HIV/AIDS posed a significant health threat in Denmark from the early 1980s until the end of the 1990s, claiming approximately 2,000 lives. Gay men, hemophiliacs, drug users, sex workers and migrants were overwhelmingly among the victims of the disease. They also constituted the groups most associated with it. This led to a raised level of public attention to these groups; a heightened visibility that ambiguously resulted both in improving the life conditions of some while also increasing the stigma of others. This article analyses the roles of different cross-sector actors in shaping the responses to HIV/AIDS in Denmark, with each group influencing and being influenced by the epidemic. Yet despite the clear connection between HIV/AIDS and the minoritized, often marginalized, groups, the article argues that the overarching and dominant response objective during the crisis in Denmark was to prevent a heterosexual epidemic. Throughout the crisis, other responses, aims and objectives concerning the groups most affected by HIV/AIDS could be, and did become, contingent with this dominant objective. The strengths and positions of those subresponses depended on, however, the perceptions of them as logical and tangible means to the primary end of preventing the heterosexual epidemic. Pulling together different and changing responses from different and changing actors serves to crystallize what objectives or logics are the mutual ones, and the significance of this analysis is that what appeared to be a very heterogeneous set of responses to the disease in Denmark, was in fact rooted in the same objective. Notably, the perceived pertinence of preventing the heterosexual epidemic was not rooted in actual rates of infection or spread of the disease.

Political disagreement in interpersonal communication increases attitudinal ambivalence and can depress voter turnout. These effects seem to be driven by a wish to avoid social controversy rather than informational gains from encountering other opinions. This article shows that political disagreement in interpersonal communication increases the difficulty of deciding for which party to vote. Moreover, this effect is a result of social disapproval of one's party preference, while political expertise in interpersonal communication has no effect. For voter turnout, no direct effect of social disapproval of one's party preference is found. However, disapproval has an indirect influence on turnout via difficulty of vote choice. In sum, both political attitudes and political behaviour are affected by social pressures. Students of political attitudes and behaviour should try to include interpersonal discussion in their models in greater detail than is common practice today.

Voters show ambivalent attitudes towards political parties: They agree that parties are necessary, but they neither like nor trust them. Existing theories fall short of explaining this paradox because they pay little attention to public opinion research. In this paper, we develop a different argument using qualitative methods. We first integrate the literature on political parties and public opinion to sketch the contours of our theory before refining it using rich empirical insights from open-ended survey answers and focus group data. Our resulting model holds that voters evaluate political parties based on the functional and virtuous linkages. They consider parties necessary because they see them as fulfilling democratic functions, but they dislike them because they are seen as behaving in non-virtuous ways when fulfilling their functions. Besides proposing a new analytical model, we also contribute to the literature by methodologically illustrating how to develop data-based theories.

This article analyses the content and processes of reforms in the university sector in Denmark. It reveals radical reforms combining governance reforms, research policy reforms and educational policy reforms anchored in New Public Management ideas. The reforms introduce values that are alien to prevailing university values. They change decision-making processes and may have problematic constitutive effects on academic practice. The challenge to political science lies in the difficulty of documenting accountability, while still meeting the demand for economic value.

There are many advantages in establishing National Ph.D. programmes, but so are the challenges in getting them in motion. These challenges are caused by the intensified competition between departmental Ph.D. programmes, which is a product of the emergence of the audit society. The Danish national political science programme POLFORSK has managed to deal with these difficulties and has established a very successful programme that raises the quality of the Ph.D. programmes in Denmark considerably. This has been possible due to governmental funding that has helped to transform the relationship between national and departmental programmes into a positive-sum game, and paved the way for a systematic provision of highly specialised courses with a strong international profile that serve as a valuable supplement to the more basic Ph.D. courses provided by the individual departments.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents Northern-based development organisations with unprecedented difficulties. They are challenged in fundraising opportunities in their home countries and in finding ways to continue their work in the Global South. As the first study to present a systematic mixed method, cross-country study of small-scale, voluntary development organisations in four different European countries, this study provides insight into the role of these private development initiatives (PDIs) in the COVID-19 crisis and sheds light on the differential impact of the crisis on these organisations. Whereas most PDIs are involved in long(er)-term development interventions, the COVID-19 crisis was for most organisations their first experience of emergency aid. Overall, we see strong resilience among PDIs and also find that the organisations which relied more exclusively on traditional methods of fundraising (offline) received a greater funding hit than organisations—often with more younger members—that had already moved to online fundraising.

Corporatism may be seen as variety of capitalism in which specific structural prerequisites such as unionization, centralization, and strong states combined with bargaining and concertation produce certain economic outputs. Corporatism may also be seen as a variety of democracy in which interest groups are integrated in the preparation and/or implementation of public policies. Departing in the last position, we measure the strength of Scandinavian corporatism by the involvement of interest groups in public committees, councils, and commissions. Corporatism in relation to the preparation of policy has gone down in all three Scandinavian countries whereas corporatism in implementation processes are more varied among the three countries.

The purpose of this article is to depict three ideal type models of how the youth is represented along the steps of the recruitment ladder: a. The ‘equality’ model with equal representation along the whole recruitment process, from electorate to government; b. The ‘pyramid’ model, where the higher up in the political hierarchy, the fewer young people are represented; c. The ‘hourglass’ model, where young people are better represented among voters, elected representatives, and ministers, but make up a smaller share of party/youth wing members, potential candidates, and candidates. The application of these models to the most likely to be equal Danish case reveals the fit to the hourglass model. Even if well represented in parliament, the youth is less likely to vote and enrol in a party, hence, they are missing in some of the established institutions of parliamentary democracy.

This essay explores the Danish concept of hygge, commonly glossed as “coziness,” as a structure of feeling attuned to particular qualities of light. It draws from an ethnographic study of Copenhagen Municipality’s Climate Plan to build the world’s first carbon-neutral capital. Homing in on one of the Climate Plan’s inaugural initiatives—the LED (light-emitting diode) conversion of street lighting—it tracks how ambient intensities of hygge are swept up with both changing lightscapes and changing national demographics. Via a semiotics of social difference, I examine how changing qualities of artificial light are experienced as eroding culturally configured sensory comforts, and how this erosion is grafted onto a fear of the city’s potentially diminishing “Danishness.” This semiotic process is evidenced in the lamination of racialized anxieties about “non-Western immigrants” onto discomforts derived from energy-efficient lighting technologies, and the apparent intrusion of both into habit worlds of hygge. In Copenhagen, I show how a semiotic account of atmosphere illuminates the fault lines of the Danish racial imagination.

Two expert groups on global health from Norway and Denmark have recently made important strides in reenergizing the debate on the role of the Nordic countries in global health. Their tailored recommendations — emphasizing core values of human rights, equity, accountability, and local ownership alongside health security — have proven influential at a time when new forms of international collaboration in global health are urgently needed.

Fortified Island (FORTIS) examines Iron Age fortifications on the island of Bornholm to assess their characters, locations and chronologies. Through a multimethod approach, the project deepens our understanding of fortifications in relation to their physical and cultural landscapes, both on Bornholm and in the Baltic Sea Region more generally.

Denmark is one of the leading countries in establishing digital solutions in the health sector. When SARS-CoV-2 arrived in February 2020, a real-time surveillance system could be rapidly built on existing infrastructure. This rapid data integration for COVID-19 surveillance enabled a data-driven response. Here we describe (a) the setup of the automated, real-time surveillance and vaccination monitoring system for COVID-19 in Denmark, including primary stakeholders, data sources, and algorithms, (b) outputs for various stakeholders, (c) how outputs were used for action and (d) reflect on challenges and lessons learnt. Outputs were tailored to four main stakeholder groups: four outputs provided direct information to individual citizens, four to complementary systems and researchers, 25 to decision-makers, and 15 informed the public, aiding transparency. Core elements in infrastructure needed for automated surveillance had been in place for more than a decade. The COVID-19 epidemic was a pressure test that allowed us to explore the system’s potential and identify challenges for future pandemic preparedness. The system described here constitutes a model for the future infectious disease surveillance in Denmark. With the current pandemic threat posed by avian influenza viruses, lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic remain topical and relevant.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) spa type t4549 is increasingly prevalent in Denmark, yet its epidemiological sources remain unclear. This study aimed to generate hypotheses about possible risk factors that may be associated with MRSA t4549 infections. We conducted a nationwide case – case questionnaire study comparing MRSA t4549 cases to other MRSA types (t002, t008, t127, t304, and t223) reported between January 2022 and November 2023. The analysis, which included descriptive statistics and logistic regression, found that 75% of MRSA t4549 cases were male. Infections were significantly more frequent in the foot (28%) and toe (54%) compared to other MRSA types. Key risk factors identified were contact with pheasants (OR = 8.70; 95%CI 1.25–174.29), participation in indoor team sports (OR = 7.54, 95%CI: 1.58–54.82) and swimming (OR = 4.15, 95%CI: 1.97–9.03). Although the limited number of cases warrants cautious interpretation, it is crucial to emphasize the need for preventive measures at both the individual and sports facility levels. Further environmental studies are needed to clarify the role of the environment and wildlife in MRSA t4549 transmission. The increasing prevalence of this spa type in Denmark underlines the importance of implementing effective public health strategies to reduce the risk of MRSA transmission.

An abundance and diverse range of prehistoric fishing practices was revealed during excavations between 2012 and 2022 at the construction site of the Femern Belt Tunnel, linking the islands of Lolland (Denmark) and Femern (Germany). The waterlogged parts of the prehistoric Syltholm Fjord yielded well preserved organic materials, including the remains of wooden fish traps and weirs, and numerous vertical stakes and posts driven into the former seabed – evidence of long term fishing practices using stationary wooden structures from the Mesolithic to the Bronze Age (c. 4700–900 cal BC). Here, we present the results of a detailed study on these stationary wooden fishing structures, making this the most comprehensive and detailed description of prehistoric passive fishing practices in Syltholm Fjord to date. The exceptional scale of the excavated area (57 ha) and abundance of organic materials encountered during excavations provides us with a rare opportunity to identify individual weir systems and information on their construction, maintenance, and use. To contextualise further, we provide an up-to-date compilation of comparable finds in the Danish archaeological record, including a dataset of directly dated specimens, based on both published and unpublished sources. Our results show that stationary wooden fishing structures are an invaluable archaeological resource, and their study, combining landscape reconstruction, ethnographic analogy, and fishing technology, together with artefactual evidence and radiocarbon dating, allows us to reconstruct prehistoric fishing strategies in depth. Due to the long chronology and diversity of the study materials, our results complement previous research on the many nuances and regional specificities of the persistence of fishing practices in the western Baltic Sea over time, despite introductions of new cultures, populations, and livelihoods. Finally, we emphasise that the Neolithisation process in Northern Europe was not as straightforward and uniform in terms of subsistence as commonly assumed.

When and how do party politics matter in junior allies’ decisions to engage in multinational military operations? Developing a new role theory model of party politics and multinational military operations, we put forward a two-level argument. First, we argue that the rationale for military action is defined in a contest between political parties with expectations of what constitutes the proper purpose (constitutive roles) and functions (functional roles) of the state. Second, we hold that material and ontological insecurities reduce political space for contestation and debate, but that junior allies tend to focus on role demands for ‘good states’ and ‘good allies’ rather than the nature and aim of the military operation. To unpack our argument, we analyse the debate among political parties in Romania and Denmark leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Concluding our analysis, we outline the implications for the changing security order and current debates in NATO member states on how to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.