Do pedagogical training courses for university teachers have desirable effects on the participants? We set out to answer this question by following a panel of 183 university teachers from Sweden's six largest universities, who participated in pedagogical training courses. Our study reveals that the participants' selfreported confidence in their role as teachers increased slightly, and their self-assessed pedagogical skills increased notably after they had finished their courses. Even though the courses were rather short, we could also observe some changes in fundamental approaches to teaching in some of the subgroups of respondents, both toward more student-centeredness and, perplexingly, toward more teacher-centeredness. Additionally, most respondents (7 out of 10) found the courses useful or very useful. Course satisfaction was most notable among participants with less than three years of teaching experience. Considering the fact that we find the positive effects of pedagogical training courses to be present mainly in the group of participants with less than three years of teaching experience, we discuss whether a policy of making these courses mandatory for all university teachers implies an overestimation of their impact. ARTICLE HISTORY

No abstract

Arguments invoking increased functional efficiency have had a profound impact on local government reforms in advanced democracies during the past 60 years. Consequently, most mature democracies have implemented municipal amalgamation reforms, often through top-down coercion. In this article, we demonstrate how far central governments have been willing to go, in terms of coercion, by providing an in-depth historical account of Swedish municipal amalgamations between 1952 and 1974. Debates on amalgamation reforms have typically revolved around pros and cons of mergers. But very few discussions have addressed the more fundamental moral problem of enforcing amalgamations through coercion. Often, large-scale mergers are carried through against the expressed will of municipalities who wish to remain self-governing. In this article, we present a normative defense of strong local self-government, based partly on values of individual autonomy, and partly on group-based human rights, and we show how coerced amalgamations are at odds with these values.

No abstract