Central bank collateral frameworks and the liquidity transformation they allow for play important roles for financing long term economic projects (and thereby economic growth) while preserving financial stability. To shed light on early central bank collateral frameworks, this note analyses a document of the Riksens ständers lånebank of 1682 which pledges real estate to serve as collateral for a loan of the Riksbank to the farmer Olof Olofsson. A transcription and translation are provided and the document is analyzed in the context of the 17th century operations, balance sheet, and mandate of the Riksens ständers lånebank and the related literature. We recall the role of central bank credit to private debtors in early central banking, and that, contrary to some prominent views, government financing was more the exception than the rule as key reason to establish and operate central banks before 1700. We also derive lessons for today's central bank collateral frameworks and their role in liquidity transformation.

This thesis investigates contemporary practices focused on facilitating the integration of those who, for various reasons, are perceived as standing“outside” society. The practices represent a societal response to a perceived need for integration. It aims to explore how integration as a social processof change is professionally facilitated, as well as how its facilitators –analytically referred to as “integrators” – reason. Such an investigation aims to help us understand the ideas that shape our contemporary understanding of society and its members. Through a “dialectical dialogue method”, conversations were conducted with integrators from eight workplaces in Sweden and Hungary, examining their knowledge, reasoning, and underlying assumptions about their practice and its role in society. Sweden and Hungary constitute two national contexts that, in this thesis, are understood as employing a shared manner of integration facilitation practice.

The analysis reveals that integrators operate within a set of inherently contradictory demands: (1) to meet their clients without prejudice while relying on cultural generalisations; (2) to respect their clients’ differences while guiding them toward established societal norms; and (3) to motivate voluntary compliance from their clients within a context where expectations have already been defined for them. These contradictory demands challenge both integration policies and established research paradigms, revealing a more complex interplay of values, ideals, and epistemologies than is typically acknowledged.

The thesis interprets these contradictions through Chantal Mouffe’s theory of the democratic paradox as a non-reconcilable negotiation between liberal ideals and democratic practices, suggesting that integrators enact a paradoxical role: upholding ideals of unconditional inclusion while realising conditional belonging. Integrators must, in effect, persuade individuals to desire becoming what they are expected to be, navigating between coercive adaptation and idealised mutual recognition. In this way, they take on a political function, mediating not just between people and institutions butalso between conflicting visions of society itself. However, the thesis contends that their work simultaneously reflects the conformist and depoliticised nature of the social sphere, as discussed by Hannah Arendt. Within this sphere, the conformist assumptions underlying integration discourses often remain hidden. Integrators thus become both enforcers and negotiators of societal boundaries.

Finally, the thesis explores how integrators must maintain a double perspective: a critical distance from society and an intimate familiarity with it – what Alfred Schütz described through the positions of “the stranger”and “the homecomer”. Concurrently, the thesis explores the limits of the integrators’ critical distance through Sara Ahmed’s concept of the stranger. It argues that the integrators’ encounters with clients, who are positioned as strangers, are shaped by visible markers of difference produced through histories of exclusion. As such, clients appear not as unfamiliar others but as familiarly strange, which enables the ongoing reproduction of the integrators’ imagined conception of an integrated society. By analysing the integrators’ role, position, and practice, the thesis deepens our understanding of how integration is enacted – not just as policy or discourse but as a lived, negotiated, and contradictory practice.

In this essay you will meet a dialogue leader who facilitates existential dialogues and participants whoare engaged in philosophizing. You are welcomed into an existential salon in an auditorium inStockholm. There is a description of the process, but above all it is an attempt to understand whathappens with both the leader and the participants in the group. What sort of process occurs when the participants explore themes such as love, hope, choice and death? What goes on in them and between them? What is this sort of philosophizing?During the course of the story, it will become evident that the participants undergoa creative process while philosophizing from longing to aftermaths, that the author calls life-creativity. The investigation shows the dialogue leader what is crucial in her way of leading the group process, and what she should refrain from doing to facilitate this philosophizing process. The testimonies from the participants aresurrounded by material from philosophers, especially the existential philosophers Gabriel Marcel and Karl Jaspers and their view about philosophizing and reflecting with others.

This study examines how the Swedish government's national goal of increasing youngpeople's reading is interpreted and implemented through the Swedish Arts Council's initiativeMore Reading for Young People (2024–2026). The focus is on young people insocio-economically disadvantaged areas and how national policy decisions are translated intolocal practice.The study is based on semi-structured interviews with project managers and Arts Counciladministrators, as well as document analysis. Four of the eight pilot projects were included inthe study.The results show that the Swedish Arts Council sets overall frameworks that allow for localadaptation, leading to variation in methods and priorities between projects. A clear goal shiftis identified, where the focus moves partly from increasing young people's reading toprocesses such as collaboration, network building, and method development. Young people'sparticipation also varies and is often limited, which restricts their influence on the projects.The study contributes knowledge about how cultural policy goals are transformed whenimplemented in project form, and how interactions between national governance and localconditions shape the outcomes.

Keywords: reading promotion, implementation, collaboration, participation, goalshifting, governance.

This chapter explores the Indigenous moral-philosophical conceptualization of Buen Vivir (Vivir Bien/ Sumak Kawsay/Suma Qamaña) as a decolonial framework for social justice and ecological harmony, rooted in Indigenous epistemologies from the Andes and Amazon. It emphasizes the term Tinkuy, representing encounters and confrontations among diverse knowledge systems, which underscores Indigenous resistance against colonial legacies. The authors analyze the constitutional recognition of Indigenous rights in Ecuador and Bolivia, positioning Buen Vivir as a response to capitalist development models. The chapter argues for a multidimensional understanding of Buen Vivir, integrating class/justice, culture/ethnicity/ontology/epistemology, and ecologism to address the complexities of Indigenous struggles. Through comparative analysis of Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives, the authors highlight the importance of ethnographic research in capturing diverse voices. The political implications of Buen Vivir are examined, revealing tensions between Indigenous movements and state policies, particularly regarding extractivism. The authors advocate for recognizing the duality of particularistic and universalistic goals within Indigenous movements, framing Buen Vivir as a floating and plural conceptualization, a "flying river" that adapts to local contexts while promoting social justice. Ultimately, the chapter calls for a holistic understanding of Buen Vivir that encompasses both cultural preservation and broader socio-economic justice, underscoring its relevance in contemporary struggles for ecological sustainability and equity.

Denna studie undersöker hur klassklyftor och klassamhället behandlas av nutida tryckt media. Föremål för undersökningen är artiklar från Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen och Svenska Dagbladet. Uppsatsen har en kvantitativ del och en kvalitativ del. Den kvantitativa delen har syftat för det första till att undersöka i vilka sammanhang som klassklyftor förekommer, för det andra i vilka genrer som klassklyftor diskuteras och för det tredje vilka gestaltning journalisterna använder sig av när de skriver om klassklyftor. Den kvalitativa delen undersöker hur klassklyftor görs meningsfullt i sitt sammanhang, i termer av bland annat ideologi och vilka slags språkliga modaliteter som används. 

Resultatet visar att sammanhangen där klassklyftor nämns är spridda och att kulturjournalistiken är mest framträdande när dt kommer till att diskutera klassklyftor och klassamhället. Vidare påvisas att tematisk gestaltning är mest förekommande i de undersökta artiklarna. Den kvalitativa delen visar en variation i sätt att skriva om klass, delvis som röst och delvis som blick. 

This chapter approaches sustainability from an educational and artistic angle, notably through the dance educator’s gaze, as a contribution to conceptualizing sustainability education. In this, education and the arts generally are viewed as spaces for young people’s efforts to enter into dialogue with the world – past, present and future. Providing space to work in an art mode like dance is seen as essential to education’s existential remit, a task the chapter explores as owning a dimension of sustainability in itself, in terms of catering for a sensitive dialogue between the self and the natural and social world, calling for survival.

The chapter is written as an essay, tentatively conceiving dance teaching as aesthetic teaching and pleading for an aesthetic turn in education. At its core is the capability and willingness to be permeated, through the senses, by what the world offers. The dancing young person is seen as an agentive subject coming into being by submitting to movement and imagination, vulnerable and receptive to what comes from ‘outside’. In the concept, teaching is seen as allowing the world with its phenomena to reveal itself aesthetically, offering its gifts and lending its heritage to us to take care of and live in balance with before passing it on to new generations. 

In the chapter ethical and relational, existential and sustainability aspects of dance and education are brought to the fore, reminding us of what education essentially is all about, what dance as primordial interhuman and world-human interaction can teach us about these fundamentals, and, hopefully, what dancing together can teach us about sustainability education.

The arguments are informed by Gert Biesta’s ideas on art as education, subject-ness and democracy in a world-oriented education, in dialogue with John Dewey’s and Maxine Greene’s thinking of art as experience, aesthetic literacy and education, and dance scholar and educator Susan Stinson’s stances on dance education and dancing as becoming.

The Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2025. In this publication we have invited several former and current CBEES colleagues to share their recollections and reflections on their time at the Centre, its development, and the challenge of conducting area studies in a changing world order. Together they provide a broad depiction of CBEES development and achievements as a research centre over the past 20 years.

In this analytical chapter, political scientist Karl Magnus Johansson evaluates the European People’s Party’s (EPP’s) capacity to shape European integration through treaty reform and political coordination. Drawing on three decades of research and case studies, he argues that Europarties such as the EPP can exert real influence—but only under demanding conditions: numerical strength, internal cohesion and the ability to mobilise networks of party leaders. Johansson traces how the EPP played a decisive role in the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty but struggled during the Amsterdam Treaty negotiations due to internal divisions and weakened Council presence. He concludes that while the EPP has shaped the EU’s constitutional architecture, its effectiveness depends on unity, strategic mobilisation and clarity of purpose—lessons that remain vital as the party navigates today’s fragmented landscape.

This study critically examines the foreign aid motives, strategies, and methods of the U.S. and China in sub-Saharan Africa during the period 2001–2024. Two theories have been used to provide a theoretical framework—realist theory and soft power. This study argues that both nations’ foreign aid policies are driven by national interests—reflecting the realist perspective—and are operationalized through soft power strategies, where aid is used as a practical tool reflecting the donor’s national interest. A soft power strategy increases the legitimacy of the donor and its influence on the African continent. Using a qualitative comparative analysis, this study has examined official governmental documents, scholarly books, and peer-reviewed articles.The results show that the strategies and methods employed by the U.S. and China differ significantly, while their motives do not differ as much. The interest in African resources is a common motive shared by both countries. The U.S. tends to set political requirements, such as the promotion of democracy and human rights, for recipient countries in order for aid to be disbursed, while China uses its "non-interference policy," offering aid without conditions.These different aid strategies reflect both ideological and historical differences. China is characterized by its non-colonial legacy, and the U.S. is characterized by its dominance within financial institutions (IMF and World Bank), which shape the global political economy. This research paper concludes that foreign aid is often framed as humanitarian, but it can be seen as a mask through which donor countries are driven by self-interest, reinforcing the realist assumption. Both the U.S. and China use aid to form political alliances and promote economic interests.

In the 1790s, many post-Kantian German philosophers attempted to lay a new foundation for the historiography of philosophy. Earlier works on the topic, they argued, made out mere aggregates of disconnected sources and allowed for no understanding of the overarching, rule-bound nature of reason’s historical development. This error was to be amended by applying the insights of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which the post-Kantians believed to offer a universally valid and unbiased method for approaching the philosophical thought of the past.

I argue that this historiographic strain in post-Kantian thought is often misunderstood. It is frequently described from a presentist viewpoint that makes it appear as merely a tendentious apology for critical philosophy. In this dissertation, I approach post-Kantian historiography of philosophy in a different way, namely, by situating it in the historically specific situation in which it arose. First, I attempt to make sense of post-Kantian theories and practices of the history of philosophy by relating them to earlier traditions. Second, I trace the development of post-Kantian historiography during its most vigorous period until the time it started tobe challenged by other, new historical methods and ideals around the middle of the 19th century.

A main result of my study is that the post-Kantians posited reason as such as the subject of the history of philosophy. This subject transcended both particular individual philosophers and particular schools of thought. To achieve this narrative of reason’s historical development, the post-Kantians established what I refer to as a “depth model”. The task of the historian was, in their view, to reach from the outer expression of historical philosophies to their rational essence, from their letter to their spirit. This ambition led to a number of new historiographical challenges. It forced the post-Kantians to reconsider the role of biographies in the history of philosophy, the geographical scope of this history, and the relation between history’s temporality and reason’s eternity. Throughout my examination, I account for all of these issues and how the post-Kantians attempted to resolve them. I claim that their approach in general can be described in terms of performative concept work, i.e., a use of concepts that was made possible by certain already-given frameworks of understanding, but that simultaneously transformed these frameworks and gave them a set of new meanings. Ultimately, I argue, the period led to a wholly new concept of “the history of philosophy” as such.

This thesis examines how the Swedish-Norwegian Consul General Jens Martin Bolstad (1858–1905) produced and disseminated knowledge about South America in his official reports between 1901 and 1905. The study introduces Bolstad as a “knowledge actor” whose consular position enabled him to gather, interpret and reproduce local information to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Stockholm. It analyses Bolstad’s reporting on interstate tensions, emerging efforts at regional cooperation and the shadow cast by the “Colossus of the North” (the United States). The research relies on archival consular reports, examining how they serve as active sites of knowledge production rather than mere factual records. By contextualising Bolstad’s reports within a broader historiography on Swedish perceptions of South America, the thesis reveals both the persistence of nineteenth-century Eurocentric tropes and the emergence of more formal policy-focused narratives. The study argues that Bolstad’s portrayal of South America, caught between hegemony and unity, echoed contemporary imperial legacies while influencing Swedish-Norwegian foreign policy outlooks. These findings underscore the value of examining diplomatic documents as rich historical sources, demonstrating that consular offices played a pivotal role in shaping European understandings of distant regions at the turn of the century.

Background: Global crises can cause significant volatility in financial markets by creating uncertainty and changing investors' risk behaviors. Previous research shows that different crises, depending on their type, affect markets and industries in different ways. Despite this, research on how global events affect the specific stock market broken down into different industries is still limited. This underscores the need for further studies in this area.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze the consequences of the three different global crises in terms of stock market volatility.

Method: The study uses a quantitative and deductive approach with event window analysis of 40 trading days around the start dates of the crises. Volatility is measured by the standard deviation of logarithmic returns. Data is collected from Investing.com.

Theory: The theory is based on a main theory, which is Behavioral Finance, which supports more irrational behavior, then there is a complementary theory, the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), which supports rational behavior.

Conclusion: The study shows that volatility increased the most during the Covid-19 pandemic. The results show that the type of crisis, rather than industry affiliation, had the greatest impact on whether changes in volatility were statistically significant. The study shows that EMH and behavioral finance theories complement each other by explaining market reactions during different types of crises.

Polisförhör är en samtalssituation som präglas av institutionella ramar ochmål. Alla som förhörs ska behandlas lika och betraktas som oskyldiga framtill dess att motsatsen bevisas av dömande instans. Omständigheter somtalar både till en misstänkts fördel och nackdel ska beaktas (Rättegångsbalken,kap. 23 §4) och polisen ska uppmuntra den förhörde till fritt berättandeoch undvika ledande frågor (Kronkvist, 2021; Polismyndighetenshandbok för förhör, 2023).I studien som presenteras här undersöks hur inledningen ser ut ivittnesförhör där polisen efterfrågar en fri berättelse, och hur polis ochförhörd person därmed synliggör och hanterar institutionella ramar. Merspecifikt undersöks 1) vilket utrymme för fri berättelse som skapas genompolisens inledande fråga/frågor och 2) hur frågan besvaras av den förhörde– blir det fri berättelse? Syftet med studien är att belysa den position isamtalet där fri berättelse ska initieras, samt ge exempel på hur detta kanse ut i praktiken. Den faktiska interaktionen i polisförhör – och särskilt iSverige på svenska – är fortfarande relativt outforskad empirisk mark (sedock Byrman, 2017; Jönsson, 1988) och systematiska studier saknas avhur utrymme för fri berättelse skapas i förhör i en svensk kontext.