Swedish public administration has for the last few decades undergone reforms aimed at making it more efficient. A substantial part of these reforms have concerned creating clearer roles for politicians versus officials in the public sector, i.e. giving politicians a responsibility for setting goals and steering activities and public officials the role of implementing them. This study aims to examine one reform following this path that is under implementation in a Swedish public authority; Försäkringskassan, the Social Insurance Agency. The purpose of the reform is to increase the organization’s effectiveness and the rule of law. The reform means that decision-making committees, Social Insurance Committees, consisting of political appointees are being replaced by public officials as decision-makers in complex social insurance cases. The purpose of this study is to see if, and how this reform could affect the democratic foundation of these decisions. The study concludes that the reform will have a negative impact on the democratic support and the legitimacy of the decisions made, as it indirectly removes the citizens’ possibilities of expressing discontent through elections. This reform could also have a negative impact on the quality of rule of law if the new roles for public officials as decision-makers are not properly exercised.

Studien utgår från två fall av gruvetablering, Rönnbäcken och Kallak, vilka har liknande utgångspunkter men resulterat i olika utfall. Respektive länsstyrelse har i de två fallen yttrat sig jakande respektive nekande. Studien är ett fall av myndighetsutövning i två fall av bearbetningskoncession och syftar till att förklara varför olika beslut fattats i fallen Rönnbäcken och Kallak. Det teoretiska ramverket utgår från Punctuated Equilibrium theory vilket belyser fyra faktorer av vikt för beslut, yttranden och processen i sig i de två fallen. Utgångspunkten är teoriprövande där det teoretiska ramverket används förklarande i och med de olika utfallen. Studien använder sig av processpårning och analyserar därigenom kvantitet såväl som innehåll och tendenser i bland annat artiklar, protokoll, lagar och yttranden.   Studien utgör ett bidrag till existerande forskningslitteratur inom området gruvnäring och stärker i och med slutsatser, förklaringspotentialen hos Punctuated equilibrium theory. Ytterligare slutsatser innefattar att det avstyrkande yttrandet och beslutet i fallet Kallak tyder på policyförändringar där fallet Kallak mycket väl kan påverka utkomsten i fallet Rönnbäcken. Attention och New participants ses som de viktigaste faktorerna i initiering av policyförändring.

This thesis aims to study how Hezbollah acted just or unjustly in the 2006 Lebanon War to conclude if their warfare was just or unjust. That leads to a better understanding of Hezbollah's warfare in the 2006 Lebanon War and if they thereby have culpability in the war. If Hezbollah want to be taken as a serious and legitimate force in war, they should be held accountable to the same standards of warfare as states and be shown that there are consequences for their actions. The theory that will be used in order to do so, is the Just War theory. It is divided into two categories: Jus ad Bellum, the right to go to war, and Jus in Bello, the right conduct in war. Hezbollah seemed to have failed to meet the criteria of Jus ad Bellum, by failing to fulfill the criteria just cause, right intention, the proportionality of ends, and a reasonable prospect of success. They only managed to fulfill the criterion of right authority and mostly the last resort criterion, due to their constitutional right to wage war and their prior intents of a prisoner exchange. The organization also failed to meet the criteria of Jus in Bello: proportionality of means and discrimination. They had no proportionality regarding the goal, nor did they differentiate between military goals and civilians. It was therefore concluded that Hezbollah acted unjustly in the 2006 Lebanon War, by not having the right to go to war, but also because the conduct in the war was unjust as well. That contributed to the more significant understanding of Hezbollah's warfare in the 2006 Lebanon War including its culpability, and the importance of holding them accountable for their actions in war. / Krishantering och säkerhet

How does public authority maintain their legitimacy in society? According to theory of institutional adjustment they maintain their authority by adapting to different criteria and modern trends society. One most famous social trend in Sweden has for the last decades been NPM, which shortly means adjusting the organization by making it more like the private sectors companies. This could mean adjusting the entire organization or just taking small influences. Large institutions in the public sector are by mostly related to something rigid and unchanging, but the research declares that even large institutions adapt their structure to maintain legitimacy. This means they only partly change the formal administration to be presented to the public but remain the same in informal structures. Research also tells that some administrations partly change by adjusting the trends to their specific purpose and profession. Riksdagsförvaltningen is the public administration of the Swedish Parliament and is one of the largest institutions in Swedish public sector. The question of this thesis is how does Riksdagsförvaltningen as an institution with such closeness to the political structure of parliament adapt to modern trends or why not? Could the institutional adjustment be affected by its purpose and profession? In this thesis managers in Riksdagsförvaltningen have been interviewed for investigating this question in a qualitative content analysis. The conclusion is that Riksdagsförvaltningen may adjust their formal administration while the mentality and organizational culture of the institution remain the same. It also adapts specific trends to fit its purpose by remaining as a traditional bureaucracy and bringing in ideals from NPM. The closeness to the parliament creates a complicated situation to both pleasure the members of parliament and maintain the values of the administration.

Syftet med denna studie är att synliggöra intressekonflikter som uppstått mellan kommun och branschorganisation när en kommun ansökt om att få bli leverantör till Arbetsförmedlingen för en tjänst som tidigare endast upphandlats med privata aktörer. Vidare är vårt syfte att undersöka huruvida demokratiska eller ekonomiska incitament ligger till grund för Karlshamns kommun respektive branschorganisationens ställningstagande i denna fråga. Karlshamns kommun har med bakgrund av SOU 2020:41 Kommuner som utförare av tjänster åt arbetsförmedlingen - en analys av de rättsliga förutsättningarna, skickat in en ansökan till arbetsförmedlingen för tjänsten Kundval Rusta och matcha. Karlshamns kommun var den första kommunen i Sverige att skicka in en sådan ansökan. Genom att analysera primärkällor i form av texter från Karlshamns kommun respektive branschorganisationen Almega med hjälp av Bacchis metod WPR analys avser vi att synliggöra hur problemet representeras från respektive part. Genom att koppla dessa representationer till politisk styrning, offentligt etos och makt visar vårt resultat att Karlshamns kommun drivs av både demokratiska och ekonomiska incitament medan å andra sidan branschorganisationen nästan uteslutande drivs av ekonomiska incitament. Vidare är vår slutsats att nuvarande politiska styrning av den Svenska arbetsmarknadspolitiken inte gynnar ett gott samarbete mellan medverkande på den svenska arbetsmarknadspolitiska arenan. Fokus bör vara den arbetssökande och reformer behöver komma till stånd. Det är Arbetsförmedlingen och därmed staten som besitter ansvaret och makten. Närmare bestämt den strukturella makten att fördela vem som ska få tillgång till kunskap och därmed aktörsmarknaden. I våra referensländer har ansvaret för arbetsmarknadspolitiken decentraliserats till lokala kommuner, vilket är ett alternativ som denna studie föreslår att Sverige bör undersöka närmare. / The purpose of this study is to make visible the conflicts of interest that have arisen between a municipality and one of Sweden's Trade associations. These conflicts arose when the municipality applied to become a provider for the Swedish Public Employment Service regarding a service that so far only has been procured with private actors. Furthermore, this study also aims to investigate whether democratic or economic incentives form the basis for Karlshamn's municipality and the Trade association's position regarding the conflict of interest. Based on SOU 2020:41 Municipalities as providers of services to the employment service - an analysis of the legal conditions, Karlshamn municipality has submitted an application to the Swedish Public Employment Service regarding the Kundval Rusta and matcha. The municipality of Karlshamn was the first municipality in Sweden to submit such an application. By analyzing texts from Karlshamn municipality and the Trade association as primary material through Bacchi's method WPR analysis, we intend to make visible how the problem is represented by each party as well as analyzing the incentives behind the representations of what is perceived as a problem. By linking these representations to political governance, public ethos and power, our results show that Karlshamn's municipality is driven by both democratic and economic incentives, while on the other hand the Trade association is almost exclusively driven by economic incentives. We also conclude that the current political governance of Swedish labor market policy does not favor good cooperation between actors on the Swedish labor market policy arena without reforms having to take place. It is the Swedish Public Employment Service and thus the state that possesses the power, responsibility and more specifically, the structural power to distribute who should have access to the player market. In our reference countries, this responsibility has been decentralized to local municipalities. Which we, after this study, consider to be an alternative that Sweden should investigate further.

I denna uppsats undersöks hur statens föreställningar om civilsamhällets roller i välfärden avspeglas i en offentlig utredning om idéburet offentliga partnerskap (IOP). Detta är särskilt intressant givet hur den tidigare civilsamhällesforskningen pekar på att staten alltmer värderar organisationer i det civila samhället likt aktörer på en marknad samtidigt som välfärdssystemen utvecklats på ett sätt som ignorerar organisationernas särart. IOP togs fram som ett försök att avhjälpa problematiken med en felriggad välfärdsmarknad och inramningen i Idéburen välfärd (SOU 2019:56) ger insyn i hur denna problematik förhandlas om i förslag för organisationernas ökade deltagande i välfärdsproduktionen. I en kritiskt granskande ansats kombineras Carol Bacchis policymetod What’s the Problem Represented to be (WPR) med en analytisk modell av statens föreställningar om civilsamhället. Angreppsättet låter undersöka statliga förhållningssätt till civilsamhällets inflytande i välfärdsproduktionen. Studien visar att civilsamhällets organisationer anses ha en avsaknad på inflytande i allt från behovsanalys till de premisser som välfärdstjänster utförs på. Den idéburna partens särart antas komma till rätta i IOP och spelar in i önskan om att främja deltagande på mer ömsesidiga grunder. För detta framstår dock vikten av att vara på rätt sida juridiken som avgörande. I den tvetydiga bedömningen av lagrummet för IOP identifieras en diskrepans mellan utredningens föreställningar och lösningsförslag. Det resulterar i ett förhållningssätt som värdesätter idéburnas särart men undgår att föreslå regleringar som förändrar möjligheten till inflytande i eller genom IOP.

The Swedish Act concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments (known as LSS) is said to hold strong rights regarding support intended to empower people with severe disabilities. This study investigates to which extent children are attributed rights in the preparatory work for the LSS and in the administrative court’s judgments. Using qualitative content analysis, this study finds that there is a strong disa-bility rights perspective in the preparatory work but a general ambiguity concerning whether the perspective covers children. The absence of a disability rights perspective in court records concerning children can be under-stood in light of this ambiguity. Other findings include a strong parent perspective and an absent or weak chil-dren's rights perspective in both the preparatory work and court judgments. Children are seldom given a voice or made visible as social actors with rights of their own. Instead, children are described as family members and the care responsibilities of parents – who, in turn, have a voice and are seen as in need of support. The thesis con-cludes that there is a need to clarify the rights of the child in the LSS and how these should be prioritized against parents' interests.

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This thesis aimed to explore which organizational ideal type dominated the Swedish Sports Confederation's central governing documents and how this could potentially construct the athletes involved. The chosen ideal types were "associative fostering" and "competitive fostering" (Peterson 2002). To identify these ideal types within the documents, a coding scheme was used to concretize the ideal types' inherent goals and logic. Subsequently, the theory of social entrepreneurship was chosen as it could connect the ideal types with overarching ideological currents in society which affect the organization of elite sports initiatives. The theory of governmentality, operationalized through rationality and technology and subject formation, was employed. This theory was used partly to identify the various rationalities and technologies produced by neoliberalism, and to place the athlete within this context to examine the potential impact on the individual. By identifying neoliberal technologies, it was observed that goal management and economization significantly influence sports, primarily in favor of competitive fostering. Beyond this ideal type, the Swedish Sports Confederation has been fragmented in some aspects through projectification. Despite external pressures, the federation remains committed to its nonprofit roots and continuously applies educational programs internally on how to relate to what they describe as Sweden's largest popular movement. The method used to analyze the source material was an idea-critical analysis with an actor focus on the Swedish Sports Confederation. The goal was to find ideological currents in the text that could provide answers as to whether there was a predominant ideal type that had gained more prominence in the organizational directions, without necessarily conducting interviews or observing multiple training sessions across different sports. In summary, the findings indicate a significant neoliberal influence on Swedish sports governance, emphasizing competitive fostering through goal management and economic rationalities. The analysis highlights the federation's efforts to balance these pressures while maintaining its nonprofit roots and fostering associative education. This complex interplay between external neoliberal forces and internal organizational ideals reveals the nuanced construction of athletes within the Swedish sports system.