Social Change In Sweden

An up-to-date description and analysis of the recent reforms, current structure and issues in Swedish education. All stages of the system, from pre-school through to adult education and teacher training are covered. The book seeks to place the material firmly within the context of Swedish society and politics but the problems addressed are of concern to people everywhere

The Swedish Social Democratic Party, the SAP, is the most successful social democratic party in the world. It has led the government for most of the last six decades, participating either alone or as the dominant force in coalition government. The SAP has also worked closely with trade unions that have organized nearly 85 percent of the labor force, the highest rate among the advanced industrial democracies. Rarely has a political party been so dominant or so closely linked to labor movement. Yet Sweden remains very much a capitolist society with economic and social power firmly in the hands of big capitol.If one wants to know if politics, and most especially if reformist politics, matters - if, that is, political mobilization can change democratic capitolists societies - then Sweden under the Social Democrats is clearly one of the best empirical cases to study.Bo Rothstein uses the Swedish experience to analyze the limits a social democratic government labors under and the possibilities it enjoys in using the state to implement large-scale social change. He examines closely two SAP programs, one a success and the other a failure, that attempted to change social processes deeply embedded in capitolist society. He ties the outcomes of these programs to the structure of the state and hypothesizes that the outcome depends, to a considerable extent, on how administrative apparatuses responsible for implementing each policy are organized. Rothstein concludes that no matter how wisely a reformist policy is designed nor how strong the political party behind it, if the administrative arrangements are faulty, it will fail at the stage of implementation.Rothstein convincingly demonstrates that the democratic capitolist countries of the world have important lessons to learn from the Swedish experience regarding the possibilities for political reform. Political scientists and political reformers alike can learn much from Rothstein's deep knowledge of Swedish government and his innovative model for analyzing political reform in social democratic societies.

The end of the Cold War and the ‘War on Terror’ has signalled a shift in the security policies of all states. It has also led to the reconsideration of the policy of neutrality, and what being neutral means in the present age. This book examines the conceptualisation of neutrality from the Peloponnesian War to today, uncovering how neutrality has been a neglected and misunderstood subject in International Relations (IR) theory and politics. By rethinking neutrality through constructivism, this book argues that neutrality is intrinsically linked to identity. Using Sweden as a case study, it links identity, sovereignty, internationalism and solidarity to the debates about Swedish neutrality today and how neutrality has been central to Swedish identity and its worldview. It also examines the challenges to Swedish neutrality and neutrality broadly, in terms of European integration, globalisation, the decline of the state and sovereignty, and new threats to security, such as international terrorism, arguing that the norms and values of neutrality can be reworked to contribute to a more cosmopolitan international order.

In The Swedish Experiment Assar Lindbeck characterizes the economic and social system in Sweden in terms of a number of institutional features by which Sweden has differed from most other developed countries. They refer mainly to the division of responsibilities between the private and the government sector, in particular with respect to economic security, employment, income distribution, consumption and investment. The book concludes by asking whether the Swedish experiment is gradually unwinding and, if so, why. The Swedish Experiment is written in a nontechnical fashion and should be of great interest not only to professional economists, but also to students of economics and other social sciences as well as to general readers.

Globalization and Social Change takes a refreshing new perspective on globalization and widening social and spatial inequalities. Diane Perrons draws on ideas about the new economy, risk society, welfare regimes and political economy to explain the growing social and spatial divisions characteristic of our increasingly divided world. Combining original argument with a clear exposition of the underlying processes, Perrons illustrates her points through a series of case studies linking people in rich and poor countries. She places strong emphasis on the socio-economic aspects of change, particularly changes in working patterns and living arrangements, and makes reference to the new global division of labour, declining industrial regions and widening social divisions within what she terms 'superstar regions'. Wide in scope, this new study also focuses on changing family structures, the feminization of employment, migration, work life balance and new conceptions of gender identity and gender roles. Diane Perrons' enlightening book concludes that divisions by social class and gender are in some ways becoming more significant than divisions between nations, and suggests that new systems of social and economic organization are necessary for social peace in the new millennium.

This volume contains a series of papers written for a symposium entitled "Adult Education and Allocation Policy in Sweden." Intended to provide a broader framework for analyzing allocation policy in adult education, the first paper is organized around the assumption that the effects of allocation policy both on participants and society are greatly determined by institutional roles defining who gets recruited to what kind of adult education and to what extent different programs and self-directed learning contribute to the creation of resources. Discussed next is the allocation policy in various Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden). The next paper, which examines recruitment in the context of allocation policy, focuses on the ways in which changes in the occupational structure over time can illustrate long-term effects of education. Also presented is a study of dropouts in municipal adult schools in the context of allocation policy. Finally, an analysis is made of the municipal adult education teaching process in the context of allocation policy. (MN)

This new study uses longitudinal data to provide new insights into the changing dynamics of lives of women today. In particular, it explores the potential of longitudinal or life course analysis as a powerful tool for appreciating the gender dimension of social life.