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This paper explores more fully the complex inter-relationship between the networking strategies of the political elites in two quasi-outsider countries (Sweden and the UK) and the politics of asymmetry as outlined by Miles (2005). After reviewing the existing literature of networking strategies, the authors revisit the five asymmetry variables outlined by Miles in the ‘euro-outsiders’ special issue of the Journal of European Integration (2005) in order to explore whether networking strategies can provide an explanation for how political elites handle questions relating to the politics of asymmetry in practice. The paper concludes with a brief empirical evaluation of the attitudes and behaviour of the British and Swedish political elites on Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and towards the issue of being outside the euro-area given their (potentially) asymmetrical positioning in relation to other euro-area political elites. In particular, the authors will reflect upon how British and Swedish political elites manage the twin dynamics of developing coherent policies towards the euro-area while, at the same time, recognising any constraints arising from domestic political discourses that make adopting the single currency a highly contentious issue. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the relation of different political economic projects and the development of pensions as a social right in three countries: Sweden, Germany and United Kingdom. It comprises three parts. The first part provides the conceptual framework, which combines a Polanyian perspective for the social embeddedness of markets with a three dimensional power theoretical approach in order to analyse modes of governance as practices of socio-economic regulation. The second part identifies the link between the macro-level of analysis i.e. different political economy logics and modes of governance and the meso-level of analysis i.e. the institutional paths that these countries have followed in developing their pensions systems and what used to be and currently is the role of occupational pension funds in them. This type of funds offers a prime example of how institutions that originally developed within a logic of social rights have now become actors in the economy. The decision-making of this new actor is however depended on the power relations between labour and capital in each country. The third part of the paper continues to show how the institutional paths have departed from their national spatio-temporal fix and have been re-embedded in the market-economy rationale of the neo-liberal project. The paper identifies a trend towards the ?equitisation? of pension funds as part of a broader process of marketisation of pensions as social right. The significance of the investment decision for pension occupational funds becomes crucial since funds are becoming major actors in the economic field. Their investment decision depends much on power relations between labour and capital ranging for example from social development (public houses, creation of jobs in the national environment) to the creation of profits through domestic and foreign financial markets. The paper concludes that pension occupational funds are re-embedded in a framework of choices, dominated increasingly more from the market economy rationale and the neo-liberal political project. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores theoretically and empirically how multiculturalism and foreign policy are interlinked. In a number of European countries, domestic debates about multiculturalism have rapidly become not only politicized in terms of a contestation over ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]