This dissertation examines how we construct security threats. Theoretically, it contributes to the literature on securitization and threat construction, which has hitherto overlooked how influential bureaucracies that – in contrast to the police and the military – have little to gain from widened threat perceptions, may still contribute to threat construction. The dissertation studies the European Commission and the issue of irregular immigration. By using frame analysis, it firstly explores what constructions of irregular immigration that the Commission generates and to what extent these contribute to threat construction. Using the Bourdieusian concepts of field, capital and habitus, it secondly analyzes how certain constructions of irregular immigration are authorized at the expense of others, due to the inner bureaucratic logic of the Commission. The empirical result reveals that the Commission mostly defines irregular immigrants as victims, yet simultaneously favors policy solutions that mainly seek to avert immigration. The Commission thus contributes to threat construction primarily through its policy solutions. Studying the inner logic of the Commission field highlights how informal routines and tacit power relations between Commission departments authorize certain frames over others. Importantly, the analysis shows how the naming of irregular immigrants as victims tends not to cost the officials anything in terms of symbolic capital, whereas the suggesting of less restrictive solutions tends to do so. Definitions and policy solutions thus follow different bureaucratic logics, which enables a mismatch between them. Moreover, the threat construction appears not because Commission officials believe that restrictive measures are the only way to solve problems linked to irregular immigration. On the contrary, officials believe that a multitude of solutions are needed. Instead, the threat construction is an unintended consequence of the logic of the field. / <p>Författaren är verksam både vid Statsvetenskapliga institutionen på Stockholms universitet och vid Statsvetenskapliga avdelningen på Försvarshögskolan.</p>

Sweden has one of the best elderly cares in Europe and the Swedish care work is also one of the best in terms of quality, compared to other European countries. In recent years, higher demands have been set on the care work and the number of privatizations of public services has increased. In 2009 a new law came into force, the Act on System of Choice (LOV) which increased individual’s right to a greater participation and a free choice in the selection of health and social care providers. This paper aims to highlight the impact of the law, system of choice. By using the method of qualitative surveys and interviews with care managers, and an exploration of relevant studies and reports, I was able to complete this study. With institutional theory and other sociological concepts such as isomorphism and street-level bureaucracy, I made an analysis of both the care managers and also at an organizational level. In the conclusions I argue that the system of choice has had a greater impact at an organizational level rather than on the care managers. The paper also highlights the fact that the knowledge of processes of implementation and political governance has had a significant role. The three main issues are how the law has influenced care managers work, how organizations have changed, how and if the active choices work in practice.

A critical task of social policy in most Western welfare states during recent decades has consisted of reducing the economic burden on society due to sick leave, by stimulating participation in the labour market. Many jurisdictions have introduced activation policies, based on the premise that work “per se” has a therapeutic effect on sick-listed workers. People are expected to be “active”, rather than “passive”, recipients of financial benefits. However, there is limited knowledge of how activation policies focusing on return to work (RTW) are carried out in local practice. Against this background, the overall aim of this thesis is to study the local practice of activation policies by analysing how they are received, implemented and experienced by welfare state organizations, employers and sick-listed workers. The analysis has been influenced by theories concerning organization fields, individualization, street-level bureaucracy and organizational governance. In this thesis, the overall aim is investigated in four interrelated papers. In Paper I, the aim is to analyse the perspectives of stakeholders (i.e. welfare state actors and employers) on work ability by studying multistakeholder meetings. Paper II sheds light on activation policy, focusing on early RTW in the context of modern working conditions; the aim is to analyse RTW practice in local workplace contexts, in relation to Swedish early-RTW policy. The third paper focuses on employers, with the aim of analysing their role and activities regarding RTW, in local workplace practice. In Paper IV, the aim is to analyse sick-listed workers’ experiences of the sickness insurance system in their contact with the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA) and their front-line staff. The empirical material comprises two empirical studies: 1) audio-recorded multi-stakeholder meetings from regular practice (n=9) and 2) semi-structured interviews with sick-listed workers and their supervisors in 18 workplaces (n=36). The analyses of the material have been performed in accordance with the principles of qualitative content analysis. Main findings of the papers reflect strong organizational boundaries in the implementation process of activation policies. Welfare state actors and employers appear to be governed by their own organizational logics and interests, so the actors involved fail to take a holistic view of sick-listed workers and do not share a common social responsibility for individuals’ RTW. This thesis illustrates how current activation policies focusing on RTW are based on a rather idealized image of the standard workplace. There is an explicit or implicit assumption that employers and work organizations are able to welcome sick-listed workers back to work in a healthy way. However, the intensity of modern working life leaves limited room for accommodating people with reduced work ability, who are not considered to have a business value to the workplace. In several cases, findings indicate that the SSIA’s focus on activation and early RTW clashes with the financially oriented perspective of employers. Economic considerations regarding their business take precedence over legal and ethical considerations, and employers have difficulty taking social responsibility for RTW. Sick-listed workers are encouraged to adjust to new workplace settings and environments to meet the demands of the workplace, and, if RTW is not possible, to the demands of the labour market. The findings also show that sick-listed workers experience that contacts with the SSIA are ‘standardized’; i.e., they perceive that the officials are loyal  to demands in their organizations rather than being involved actors who support workers’ individual needs. Sick-listed workers clearly experience that measures in Swedish activation policies have a strong focus on demanding aspects (financial work incentives) and less on enabling aspects (investments in skills). Overall, this thesis illustrates an emerging social climate where sick-listed workers are positioned as active agents who must take responsibility for their sick leave and their RTW process. In a Swedish context, RTW is a matter of activating the sick-listed rather than activating the workplace.

This thesis consists of three self-contained essays. Essay 1, "Dispatchers", is a study of a specialized service sector that has arisen in many developing countries. It is a well-established fact that the government bureaucracy in many developing countries is large, difficult to understand, non-transparent and time-consuming. However, "de jure" procedures sometimes have little to do with how firms or individuals actually go about when dealing with the government bureaucracy. One institution that has emerged is a specialized intermediary, henceforth called dispatcher, that assists individuals and firms in their contacts with the public sector. A model is developed to study the effects of dispatchers on time and resources spent in obtaining licenses, on informality and on the incentives of bureaucrats and dispatchers to make regulation more/less complicated. Essay 2, "Informal firms, investment incentives and formalization", studies informal firms in developing countries. In a typical developing country, the majority of small firms are informal and entry costs into formality are high. What can we expect in terms of firm investment, growth and formalization in such a setting? I show that investment and growth trajectories differ substantially between firms that choose to formalize and those that do not. The formalization decision depends non-trivially on the informal firm's productivity. This, in turn, has an effect on how policies should be designed. The long-run firm size distribution exhibits a "missing middle" and depends on the initial firm-level stock of capital, a result that can be interpreted as a poverty trap. Essay 3, "Compositional and dynamic Laffer effects in a model with constant returns to scale", studies dynamic effects of tax cuts. The possibility of tax cuts paying for themselves over time seems like an attractive option for policy makers. In a constant returns to scale model, I study conditions under which reductions in capital taxes are self-financing

Magistro baigiamajame darbe išanalizuotos viešosios ir privačiosios partnerystės formos ir jų taikymo galimybės viešųjų paslaugų sektoriuje. Taip pat pateikiamos rekomendacijos koncesijų taikymo kelių statybos srityje tobulinimui. Pirmoje darbo dalyje teoriškai išanalizuoti tradicinio ir modernių viešųjų paslaugų teikimo būdų teoriniai aspektai, ypatingai išryškinant specifinius jų bruožus, privalumus ir trūkumus. Antrajame skyriuje analizuojami praktiniai koncesijos taikymo kelių statyboje atvejai – Palangos ir Vilniaus aplinkkeliai. / Master's thesis analyzed the public-private partnership forms and applications for the public service sector. It also provides guidance on the application of concessions in the field of road construction development. The first part of the theoretical analysis of the traditional and the modern public service delivery methods of theoretical aspects, particularly highlighting their specific features, pros and cons. The second section discusses the practical application of the concession road construction cases - Palanga and Vilnius bypasses.

This thesis investigates how an institutional coordination of civic policies and organizational processes within Pride Toronto were brought to bear on the activist group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) in their attempts to participate in the 2010, 2011, and 2012 Toronto Pride Parades. Utilizing an institutional ethnography (IE), I explore this issue in two key ways. First, by mapping a work-text-work sequence of QuAIA’s experience in applying to march in the 2010 Parade, I demonstrate how the application process was subject to social relations that extended beyond Toronto Pride. Second, through the elaboration of processing interchanges, I demonstrate how the experiences of QuAIA were hooked into a series of translocal relations via Pride Toronto’s funding relationship to the City of Toronto. These translocal relations working through the City of Toronto were themselves varied, from pro-Zionist pressure on individual City councilors, to an alignment with anti-tax and arguably homophobic interests on council. / Graduate

Despite an annual expenditure of the order of £400 million and administrative arrangements which in a number of respects are significantly different from the other arms of the National Health Service, the dental health services have attracted little scholarly attention. The recent Royal Commission on the National Health Service drew attention to this point (Report, para. 9.1) and in a sense the thesis represents an attempt to fill this particular lacuna. The central question addressed is why the performance of the dental health services has neither realised the more general goals (such as equal treatment for all or the relating of access to treatment to need) which were behind the assumption of public responsibility for health care nor overcome the more particular problems associated with the provision of dental services. The thesis seeks to locate the answers in the particular approach adopted to public supply and to this end some considerable space has been given to both the origins and character of this approach. An examination of the pressures that led to public involvement in the provision of dental care is followed, in the main part of the thesis, by an account of the implementation and subsequent operation of the services. Using material from the files of the Ministry of Health and the British Dental Association as well as the numerous public enquiries which have focussed on different aspects of the services, an attempt is made to relate the shortcomings in performance to the adopted approach to supply and more particularly to the inadequacies of the assumptions which underpinned it. The central conclusion is that problems associated with both the power of those involved in the services and the values inherent in the processes of public administration have been responsible for the untenability of these assumptions and that in consequence neither the administrative capacity nor the degree of political control on which policy achievement had been postulated have in fact been realised. The whole policy has become centred on the arrangements for paying individual practitioners in which wider community goals have generally been ignored and in which considerations other than equity or dental need have governed both the supply of, and access to, the available treatment.

Municipal government is responsible for public safety, maintenance of city streets and parks, wastewater treatment, trash removal, fire and rescue services, public transportation, and other essential services which mean that it plays a big role in the life of the city and its citizens. The efficiency of the work of the municipality largely depends on the work of its top management. Most common forms of the head of a municipality in Russia is a mayor or a city manager. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze municipal officials’ views on a proposed change from a system with a mayor to a city manager system in the city of Arkhangelsk, Russia. In order to understand this, I look at the history of the country and interviews, study the theoretical material as well as the media. The thesis is qualitative and aimed to find out what the new system of city manager mean in practice and see the benefits and downsides of the new system according to those who are involved in the local government. In the case study I interview civil servants and councilors. The theoretical framework is based on the theories of Weber, Simon, Du Gay, Christensen &amp; Lægreid, Pierre &amp; Rothstein and others. The result shows that both civil servants and councilors see the possibilities of more efficient work of the municipal government if one has the city manager system of governance. They see the city manager to be a professional manager who would be out of politics and not dependent on the opinion of certain group of people. At the same time, I can point out that the ideas of New Public Management help the public sector to be productive. NPM-ideas are often argued to enhance efficiency, but they are not fully compatible with the Russian context. Due to the history and realities in Russia, I have come to a conclusion that the city manager system has weak points such as the lack of professional managers and the power vertical built in Russia, whose representatives mostly belong to one political party.

The study of money and banking is largely considered the purview of economics. Nevertheless, money theme cannot be neglected by social analysis for money is a social construct, embedded in social interactions. Financial system, money&rsquo / s highest level of institutionalization, also cannot be abstracted from social and political sub-structure. In this thesis we tried to look at the way in which Turkish financial transformation in early 1980&rsquo / s has found its reflections on social sphere / in terms of changing social relations and institutions. We first presented a short history of Turkish financial system, then we focused on the essential features of 1980 Transformation, covering its political background. The emphasis is made on power relations between bureaucracy, political will and financial market participants. We also combined the main features of mainstream theoretical approaches to money and finance from the fields of sociology and we put current debates on Turkish financial liberalization into the context of sociology. As we considered the ways financial relations shape societal developments and political processes, we tried to identify how debt-money system had permeated further in the social relations through financialization of society

Interest in the power of heads of field offices in the United Nations Organization (UN) began with the researcher's appointment to such a position and with anecdotal suggestions that any explanation of the powers they held would be complex. For these reasons, this study has the research aim of explaining the power of some UN heads of field offices. The study focusses on seven heads of field offices in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Literature searches indicated that no academic study had been made of any UN field work but the searches produced considerable literature on the UN and a wide range of theories about organizations, leadership and power, related issues of ethics and rationality and useful concepts from the work of Weber and Foucault. The research is interpretive. A case study and an appropriate conceptual framework were designed to reflect both the literature and the three research questions that promote the aim: organizational bureaucracy, organizational capital and frontline work are the guiding concepts. Because case studies may be challenged for possible lack of rigour and for validity, a number of data collection and analysis methods were used to promote reliability: both the data sources and the analysis checks included participants, UNESCO documents and information from other international bodies. Appropriate literature is also used for theoretical analysis. The results are presented progressively in three chapters, each chapter focussing on one framework concept and its appropriate question. The relevant data are presented and theoretical analysis, including selected concepts from Weber and Foucault, suggests answers to each question posed. The research results suggest that in the organization the participants gain power from UNESCO's intellectual and ethical purpose but are constrained in its use by processes of the bureaucracy, especially its lines of communication. The participants also have considerable power in organizational capital that includes tangible capital of qualifications, experience, skills, high level of position, the resources of the post in which they work and the intangible capital of the assumptions they hold about their work. At the frontline, although constrained by bureaucratic processes that limit their time for programme work, participants report valuable contributions to UNESCO's development and advocacy work: they gain power fiom proximity to the countries they serve and from their ethical motivation. They also gain some power in the freedom of distance from their headquarters, thus weakening the possible double jeopardy by being in a class-at-the-frontline and being in a group-not-in-headquarters. The final chapter brings all suggestions together and examines participants' power for sources (as rights or capacities), limitations (as control or domination) and agency (with compliance and resistance); when these perspectives are combined in a circle of power, the study suggests a Janus syndrome in which participants paradoxically are powerful/powerless agents, sited as they are between the power provision and constraints of both their bureaucracy and the governments and other bodies with whom they work.