The aim of the study has been to provide a further understanding to the underlying mechanisms and principles that has shaped the Swedish governmental measures towards the pandemic of Covid-19 in Sweden. Throughout the pandemic of Covid-19, Sweden has been considered as deviating in its national and domestic approach towards the pandemic where Sweden has been pointed out as controversial in its measures that heavily has relied upon trust and common sense of the citizens. Through a qualitative document analysis, the thesis has analyzed the domestic measures taken by the Swedish government between the period of January 2020 and June 2021. The study has used the theoretical lens of constructivism and the empirical departure of the Swedish model as explanatory tools for how the self-image of Sweden derives from a conceptualization of identity provided by the Swedish model. Hence, the study has related to the Swedish model as a tool that shapes the Swedish identity which during the pandemic thus has shaped the identity politics of Sweden by domestic measures as a national response. By using the fundamental pillars of the Swedish model comprising labor market, economic policy and welfare policy, the thesis concluded that the Swedish identity that has shaped the executed identity politics during the pandemic derives from a Swedish self-image of being a welfare state originated from the values of the Swedish model permeating the governing of Sweden. Hence, the mechanisms and principles that have shaped the Swedish behavior through domestic measures during the pandemic of Covid-19 has been the Swedish model along with a Swedish identity and self-image deriving from a self interpretated definition of the Swedish governmental self.

The author studied the welfare state typology in China from a health care perspective. This study aims to figure out what type of welfare typology works in Chinese health care system through comparative welfare state typology, specifically the decommodification principle proposed by Esping-Andersen (2019) and health care decommodification index put forward by Bambra (2006). Studying the classification of Chinese welfare state typology by analysing the Chinese health care system and comparing it with other countries in the world within the scope of welfare state typology, helps China enhancing the public administration. The author found that China belongs to medium decommodification group which means it is the same decommodification level as Conservative-Corporatist regimes, but also indicates there's a huge improvement potential to high decommodification group in the future. Keywords Welfare State Typology; China; Chinese Health Care System; Health Decommodification Index Range of the Thesis: 66 pages

My thesis deals with the change of retirement policy in the Nordic welfare state. It focus on the period between years 1990 - 2014, during which the Nordic countries Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark were forced to respond to demographic challenges, such as population aging, decrease of economically active population, the increase of old - age dependency ratio and other problems. The main aim of my thesis is to find out if it is possible to observe a markedly different response and acceptance of different changes in the period 1990 - 2014 in the context of pension policy in these countries, or whether the countries responded similarly. The second objective of my work is to undertake a comparison of pension policy within the Nordic countries. As an aspect of comparison, I chose the financial sustainability of pension systems (expected future pension expenditure as % of GDP), the adequacy of pensions (according to the replacement ratio) and the possibility of drawing pensions (ordinary, early) and delay drawing pensions. In my work, I use the method of secondary analysis (especially statistics issued by the OECD and the Eurostat, legal documents and publications). Furthermore, I use comparative method for comparing the situation in different countries according to selected criteria and method of...

La réforme économique en Chine a été largement appréhendée comme un processus dans lequel le paternaliste danwei a été remplacé par le contrat de travail, un concept plutôt libéral. A cet égard, le déclin de bien-être à caractère socialiste et la montée d’assurance sociale sont considérés comme un phénomène de marche, les récents législations sociales sont discutés dans le cadre polanyien de double-mouvement qui invoque la dichotomie entre état et marche. Cette étude vise à offrir une perspective alternative en repensant l’évolution de la transformation moderne du travail en Chine d’une manière institutionnelle. Nous montrons que la structure de l'emploi héritée de danwei était au cœur des lois du travail de la Chine en temps de réforme. La protection de l’emploi reste pertinente tandis que l’afflux de main-d’œuvre informelle en provenance des zones rurales a explosé dans les secteurs privés urbains. Eux, ils sont devenus de plus en plus des outsiders du marché du travail qui sont vulnérables quant à leur condition précaire. Cette configuration institutionnelle correspond à une structure hiérarchique dans laquelle le ‘insider’ se distingue clairement du ‘outsider’ en termes de stabilité de l'emploi et de bien-être social. Malgré les récentes législations qui visent à rendre l'assurance sociale plus inclusive, notre étude de terrain sur la résolution des conflits du travail dans l'arbitrage et le tribunal a montré que la capacité de mobiliser la loi peut différer en termes de préoccupation personnelle sur le marché du travail. L'approche de capabilité et la sociologie du droit nous permettent de développer un cadre analytique nuancé permettant d'identifier la raison sous-jacente pour laquelle les individus adoptent différentes stratégies tout en contestant la loi abstraite dans une situation concrète. Notre étude conclut que la législation du travail ne sont pas nécessairement des réactions intentionnelles à la dynamique du marché mais plutôt, en tant que forme essentielle de convention sociale, a initié le cadre dans lequel les parties coordonnent leurs activités économiques. / Market reform in China has been widely understood as a process in which paternalistic socialist danwei was replaced by labour contract that is liberal-oriented. In this regard, decline of all-encompassing welfare arrangements and the rise of social insurance is seen by mainstream as a market phenomenon, recent legislations on social rights are discussed within Polanyian double-movement framework which invokes the dichotomy between state intervention and market.This study provides an alternative perspective by rethinking the evolution of China’s modern labour transformation in an institutional way. We show that inherited employment structure rooted in danwei lied at the core of China’s labour laws in reform time. Employment protection remained relevant while influx of informal labour from rural area boomed in urban private sectors. The later, increasingly became labour market outsiders who are vulnerable as to their precarious condition. This institutional configuration amounted to a hierarchical structure in which core workforce is clearly distinguished from precarious one in terms of job stability and welfare benefit. Despite the recent legislations which aim at making social insurance more inclusive, through our field study on labour dispute resolution practice in the labour arbitration and court, we found that the extent to which people can benefit favourable legal terms is contingent as the ability to mobilize law can differ in terms of people’s own preoccupation in the labour market. The Capability approach and Sociology of Law allow us to develop a nuanced analytical framework whereby we could identify the underlying reason why people take various strategies while contesting ‘abstract law’ in concrete situation. Our study concludes that labour legislations are not necessarily intentional reactions to market momentum but rather, as essential form of social convention, initiated the framework in which parties coordinate their economic activities.

This dissertation addresses the role of welfare state/family care regimes, intersecting social locations and stress process factors in influencing the mental health and subjective well-being of informal caregivers of care recipients with age-related needs or disabilities within a European international context. Empirical analyses were conducted with secondary data from the 2012 and 2016 European Quality of Life Surveys. The study sample included informal caregivers (n=6,007) residing in seven different welfare state/family care regimes, including Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, Italy, Greece and the United Kingdom. Ordinary least squares and ordered logit regression models revealed that welfare state/family care regime, social location (including both additive and interactive associations among gender, age group, marital status, and income), and stress process factors were independently associated with the mental health and life satisfaction of informal caregivers. Furthermore, there was some evidence to suggest that social location and stress process factors mediate some of the relationships between regime type and self-reported health and well-being and that stress process factors mediate relationships between social location factors and mental health and well-being. Overall, the results provide support for integrating welfare state/family care regime type and intersectionality factors into the SPM. Thus, future research on informal caregivers‘ mental health and well-being ought to incorporate such factors into their empirical analyses. The results also have some policy and practice implications. Residence in social democratic formal (Denmark), semi-formal (Sweden) and conservative formal (France) care regimes was the most beneficial to informal caregivers self-reported mental health. This was also the case for life satisfaction, except that residence in the liberal semi-formal (UK) was more beneficial than in the conservative formal (France) care regime. Mediating social location and stress process factors suggest that UK policy makers should address the greater social location disparities, greater role overload, and lack of coping resources that advantage Danish and Swedish informal caregivers compared to those residing in the UK. Lastly, policy makers from all the European countries assessed in the study should address the poorer mental health status of women and rural informal caregivers, those who experience role overload, secondary stressors, and lack coping resources. They should also address the the lower levels of formal education, more secondary stressors, and lack of coping resources associated with poorer subjective well-being. / Graduate

Disaster risk reduction (DRR) is an important strategy for preventing the consequences of climate change. The Sendai Framework states that all countries need to implement national strategies for DRR, which Sweden has not yet done. The scientific problem is partly that there is a lack of research on DRR in welfare countries, and partly that Sweden's municipalities' strategies to control risk reduction are relatively unexplored. The purpose of the paper is therefore to contribute to filling these knowledge gaps, and to map and evaluate Sweden's municipalities' governance work with DRR, to examine whether the municipalities follow the same guidelines or whether the work is carried out completely differently in all municipalities. The study is conducted with a theoretical framework based on the Sendai framework, polycentric governance and disaster risk governance. The method used is qualitative thematic content analysis, where Arjeplog, Gävle, Gothenburg, Helsingborg and Ljusdal's governance documents are analysed based on the theoretical framework. The results showed that the five municipalities internally govern DRR relatively well, where the main shortcoming, however, is that no municipality uses DRR as a concept. The conclusions are therefore that municipalities need to include DRR more in their governance documents, to make beneficial and deficient factors visible. Governance between municipalities and at different levels is also in need of further development and research.

Immigration has been a topic of interest for a very long time in Europe and it is currently a highly debated topic in today's politics. Previous studies on the attitudes of Europeans towards migrants have shown that Europeans apply different conditions and criteria to assess migrants' deservingness of social and legal rights. In this study we investigate Europeans' attitudes towards migrants using the concept of deservingness. Using data from the 2014 ESS survey we operationalize deservingness using the CARIN (control, attitude, reciprocity, identity and need) model to find the differences between the 21 different countries that are included in this study. The study utilizes multi-level analysis, with deservingness as the dependent variable and Integration legislation, the extent of the welfare state and gross domestic product (GDP) as our independent variables. The results showed that all three of our independent variables have a significant effect on deservingness towards migrants in Europe. Europeans from countries with more generous Integration legislation, a larger welfare state and a higher GDP have on average a lower deservingness, which means that they have lower demands on the migrants in their countries wishing to access social and legal rights. In conclusion, we establish that Europeans have different views on how many social and legal rights migrants in their country deserve.

At the same time as the European Union’s (EU) influence has grown, path-breaking changes in Sweden’s social policy characteristics have appeared. Previous research gives contradictory evidence on whether and how these developments relate, and it remains unknown to what extent the EU contributed to the changes observed in Sweden.  By operationalising four theories on the mechanisms of social policy change (institutionalism, power resources approach, new politics, and new social risks), using the EU as a driving force, and two diverging policy developments as outcomes, this thesis cast the net wider than previous research and applies process tracing methods to a selection of 339 policy documents to answer: (i) How has Europeanisation affected unemployment policy and family policy in Sweden, 1990- 2019? (ii) To what extent can Europeanisation sufficiently explain the retrenchment in unemployment policy while family policies were expanded in the same period of time?  I find no support for the mechanisms of institutionalism and new politics, limited support for new social risk, and mixed support for the power resource approach explaining the Europeanisation of Swedish social policy. Although I found empirical support for parts of several, I conclude that no theory can sufficiently explain the complete causal chain of how the EU influence the two Swedish policy outcomes.

The first two chapters examine the party's policy towards the wage-stop and the poverty trap. Until 1963 the party ignored the wage-stop but from then until 1975 a section of the party campaigned against the regulation expressing moral revulsion and concern about its administration but only rarely opposition to the principle. A Labour government removed the stop when its operation affected only a tiny minority of families. The party was quickly involved in the development of the poverty trap debate being particularly drawn to its disincentive characteristics, but Labour governments, like their Conservative counterparts, soon came to regard the idea as a mere statistical abstraction. After confirming the party's historical ambivalence about Family Allowances the thesis demonstrated that whenever it advocated allowances it did so because it believed the programme would alleviate family poverty rather than augment work incentives. However Labour governments consistently upheld the principle of substitutability, thus conferring de facto support on that less-eligibility dimension of Family Allowances which Macnicol has established informed the coalition government's decision to legislate for the programme in 1945. Despite the party's opposition to Family Income Supplement it became an important element in the Labour government's anti-poverty strategy after the Child Benefits debate in 1976. F.I.S. was criticised because of its contribution to the poverty trap and its potential for assisting in the pauperisation of the low paid, while Child Benefit was supported because it appeared to be a more equitable technique of delivering support to families with dependent children although some in the party were sensitive to the scheme's potential link with improved work incentives. In general, the Labour Party is seen to have failed to develop any coherent and sustained alternative to the ideas and programmes of its political opponents in this critical area of social policy.

Between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s, second-wave feminism involved both the construction of a distinctive body of social theory and socio-political activity with the explicit goal of turning violence from a private injury into a political problem demanding state intervention. In two decades the most radical wing of second-wave feminism launched an extraordinarily successful campaign against male violence that led to legislative reforms, and embedded itself in the interstices of state-funded social provision in European capitals. Most broadly, this dissertation examines how and why violence behind closed doors has come under the purview of the state as a vacuum to be filled with criminal law, and participates in a broader spectrum of queries about the rethinking of the state monopoly on violence, the erosion of the welfare state and the usages of law and punishment as vehicles for social change. A visionary radical feminist project, that had initially sought systemic change, instead folded itself into world affairs. The history of this transition is drastically under-researched, and has been left by historians to theorists. I propose a form of intellectual history centred on collectivity, on recovering underappreciated histories and on challenging the scripts by which the stories of making and unmaking feminist thought are told. In this dissertation I examine the transformation of intimate violence, first defined as “violence against women”—in public perception, social science, and the law—from a private matter to a state concern. I consider feminist activism and theory, academia (notably sociology and women’s studies), social democratic politics, and the legal system, to understand how intimate violence has become a terrain for action and thought. This dissertation demonstrates the centrality of violence to feminist arguments against women’s economic dependence, and shows how the exposure of violence against women resulted in new categories of need, that enabled the Dutch welfare state to produce welfare subjects accordingly. I explore how radical feminists first exposed violence in the intimate realm, why it became a focal point for liberal feminism as well, and how this exposure has set in motion a process of social change that veered into recuperation. Gradually, the cultural, political and legal outlook shifted—ultimately the siren call of law was answered. This is a history of classifications and (unintended) consequences.