Underlying institutional forms are normative orders which give meaning to rules, norms, practices and customs. It is only recently that scholars have seriously considered the role of normative orders in institutional dynamics. Two meta-theories of institutionalism offer competing visions of how these normative orders are invoked. The Institutional Logics Perspective calls normative orders “institutional logics” and suggest that they are invoked in a consistent stable fashion. The Pragmatist Institutionalism approach calls normative orders “anchoring concepts” and suggests that they are used in less predictable ways to produce meaning. This study introduces the concept of fidelity to capture the difference between these two approaches and test which approach may offer a more accurate account of how normative orders are invoked in practice. The study uses the case of the USCG response to melting Arctic ice to study this issue by focusing on the two most dominant normative orders of American government. The study relies on interviews conducted with USCG personnel dealing with the agency’s response to melting Artic Ice. The data is then analyzed through a narrative analysis framework. The study finds that normative orders are invoked, in this case, in a manner more closely aligned with Pragmatist Institutionalism. This finding has implications for how administrative judgement is understood especially with respect to public agencies. / Ph. D.

Avhandlingen kartlägger och analyserar i fyra empiriska artiklar hur elevsubjekt konstrueras i skolans vardag och vilken roll marknadens principer spelar i dessa konstruktioner. I synnerhet fokuseras vilka logiker som konstituerar gymnasievalets praktiker, samt hur dessa legitimeras, tolkas och utmanas. Resultatet visar att gymnasievalets praktiker delar upp både nuet och framtiden för eleverna, som valet mellan en uttalad utopi eller en underförstådd dystopi, där eleverna i hög grad själva görs ansvariga för att lyckas eller misslyckas med att förverkliga den utopi som iscensätts i valets praktiker. Denna uppdelning framstår för aktörerna till stor del som naturlig och apolitisk, vilket i sin tur legitimerar dess effekter i termer av exkludering, ojämlikhet och segregering, ofta på basis av social klass. Den marknadsstyrda skolans diskurser konstruerar och delar också upp eleverna som om de vore varor med olika värde. Begreppet fantasmatiska logiker kan förklara hur elever greppas av  marknadsliknande diskurser, samt hur de hanterar motsägelsefulla villkor. Exempelvis hur gymnasievalet för eleverna både innebär att förändras och bli vad man vill, samtidigt som man formas att bli mer av den man redan är, genom att välja att vara den man är. Elevernas problematisering och destabilisering av dominerande marknadslogiker i skolan förekommer i alla undersökta sammanhang, och beskrivs i avhandlingen som både genomskådanden och ifrågasättanden av hur skola och utbildning kopplas samman med marknadens logiker. Genom att genomskåda gymnasievalets förmenta neutralitet synliggör eleverna hur marknadsstyrningen av utbildning i allmänhet och iscensättningen av mässorna i synnerhet tycks ligga i skolornas, snarare än elevernas intresse. / The thesis explores and analyzes in four empirical articles how student subjects are constructed in everyday school life and what role market principles play in these constructions. In particular, it focuses on the logics that constitute upper secondary school choice practices, and how these are legitimized, interpreted and challenged. The results show that upper secondary school choice practices divide the present and the future of the students as the choice between an explicit utopia and an implied dystopia. Here, the students themselves are made responsible for their success or failure in realizing the utopia that is staged in school choice practices. This division generally appears to the actors as natural and apolitical, which in turn legitimizes its effects in terms of exclusion, inequality and segregation, often on the basis of social class. Furthermore, the market-driven school discourses construct and divide the students as if they were commodities of different value. The notion of fantasmatic logics can explain how students are gripped by market-driven discourses and how they handle contradictory conditions. For instance, it explains how, for students, school choice means they can transform and become who they want to be, while at the same time they can also become more of what they already are, by choosing to be who they are. Students, however, problematize and destabilize dominant market logics in the school in all examined contexts, which in the thesis is analyzed in terms of penetrations and destabilizations of how schools and education are linked to the market logics. By penetrating the presupposed neutrality of secondary school choice practice, the students expose how the market orientation of education in general and the staging of school fairs in particular appear to be in schools’, rather than students’, interest.