This study fills what has long been recognized as a major gap in the field of International Relations (IR): an account of when and how change occurs in the structure of the international system. Attempts to create social change, to create or to alter intersubjectivity, are relatively common; the crucial question is why some attempts succeed while most fail. I argue that social change is itself a rule-governed social activity, which I term institutional politics, and that attempts to create social change are more likely to succeed if they are pursued in a manner consistent with what H.L.A. Hart called secondary rules, or rules about rules. This central hypothesis is investigated in three cases: the emergence of great power management following the Napoleonic war, attempts to ban war as an instrument of state policy in the inter-war period,and the period of institutional contestation instigated by the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. Available evidence in all three cases provides strong overall support for the central hypothesis and for the other core expectations of my theory. In addition to achieving important descriptive and explanatory advances with respect to the dynamics and morphology of the international system, the study makes significant contributions to the constructivist literature in IR; namely, it suggests a basis on which to improve conceptual consolidation and comparability, and it moves beyond a primary focus on norm promoters to include explicit theorization of the evaluative acts of their audiences. The most important policy implication of the study is the need for explicit renovation of the contemporary international system’s stock of secondary rules, to counter a decline in their legitimacy among a much more heterogenous set of members.

This essay takes a look at Israel's security policy and the definition of threat as a major factor in building up the security policies. This essay brings up also the problems of having a realist way of acting towards a more constructivist problem, as it is in this case. To understand better the constructivist context an analysis of Israel's security policy and a research of its roots are made as well as how Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Hamas and Hezbollah are seen as threats to the Israeli state security. The aim is to look at the problem and at the basis of the foundation of both the organizations and Israel. From there, the conclusion takes its essence. In fact. what come forward are the social structures that created the infrastructures and this phenomenon is the root of the problem and not just the balance of power, which tends to come from a more bipolar problem thinking. This means that this problem might be easier to please with a more constructivist way of thinking and of looking at the problem to be able to think of solving it.

Brazil has been one of the most active actors in international environmental negotiations and is an up-and-coming developing country with huge reserves of natural resources, biodiversity, and ecosystems that are of interest to the rest of the world, such as the Amazon rainforest. This pa- per provides an analysis of Brazilian foreign policy in the area of environment. By studying three major, international environmental conferences – Stockholm 1972, Rio 1992, and the COP 15 in Copenhagen, in 2009 – from a liberal-constructivist perspective, the objective is to inves- tigate how Brazil has contributed to, as well as has been affected by, the international environ- mental regime over time. With the Rio+20 conference around the corner, this paper can provide important insights to what processes are behind Brazil’s action and position in these issues. The paper takes an eclectic approach and analyzes the national and international contexts and the positions Brazil took at the time of each conference, in the light of a framework that emphasizes the reciprocal relationship between domestic and international structure and agent. The conclu- sion is that there is a clear trend of Brazil going from being defensive and confrontational to being open to cooperation and taking initiatives. The changes in Brazilian attitude at each of the three conferences can be connected to great transformations in national as well as international context. The social and material reality in which Brazil has found itself has affected the way it interprets its capabilities, as well as how it identifies its interests. Furthermore, it is identified that tradition in foreign policy has played an important part in constraining some alternatives and promoting others.

This study aims to seek knowledge about what preschool teachers think about gender issues, and if it affects their work. The study has been performed in a multicultural district in Stockholm. A working party of three teachers, one male and two females, has been interviewed and observed. The empirical material from the interviews and observations has then been analyzed based on theories about gender, femaleness, maleness and cultural behaviour. The result proves that one of the three teachers considers that there are general typical female and male behaviour. One of the three teachers considers that there are differences in the children’s behaviour based on their gender. My observations prove that all the three teachers have some apprehensions about what is to be typical male or female behaviour. One of the three teachers thinks that the differences between her male and female colleagues are a result originating in culture and not gender. To sum up, my result suggests that the three teachers’ respective cultures, affects their idea of maleness and femaleness.

Abstract All students in the Swedish elementary school that do not reach the educational objectives in mathematics have a legal right to receive support in order to reach these objectives. An action plan shall be created, where it should be visible what supportive measures the student is given to reach the objectives. The purpose of our final thesis is to investigate how the action plan can contribute to the work with students that experience difficulties within mathematics. The study is performed on 7-9th grade schools, and the empirical material is gathered through reading of hundreds of action plans, observations, and interviews of students, teachers, remedial teachers and headmasters. The theoretical frame used is hermeneutics, constructivism and perspective on special education. The result of the study is that action plans do play an important role in the work with students that experience difficulties within mathematics, but the quality of the programs seems to vary. Some action plans are clearly stated, contain tangible actions, both on individual as well as on a group level, that help the student in their learning, whereas other programs are unclear and aimed only at what the student himself should perform to reach the objectives, i.e. only on an individual level. The remedial teaching support is often categorical, they are assuming that the student is the owner of the problem, and the support is also given from that perspective. That means that the student is given support in the format of individual education by a remedial teacher or by education in a smaller group.

<p>The opposition between the realists and the anti-realists isas old as Western science. The question as to whether the“furniture of the world”we call the“things”is to be considered real or not hasconsistently been at the forefront in the debates about scienceand philosophy. This urgent interest is motivated by the closeconnection to another question–namely that of scientificobjectivity - an issue that seldom receives proper treatment.Objectivity has rather been taken for granted in thetraditional Newtonian paradigm with its well-known slogan: Thedetached observer is the objective one and the rational mind ofclarity.</p><p>It was impossible to continue with this dictum, which isresponsible for the cleft between the natural and socialsciences and still presents a ban on human feelings inscientific endeavours, after the findings of quantum mechanicsat the beginning of the 20th century. However the penetratingpower of this important insight has been astonishingly weak andwith the emergence of computer science in the middle of thecentury, Newtonian science’s self-assumed status ofobjectivity has been apprehended as both very doubtful and asevere hindrance in other areas outside the quantum domain ofscientific activity. The efforts of computer modelling andsimulation analysis revealed a pronounced observer-dependencyregarding investigation.</p><p>For these reasons this thesis will scrutinise the activityof science and the art of modelling–proposing the use ofa 2-step model of modelling (metamodel) to clarify andemphasize the involvement of the observer in the process ofobservation. This approach reveals that the object-orientedapproach (OOA), which has been the prevailing one since thedawn of Western science and is one of the basic tenets of theNewtonian paradigm, makes science unable to describe itsobjects of discourse in an observer-independent manner. Such ascience is at risk to be considered inconsistent, incompleteand non-objective and for that reason unfit for consensualscientific use.</p><p>The main claim of this thesis is that the object-orientedapproach is responsible for the genesis of Cartesian dualismand other inconsistencies, which are met in present dayscience. Such a claim is not novel however, but I will arguethat when science is dressed up as the Subject-orientedApproach to Knowledge (SOA) a long row of embarrassing andbewildering situations encountered in classical humanconceptualisation will vanish–in a way that, as far as Iknow, has never been explicitly explained before. This approachalso promises a unification of the different disciplines ofsciences so that e.g. the social sciences can be treated on anequal footing with the natural sciences–and thus thisembarrassing gulf of human knowledge can be removed. This is aprofound shift of paradigm in science and the re-orientation ofhuman thinking required is both considerable andtime-consuming.</p><p>For this reason this thesis is not a systematic presentationof the SOA, but rather tries, in Part 1, to pave the way for anunderstanding of this approach by an introductory discussionabout the means and scope of science and the essential role ofsymbolic modelling in this endeavour–and in particularthe way these activities will be influenced by the anticipatedchange of paradigm. Some historical aspects of this particularSOA are also given as a background and this section iscompleted by a brief survey of the modern trends in scientificmodelling.</p><p>Part 2 is collection of papers dealing with the principlesof modelling and simulation, and, rather more importantly, asequence of papers reflecting how the ideas of the SOA havedeveloped throughout the years due to the inconsistencies metwith in these and adjacent areas. To my mind they prove -beyond the point of any consensual doubt–that therealist’s position in science cannot be defended anylonger and that the“things of the world”by thescientific community must be considered merely privateallusions.</p><p>More important however is the insight that the Newtonianparadigm is unable to produce an observer-independentdescription of this world with its conceived things and theonly way out of this embarrassing dilemma seems to be theacceptance of the SOA–with its hitherto strictly bannedfeature of subjectivity. Using this approach, we claim, sciencecan be given a consensual and consistent foundation–andthe price to pay is the loss of scientific ontology. As alreadypointed out this thesis merely hints at the new path to take–instead concentrating on the reasons for the impendingdemise of scientific realism and need of a constructive systemsscience.</p>

<p>This study examines different national constructions of contemporary European identities. The assumption is made that the construction of states'identities and identification of threats is a mutual process. For this reason special attention is paid to the construction of threats, embedded in a specific structure of the securitisation process. The author tries to answer to the questions of how identities are reproduced through the discourse on security and what information the analysis of national identities'constructions of Germany, Great Britain, Sweden andLithuania can provide about the contemporary ideas of a collective European identity using combination of Alexander Wendt's theoretical framework for analysing states'identities and the Copenhagen school's securitisation approach.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-178). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-111). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [160]-165). Also available on the Internet.