Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2013

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2013.02.002

Abstract

Recent ‘democratic revolutions’ in Islamic countries call for a re-consideration of transitions to and from democracy. Transitions to democracy have often been considered the outcome of socio-economic modernization and therefore slow and incremental processes. But as a recent study has made clear, in the last century, transitions to democracy have mainly occurred through rapid leaps rather than slow and incremental steps. We show that transitions to democracy starting before 1900 lasted for an average of 50 years and a median of 56 years, while transitions originating later took an average of 4.6 years and a median of 1.7 years. However, our results indicate that the survival time of democratic regimes is longer in cases where the transition periods have also been longer, suggesting that patience paid in previous democratizations. We identify a critical ‘consolidation-preparing’ transition period of 12 years. Our results also show that in cases where the transitions have not been made directly from autocracy to democracy, there are no main institutional paths towards democracy. Instead, democracy seems reachable from a variety of directions.

Institutet för Framtidsstudier arbetsrapport 2013:1.

Ladda hem arbetsrapport 2013:1.

2013. International Journal of E-Politics, Vol. 4 (1), 1-17.

På jakt efter framgångsrik arbetslivsintegrering. Effekter av deltagande i socialfondsfinansierade projekt i jämförelse med Arbetsförmedlingens ordinarie verksamhet.

I den här rapporten jämför vi utfallet på arbetsmarknaden för personer som deltagit i ett projekt som finansieras av Europeiska socialfonden med utfallet för de som deltog i Arbetsförmedlingens löpande aktiviteter för motsvarande grupper.

Den analys som presenteras i denna rapport tyder på att bedömningen av effekten av deltagande i projekt som finansieras av Europeiska socialfonden är mycket beroende av vilka ordinarie aktiviteter som valts som referenspunkt.

För att sätta sysselsättningen mellan inrikes- och utrikes födda i den svenska arbetsmarknaden i ett större sammanhang, innehåller rapporten också en analys av arbetslöshet bland invandrare i femton europeiska länder. Det finns också en beskrivning av de aktiva arbetsmarknadsprogram i Sverige samt en beskrivning av de viktigaste målen för Europeiska socialfonden i Sverige och de projekt som finansieras av fonden.

Ladda ner rapporten

Rapporten presenterades vid ett seminarium den 21 februari 2013. Den kommenterades då av Arbetsförmedlingen och ESF. Se seminariet här

doi: 10.1093/bjc/azt005

We examine the gap in registered crime between the children of immigrants and the children of native Swedes. We follow all individuals who completed compulsory schooling during the period 1990–93 in the Stockholm Metropolitan area (N = 63,462) up to their thirties and analyse how family of origin and neighbourhood segregation during adolescence, subsequent to arriving in Sweden, influence the gap in recorded crimes. For males, we are able to explain between half and three-quarters of the gap in crime by reference to parental socio-economic resources and neighbourhood segregation. For females, we can explain even more, sometimes the entire gap. In addition, we tentatively examine the role of co-nationality or culture by comparing the crime rates of randomly chosen pairs of individuals originating from the same country. We find only a small correlation in the crime of individuals who share the same origin, indicating that culture is unlikely to be a strong cause of crime among immigrants.

Läs mer på hemsidan för The British Journal of Criminology.

SAGE journals Acta Sociologica 2013 56: 3

DOI: 10.1177/0001699312468802

http://asj.sagepub.com/content/56/1/3

Abstract

The way employee flows generate ethnic and gender segregation across workplaces is investigated using a population sample of 80,139 workplaces with 977,978 employees in the Stockholm area. Comparisons of actual stocks and flows of employees across workplaces to counterfactual simulations of these reveal that segregation clearly has a random component to it: Even with random allocation of employees to workplaces, segregation would still be substantial. Systematic (non-random) segregation appears to be upheld primarily because employees recruited to workplaces are similar to those already employed there, not because underrepresented groups within workplaces are systematically screened out. This tendency appears to be less connected to between-group differences in education, occupation or industry, but instead largely sustained by the tendency of employers to select new employees from a pool of workplaces where their employees have been employed previously. Network recruiting might generate this pattern, but unobserved individual and workplace factors cannot be ruled out as potential confounders. The results speak to theories of homosociality applied to segregation processes: If homosocial biases affect segregation, they apparently do so mostly in the recruitment process to workplaces, but less so through processes of exclusion of minorities from workplaces.

i Swärd, Hans et al (Red.) Vägar till välfärd. Liber, 2013, s 323-333.

I detta kapitel ligger fokus på svenskarnas attityder till välfärdsstaten: Har tilliten för välfärdstjänsterna och socialförsäkringen ökat eller minskat under åren? Ökar eller minskar betalningsviljan och stödet för kollektiv finansiering? Hur har stödet för stat och kommun som lämplig serviceleverantör förändrats? Har misstänksamheten om att välfärdspolitiken missbrukas i olika avseenden vuxit eller krympt? Tidsperspektivet varierar beroende på exakt vilka frågor som avses, men i stort sett omfattas perioden från 1980-talet, då de första bredare undersökningarna av svenskarnas åsikter kring välfärdsstaten genomfördes, fram till dagens situation en bit in på 2000-talet. Det finns på det hela taget inga tecken på något sviktande opinionsstöd. Attityderna är påfallande stabila och där förändringar kan registreras går de snarast i riktning mot ökat stöd. Fler hävdar i dag att de är beredda att själva betala högre skatt om den går till välfärdspolitiska ändamål, det finns ett starkare stöd för kollektiv finansiering av välfärdspolitiken och färre misstänker att välfärdspolitiken missbrukas. Däremot har förtroendet försvagats för socialförsäkringarna medan det stärkts för välfärdstjänsterna. Tillitstappet för socialförsäkringarna är särskilt påtagligt bland marknadssvaga grupper, som arbetare och personer med försörjningsproblem av olika slag.

Underlagsrapport till den parlamentariska socialförsäkringsutredningen.

http://www.psfu.se/uploads/files/12_vid_arbetslivets_granser.pdf

kap. 23 Intergenerational redistribution in Sweden’s public and privat sectors

Köp den här: http://www.e-elgar.com/Print_product_detail.lasso?id=13816

Population Aging and the Generational Economy was selected as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2012 by Choice Magazine. http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about

Institute for Futures Studies, IFFS Report 2012/3, 82 p.

During the last decade, Denmark and Sweden have become increasingly dissimilar in terms of migration policy. While Sweden has remained relatively open with regard to refugees and asylum seekers, Denmark has gradually closed its borders to the extent that is has been questioned whether the country even lives up to the minimum standards set by international conventions.

Moreover, Sweden has a refugee dispersal policy which allows newly arrived refugees, asylum seekers and their relatives to choose where in Sweden they want to live, provided that they can find their own housing in that particular location.

In Denmark, on the other hand, those refugees, asylum seekers and their relatives, that actually do make it to Denmark, are dispersed as evenly as possible over the countries’ municipalities for a period of three years. Taken together, these two differences in terms of migration and refugee dispersal policies are bound to have effects on the reception of refugees at the municipal level and perhaps most strongly on the question of how to find housing for the newcomers.

The aim of this report is to study in what ways and to what extent, these differences are perceived at the municipal level in the cities of Malmö and Århus.

English version.

Endast tryckt på svenska. / Only printed in Swedish.