The following thesis analyzes why is the democratic rule of law stronger in Uruguay than in Mexico? This work focuses on the state of the democratic rule of law in Mexico and Uruguay. The premise of this thesis is that there is a gap in the literature on causes that have historically made Uruguay the country with the strongest democratic rule of law in Latin America and Mexico one with the weakest democratic rule of law. Historical institutionalism is used to see how the evolution of the sequencing of political regimes as well as the evolution of civil-military relations in the two countries may explain the divergent outcomes. Emphasizing path-dependency, this analysis is conducted using a methodology of process-tracing. This research serves to put forward propositions in the form of a testable hypothesis on the causes that have led Mexico and Uruguay down different paths when it comes to the democratic rule of law. It also serves to fill a gap in the literature as cross-national differences on rule of law in Latin America have not been sufficiently well-explained.

This research has analyzed how the institutions of the merit-based bureaucratic system in the Korean Government changed from 1948 to 1963, applying the gradual institutional change theory of Mahoney and Thelen (2010). Though copious research has been produced on Korean economic development, little analysis has been made on the emergence of the Korean developmental state. This research aimed to fill in the analytical gap by examining how effective bureaucratic institutions was established in the Korean developmental state to draw out implications for the institutional change theory as well as the discussion on the developmental sate and state capacity. This research has found that the merit-based bureaucratic institutions of the Korean Government positively changed in a piecemeal approach from 1948 to 1963, though once disturbed from 1955 to 1959. Contrary to the existing literature, this research also has found that the institutional setting for the merit-based bureaucracy was set from the very beginning of the Syngman Rhee Administration; however, the selective implementation and enforcement of the rules in the Syngman Rhee period hindered the Weberian bureaucracy. This research has, therefore, drawn out that for positive institutional change, the role of the change agents is critical especially the vertical chain of reformative leadership and capable practitioners. The low level of opposition is beneficial for not only positive but also negative change. In the end, in the case of Korea, the initially ambiguous institutions provided the actors with considerable discretion to manipulate or misuse rules. As a result of the institutional reform the rules and regulations became detailed reducing the gap between what the rules say and how the rules are implemented. The empirical tests of this research have confirmed the basic assumptions of the gradual institutional change theory of Mahoney and Thelen (2010). Firstly, the empirical results have shown that the institutional change has more to do with a piecemeal internal process than to do with any external shock or event. Secondly, the gap between the existence and the enforcement of an institution has also been proved valid. Thirdly, the empirical tests have confirmed the influence of three change factors producing different types of change in the theory. Based on the empirical findings, this research has identified important implications for the institutional change theory with three key areas for improvement. The first is the validity of the three modes of change in the theory. The test has identified the need to address the different magnitudes of the three factors affecting change. This research has also identified the need to clarify the definition of gradualness and the concept of the change agents to solidify the theory. This research has also enriched the discussion on the developmental state and state capacity by identifying the limitations of the merit-based institution in different contexts. Based on the analysis, this research has drawn out four key lessons for developing countries and for the donors: the importance of the enforcement of rules; the synchronized reform coalition between committed leadership and competent practitioners; the importance of understanding local contexts; and the relationship between dictatorship and development. By analyzing the emergence of the bureaucratic institutions, this research has not only broadened our understanding of development and state capacity but also presented a practical policy solution to overcome the persistent state of incapacity in the developing countries today.

A hot topic in politics as well as in the political sciences is the topic of labour market integration. For newcomers the challenge of entering into the labour market is a staggering one. This can be showcased by the vast statistical difference in labour participation between newcomers and citizens. Another interesting aspect regarding labour market integration is inthe way that it is being governed. Both the political sphere and academia have shown an inclination to question the validity regarding New Public Management. This has started adebate regarding other ways of governmentality that is more suitable for the public sector. One of these is Public Value Management which emphasizes the goal of public value. The aim of this study is to perform a policy analysis of a government proposition as well as a planof action from the Swedish Employment Service. This was done by examining the problem representations as well as what was being left unproblematic. It also identified what type of governmentality is applied in the documents. The results revealed three problem representations of cooperation, quality & efficiency and governance. Additionally the labour market participation of immigrants that were not newcomers were left out of both the proposition as well as the plan of action. Lastly the study found an inclination by the Swedish Employment Service to rely more on a type of governmentality that resembles the one of Public Value Management.

After decades in which NATO epitomized the central forum towards the pursuit of European defense, a progressing integration and enlargement process of the European Union’s defense sector has catalyzed a debate about the future of the European defense and security architecture. The implementation of collective EU defense structures like the Permanent Structured Cooperation in 2017 aggravated concerns about a duplication of needs for military and defense capabilities and consequently a diminishing role of NATO, particularly among non-EU NATO states. Taking this background into account, the study aimed to elaborate the influence of both NATO and EU – as institutions commissioned with defense and security endeavors - on their member states’ military sectors. In particular, how member states aligned their military sectors with institutional expectations towards members’ commitment and how these developments could be explained in course of a historical institutionalist approach, in particular by the concept of path dependency. For this matter, the study revisited developments in member states’ military sectors from 1996 – when the European Defense and Security Identity was agreed on – until today in a first step, connected to an analysis on the extent to which the identified developments could be traced back to the states’ membership in both NATO and EU as driving factors. By using path dependency as explanatory variable, the study ultimately aimed to identify dimensions in which a member’s commitment to EU and NATO constituted a “path” that would shape decision-making towards domestic military sectors - e.g. in form of member states’ compliance with norms and guidelines or engagement in institutions’ operations - for years to come. The cases selected for the study were France, Germany and the United Kingdom which after the Brexit is still committed to EU defense structures in course of 3rd state participation.

During the last decade, the European Union has had to overcome several types of crises, for example, the economic crisis, the Eurozone crisis, the migration crisis, and Brexit. Currently, the EU is facing the Covid-19 pandemic. It is well known that there is a strong relationship between the multifaceted crises and the EU’s responses to them and increased Euroscepticism in the EU countries as a result. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the reasons why such crises result in increasing Euroscepticism. More specifically, the study explores the mechanisms that can be identified as causes for Euroscepticism. To test the hypothesis that the crises’ responses made by the EU created an opportunity for Eurosceptic actors to thrive, a process-analysis of the responses was conducted. Three legislative acts as main responses to the economic crisis and the migration crisis were chosen, to analyze a mechanism between the crises and increased Euroscepticism in the EU member states. The responses were then combined with data on the EU citizens’ trust for the EU to identify if the EU’s responses to these crises have been a major cause for increased Eurosceptic tendencies. The results show that even though some of the EU’s responses to the crises resulted in increased Euroscepticism, EU citizens do not seem to lose their trust in the EU or their institutions in the long run.

As democracy globally declines according to the indices that measure the level of democracy around the world, existing literature lines up a wide spectrum of explanations for this decline. However, the impact of foreign policy on the domestic democratic system is widely overlooked. In this research project I have investigated the possible contribution of human rights infringing elements in foreign policy to the decline of democracy in the US.  I have done a single case study with a constructivist approach, US foreign policy in the post Cold War era being the case, focussing on the War on Terror. This is done with Historical Institutionalism as the theoretical framework. The results of this study show that practices of detention without legal charges and torture strain the rule of law and the accountability of officials and violates the value of equality, a core value of democracy. I come to the conclusion that foreign policy does have impact on the quality of the domestic democracy.

The main purpose of this research is to explore the relationship between the EU and UK in terms of space defence policy developed from the viewpoint of historical institutionalism. As a research objective, it is intended to assess the nature of historical institutionalism as a concept and its applications to space defence policy. Another objective is to trace the historical development of the relationships between the EU and the UK in the space sector. Finally, this historical development is discussed through the lens of historical institutionalism. The attainment of these aims and objectives requires an optimal choice of methodology and research design. This study has been guided by the principles of interpretivism, a dominant philosophical stance in social studies. This philosophy emphasises the role of interpretations in the attainment of knowledge due to a lack of absolute truth, as according to interpretivism, the truth depends on the observer and their interpretations. In line with this philosophical stance, this research is conducted using an inductive approach, which stipulates theory development, hypothesis formulation, or new proposition statements based on observations. This contrasts with deductive testing of existing research hypotheses. The choice of an inductive approach has...

The 2008-2009 global financial crisis, and the protracted European sovereign debt and banking crisis that followed, re-shaped the institutions that govern Europe’s financial system. Despite demands for comprehensive and integrated reform, patterns of regulatory change varied significantly across core elements of the financial system. Through case studies of the banking, securities, insurance and pensions sectors, this study documents the emergence of a patchwork of European financial regulatory institutions that entail new divisions in the responsibilities held by the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB), and domestic governments. Employing an historical institutional framework, the study finds that the distribution of financial regulatory authority between member states and the European Union preceding the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis was instrumental in shaping changes to EU regulatory institutions during and in the immediate aftermath of the crises. Sectoral variation in levels of regulatory integration among member states prior to the crises shaped state preferences and predisposed institutions to particular patterns of institutional change. Where high levels of regulatory integration existed before the crisis, EU institutions expanded through a process of institutional layering, gradually hardening enforcement mechanisms, extending regulation to new markets, and issuing more binding technical standards. This contrasts with the displacement in the locus of supervisory authority experienced in the creation of a European banking union in 2013, in which supervisory control over eurozone banks was transferred from domestic authorities to the ECB. Low-levels of regulatory integration are found to have been a necessary condition for this transformative change to occur, while the protracted eurozone sovereign debt crisis is found to have provided a period of heightened contingency during which the ECB was able to exert significant political agency at the European Council to effect the resulting shift. In explaining the emergence of a complex financial regulatory system in Europe after 2008, the study contributes to deeper understanding of the political processes that shape the evolution and integration of national and international institutions of economic governance in the early 21st century. / Political Science

This study explores how local community economic development actors in rural settings view prospects for bottom-up (i.e., endogenous) development through a case study of the Keremeos area in British Columbia. The study involved a basic descriptive analysis of the case study site drawing upon Statistics Canada data, historical records and local policy documents along with 11 semi-structured interviews of local development actors representing the varied geographic, jurisdictional and organizational interests comprising the Keremeos area development landscape. The findings indicate that not only do predominant institutional arrangements presuppose and eventuate rural inferiority and decline, they also tend to impose externalities for rural communities to contend with while failing to provide similar measures of in-kind support to mitigate such impacts. This stokes an erroneous sentiment that local government is responsible for precipitating endogenous development, limiting the extent to which community members work to actively operationalize it as a result. Such conditions ultimately lead rural communities to have no choice but to challenge predominant institutional arrangements in order to forge their own paths for realizing endogenous development. Indigenous communities offer hope for rural areas through increased guardianship programs and industry partnerships which help to challenge and rearticulate these arrangements to the advantage of their communities and interests. It is advisable that senior government work to provide rural communities with capacity to facilitate their own economic viability – reflecting local values, knowledge, identity and autonomy – thus working to counter the externalities and parameters which they and prevailing market forces have conceived for rural communities to persist within. / Graduate

Syftet med den här avhandlingen är att undersöka utvecklingen av kvalitetssystem i hälso- och sjukvården ur ett historiskt-institutionellt perspektiv utifrån fallstudier och konceptuella analyser. Särskilt analyseras implikationer av utvecklingen med avseende på relationen mellan den medicinska professionen och det politiskt administrativa systemet samt konsekvenser för den politiska styrningen av sjukvården. Studien visar att medicinska kvalitetssystem och därmed även den medicinska professionen bäddats in i den politiska styrningen i takt med att ambitionerna mot en offentlig kunskapsstyrning tilltagit. Den visar även att hälso- och sjukvårdens kvalitetsregister i olika faser av sin utveckling har påverkats av politiska ideologier, managementidéer och idéer om transparens. Öppna jämförelser som en oavsiktlig konsekvens av kvalitetsregisteranvändningen förstärker dessutom tendensen mot en offentlig kunskapsstyrning. Av studien framgår också att den offentliga kunskapsstyrningen utmanar föreställningen om demokratiidealet om upplyst förståelse. Den ökade fokuseringen på kunskapsstyrning inom hälso- och sjukvården gör det relevant att ställa frågan vem som styr vem i svensk hälso- och sjukvård, vilket i sig är en fråga om demokrati och legitimitet. / The aim with this thesis is to describe the quality development in Swedish healthcare from an institutional perspective, analyse implications of the development concerning the relationship between the medical profession and the public administrative system and discuss consequences for political direction and welfare organization. The study is based on four case studies and one conceptual analysis. The main conclusion is that the medical quality systems have been imbedded in the political management alongside the development towards a public knowledge management. The analysis has more specifically uncovered that quality registries in healthcare have been influenced by political ideologies, management ideas and ideas of transparency. It is also clear that open comparisons were an ‘unintended consequence’ of the quality registry development that has enhanced the development towards a public knowledge management. The analysis also shows that public knowledge management challenges the ideal of democratic enlightened understanding. The development of public knowledge management in the healthcare sector raises the question of who is governing whom in Swedish healthcare.