The objective of this study is to examine the implementation of the first Chinese anti-domestic violence law at street-level in three cities located in central China. This study aims to document these street-level workers’ experiences with domestic violence, particularly the efforts they have made against domestic violence, as well as the challenges they face in their daily work. Sixteen qualitative interviews were conducted with nineteen street-level bureaucrats who work in judicial functionary (civil court), law enforcement (police), All-China Women’s Federation and residents’ committees (mass organizations). The results are analyzed with the theory of bottom-up implementation (Lipsky, 2010; Matland, 1995) and street-level bureaucracy (Erasmus, 2015). The study found that most Chinese street-level bureaucrats commonly believe that the first Chinese Anti-DV is characterized by ambiguity of goal and ambiguity of mean. Such vagueness causes frustrations, confusions and conflicts among these workers. Additionally, based on their experiences these street-level bureaucrats reflect that they do have some degree of discretion, but they are constantly under the pressure and limitation of time, resource and heavy workload. All these factors tend to indicate that the implementation of the first Anti-DV law in China still has a very long way to go. However, the result also show that the Chinese street-level bureaucrats are working diligently to ensure the successful implementation of China’s first anti-domestic law, while actively coping with the challenges mentioned previously and developing their own ways to cease the violence. / MFS

In this thesis, public housing was investigated with particular reference to the nature of communication between the landlord and tenant. It focussed on interactive behaviours and the incidence of litigation. The study attempts to bridge the gap between social theory and social practice through the application of existing social theory in the description and analyses of social problems. Based on a critical review of the relevant literature, the characteristics of communicative interaction and human relationships are described, together with the history of housing provision and the growth of litigation to resolve issues in public housing. Research of communicative interaction in the housing sector in general and the landlord-tenant interaction in particular has been a neglected area of research that is addressed in this thesis. An initial study surveyed both tenants and housing officers in the Sydney metropolitan area. Social analysis focuses on local interaction between landlord and tenant and how these local interactions expand into global patterns. The thesis analyses how power-relating, ideological/evaluative and ethical choices of housing officers and tenants influence their communicative interaction and the subsequent access and distribution of services and resources in the public housing sector. The theoretical framework explicates on complex responsive processes (CRP) perspective. CRP is a process theory that looks into the simultaneous and co-influencing relationship between the individual and the social and multi-agency approach in social analysis. The conceptualising framework relies on the application of this theory and the principles of Humanity, human rights and social justice to achieve a dialogical communicative interaction. The thesis applied complementary quantitative and qualitative methods where a quantitative study of a small population was conducted using structured interviews and group meetings to guide the qualitative research. The population was identified by natural experiment, i.e., identification of two populations in a public housing estate: a Participative group, comprising tenants who had consciously participated in the housing authorities?? renewal programs, and a Non-participative group of tenants who had not taken part in the Tenant Participation programs by Housing New South Wales (HNSW). The housing officers and tenants were identified using snowball and quota sampling. The findings reveal a conspicuous absence of research that focus on local interaction between housing officers and tenants in public housing. The study confirms the anti-dialogical nature of communicative interaction in public housing, which is iterated, sustained and perpetuated by the use of litigation, a mechanism that is increasingly being preferred to settle disputes, by both landlord and tenant.

<p>This study aims to identify the municipalities of Hallands’ methods, guidelines and policies in integration concerning new arrivals of children and teenagers. Some of the new arrivals are under the power of Swedish Migration Board and some of them are by a contract handed over to the municipalities. The evaluation is based on Michael Lipskys street-level bureaucracy which puts its focus on the lower level of bureaucrats meeting with clients. The frame is Skolverkets guideline for education of new arrivals which is more or less a way towards a common policy. The other document used to put up evaluation criteria’s is the Integration office united goals towards the receiving of new arrivals. The material for this evaluation is empirical in the sense of interviews made in the municipalities and document handed from each responsible bureaucrat. The result shows implications of the wide interpretation that the municipalities have. Some of them follow the directions and stop there, while others form routines and policies which go beyond the expectations. The conclusion of this study is that some municipalities have a lack of structure in the area for new arrivals of children and teenagers. This is in most of the cases because there also is a lack of liability areas. Most of the jobs are handed over to the principals who in the same way hand theirs over to the teachers. Bureaucrats need to know what is expected and there need to be documents or a reliable structure to work under.</p>

The aim of this study is to explore and analyze experienced teachers understanding, as well as transformation, of the school subject civics. The study has focused on the content, methods, and evaluation of the education taking place in the class room as described by the teachers themselves. Teachers’ autonomy, within the education setting, and their knowledge base is the point of departure when assessing teachers understanding and transformation of the subject. A further aim of the study has also been to make visible, where possible, the role of a personal knowledge base in this transformation process. The findings of this study are based on interviews with teachers teaching civics at upper secondary level in various parts of Sweden. These findings show that it is possible to discern that teachers’ general dictum about content, methods, and evaluation are very much alike. The findings further show that when teachers describe their daily transformation of civics the most visible knowledge is their pedagogical content knowledge, knowledge of learner and their characteristics and knowledge of educational context. One conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that when autonomy and knowledge base is combined, then it is here one find that teachers’ general comprehension about the school subject civics seems to be very similar. However, when it comes to daily transformation within the classroom, then the subject transformation is modified to fit the learners, the school context, and sometimes to the teachers’ well-being. From this one can draw the conclusion that comprehension and transformation need not always go hand-in-hand.

The purpose of this study was to understand how social workers experienced working with Addiction Severity Index (ASI) in relation to the goal set by the National Board of Health and Welfare. The method is spread nationwide and therefore it is of great importance to examine how the social workers themselves experience the demands and the resources surrounding ASI. We choose to do a qualitative study interviewing eight social workers at six different occasions. The result was analyzed using Max Weber’s ideal type bureaucracy and Michael Lipsky’s thesis on street-level bureaucrats. We found that the social workers consider the method useful when used from without their own purposes. The standards set by the National Board of Health and Welfare was considered hard to achieve because of the complexity of the method. Among other things the valuation done by both social worker and client was regarded as tough and therefore the results of the interview are at risk of not becoming reliable. We found that the outcome of the interview depends on the performer.

<p>The purpose of this study was to <em>understand</em> how social workers experienced working with Addiction Severity Index (ASI) in relation to the goal set by the National Board of Health and Welfare. The method is spread nationwide and therefore it is of great importance to examine how the social workers themselves experience the demands and the resources surrounding ASI. We choose to do a qualitative study interviewing eight social workers at six different occasions. The result was analyzed using Max Weber’s ideal type bureaucracy and Michael Lipsky’s thesis on street-level bureaucrats. We found that the social workers consider the method useful when used from without their own purposes. The standards set by the National Board of Health and Welfare was considered hard to achieve because of the complexity of the method. Among other things the valuation done by both social worker and client was regarded as tough and therefore the results of the interview are at risk of not becoming reliable. We found that the outcome of the interview depends on the performer.</p>

In this thesis, public housing was investigated with particular reference to the nature of communication between the landlord and tenant. It focussed on interactive behaviours and the incidence of litigation. The study attempts to bridge the gap between social theory and social practice through the application of existing social theory in the description and analyses of social problems. Based on a critical review of the relevant literature, the characteristics of communicative interaction and human relationships are described, together with the history of housing provision and the growth of litigation to resolve issues in public housing. Research of communicative interaction in the housing sector in general and the landlord-tenant interaction in particular has been a neglected area of research that is addressed in this thesis. An initial study surveyed both tenants and housing officers in the Sydney metropolitan area. Social analysis focuses on local interaction between landlord and tenant and how these local interactions expand into global patterns. The thesis analyses how power-relating, ideological/evaluative and ethical choices of housing officers and tenants influence their communicative interaction and the subsequent access and distribution of services and resources in the public housing sector. The theoretical framework explicates on complex responsive processes (CRP) perspective. CRP is a process theory that looks into the simultaneous and co-influencing relationship between the individual and the social and multi-agency approach in social analysis. The conceptualising framework relies on the application of this theory and the principles of Humanity, human rights and social justice to achieve a dialogical communicative interaction. The thesis applied complementary quantitative and qualitative methods where a quantitative study of a small population was conducted using structured interviews and group meetings to guide the qualitative research. The population was identified by natural experiment, i.e., identification of two populations in a public housing estate: a Participative group, comprising tenants who had consciously participated in the housing authorities?? renewal programs, and a Non-participative group of tenants who had not taken part in the Tenant Participation programs by Housing New South Wales (HNSW). The housing officers and tenants were identified using snowball and quota sampling. The findings reveal a conspicuous absence of research that focus on local interaction between housing officers and tenants in public housing. The study confirms the anti-dialogical nature of communicative interaction in public housing, which is iterated, sustained and perpetuated by the use of litigation, a mechanism that is increasingly being preferred to settle disputes, by both landlord and tenant.

The purpose of this thesis was to get a deeper comprehension of how Swedish schools are affected by institutional change, what influence eventual governmental intervention has on the professional autonomy of street-level bureaucrats and towards which direction the educational system is heading.   As a theoretical frame of reference, the study used two primary theories. The first theory consists of a classical work in political science – the theory of street-level bureaucracies by Michael Lipsky. Its insightful pondering on public service workers as policy decisionmakers served as a tool to better understand the crucial part that street-level bureaucrats play in the political game. The second theory is the principal-agent theorem. With its assumtions grounded in rational choice, it aims to explain the agency problem, which occurs when the agent is acting in his own best interest. The principal-agent theory was used in order to explain why the government could have an increased need for control and surveillance. Through empirical evidence, the study found that decentralization leads to an increased governmental need for control and surveillance over Swedish schools. Furthermore, the study found that governmental intervention has a negative impact on the professional autonomy of street-level bureaucrats. The actions taken by the government is indicative of an attempt to strengthen the control of goal fulfillment. Thus, the study concludes that the educational system is heading towards a situation with more political control and less professional autonomy.

Cette thèse s'intéresse au travail quotidien des acteurs administratifs de la justice pénale et de la police c'est-à-dire aux greffiers, secrétaires, collaborateurs, estafettes, assistants, soit à tous les employés qui travaillent dans les coulisses des institutions étudiées aux côtés des magistrats et policiers, plus connus et plus étudiés. Notre intérêt pour ces acteurs a d’abord été guidé par un questionnement central et volontairement large visant, d’une part, à identifier et à découvrir la nature de leur travail et, d’autre part, à comprendre en quoi et comment ils contribuent à l’action de la justice pénale et de la police. Il s’inscrit dans une démarche empirique et inductive qui cherche à éclairer cette réalité professionnelle et son impact sur le fonctionnement institutionnel « à partir et au plus près » du quotidien des acteurs étudiés, en recourant à des immersions de type ethnographique au sein des coulisses de commissariats, parquets et tribunaux. En se penchant sur les pratiques d’acteurs qui œuvrent au fonctionnement des instances de justice pénale et de police, nous cherchons donc à mieux comprendre l’activité et le fonctionnement d’institutions chargées de réagir aux comportements problématiques, de les prévenir, de les réguler ou de les punir, et donc à éclairer les processus de réaction sociale. Notre démarche se situe ainsi au croisement entre une sociologie de l’action publique par le bas et une sociologie du travail privilégiant l’approche par l’activité ou la relation de service. Le premier courant est notamment inspiré des travaux précurseurs de M. Lipsky qui mettent l’accent sur la participation active de fonctionnaires – les street-level bureaucrats – à la construction des politiques publiques, malgré leur éloignement des instances décisionnelles (LIPSKY, 2010 [1980]). Le second courant s’éloigne d’une sociologie du travail « classique » qui s’intéresse à l’organisation du travail et aux politiques en la matière pour se focaliser davantage sur l’activité « en train de se faire » inscrite dans un système d’interactions impliquant d’autres acteurs et un contexte de travail (AVRIL, CARTIER et SERRE, 2010 ;HUGHES, 1996 ;UGHETTO, 2013 ;WELLER, 2007).La thèse répond au questionnement de départ en montrant comment les acteurs étudiés participent aux pratiques de la justice pénale et de la police à travers leurs pratiques quotidiennes, leur pouvoir discrétionnaire et les bricolages et routines qu’ils mettent en place pour fonctionner. Malgré une forte invisibilité – entendue comme un manque de reconnaissance de la valeur et de l’importance de leurs activités par le grand public, par la hiérarchie, par les travailleurs eux-mêmes et par les institutions qui les emploient (CRAIN, POSTER et CHERRY, 2016) – ils participent de manière indispensable à l’action publique, ils la rendent possible et l’influencent. Ils exercent donc bel et bien un rôle de « policy maker » au sein d’organisations dont les spécificités atténuent ou renforcent ce rôle. Ils participent à la construction des décisions qui y sont prises (par d’autres) en les mettant en forme et assurant leur légalité ;ils influencent les décideurs par leurs actions ou par leurs interactions ;ils créent et préservent le lien entre les collègues mais aussi entre les organisations chargées de mener une action collective – la restauration et le maintien de l’ordre public – dans un contexte particulièrement segmenté. La thèse montre également que ces acteurs sont des professionnels à part entière qui exercent un métier spécifique, indispensable au fonctionnement de la justice pénale et de la police. Ils participent au contrôle social et, dans le même temps, subissent le contrôle exercé par les institutions sur eux et leur travail. / Doctorat en Criminologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Syftet med studien är att bidra till ökad kunskap kring implementering av lagen om omställningsstudiestöd (SFS 2022:856). I studien särskiljs implementeringsobjekt och implementeringsprocess i syfte att undersöka huruvida implementeringsobjektets egenskaper främjar eller hämmar implementeringsprocessen. Kvalitativa intervjuer har genomförts med rådgivare, även kallade frontbyråkrater, inom svenska omställningsorganisationer som arbetar med omställningsstudiestödet. Vid analysen av det empiriska materialet används Vedungs (2016) påverkansfaktorer i implementeringsprocesser i kombination med Lundquists (1992) tre förutsättningar för lyckade implementeringar. Studiens resultat visar att en central del av lagen om omställningsstudiestöd är svårtolkad på grund av att den är otydligt formulerad. Otydligheten ligger i avvägningen mellan individens behov och arbetsmarknadens behov. Implementeringsprocessen tycks dock inte hämmas av otydligheten. Studien bidrar med ökad förståelse för faktorer som påverkar implementering av nationell policy. Denna kunskap är relevant för alla yrkesgrupper som i sitt arbete har att förhålla sig till nya lagar, förordningar och föreskrifter. Vidare bidrar studien med sex förslag till framtida forskning inom det aktuella området. / The purpose of the study is to contribute to increased knowledge regarding the implementation of the law on omställningsstudiestöd (SFS 2022:856). In the study, implementation object and implementation process are distinguished to investigate whether the characteristics of the implementation object promote or inhibit the implementation process. Qualitative interviews have been conducted with advisors, also called street-level bureaucrats, within Swedish transition organizations that work with omställningsstudiestödet. In the analysis of the empirical material, a combination of Vedung's (2016) influencing factors in implementation processes and Lundquist's (1992) three prerequisites for successful implementations are used. The study's results show that a central part of the law on omställningsstudiestöd is difficult to interpret because it is unclearly worded. The ambiguity lies in the balance between the needs of the individual and the needs of the labor market. However, the implementation process does not seem to be hampered by the lack of clarity. The study contributes with increased understanding of factors that influence the implementation of national policy. This knowledge is relevant for all professional groups that in their work must deal with new laws, ordinances and regulations. Furthermore, the study contributes six proposals for further research in the relevant area.