scholarly journals Terror in utopia: Crisis (mis-) management during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 961-1007
Author(s):  
Sörensen Stilhoff

This article provides an early account to document Swedens strategy to the COVID-19 pandemic and critically examines the countrys crisis response during the first six months of 2020. Sweden stood out internationally with a hands-off approach that gained much attention. Schools remained open, no lock-downs were underaken, no face masks reccommended, even in care homes, and testing-tracing-isolation was very limited. Although Swedens death rate per million was among the seven highest in the world during the period, there was no change in strategy. The article employs concepts to analyse and understand this peculiar approach and the secutity culture and political culture underpinning it. It uncovers deeper systemic defects and a breakdown in the state functions accompanyied by secrecy and cover-ups, as well as a totalitarian element in the political culture.

Author(s):  
Michael P. DeJonge

This chapter continues the examination of Bonhoeffer’s first phase of resistance through an exposition of “The Church and the Jewish Question,” turning now to the modes of resistance proper to the church’s preaching office. Because such resistance involves the church speaking against the state, it appears to stand in contradiction with Bonhoeffer’s suggestion earlier in the essay that the church should not speak out against the state. This is in fact not a contradiction but rather the coherent expression of the political vision as outlined in the first several chapters of this book, which requires that the church criticize the state under certain circumstances but not others. The specific form of word examined here is the indirectly political word (type 3 resistance) by which the church reminds the messianic state of its mandate to preserve the world with neither “too little” nor “too much” order.


1995 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-184
Author(s):  
Mark Voss-Hubbard

Historians have long recognized the unprecedented expansion of federal power during the Civil War. Moreover most scholars agree that the expansion of federal power manifested itself most immediately and profoundly in the abolition of slavery. In a sense, through the Emancipation Proclamation, the Republican administration injected the national government into the domain of civil rights, and by doing so imbued federal power with a distinct moral purpose. The passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments codified this expression of federal authority, rejecting the bedrock tenet in American republican thought that centralized power constituted the primary threat to individual liberty.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-113
Author(s):  
Iaroslav Petrunenko ◽  
Oleg Podtserkovnyi

Complex and contradictory processes of modern social transformations and the need to overcome the crisis in the economy require the appropriate influence of the state and a clear system of socio-economic management through the formation and implementation of effective state economic policy. The main elements of economic policy are financial and credit, budgetary, scientific and technical, structural, social, investment, agricultural, regional, foreign economic policy. The implementation of state economic policy is considered in terms of the relationship between social problems and the state. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to study the essence, tools and methods of state economic policy in modern conditions. It is also necessary to identify the main risks and features of further development of state economic policy of individual states in a global imbalance and crisis. The theoretical part is devoted to the study of the essence of state economic policy, theoretical and practical aspects of its organization in the state, as well as tools that can be used by the state. The resulting part is devoted to the consideration of the situation, in which the world economy has found itself in 2020 in the conditions of the economic COVID-19 crisis. General forecasts have not provided to individual states because it has been impossible to predict the end of the pandemic and the return of the world to normal life. However, it is clear that the world economy has undergone irreversible processes that will synergistically affect different states in different ways. The crisis has hit a significant number of industries, including tourism, logistics, hotel business, the crisis has been felt in world markets: oil prices have collapsed, as well as the stock markets. Undoubtedly, there are areas with a rapid growth, especially the pharmaceutical industry and retail, online delivery services, IT entertainment and communications industry, information marketing business and education and training services. It is likely that the indicators of economic development in the states by the end of the year will be better than the results of the first half of the year. The basic forecast of economic world development assumes a sharp growth of the economy after a short recession after quarantine. The financial capabilities of the EU states vary considerably, but each state must pursue counter-cyclical policies aimed at stabilizing its own economy. The answer to the question of what kind of crisis response policy they can afford depends on the fiscal policy of the states before the crisis. In economically developed states, where emergency measures have been introduced, governments and central banks issue trillions of dollars in government spending, social support of citizens, and interest-free business loans to limit the economic damage of quarantine. At the same time, in Latin America and Southeast Asia, total quarantine is impossible in multi-million cities. Such states have a triple effect of suffering from the virus, the environment and poverty. States dependent on the export of natural resources and raw materials, when faced with the crisis, are forced to sell them for nothing, so they will suffer great losses. More than 150 states have set up anti-crisis headquarters and are taking anti-crisis measures. The authors have also tried to predict how largescale the global economic crisis will be for Ukraine, what consequences await it, and what measures need to be taken to overcome it.


Author(s):  
Christian Welzel ◽  
Ronald Inglehart

This chapter examines the role that the concept of political culture plays in comparative politics. In particular, it considers how the political culture field increases our understanding of the social roots of democracy and how these roots are transforming through cultural change. In analysing the inspirational forces of democracy, key propositions of the political culture approach are compared with those of the political economy approach. The chapter first provides and overview of cultural differences around the world before tracing the historical roots of the political culture concept. It then tackles the question of citizens' democratic maturity and describes the allegiance model of the democratic citizen. It also explores party–voter dealignment, the assertive model of the democratic citizen, and political culture in non-democracies. It concludes with an assessment of how trust, confidence, and social capital increase a society's capacity for collective action.


Author(s):  
Ronald J. Schmidt

This article considers the concept of the so-called American exceptionalism in new contexts. It explains that American exceptionalism is a highly adaptable narrative for commentators on the political culture of the U.S. was first coined in the mid-twentieth century as part of an attempt by social scientists to explain the lack of a revolutionary socialist response to the failures of industrial capitalism in the Great Depression. The article suggests that rather than reversing or redeeming American exceptionalism, the theorist must now confront it and find new ways to read the role played by the U.S. in a new century, and refuse to be tempted by the easy and apolitical escape of identifying the one true and essential American soul.


1992 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 512-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES COTTON

South Korea cannot be seen as an example of the bureaucratic-authoritarian state type. Neither its position in the world system nor its industrialization strategy can be used to give a sufficient explanation of its political and social character. Although these factors have played a part, particular historical, political, and cultural circumstances have permitted the state to enjoy a degree of autonomy during the period of rapid social and economic transformation from the 1960s to the 1980s. The determinants and character of the transition to democratization generally support this analysis, but also indicate that limits exist to the degree of liberalization to be expected in the political system.


1975 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell Owusu

Policy research involves two acts of translation: translation of the problem from the world of reality and policy into the world of scientific method, and then a translation of the research results back into the world of reality and policy.1Since the political scientist, David Easton, commented critically in 1959 on the state of the study of politics by anthropologists,2 many interesting changes have taken place in the analyses of African politics – in fact, of politics of non-western societies in general.


2010 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Krupa

Recent ethnographic work on the state has exposed a crack in one of the founding myths of modern political power. Despite the state's transcendental claim to wielding absolute, exclusive authority within national territory, scholars have shown that in much of the world there are, in fact, “too many actors competing to perform as state,” sites where various power blocs “are acting as the state and producing the same powerful effects” (Aretxaga 2003: 396, 398) Achille Mbembe (2001: 74), writing of the external fiscal controls imposed upon African countries during the late 1980s, has termed this a condition of “fractionated sovereignty”—the dispersal of official state functions among various non-state actors. There is, as Mbembe suggests, “nothing particularly African” about this situation (ibid.). Around the world, the power of various “shadow” organizations like arms dealers and paramilitary groups seems increasingly to depend upon their ability to out-perform the state in many of its definitive functions, from the provision of security and welfare to the collection of taxes and administration of justice (Nugent 1999; Nordstrom 2004; Hansen 2005). These observations present a serious challenge to conventional state theory. They force us to consider whether such conditions of fragmented, competitive statecraft might be better understood not as deviant exceptions to otherwise centralized political systems but, rather, as the way that government is actually experienced in much of the world today.


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