Mozambique has the sixth highest prevalence of HIV in the world and ranks fourth in new infections. The government-owned print press Notícias has played an important role in the social construction of HIV and AIDS in the country as it was entrusted with the role of disseminating HIV and AIDS information to the public since the outbreak of the pandemic in the country in 1986. Using Notícias' articles and frame analysis perspective, the article analyses the way Notícias has framed HIV and AIDS in the country since the late 1980s. The choice of media results from the fact that the way a phenomenon is constructed influences the way it is understood, as well as the way people may behave before it. The study found that Notícias' frames on HIV and AIDS have suffered from a threefold tension: the need to maintain the Frelimo government's former centralised and grassroots-orientated socialist ideology of health services in the context of the liberal market; the need to balance the influence of the global multilateral and bilateral actors and the Frelimo government's political interest of translating HIV and AIDS response to the Mozambican context; and the need to portray a nationalist and positive image of the government's performance in HIV and AIDS response before Mozambique's non-fully plausible societal practices for an effective HIV and AIDS response. In a top-down approach, Notícias' frames reflect not only the African post-independence ancillary and nationalist role of government-owned print press but also the power of global actors. Less is done from the societal bottom-up perspective.
Ageing societies need to supply support to an ever growing segment of elderly dependent population without compromising the future sustainability for the currently young or unborn population. Current tendencies to focus on policy solutions like automatic stabilisers and norm-based pre-commitment strategies with decisions delegated to experts carry a high risk of political breakdown when the future population re-evaluates this with new information. Using the Swedish pension reform as a concrete example we show how the futurity problem associated with the current non-existence of the future population makes the political process prone to avoid bringing issues with very long horizons into the public debate. Alternative demographic scenarios for Sweden are used to illustrate how even very small variations in the assumptions of demographic projections lead to radically different future population structures. Hence, the majority preferences in a distant future cannot be foreseen. Adding to this, the complex interactions with a changing environment of technology and nature time-consistent decision making at the far future horizon must be virtually impossible. Thus, the sustainability of long-term social security systems requires constitutional balances that provide for orderly and continual adaptation rather than once-for-all fixes that are likely to be rejected by future electorates.
Das Unterfangen der schwedischen Sozialdemokratinnen und Sozialdemokraten, den Begriff „Nordisches Modell“ markenrechtlich schützen zu lassen, mutet absurd an. Zeitgeschichtlich betrachtet sind diese Anstrengungen um den Markenschutz allerdings nur das jüngste Kapitel einer anhaltenden Debatte über die Auslegung des Begriffs. Urban Lundberg skizziert die Entwicklung des nordischen Modells von den 1930er Jahren bis in die Gegenwart. Erst die Genese des Konstrukts macht den symbolischen Gehalt, die begrifflichen Ambivalenzen und Konflikte um die Deutungshoheit verständlich. Gerade weil der Begriff des nordischen Modells vage ist, bietet er hinreichend Ermessensspielraum für Interpretationen und genügend Anlässe für politische Kontroversen. Das nordische Modell hat wie alle politischen Begriffe eine komplexe Geschichte, die weder von der Sozialdemokratie, noch von einer anderen Partei für sich reklamiert werden kann.