Skolinspektionen har i drygt 150 år genom skolbesök och andra metoder ansvarat för övervakning, uppsikt, tillsyn, granskning och kontroll av kunskapsnivån, lärarnas arbete, skolbyggnadernas standard och mycket annat. Dess plats i statsförvaltningen har skiftat, likaså verksamhetens tyngdpunkt. Men hur viktiga är själva skolbesöken? Ska inspektörerna utöver att kontrollera skolarbetet också ge råd till såväl lärare som skolans politiker och administratörer? Spänningen mellan kontroll och rollen som rådgivare följer Skolinspektionen över hela dess tid.

Professor Torbjörn Nilsson är historiker och verksam vid Samtidshistoriska institutet vid Södertörns högskola.

The author analyses the operation by Swedish diplomatsin the Soviet Union during the peak of the Stalinist Terror.Although Swedish communists living in the USSR have beenin the spotlight of some journalists and historians, the extent ofthe different Swedish groups and the complicated diplomaticactions to help them are nearly unknown. Who could besaved? Who disappeared in the Gulag? The context is the Soviet actions against all foreigners in the Great Terror from 1937,forcing them to either become Soviet citizens or immediatelyleave the country. Comparisons are made with Finnish peoplein the Soviet Union, a group much harder hit by the terror thanthe small groups of Swedes. 

In January 1867, the new Swedish Parliament, the bicameral Riksdag, was opened. Its upper chamber, based on graduated voting rights, played a decisive role in the process of modernisation for several decades. Liberals and conservatives used the state as an instrument, contrary to the principles of laissez-faire. The upper chamber, with its positive attitude towards allotments and government intervention, acted in a more progressive way than the lower chamber, while also strongly defending its privileged political position. Its more dynamic role in the field of economics was lost in the 1880s when a modern party system was introduced, and increased parliamentarism and universal suffrage were demanded. In the decisive year of 1918, conservatives in the upper chamber were subjected to strong pressure to yield to democratic reform. The attitudes of business leaders, the archbishop and members of the royal family were specially important in this respect. The fear of a more radical development, like in Russia and Germany, and the need for stability forced them to support reform. After the democratic breakthrough, the Swedish Senate, lacking a real function, increasingly lost its legitimacy, before it was disbanded after its last session on 16 December 1970.

In 1989, Polish research policy underwent transformation in the context of a broader societal transition from state socialism to democracy. KBN, Komitet Badan Naukowych (”The State Committee for Scientific Research”) was primarily responsible for the design of a new research policy and organization of the research system. In order to allay concerns about lingering state control, the Committee was to operate as a more or less autonomous body in relation to the workings of the Polish government. The Committee not only had responsibility for administering research grants, but also for research policy at the macro level to ensure academic freedom from political control. As a result the ambition of science policy was rather abruptly transformed from an instrumental view of science tied closely to societal progress under the Soviet regime to one recognising the intrinsic value of scientific knowledge. This transformed view of the role of science was not entirely new. It had strong roots in the political history and the structures and culture of the "old" research system, and more broadly among the Polish intelligentsia.

However, several contextual factors acted to undermine the heralded ambition of autonomous scientific governance.  In the 1990s, economic conditions in Poland worsened.  In response mobilisation of public resources for the development of the market economy became an urgent imperative as did planning and preparation for the Poland’s accession to EU in 2004. These factors contributed to a yet another comprehensive reinterpretation and renegotiation of the role of science in Poland.  The empirical material that forms the basis for the study consists of both KBN’s periodical journal Sprawy Nauki that became the arena of science policy debate in the country and various governance documents from the study period. Using a social constructionist approach, this study analyses these transformational moments by focusing on how the dynamics of change found expression in the reinterpretations and renegotiations of the role of science in Polish research policy between 1989 and 2011.

Nation-states and national identities are a product of European history and have been the most salient framework of spatial identification since the nineteenth century. In the past decades, however, the EU has attempted to foster a supplementary European sense of identity, embodied in the notion of European citizenship. Moreover, the European continent encompasses various macro-regions that have been presented as having certain historical significance and that play a role in identity politics. Two prominent examples are the Baltic and the Mediterranean regions.

This study reconstructs through interviews the overlapping identifications of Latvian and Greek migrants, respectively – migrants who have moved to Sweden in different time periods after the Second World War up to the present. The interviews focus on issues related to integration, feelings of belonging and spatial identification with the countries of origin (Latvia, Greece) and residence (Sweden) in order to understand the significance of the nation in the current European context. Another aim is to examine how the idea of a common European identity, as an aggregate based on national and regional affiliation, works in practice. Furthermore, the interviews executed in this study give an account of how migrants position themselves in relation to the Baltic Sea region and the Mediterranean as well as to alternative macro regional spaces. The study of immigrants’ narratives about their social and everyday life, and their personal experience of coping with public authorities seeks to improve our understanding of the current phenomenon of internal European migration, which is still an under-researched field.

The analysis shows that the nation, both that of origin and of residence, remains the most significant space of identification for the interviewed EU-migrants. It is obvious that the EU has not brought forth a European identity parallel to the national one. However, elements of European identification and belonging exist in the responses of the migrants, revolving around their benefitting from free mobility inside the EU. This study shows also that there barely is any particular identification with the Baltic and Mediterranean regions among the examined migrants. However, other macro regional identifications appeared, such as the Baltic States for Latvian and the Balkan for Greek interviewees.

This chapter aims to explore the development of this movement in Sweden in the 1980s, i.e. in that “middle-earth” between the formative period of a renewed environmental movement (1960s–1970s) and the completion of its institutionalization at global level in the 1990s. Theories of political opportunities structure have overlooked that the relation between the political arena and the complex galaxy of environmental groups was far from being uncomplicated. The chapter focuses precisely on this multifaceted interplay, which is studied through two cases of bottom-up mobilization, one at national level, the anti-nuclear campaign, and the other at local level: the struggle against the Scandinavian Link. How were institutions regarded by these activists? How did they experience the relation between representative and direct democracy, both in principle and in concrete terms (dialogue/confrontation with institutional representatives)? By addressing these issues, this chapter aims to contribute research on social movements with a more nuanced understanding of their oscillation between the institutional and the confrontational level. The sources are, besides secondary literature, bulletins and publications of the groups and associations involved in the two campaigns examined in this chapter as well as media articles. 

The article focuses on several figures who are particularly interesting when it comes to develop a radical critique of capitalism that does not shrink from the possibility of designing and imaging a different future. Following Michael Löwy, in our study we have identified relationships of 'elective affinity' between figures who might appear different and dissimilar, at least at first glance: the Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai, the German communist Paul Mattick, the Italian Socialist Raniero Panzieri and the French social scientist Alain Bihr. After providing some biographical information, we analyze their respective paths to a socialism based on, and achieved through, self-organization and self-government.We do not intend to build a new tradition with this review of thinkers, most of whom were also political militants; rather, more modestly, we hope to suggest a path forward for both research and political activism. In order to show how significant the questions raised by these four intellectuals-militants still are even today, in the Conclusions we analyze the social and political experiment carried out by the Movement for a Democratic Society of the Rojava region in Syrian Kurdistan.

I debatten om den svenska skolans kris lyfts ofta betydelsen av de omfattande reformer som genomfördes under några år kring 1990 fram. Det gäller framför allt kommunaliseringen, införandet av skolpeng och det fria skolvalet. Hur gick besluten till? Vilka var de centrala aktörerna? Vad var syftet med reformerna?

I juli 2014 bjöd Samtidshistoriska institutet vid Södertörns högskola tillsammans med Lärarnas Riksförbund in några aktörer som på olika sätt varit aktiva under 1990-talets skolreformer till ett vittnesseminarium. Utgångspunkten var att de skulle ge sin minnesbild av skeendet, vilken roll de själva spelat, samt hur de nu, cirka 25 år senare såg på resultatet.

Medverkande: Lars Leijonborg (FP), f.d. utbildningsminister och partiledare, Christer Wretborn f.d. ambassadör, departementsråd och central tjänsteman vid kommunaliseringen 1989, Ann-Cathrine Haglund (M), f.d. landshövding, ordförande Riksdagens utbildningsutskott 1991–1993, Peje Emilsson, grundare av och ordförande för Kunskapsskolan och Bo Jansson, förbundsordförande, Lärarnas riksförbund.

Den 21 september 2016 anordnade Samtidshistoriska institutet som en del av Södertörns högskolas 20-årsjubileum vittnesseminariet ”Levande campus. Utmaningar och möjligheter för Södertörns högskola i den nya regionala stadskärnan i Flemingsberg”.

Utgångspunkten för seminariet var att under jubileumsåret inte bara blicka bakåt, utan också lufta idéer kring högskolans framtida utmaningar och utvecklingsmöjligheter. Frågor som diskuterades handlade om hur det sociala landskapet bör gestaltas när det är en kunskapsinstitution som utgör navet för platsen, samt vilken roll Södertörns högskola ska ha i den nya regionala stadskärnan som håller på att växa fram.

This article examines the intertwined circulation of multiple kinds of Nordic models. We seek to understand how modelization of the region occurred at multiple levels and in disparate fields, in other words how different aspects of Nordic policies and politics came to be understood as worthy of interest and at times of emulation. In doing so, we aim to contribute to the critical scholarship on the Nordic model concept, exploring how it has been changed and contested over time, the contexts in which it circulates and why it has generated interest. Methodologically, we use digital tools to analyse scholarly literature in different disciplines published between 1965 and 2019. In focusing on intellectual constructions of the Nordic model, we locate academia as a crucial field for the development of the Nordic model concept, but one that is in communication with and integrates typologies developed in other fields. Following a brief discussion of the model concept, we assess intensifications and critical junctures in the modelization of the Nordics through wordclouds. Second, we demonstrate the variety of such modelizations through case studies. Third, we conclude by pointing to the rhetorical and heuristic effects of such modelizations.