<p>I den här uppsatsen diskuteras begreppet paternalism så som det används av Danny Scoccia och Joel Feinberg. Särskilt fokus ligger vid hur man bör definiera mjuk och hård paternalism. Begreppen är viktiga då de är centrala om man vill diskutera kopplingen mellan moral och politik. I denna uppsats är huvudfokus på de moraliska begränsningarna av vad man bör stifta lagar om men det uppstår oundvikligen paralleller till moraliska överväganden av mer privat karaktär. Även om uppsatsen inte lägger fram några argument som slutgiltigt avgör diskussionen bemöts ett antal argument mot Feinbergs teori och stark kritik framförs mot det av Scoccia föreslagna alternativet till definitioner.</p>

The aim of this thesis is to examine the Swedish model with attention to core values over time, as well as, explain recent changes. It examines changes of the social insurance system, with focus on political reforms in the unemployment insurance, health insurance and family policy, during the last two decades. The thesis is empirical but although a discourse amount political theories and normative conceptions. Conclusions are that the normative basis in the Swedish model contains general equally and uni-versally designed rights and consensus on growth and development as well as a strict focus on an employment oriented society. Important values have also been dialogue between actors as well as accountability, even if these facts appear to have declined in recent years. Relating to three leading theories in political philosophy - utilitarianism, Rawlsian communitarian-ism - explores the directions in later year political reforms. The results show that later years changes seem to go in relative strongly utilitarian direction. The policy has become more a ques-tion of utility maximization, generating partly with signs of the Rational-choice theories, than a question of trust between citizens and common interests in society. Considerably fewer reforms today, than earlier, rest on components as accountability and co-operation. One exception is the family policy, which rather shows a mixture of different values, found in each of the three studied political theories. Freedom to choose among childcare alternatives is here fighting with more conservative values.

I den här uppsatsen diskuteras begreppet paternalism så som det används av Danny Scoccia och Joel Feinberg. Särskilt fokus ligger vid hur man bör definiera mjuk och hård paternalism. Begreppen är viktiga då de är centrala om man vill diskutera kopplingen mellan moral och politik. I denna uppsats är huvudfokus på de moraliska begränsningarna av vad man bör stifta lagar om men det uppstår oundvikligen paralleller till moraliska överväganden av mer privat karaktär. Även om uppsatsen inte lägger fram några argument som slutgiltigt avgör diskussionen bemöts ett antal argument mot Feinbergs teori och stark kritik framförs mot det av Scoccia föreslagna alternativet till definitioner.

This dissertation is a critical study on conceptions of future in swedish social studies textbooks for primary secondary school, and a discussion on discourses of the young person as a future political subject. The main part of the thesis is a discourse analysis of textbooks published within the timeframe 1992 through 2010. The demarcation of the two decade timeframe stems from a critical discussion within educational research on political and educational discourses about individual and common future in recent years. I mainly draw my critical theoretical argument from a discussion on what in radical democratic theory is referred to as a post-political state within late liberal democracies. Much of the future oriented educational research is implicitly rooted within this discussion, where the possibility of understanding the young person as a future political subject to a great extent is scrutinized. The method through which the textbooks are read is discourse analysis, mainly inspired by deconstruction, focusing social and political logic within normative texts. My findings are that future in large parts of the textbooks is put forth as dependant on the single individual´s commitment to making the future democratic society possible through political engagement, but also her adaptation to an already well ordered democratic society. Commitment and adaptation take form in two, what I call, ontopolitical discourses about the young person as a future partaker of democratic society. The first discourse delineate the young person as partaker in an already initiated course onto a better common future. As an individual the young person is put forth as part of an overarching common shared temporal movement towards future for the society as a whole. Earlier books seem to suggest this temporalization of the common, to a higher extent than later. Later books suggest the idea of the young person as possible part to either a positive common future full of personal opportunities at hand, or a negative common future, shared by those without same life opportunities. This second discourse render threats towards the future democratic society, as such individuals without ability to fulfil their aspirations. Being unemployed at the outskirts of society both put a strain on the ordered society and also implies that those without means to take care of themselves might in fact become dangerous. Through French thinker Jacques Rancière I suggest that these implications should be understood as a view on future society where all are included, but some are included through defining them as excluded within society.

<p>By first arguing for the fact that globalization is a concept under contest within the social sciences this thesis develops a tool to classify perspectives of globalization. This tool is then applied to textual documents that represents the so called globalization councils (or initiatives) of Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway. Each document is then classified as falling within one of four perspectives of globalization; Liberalisms, Marxisms, Constructivisms and Post-colonialisms. By analyzing a number of documents tied to all four councils and initiatives the thesis is able to interpret what perspective of globalization that is dominant within each of them. Since all four nations examined aspire to use scientific methods to deal with the challenges of globalization they should reflect the diverse state of explanations present within the social scientific community. The thesis finds that this is not the case. While the Norwegian initiative establishes a platform where the concept of globalization could be said to be broadly debated and understood, the other three nations show an astonishing conformity around the perspective named Liberalisms.</p><p>In a concluding discussion the thesis argues that the results of the study cannot be fully explained by differences within the institutional arrangement among the councils and initiatives. Instead the thesis holds that the results can be explained by investigating how science is used in modern society to establish truths that are not necessarily the views of the scientific community. Using theories by Georg Henrik von Wright and Chantal Mouffe the essay concludes that the conformity could be understood as a part of a process that some social scientists call post-politics.</p>

In recent years, The Swedish Moderate Party have repeatedly used the term social contract. What do they mean by this concept that has its roots in the philosophers during the Enlightenment? These thinkers lived in a different time with political problems of ther time. To answer the reserach question, the Moderates' new proposal for an idea program has acted as a research object and a discriptive idea analysis have been done on the text. To then analyze this material, different Ideal types have been used that have been inspired by Enlightenment philosophers and given diffrent types of contract theories. Central points of the social contract theory have been examined and similair ideas as to the philosophers has been found in the idea proposal, some more than others. New ideas have also been seen that can be linked to the social contract. Finally, it is discussed whether the concept has to some extent lost its meaning or whether it is relevant that the concept does not mean the same thing today as three hundred years ago.

Is there a relationship between how one views free will – a concept related to issues of moral responsibility and agency – and one’s political opinions? To answer this question, I constructed a survey based on questions from the SOM Institute’s opinion polls and the FAD-Plus index for measuring free will beliefs. The survey asked a sample of 348 Swedish speakers about their views on free will, political ideology, party preferences, and policy preferences regarding punishment and redistribution. Responses were analyzed through a series of regression models. The results show that a stronger belief in free will is positively correlated with party preference and ideology, with right-leaning voters having a generally stronger sense of free will. Furthermore, the study also finds that stronger belief in free is positively correlated with retributive views on punishment, support for harsher sentencing, and support for capital punishment, while negatively correlated with support for a proposal that the state should increase its efforts to reduce income inequality. The adjusted R2 values of the regression models illustrate that views on free will explain a greater deal of variance in self-assigned ideological placement and party preference than common demographic variables often used to predict political leanings, such as gender, age, income, and education level. The study concludes by pointing out possible directions for future research.

Debatterna om Hobbes och Rousseaus politiska ståndpunkter är långvariga och välpublicerade. Min ambition i denna mylla har varit att koncentrera mig på en fixerad och konstitutiv fråga, nämligen hur deltagande respektive författare tyckte att folket borde vara i fattandet av politiska beslut - sådana svaren formuleras i Leviathan och The Social Contract. Den kontextualistiska metoden synes naturlig för historisk idéanalys, i synnerhet som en betydande del av undersökningen kommer behöva ta itu med hermeneutiska problem: för att ge förståelse åt Hobbes och Rousseaus politiska filosofier är det nämligen nödvändigt att ha kännedom om de kontexter i vilka de formades. Teorin som appliceras är Kuhns teori om paradigm, kompletterad med Foucaults koncept om episteme. Med paradigm respektive episteme menar Kuhn och Foucault ett temporärt a priori-förhållande som definierar den intellektuella räckvidden inom en specifik disciplin. Bakgrunden mot vilken Hobbes Leviathan tolkas är således det stormiga engelska 1600-talet, Richelieus Frankrike (där Hobbes residerade under nästan hela det decennium som föregick skrivandet av Leviathan), hans personliga biografi etc. Kontextualiseringen av The Social Contract inkluderar bl.a. Machiavellis inflytande, Rousseaus personliga biografi, och upplysningen. Hobbes och Rousseau är överens om att suveränen bör ha absolut makt över alla medborgare. Med denna premiss blir frågan hur de definierar suveräniteten central. För Hobbes är suveränen samtliga medborgare sammanfogade till “one and the same Person” i ett förbund där envar avsäger sig sin “Right of Governing” sig själv och transfererar “thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions”. Emellertid  tillägger han att folket endast är “made One Person, when they are by one man, or one Person, Represented [...] For it is the Unity of the Representer, not the Unity of the Represented, that maketh the Person One.”  Rousseaus definition av suveräniteten är allmänviljan omsatt i praktik. Skillnaden mellan allas vilja och allmänviljan är att “while the former considers private interest and is merely a sum of particular wills” exkluderar allmänviljan “the pluses and minuses, which mutually cancel each other out” tills endast det gemensamma intresset återstår.  Efter att suveränen etablerats är alla medborgare, enligt Hobbes, förpliktigade att agera unisont i enlighet med de beslut suveränen fattar. I samma anda är suveränen “the sole Legislator”. Sammantaget är Hobbes mening att en person (eller församling) bör vara enväldig beslutsfattare, och att folket, således, inte bör ha något inflytande i politiska frågor. Det är sant att suveränen beskrivs som samtliga medborgare sammanfogade till “one and the same Person”, men då det är tydligt att denne är en faktisk person (eller församling av faktiska personer) och det är “the Unity of the Representer, not the Unity of the Represented, that maketh the Person One” förefaller detta vara av metafysisk innebörd. Övervägande Hobbes svar på frågan - hur deltagande folket borde vara i fattandet av politiska beslut - är det således tydligt att medborgarna inte vid något skede (efter upprättandet av en “commonwealth”) bör vara delaktiga i den politiska beslutsprocessen.  I kontrast till Hobbes menar Rousseau att suveräniteten inte kan representeras. Vidare anser han att “The people subject to the laws should be their author”. Som vi sett är suveräniteten hos Rousseau identisk med allmänviljan omsatt i handling. När allmänviljan ska definieras i en specifik fråga föreslår Rousseau en “assembly of the people” varpå en motion presenteras och var och en “expresses his opinion on this by voting, and the declaration of the general will is taken from the counting of the votes”. Medelst detta system menar han att varje enskild medborgares makt är lika med suveräniteten delat med antalet medborgare. I The Social Contract argumenterar Rousseau följaktligen för att alla medborgare (endast vuxna män) bör vara jämlika i fattandet av politiska beslut. Ställd inför frågan föreslår Rousseau direktdemokratiska och bindande omröstningar - där alla medborgare tillåts rösta och alla röster är likvärdiga.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka om det går att rättfärdiga militära interventioner med stöd i klassisk liberal politisk teori. För ändamålet har de klassiskt liberala filosoferna John Locke och John Stuart Mill analyserats. Undersökningen är utförd medelst en text- och idéanalys av några av filosofernas portalverk. Resultatet av studien visar ett tydligt stöd för vissa sorters militära interventioner och att det faktumet är djupt rotat i flera etiska och moraliska överväganden som Locke respektive Mill gör. Slutsatsen i uppsatsen är därav att det finns klassiskt liberala argument för att genomföra militära interventioner.

Although the ideal of liberal neutrality remains common in political philosophy, some authors argue that moral judgments are indispensable in public decisions. In particular, Michael J. Sandel has proposed that the question of legalizing same-sex marriage cannot be settled without ideas about the value and purpose of marriage. In this study, the final debate in the Swedish parliament about gender-neutral marriage is analyzed in terms of members of parliament’s opinions on state neutrality. It is shown that the ideal of moral neutrality are either rejected or accepted, but in the latter case the value-neutral ideal is not sustained throughout the course of the debate. Instead, members of parliament invoke ideas about the moral value of marriage and same-sex relationships. This adds some credibility to Sandel’s opinion that important public decisions rely on conceptions on what constitutes a good life. However, the ultimate success of Sandel’s argument depends on whether state recognition of civil marriage in itself can be justified on value-neutral grounds.