The aim of this master’s thesis is to examine which ideas about the public library that appear in a selection of municipal library plans and to examine if these ideas are unanimous. The comprehensive questions are: Which ideas about the public library appear in each municipal library plan? How do the ideas agree in the different municipal library plans? The sub questions are: Which judgements of reality appear in the different library plans concerning each municipality and its library needs? How do the municipalities define the concept of development and future demands in the municipality on the basis of the judgements of reality? Which recommendations do the judgements of reality give and how is the plan of action that is established in each library plan justified? Which fundamental views of reality, i. e. which values of the library and its role (function, task and responsibility in the municipality), do the library plans contain? The theoretical basis of the study is a model, designed by Dorte Skot-Hansen, consisting of three rationalities – humanistic, sociological and instrumental - that constitute the cultural policy. Idea analysis is the textual analytic method used in this study to classify the material and make visible the ideas in the library plans. The concept of the idea consists of the three elements: judgement of reality, recommendation of action and a fundamental view of reality. A modified version of Skot-Hansen’s model is used as a means to analyze the empirical material, which consists of six library plans. The findings of the study show that each library plan manifests all of the rationalities and that the ideas about the library that appear in the selection of library plans are practically unanimous. / Uppsatsnivå: D

This study is meant to analyse the purpose of reorganizing cultural activities within the municipal political and management organization, how such a procedure progresses, and to which extend the organizational location reflects the role of cultural activities in the municipal. To depict the procedure of reorganizing cultural activities in the municipal organization I used qualitative content analysis. When I analyse the role of culture and why the reorganization was made I used idea analysis with ideal types as a tool to contrast different reasons for the reorganization. The ideal types I used was Thomson and Svenssons institutional logics and Dorte-skot Hansens cultural-political rationalities. I came to the conclusion that the sources I have used, documents of public decisions, does not include cultural-political motivations for the reorganization, though it includes motivations about organizational location. On the other hand I received an overview of the procedures progression in Forshaga municipal.

This study explores cultural activities aimed at the elderly in two Swedish municipalities, Karlstad and Örebro, and investigate what motivates them. These activities are mainly organized in the area of care or preventive activities. This study shows that these activities are aimed at contributing to a better mental and physical health for the elders. The analysis is based on cultural policy documents and shows that both municipalities’ rationales for their investments in culture for the elderly are founded in a belief that culture contribute to positive social and health benefits. Dorte Skot-Hansen’s dimensions of the humanistic, sociological, and instrumental rationales have been used to analyze the material. When specifically studying the rationales behind implementations, several rationales can be expressed simultaneously and may to some degree overlap.

The Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) has in recent years distinguished themselves in the arena of library policy and have initiated several controversial proposals in this field that goes against what can be considered the traditional public library mission in Sweden. These proposals, although much written about in media has been the focus of few studies and not one single study has focused exclusively on the Sweden Democratic library policy field as a whole. Therefore it has been my intention to do a textual analysis on thirteen political documents concerning library policy from the Sweden Democrats during the years 2018 to 2021 on all the political levels of decision making in Sweden: national, regional and municipal. With the help of researcher Dorte Skot-Hansens model of rationalities in nordic cultural policymaking I have tried to identify the predominant lines of policy in the material and the conclusion is essentially two main rationalities. The first one is the social conservative rationality in which the main goal is to preserve traditional Swedish values, which can be found on all political levels. The other one is the radical right rationality which is mostly distinct in the municipal and regional level and in which the main goal is to assimilate citizens into the Swedish culture. Both these rationalities make up the main political currents in the library policy of the Sweden Democrats which I have christened the the rationalitities of national identity.

This bottom-up study argue that making of social politics occurs in the meeting between the citizen and the representative of state. In order to generate a deeper understanding of the production of politics, the aim of this study was to identify expressed motivators and arguments in relation to a specific policy, which would unveil the underlying rationalities of actions taken by the specific actors. The policy was introduced in the Växjö municipality in June of 2017 and has changed the benefit distributed by the social services for immigrants waiting to start an employment program through an employment bureau into a loan.  In-depth interviews study, a total of 9 interviews have been undertaken with; decision-making politicians, public officials working with the policy and service users who have been affected by the policy. The data was processed and analyzed according to themes and to theory on rationality. The results showed that the main rationality forming the actions of politicians and public officials was linked to their ambition of upholding an efficient use of resources for the benefit of municipality economy. The main rationality behind the actions of the service users was to obtain autonomi in their life. An important goal for both parties was that the service users should become self-sustaining. Furthemore, the politicians and public officials clamied the responsibility for goal-fullfilment to realy on the individuals and not on the municipality. In addition, the results of this study has revealed that the way that politicians and public officials´ view immigrants, has affected the framing of the policy, deriving from a paternalistic understanding. Service users in the study expressed eagerness and high motivation towards starting employment. However, service users in this study viewed the loan as a hindrance rather than a support towards accomplishing the goal of employment, thus becoming autonomic.

Instead of asking why governments in developing countries are not doing what (Western) governments can (or at least in the past could) be expected to do we may need to ask the questions of how governance empirically is provided and by whom. While the involvement of non-public actors within processes of governance is far from new, the increased interest in social entrepreneurship, both as a practice and scholarly, is. The aim of the present study has been to explore and describe the interface between social entrepreneurship and governance within regions of India. The study has been inspired by a case study research design, including a set of qualitative methods: A generated sampling frame has facilitated the selection of analytical units; The collection of data has been conducted by semi-structured interviews; The data has been analyzed by a comparative approach. Based on a broad analytical governance framework provided by Kooiman et al (2005a) three research questions have guided the analysis: 1. What arguments are provided by the examined social entrepreneurs for their intentional action? 2. May action taken by the social entrepreneurs in this study be understood as an expression of hierarchical governance, self-governance and/or co-governance, and if so, how? 3. How may action taken by the social entrepreneurs in this study be related to first-order governance (day-to-day problem-solving and opportunity creation), second-order governance (institutions) and/or third-order governance (principles)? The result of the study reveals how the action taken by the studied social entrepreneurs interface with several aspects of governance. The arguments presented for intentional action, related to the provision of collective goods to marginalized citizens, may be understood in relation to two themes: perceived government failures (as well as failures by traditional NGOs) and the self-perception of being “value-driven”. The data reveals strands of hierarchical-, self- and co-governance. The studied social entrepreneurs are understood to contribute to first-order governance. Their action is further suggested to be challenging existing institutions in the long-run and perhaps also dominating principles guiding the “governance of governance”.