Sara Nyhlén

Forced cooperation from above: the case of Sweden's establishment reform

ABSTRACT In December 2010, significant parts of Swedish integration policy were changed. Through the ‘establishment reform’, a centralization was implemented in which the national level overtook the responsibility of municipalities for the establishment of newly arrived immigrants. In todays system, the responsibility is shared between several authorities, the municipalities, and publicly financed private actors. Recent governmental reports have described the current situation as being characterized by coordination problems and shortcomings in accountability. This policy creates an institutional landscape that spans both vertical and horizontal dimensions, reflecting several levels of the public administration and actors that originate from several sectors. The purpose of this article is to explore the governance of Swedish integration policy, with a theoretical focus derived from the ideal types of hierarchy, market, and network. We examine one Swedish region in which parts of the establishment reform were applied as a pilot project before being applied to the rest of Sweden. The theoretically driven results are unexpected in that they reveal traits of governance steering but also of top-down perspectives and restrictions for involved actors in a way that counteracts theoretical logics.

The home care principle in everyday making of elderly care in everyday making of eldercare policy in rural Sweden

Translating the urban based national policy of eldercare to a rural context is seen as a key activity for rural policy actors since the fact that rural municipalities face different issues to urban ...