Contributing a new dimension to the existing literature on China’s economic development which focuses on the how questions – i.e., questions about the process and conditions – this dissertation research addresses a fundamental why question. Specifically, it asks: why, after more than two millennia of subsistence-oriented economy, did Chinese leaders and/or common people become interested in and reorient toward sustained economic growth? It examines and compares three episodes of China’s economic modernization in the course of the past century, testing the hypothesis that this reorientation has been motivated by nationalism, specifically the desire to improve the international standing (power and prestige) of China, using as the chief means to this end the country’s enormous economic resources. The three chosen episodes for historical comparison are: the Nanjing Decade (1928-1937) under the rule of the Nationalist government, the years of early economic reform led by Deng Xiaoping (1978-1997), and the recent years, broadly identified as Chinese globalization, under Xi Jinping (2013- present). Drawing upon historical archives, biographies, contemporary official documents, media reports, economic statistics, and survey data, this dissertation empirically examines the major changes of China’s political economy in each of the three periods. In particular, it looks into the development and competition of different nationalist aspirations (i.e., nationalism prioritizing the economy versus other spheres such as ideology, culture, or the military) and analyzes the mechanisms through which the type of nationalism that came to be adopted by Chinese leaders and eventually the people made the economy its priority. On the basis of the comparative-historical analysis of the three core periods in Chinese political economy, the dissertation overall argues the following: First, the identification of the economic sphere as the basis of national greatness in China (in imitation of leading Western nations and, in particular, Japan) made economic success a way to social status and approbation. This led to nationalism, specifically nationalism prioritizing the economy, among those with economic opportunities, as people came to connect their success and increased dignity with China’s international standing, seeing themselves as directly contributing to it and becoming personally invested in and committed to the nation’s prosperity. Second, the sectors of the population to whom economic opportunities were open during the three periods of Chinese modernization differed. Thus, nationalism prioritizing the economy was only shared by a small number of individuals within the intellectual and business elite in Republican China, spreading to a much wider circle in the elite and those who got rich first under Deng’s “Reform and Opening-up” policy, and, in the recent decades eventually percolating to the population at large. Third, competition for international prestige is endless – when it is pursued through the economy, it creates commitment to sustained growth. China’s rising international status based on its rapid economic growth since 1978, signaled by its astonishing display at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and its resilience during the 2008/09 international financial crisis, converted many more Chinese into nationalists, which, in turn, reinforced their economic motivation, creating a snowball effect. Fourth, similarly to the earlier leaders in the economic competition (e.g., Britain, the US, and Japan), China’s growing economic power changed its attitude to free trade and globalization. Its economic policies have steadily turned away from protectionism that so many experts believe to be inseparable from the political ideology of the authoritarian Chinese state. China’s recent championship of globalization shows that economic globalization is ideologically-independent – i.e., it is simply in the interest of the economically most powerful nations, and thus, today, in China’s national interest.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate in what way Swedish universities regulates its internal and external communication by the use of policy documents. The purpose has led to three research questions: what scope of communication is given to the documents user, if the document is challenging or redefining the current means of power, and how questions regarding trademark is taken into consideration. In order to achieve the purpose a discourse analysis is used as both underlining theory and comprehensive method. The underlining theory is based around social constructionism, structuralism, poststructuralism and critical discourse analysis. The analysis have taken emphasis from Norman Faircloughs three-dimensional model in which the documents have been studied on three separate levels. The material the research has been built upon is documents regarding communication policy from ten of Swedens fourteen universities. The results indicated that three central groups of participants where given authority in the policy document. The first group consists of different types of managers whom, in the policy document, where given the highest freedom of their own communication. The second group consist of colleagues and employees and are by the policy document viewed as both goals and actors with limited freedom and power over their own communication. The third group consists of students, whom much a like the second group, were viewed as both goals and actors. The last group where however given less influences over their own communication and there was a clear distinction between universities whom looked upon their students as part of the organisation and those who placed the students outside the university organisation. The results furthermore indicated that the policy document are used and works as reproduced documents for the current means of power and that questions regarding trademark are present. The term trademark were used in the majority of the documents and it was also possible to distinguish and read that the universities are very conscious about, and want to influence what image of them that is corresponded through media, employees and students.

The purpose of this study is to understand how colleges and universities use language to represent themselves on their institutional websites (official websites of higher education institutions). Organizations, like colleges and universities, seek to create and maintain a distinctive identity in an effort to build legitimacy (i.e., status) and attract students (i.e., tuition dollars). Institutional websites are increasingly important to the admissions and marketing practices of colleges and universities due to their ability to rapidly communicate a significant amount of content to a vast audience. Colleges and universities use language, whether textual (i.e., written) or visual (i.e., images), to position and differentiate themselves from other institutions and promote their efforts. This study utilizes Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine the language on the institutional websites of 12 colleges and universities across a number of characteristics (e.g., control, type, geographic region, admissions selectivity) in the United States. Theoretically, CDA provides the means to examine everyday language in an effort to raise awareness about issues of inequality, such as access to education. Methodologically, Fairclough's approach to CDA has three dimensions of analysis. The first dimension is descriptive analysis where the intent is to describe the properties of the textual and visual elements. The second dimension involves interpretive analysis where the goal is to examine the contents of language and its functional parts to understand and interpret the connections between the role of language and the greater social structures it reflects and supports. Societal analysis, the third dimension, focuses on explanations of larger cultural, historical, and social discourses surrounding interpretations of the data. The analyses from this study suggest that colleges and universities utilize a common promotional discourse en masse to market rather systematic representations of "higher education" despite the fact that they vary widely by a number of institutional characteristics. Specifically, analyses reveal that institutions use language to repeatedly establish prestige and relevancy by touting the accomplishments of their institutional actors. The institutions attempt to engage the viewer with relational language, present numerous co-curricular experiences along with numerous images related to generic institutional characteristics (e.g., architecture, campus scenery), and multiple layers of navigation. The scholarly commitment associated with higher education plays a reduced role while the intangibles available to the prospective student are at the forefront of representations in the sample. Institutions also poorly represent other social goods (e.g., class, sexual orientation). Of the 453 images in the study, 98 feature a non-white actor (21%) and 146 feature a female actor (32%). Representations of diverse actors often appear in the form of caricatures (e.g., Native American in tribal dress). Given the mission and rhetoric stemming from many postsecondary institutions, including the institutions in this sample, to increase access to education for underrepresented individuals and enhance diversity in all its forms, the language utilized on the websites does not align with such statements. By deploying similar promotional discourse, the institutions choose what to present, emphasize, and exclude. Hence, institutions retain a great amount of control over information the viewer has access to on the institutional website. The language in use reveals that the institutions retain significant control over its actors with strategic placement of obligational discourse and, in most cases, complete silence on issues. Such discourse constructs an unrealistic portrayal of higher education while simultaneously reducing the role higher education has as a social institution committed to teaching, research, and service.

När det offentliga väljer att upphandla välfärden och köpa in tjänsteutförandet från fristående vårdbolag följer ett behov av nya verktyg för att driva välfärden i önskad riktning. Den här uppsatsen söker beskriva hur kommunala tjänstemän bemöter konsekvenserna av trenden att omvandla de byråkratiska välfärdssystemen till marknader för välfärdstjänster och utvecklar nya verktyg för styrning. Utgångspunkten för undersökningen är de förfrågningsunderlag tjänstemännen formulerar och som utgör grunden för upphandlingsprocessen. Fördjupad kunskap om hur upphandlingsprocessen utformas i praktiken samlas genom intervjuer med ansvariga tjänstemän vid Uppsala Kommun samt marknadschefen vid ett av kommunens utförarbolag. Undersökningen visar att tjänstemännen lägger stor vikt vid formuleringen av obligatoriska krav som utförarna måste leva upp till för att maximera de boendes välmående. Dessa krav utformas för att stärka tydlighet, uppföljningsbarhet och standardisering. Detta görs genom att öka mängden krav, använda och skapa normer för hur verksamheten bör bedrivas och att stärka professionella yrkesgruppers roll.

Syftet med denna uppsats har varit att synliggöra diskurser kring äldre i en offentlig text samt vilka konsekvenser dessa kan medföra för äldre inom äldreomsorgen utifrån begrepp som makt, socialt ordningskapande och åldersordning. För att uppnå detta syfte har vi studerat den statliga offentliga utredningen ”Värdigt liv i äldreomsorgen” (SOU 2008:51). Metod och teori har varit en kritisk diskursanalys som betraktar att diskurser genom språk och text är en del av konstruerandet av den sociala verkligheten. Den kritiska diskursanalysen uppmärksammar även att det finns icke-diskursiva element som påverkar diskurser i dialektik. Det vill säga att utsagorna i materialet kan reproducera befintliga diskurser men även konstruera nya kunskaps- och betydelsesystem. Resultatet visar på fyra diskurser som urskilts i utredningen vilka är välfärdsdiskursen, värdighetsdiskursen, empowermentdiskursen och marknadsdiskursen. Sammanfattningsvis visar slutsatserna att regeringen och utredningen både reproducerar och konstruerar nya kunskaps- och betydelsesystem. Exempelvis påverkar dessa hur värdigt liv och välbefinnande definieras och vad det innebär, hur det offentliga ansvaret för detta ska vara samt hur mycket det får kosta. I sin tur får detta faktiska konsekvenser för äldre inom äldreomsorgen bland annat genom att det kan påverka resursfördelning på så sätt att värdigt liv och välbefinnande, förutom implementering, inte anses medföra ökade kostnader.

Social policy and its associated institutions are central political arenas for societal compromise and conflict. The capacity to attract strong support from a wide constituency of citizens is, therefore, a defining feature of welfare policy legitimacy. While there is much research measuring attitudes towards state-organized welfare, the overall aim of this thesis is to incorporate attitudes towards the market into this research field. This aim is carried out through four empirical studies that add a market component to the analysis of different topics covered in current welfare state research. The articles in this thesis either compare attitudes across countries or deploy Swedish public opinion as a test case. Newly designed or previously underutilized survey measures are used that explicitly cover attitudes towards the market. Latent class analysis, structural equation modeling, and multilevel analysis are used to study how attitudes vary both within and across countries.   Citizens’ perceptions and evaluations of the market are found to be shaped by their everyday life experiences within the market structure. Moreover, citizens’ trust in the performance of market institutions is found to be important in structuring their welfare policy preferences. In addition, attitudes towards the market appear to be influenced by the institutional context: citizens living in countries with more ambitious welfare states are less inclined to support market distribution of social services, and class differences in political welfare attitudes tend to be larger in countries with more encompassing welfare states. Collected findings thus suggest that citizens living in countries with more generous welfare states are more inclined to think that the legitimate scope of the market nexus should be negotiated and calibrated via social policy.   By incorporating attitudes towards the market in relation to welfare state support, this thesis contributes to increasing our understanding of the political and moral mindset of citizens in advanced political economies. Public attitudes towards the welfare state are to a significant degree formed by perceptions and evaluations of the market and its actors. In order to further our knowledge about preferences regarding the role of the state in modern society, and to stay in tune with ongoing policy developments, future socio-political research is well advised to bring the main alternative to the state – the market and its actors – into the analytical framework.

Individual membership is a widespread phenomenon in society. However, despite its well-documented empirical presence, there is a lack of knowledge concerning the meaning of that specific relation between members and their organizations.  This study sets out to analyze how top-level leaders and officials in membership-based and democratically governed federations perceive membership. The federations included are: the Swedish Red Cross, the Swedish Teachers’ Union, the Swedish Union of Tenants, the Swedish Co-operative Union, the Swedish Football Association, the Swedish Social Democratic Party, the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden, the Swedish Association of the Visually Impaired, and the International Organization of Good Templars in Sweden. The analysis explores linkages between the interviewees’ perceptions of membership, these federations and their societal context. The study suggests that the federations can be described as hourglass constructs, involving a hybridization of democracy and bureaucracy. These hybrids, and the societal context, are also discussed in relation to the Swedish notion of folkrörelse. A reconsidered model for membership is developed in order to offer a nuanced picture of how the meaning of membership evolves through the continuous interplay between acting agents, culture, and social structure. The analysis reveals that the notion of folkrörelse is deeply embedded in the per­ceptions of membership. Furthermore, membership is an important part of the identity of these organizations, and contributes to the legitimization of their existence. It can be understood as a boundary-defining relation with a gate-keeping function. Moreover, it represents a channel for mobilizing resources, and constitutes a base for specific member roles, such as members as principals and members as customers. The dis­cussion highlights oligarchic tendencies and increased bureaucratization in these federations, as well as a drift towards commercialization, which also seems to propel a gradual commodification of membership. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2008

The aim of this essay is to understand the social mechanisms for why people go to work when they are sick. To understand it, we investigated why upper secondary school teachers sickness presenteeism increased in the last twenty years. Data consists of interviews with eleven upper secondary school teachers and two principals, plus statistics. To find patterns in the data we examined the theory of professions and the theory of the new capitalist culture. School budgets are based on support from the government that provides money for each student. Since 1992 free schools are allowed in Sweden. This creates a competition between schools, which may lead to programs in schools with insufficient applicant students to be shut down. The results show that the market's growing influence in schools has given upper secondary school teachers an increased social function. The customer, in this case the students and parents, has become more at the center. This new task, the student caring role, forces the teacher to be more accessible and flexible which has made their profession weaker, giving them more stress and in a longer term, they are feeling sick more often. A combination between a striving to keep up their profession and to not losing students, teachers go to school even if they’re sick.

Välfärd, vård och omsorg var under en lång tid närmast synonymt med Sveriges nationalstatliga universella välfärdsmonopol fram tills slutet av 1980-talet. Välfärdsmonopol ersattes med välfärdspluralism och valfrihet. Genom konkurrens skulle utförare av socialtjänst bli effektiva och kvaliteten skulle öka. Men vad är kvalitet inom vård, omsorg och socialtjänst?   I två olika delstudier har äldreomsorg inom Stockholms stads valfrihetssystem system studerats. De två olika studierna bidrar tillsammans till att problematisera kvalitetsbegreppet utifrån institutionell organisations- och kvasimarknadsteori. Samtidigt ger studien en bild av hur olika regiform kan påverka den uppfattade kvaliteten. / For the majority of the 2000th century welfare and social services in Sweden were almost synonymous with the universalistic welfare-solutions provided by the nation state.  In the late 1980th and the early 1990th a dramatic change occurred through extensive market reforms the monopolistic welfare-solutions were challenged in favor for a pluralistic welfare market. A competitive welfare-market would increase efficiency and quality of services. But what is quality in welfare and social services? Through a two-part study, using in city of Stockholm as a case and institutional organizational theory and theories on quasi-markets this study has investigated and problematized quality in city of Stockholm’s special housing for the elderly voucher system.

This thesis engages in and contributes to the current debate of marketization on the potential consequences of the seemingly increasing marketization of non-governmental organizations and the emerge of for-profit actors in humanitarian work, focusing on one of the biggest actors in humanitarian aid; Médecines Sans Frontières (MSF). By interviewing three highly positioned representatives from the organization, examining a report on the matter as well as MSF website several aspects of marketization identified in the literature were searched for, such as: market language/concepts, commercialization, private sector funding and professionalization. The study shows that all these aspects of marketization can be traced in the work of MSF. Moreover, the study reveals that marketization appears to shape how MSF view and relate to other actors working with humanitarian aid, non-profit as well as for-profit actors. A fundamental difference that can be seen is that while MSF view for-profit actors in a very positive way and as partners of collaboration, non-profit actors (similar to themselves) are portrayed and seen as competition. Hence, the study suggest that the increasing marketization appears to foster increased competition between non-profit actors – potentially undermining coordination – while at the same time potentially increasing the potential for coordination between for-profit and non-profit actors. This study also suggests that more research should be conducted, analyzing other NGOs in a similar way as well as analyzing to what extent this competitive view affects a well functioning coordination in humanitarian actions on the ground.