affect the EU – Russian interdependence is discussed.

Aspiring to become a “global security actor,” the EU has, throughout the last decade, increasingly made use of its versatile toolbox in crisis management missions far beyond its own soil. Crisis management missions are particularly challenging when security is threatened on various levels at once, as is the case in Mali. There, addressing the conflict means combining military assistance with development aid, state-building efforts, and security sector reforms. Ambitious to apply a truly comprehensive approach, meaning an approach that bridges military and civilian efforts, the EU has launched two missions in Mali; yet it has refrained from providing a full-scale military operation. This case study aims to foster an understanding of European security actorness by accounting for the challenges of EU crisis management in general and in Mali in particular from a theoretical perspective that integrates realist, institutionalist, and constructivist understandings. Finally, this thesis contributes to the academic debate on the concept of strategic culture by analyzing to what extent the concept proves helpful for understanding the challenges inherent in European crisis management.

This thesis tests the hypothesis that increasing state subsidies to political parties cause a declined party membership. The theory that predicted this development was constructed by Epstein in 1967 and presented in his book Political Parties in Western Democracies. The theoretical propositions have been debated by political scientists since then, but no thorough test has been conducted.  In order to test the hypothesis state subsidies data and party membership data was collected for the national parties from eight states. The data was then analysed by use of the panel data models. Panel data models make use of the regression analysis technique. Examples of specialized such models are analysis through the fundamental parameter of change, first differencing and pooled analysis. The results provided by the models proved to not give a straight answer. Instead, the results pointed in different directions.  The most likely interpretation of the results is that increasing state subsidies to political parties does not cause a decline in party membership. To validate such a result would require that most of the results pointed in the same direction. Thus, the hypothesis of the investigation should be considered falsified. Instead the focus of future studies should probably be directed at the supply side of party membership. When party membership decline is explained by the supply side this means that the decline is explained by people stop having motive to become party members. However, it is important to remember that other interpretations of the results are possible as well.

The desire for many people today is to be professional, and many occupations seek professional status. The idea of a profession has a higher status than a mere occupation; professionals have lot of knowledge and power to decide about their own work and they can also voice opinions about others. Occupations are driven towards attaining professional status. This process is not driven by single individuals aiming to exercise power in relation to other individuals. It is a collective, national process by an occupation. The overall aim of this dissertation is to examine, describe and analyze the process of professionalization of local public managers. There are four researchtopics: a) What are the characteristics of a professional group, and do these apply to local public managers? b) How is municipal organization portrayed with regard to the roles of politicians and administrators? c) How do politicians,managers, and public servants view themselves and each other in a normative and descriptive way? d) In what ways are managers trying to increase their influence to reach a position from which it is possible to choose to follow, or notfollow, a political decision? The methods used in this research are several; a deep case study in which surveys, observations, document studies and interviews are conducted. As theoretical framework theories of power, professionalization and discourse are used to analyze the empirical material from the case study.The results show top managers’ ongoing quest for professional status. They exclude other groups in order to handle their work without interference from others – discretion, the driving force behind professionalization. Usurpation is a strategy to get into the area of the politicians. Politicians are talked of as children in need for raise and a municipality is perceived as a private business enterprise. In this discourse values such as effectiveness, customer satisfaction, competition and value-for-money are important. The municipality is heavily inspired by thei deas of New Public Management. This development is quite problematic withregard to democracy. The democratic values such as public ethics, political democracyand the rule of law – the public ethos - are not spoken of. My hope is that this dissertation can prompt managers to reflect, since I have tried to see their work from a different perspective than what they most probably use.

Many civil wars are illustrative of wider international tensions and connections that transcend state borders. States often intervene to influence the trajectory and outcome of civil conflicts by providing external support to warring parties. This assistance ranges from direct military intervention to the provision of weapons, training, funds, safe havens, intelligence, logistics and other critical resources. This dissertation contains four individual essays that each seeks to advance our knowledge of state support to rebel movements. The first essays (I and II) add to our understanding of how external state support influences conflict dynamics while the latter (III and IV) begin to unpack the political decision-making process behind decisions that alter the original support commitment. Essay I evaluates whether state support to rebels increases the probability of civil war negotiations being initiated. The findings question a widespread belief among policymakers that support can foster negotiations. Essay II explores if external support influences the risk of conflict recurrence. It finds that state support to rebels can increase the risk of conflict recurrence in the short-term while there is no equivalent effect of support provided to governments. Essay III is the first global analysis of support termination and it thereby opens up an entirely new research field. The results suggest that the causes related to the initiation of support and its termination are largely distinct while the transition from the Cold War and the absence of ethnic kinship ties offer some insights into when states are more likely to terminate support. Essay IV unpacks the political decision-making process of the United States’ support to the armed opposition in Nicaragua in the 1980s and in Syria in the 2010s. The results indicate that adverse feedback functions as a trigger for increasing previous commitments as long as policy failure can be attributed to external actors, while reduced support is often a result of attributing failure to the state sponsor’s own actions. Taken together, the essays make significant contributions to advance our understanding of biased third-party interventions, conflict recurrence, civil war negotiations, foreign policy decision-making and state sponsorship of terrorism.

What explains continuity and change in post-Cold War maritime security strategies? What lessons can we learn from the employment of such comprehensive grand strategies in maritime regions where traditional and non-traditional threats converge? While many scholars have addressed particular maritime security issues, this author joins the few who engage themselves in the study of the conceptual development of maritime security. Through the lens of structural realism, this thesis examines the logic of the maritime security strategies employed in two distinguished regions by the US and EU member states Finland and Sweden. It concludes that while their maritime security concept remains broad, the recent increase in security pressure has renewed the priority assigned to the military sector of security. Navies are thus re-using the measures implemented by a broad set of civil agencies and the shipping industry to improve maritime security, to gain the level of maritime domain awareness required for establishing regional sea control and project power from the sea. / Vad förklarar kontinuitet och förändring i staters maritima säkerhetsstrategier efter det kalla krigets slut? Vilka lärdomar kan vi dra av deras implementering av allomfattande säkerhetsstrategier i maritima regioner där traditionella och icke-traditionella hot sammanfaller?  Medan många forskare valt att fokusera på specifika maritima säkerhetsproblem som piratverksamhet, terrorism eller smuggling av droger och människor, förenar denna avhandlings författare sig med det fåtal som engagerat sig i studiet av begreppet maritim säkerhets konceptuella utveckling. Genom en teoretisk lins av strukturell realism undersöker författaren av denna avhandling logiken bakom de maritima säkerhetsstrategier som implementerats av USA respektive EU-länderna Finland och Sverige i Ost- och Sydostasien samt i Östersjön.  I avhandlingen dras slutsatsen att medan dessa staters maritima säkerhetskoncept permanent breddats till att omfatta hot inom olika säkerhetssektorer, innebär de senaste årens ökade säkerhetstryck att hot inom den militära säkerhetssektorn åter prioriteras. De undersökta staternas marinstridskrafter drar därmed nytta av den mångfald av maritima säkerhetsåtgärder som implementerats av civila myndigheter och sjöfartsindustrin i syfte att förbättra maritim säkerhet för handelssjöfart, främja miljöskydd och möjliggöra exploatering av maritima naturresurser, till att upprätta militär kontroll över viktiga havsområden samt projicera militär makt från havet. / <p>Docent Steve Lindberg utgjorde min handledare vid Åbo Akademi till och med sin pensionering år 2016.</p><p>Professor Göran Djupsund utgjorde min handledare vid Åbo Akademi från och med 2016.</p><p>Professor Jerker Widén utgjorde min utsedde biträdande handledare vid Försvarshögskolan.</p>