Oscar L. Larsson

Bio: Oscar L. Larsson is an academic researcher from Swedish National Defence College. The author has contributed to research in topics: Corporate governance & Governmentality. The author has an hindex of 9, co-authored 23 publications receiving 261 citations. Previous affiliations of Oscar L. Larsson include Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences & Uppsala University.

Poststructural policy analysis – a guide to practice

Abstract: In this fairly short book, Carol Lee Bacchi and Susan Goodwin further develop Bacchi’s novel approach to policy analysis, which they term ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be?’ (WPR). WPR is an an...

Using Post-Structuralism to Explore The Full Impact of Ideas on Politics

Abstract: Colin Hay's constructivist institutionalism and Vivien A. Schmidt's discursive institutionalism are two recent attempts to theorize ideas as potential explanations of institutional change. This new attention to the causal role of ideas is welcome, but Hay and Schmidt do not take into consideration the constitutive and structural aspects of ideas. Instead they reduce ideas to properties of individual conscious minds, scanting the respects in which ideas are intersubjectively baked into the practices shared by individuals. This aspect of ideasarguably, the institutional side of ideasis developed in post-structuralist thought, which therefore demands a place in ideational research.

Responsibilization in contemporary Swedish crisis management : expanding ‘bare life’ biopolitics through exceptionalism and neoliberal governmentality

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate the changing relations between individuals and public authorities within the Swedish crisis management system from 1995 to 2017. After the end of the Cold Wa...

Sovereign power beyond the state: a critical reappraisal of governance by networks

Abstract: This article argues that existent critique against the discourse and practice of governance by networks fails to consider the more substantial political challenges that such a style of governance generates. By not addressing the depoliticization claims present in the discourse of governance by networks there is a continuation of the seemingly attractive solution and possibility for states to perform metagovernance of networks. Such suggestions have, however, overlooked the instability of networks and the politics of politics that this form of organization entails. By making use of a retheorization of sovereign power and its double relationship to public political space, it is argued that new insights can be gained with regards to the role of networks in contemporary politics. This retheorization suggests that sovereign power is present when decisions are made both on the political nature of issues and on whether accountability to the wider public should apply. Thus, contrary to the claim that sovereign po...

The Governmentality of Meta-governance : Identifying Theoretical and Empirical Challenges of Network Governance in the Political Field of Security and Beyond

Abstract: Meta-governance recently emerged in the field of governance as a new approach which claims that its use enables modern states to overcome problems associated with network governance. This thesis sh ...

The culture of control: crime and social order in contemporary, society

Abstract: Nos últimos trinta trinta anos, houve profundas mudanças na forma como compreendemos o crime e a justiça criminal. O crime tornou-se um evento simbólico, um verdadeiro teste para a ordem social e para as políticas governamentais, um desafio para a sociedade civil, para a democracia e para os direitos humanos. Segundo David Garland, professor da Faculdade de Direito da New York University, um dos principais autores no campo da Sociologia da Punição e com artigo publicado na Revista de Sociologia e Política , número 13, na modernidade tardia houve uma verdadeira obsessão securitária, direcionando as políticas criminais para um maior rigor em relação às penas e maior intolerância com o criminoso. Há trinta anos, nos EUA e na Inglaterra essa tendência era insuspeita. O livro mostra que os dois países compartilham intrigantes similaridades em suas práticas criminais, a despeito da divisão racial, das desigualdades econômicas e da letalidade violenta que marcam fortemente o cenário americano. Segundo David Garland, encontram-se nos dois países os “mesmos tipos de riscos e inseguranças, a mesma percepção a respeito dos problemas de um controle social não-efetivo, as mesmas críticas da justiça criminal tradicional, e as mesmas ansiedades recorrentes sobre mudança e ordem sociais”1 (GARLAND, 2001, p. 2). O argumento principal da obra é o seguinte: a modernidade tardia, esse distintivo padrão de relações sociais, econômicas e culturais, trouxe consigo um conjunto de riscos, inseguranças e problemas de controle social que deram uma configuração específica às nossas respostas ao crime, ao garantir os altos custos das políticas criminais, o grau máximo de duração das penas e a excessivas taxas de encarceramento.

Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century

Abstract: (2003). Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 130-130.

Political Theology: Nordic Voices

Abstract: This is a special issue on political theology in the Nordic countries. The Nordic countries represent a region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic and consists of five countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Nor way and Sweden, including their associated territories, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Aland. Around 25 million people live in an area of 3.5 million km 2 . Although there are significant differences between the countries, it would not be an exaggeration to suggest that they also share a common history, including similar societal structures, cultures and religious heritage. Linguistically, they all, with the exception of Finland and the Sami people (that inhabit Finland and Norway as well as Sweden), belong to the same language group, and throughout history there has been a constant exchange, sometimes of a more war-like and sometimes of a more friendly nature. In the fifteenth century, all of the Nordic countries were united in the Kalmar Union; it was not until the twentieth century that all five countries that we now have were independent from each other. Politically, Denmark, Norway and Sweden are constitutional monarchies with a parliamentary system, whereas Finland and Iceland are parliamentary republics. Iceland and Norway do not belong to the European Union, whereas the other three do. Religiously, Christianity has been the dominant religion in the Nordic countries for more than a thousand years, and the latter were all part of the Lutheran reformation in the sixteenth 1. Ola Sigurdson is professor of systematic theolog y and director of Centre for Culture and Health at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The author of more than fifteen books on systematic theology, political philosophy, theology and culture and political theology, his most recent publication is Theology and Marxism in Eagleton and Žižek: A Conspiracy of Hope (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).