Andreas Bergh
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 314809 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Andreas Bergh |
| NOMBRES | Andreas |
| APELLIDO | Bergh |
| FIRMA | BERGH A |
| AFILIACIONES | Lund University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2621-6769 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 44 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 198 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 44 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2004 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
Rural Retrenchment and Marginalization in Sweden? Evidence From Employment Registers and Survey Data
Debates about spatial inequality and rural discontent often invoke cutbacks of the public sector as a key factor in explaining political and social divides. Covering the period from 1993 to 2023, we use register‐based employment data and citizen surveys to study public employment, as well as trust in and satisfaction with public services across five types of municipalities, ranging from metropolitan to very sparse rural areas. By combining data o…
Recontextualisation of children’s rights in local school contexts
This article examines how the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), incorporated into Swedish law in 2020, is recontextualised in five socioeconomically and ethnically diverse school settings. Drawing on Bernstein's concepts of recontextualization, classification and voice, the study analyses interviews with teachers, principals and superintendents to explore how the CRC shapes pedagogical relations in terms of boundaries and power relatio…
The rise of law in education - exploring three drivers of juridification in the context of a changing welfare state
This article takes as its starting point that governments in different countries increasingly tend to use legal means to solve societal problems and argues that this tendency reflects broader changes in the welfare state. While previous critical studies of education policy have contributed important knowledge on governance changes, the impact of the legal system has, however, until recently remained an outlier. By synthesising links between diffe…
Special issue introduction
No abstract available
Retrenchment Without Liberalisation
Fifteen years ago, Bergh and Erlingsson (2009) argued that Sweden's period from 1980 to 2000 was characterised by ‘liberalisation without retrenchment’. This resulted from pragmatic policymaking, a consensus‐building governmental inquiry system and close links between policymakers and academics. We use new data to confirm that total tax revenue and economic freedom increased in Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s. After 2000, however, the trends re…
Teachers’ Facebook rebellion groups
This study examines conversations in a Swedish teachers' School Rebellion (SR) group on Facebook, a group that attracts members who wish to engage in activism for a different and better Swedish school system and improved conditions for teachers. The phenomenon of teachers' Rebellion Facebook groups is relatively new. It has emerged in several countries over the past decade and clearly differs from traditional online teacher collaboration and prof…
Differentiation of education through juridification
The objective of this article is to explore differentiation of education through juridification. We examine changes in school governing, including trends towards globalization and marketization, as well as increased regulatory intervention in addressing complex social problems. Drawing on Luhmann's theory of functional differentiation and Teubner's problematization of juridification, we scrutinize three sets of distinct legislative regulations in…
What happens when municipalities run corporations? Empirical evidence from 290 Swedish municipalities
Across the globe, local governments have increasingly begun to rely on municipally owned corporations (MOCs) to provide public services, mounting to what scholars describe as a burgeoning corporatization in local government. Some studies have described this development as a rational response to financial stress and contemporary austerity challenges, and emphasize the cost-efficiency of MOCs (the optimistic view). However, several scholars have id…
Swedish teachers’ and school leaders’ rebellion groups on Facebook- collective formations and administrators as gatekeepers
This article explores Swedish teachers’ and school leaders’ Facebook rebellion groups as a medium where professional needs and actions can be formulated. Data consist of interviews with administrators representing the rebellion groups. Based on a theoretical perspective of teacher agency we searched for experiences and visions related to contextual aspects expressed in the groups. The results indicate a common experience of lacking resources amon…
Explaining the rise of populism in European democracies 1980–2018
Objectives This article aims to find country‐level factors that explain the rise of populist parties in European democracies. While populism is often connected to inequality, we not that right‐wing populist parties tend to thrive on fear, including fear of job loss. If flexible labor markets mean that unemployment is dedramatized because finding a new job is easier, labor market flexibility could dampen populism and inequality may be less importa…
On collegial deliberation as a tool to counteract racism in education
This paper analyses and discusses the possibilities and challenges ofcollegial mutual deliberation among teachers as a way of counteractingracism. It takes its starting point in research on teacher collaborationthat emphasises the importance of creating conditions locally forcritical discussions, building on knowledge from different perspectivesand going beyond simple solutions. With a focus on the practical, theidea of deliberative communication…
Mine or ours? Unintended framing effects in dictator games
This paper reports results from a classroom dictator game comparing the effects of three different sets of standard instructions. The results show that seemingly small and typically unreported differences in standard instructions induce different perceptions regarding entitlement and ownership of the money to be distributed, and that these perceptions influence behaviour. Less is given when the task is described as a task of generosity and more w…
Does economic freedom boost growth for everyone
While the association between economic freedom and long‐term economic growth has been well documented, the parallel research literature on the distributional consequences of economic freedom is full of conflicting findings. In this paper, we take a step toward reconciling these two bodies of literature by exploring the within‐quintile growth consequences of changes in three separate elements of economic freedom: the size of government, institutio…
A conceptual framework for understanding juridification of and in education
The legal framing of national education systems has been subject to substantial change in the past decade, especially in Nordic countries. Earlier research has called for better understanding of the implications of these changes which, in turn, points to a need for conceptual development. With an emphasis on legal and education scholarly work, this article explores concepts for further research on juridification in relation to education. This is …
Globalization and populism in Europe
Recent micro-level studies have suggested that globalization—in particular, economic globalization and trade with China—breeds political polarization and populism. This study examines whether or not those results generalize by examining the country-level association between vote shares for European populist parties and economic globalization. Using data on vote shares for 267 right-wing and left-wing populist parties in 33 European countries duri…
The Compensation Hypothesis Revisited and Reversed
This note describes how research on the link between economic openness and government size has changed over time. Early interpretations suggested that countries develop welfare states to compensate for volatility caused by economic openness (the compensation hypothesis). Recent findings have cast doubts on this interpretation. For example, more open economies are on average not more volatile, and economic openness does not unambiguously increase …
Hayekian welfare states
To explain the coexistence of economic freedom and big government, this paper distinguishes between big government in the fiscal sense of requiring high taxes, and big government in the Hayekian sense of requiring knowledge that is difficult to acquire from a central authority. The indicators of government size in measures of economic freedom capture the fiscal size but ignore the Hayekian knowledge problem. Thinking about government size in both…
Migrants and Life Satisfaction
We investigate how the life satisfaction of migrants is affected by life satisfaction in their background country and in their new country of residence. In particular, we contribute to the literature by differentiating between first‐ and second‐generation immigrants and by differentiating between types of background country. Using data from the European Social Survey on 30,000 immigrants from 200 countries in 32 European countries, we find that f…
What Happens When Municipalities Run Corporations? Empirical Evidence From 290 Swedish Municipalities
Municipally Owned Enterprises as Danger Zones for Corruption? How Politicians Having Feet in Two Camps May Undermine Conditions for Accountability
The market-inspired reforms of New Public Management have been particularly pronounced in Swedish local government. Notably, municipally owned enterprises (MOEs) have rapidly grown in numbers. Principal-agent theory gives rise to the hypothesis that the massive introduction of MOEs has impacted negatively on the conditions for accountability in Swedish local government. To study this, social network analysis was employed in mapping networks for 2…
Explaining the labor market gaps between immigrants and natives in the OECD
In most OECD-countries immigrants have lower employment and higher unemployment than natives. The gap in labor market outcomes is larger in countries with more immigrant friendly attitudes. This paper suggests that in countries where labor market institutions are less competitive, native workers face less direct wage competition from immigration. As a result, the general population is more immigrant-friendly and income inequality is dampened. On …
More politicians, more corruption
In the literature on political economy and public choice, it is typically assumed that government size correlates positively with public corruption. The empirical literature, however, is inconclusive, owing to both measurement problems and endogeneity. This paper creates a corruption index based on original data from a survey covering top politicians and civil servants in all Swedish municipalities. The effect of more politicians on corruption pr…
Sick of Inequality
There is a clear trend in rich countries that despite rising incomes and living standards, the gap between rich and poor is widening. What does this mean for our health? Does increasing income inequality affect outcomes such as obesity, life expectancy and subjective well-being? Are rich and poor groups affected in the same ways? This book reviews the latest research on the relationship between inequality and health. It provides the reader with a…
Local quality work in an age of accountability – between autonomy and control
This article analyses a specific part of the actions taken to improve the quality of Swedish education, namely the expectations formulated in national policy documents for the quality work that local authorities, schools and teachers are supposed to undertake. For the empirical analysis of how these expectations have changed over the last two decades, two sets of theoretical concepts have been combined: management of placement and management of e…
Is Globalization Reducing Absolute Poverty
Liberalization without Retrenchment
In 1980, Sweden was a highly regulated economy with several state monopolies and low levels of economic freedom. Less than twenty years later, liberal reforms turned Sweden into one of the world's most open economies with a remarkable increase in economic freedom. While there is resilience when it comes to high levels of taxes and expenditure shares of GDP, there has been a profound restructuring of Sweden's economy in the 1980s and 1990s that pr…
Good for Living? On the Relationship between Globalization and Life Expectancy
Public Corruption in Swedish Municipalities – Trouble Looming on the Horizon
In the 1990s, several public corruption scandals were uncovered in Sweden. This article focuses specifically on local corruption, and our purpose is to examine whether a case can be made that problems of public corruption in Swedish municipalities have increased. By applying instruments from the institutional rational choice framework, we reach the conclusion that there are indeed reasons to suspect that retrenchment initiatives and organisationa…
The Universal Welfare State
In the existing literature on welfare state typologies, the concept of the universal welfare state is not defined precisely enough to allow for comparisons of universality over time and between countries. In this paper, I discuss some problems with the way the term ‘the universal welfare state’ has been used and I suggest possible solutions. Among other things, I propose that the term ‘universality’ be used to describe the provision of a specific…
On the Counterfactual Problem of Welfare State Research
To measure welfare state redistribution, it is standard to compare the income distributions before and after taxes and transfers. This approach incorrectly assumes that the pre fisc distribution is independent of the welfare state. This paper identifies four sources of bias in the pre/post-approach: 1) Welfare states redistribute both between individuals and between generations, 2) Labor supply responses vary between socio-economic groups and dep…
Is Globalization Reducing Absolute Poverty
A conceptual framework for understanding juridification of and in education
The legal framing of national education systems has been subject to substantial change in the past decade, especially in Nordic countries. Earlier research has called for better understanding of the implications of these changes which, in turn, points to a need for conceptual development. With an emphasis on legal and education scholarly work, this article explores concepts for further research on juridification in relation to education. This is …
Globalization and populism in Europe
Recent micro-level studies have suggested that globalization—in particular, economic globalization and trade with China—breeds political polarization and populism. This study examines whether or not those results generalize by examining the country-level association between vote shares for European populist parties and economic globalization. Using data on vote shares for 267 right-wing and left-wing populist parties in 33 European countries duri…
Local quality work in an age of accountability – between autonomy and control
This article analyses a specific part of the actions taken to improve the quality of Swedish education, namely the expectations formulated in national policy documents for the quality work that local authorities, schools and teachers are supposed to undertake. For the empirical analysis of how these expectations have changed over the last two decades, two sets of theoretical concepts have been combined: management of placement and management of e…
More politicians, more corruption
In the literature on political economy and public choice, it is typically assumed that government size correlates positively with public corruption. The empirical literature, however, is inconclusive, owing to both measurement problems and endogeneity. This paper creates a corruption index based on original data from a survey covering top politicians and civil servants in all Swedish municipalities. The effect of more politicians on corruption pr…
Explaining the rise of populism in European democracies 1980–2018
Objectives This article aims to find country‐level factors that explain the rise of populist parties in European democracies. While populism is often connected to inequality, we not that right‐wing populist parties tend to thrive on fear, including fear of job loss. If flexible labor markets mean that unemployment is dedramatized because finding a new job is easier, labor market flexibility could dampen populism and inequality may be less importa…
What are the Policy Lessons from Sweden? On the Rise, Fall and Revival of a Capitalist Welfare State
This paper discusses a number of questions with regard to Sweden's economic and political development:• How did Sweden become rich?• What explains Sweden's high level of income equality?• What were the causes of Sweden's problems from 1970 to 1995?• How is it possible that Sweden, since the crisis of the early 1990s, is growing faster than most EU countries despite its high taxes and generous welfare state?These questions are analysed using recen…
The growth effects of institutional instability
We study the effects of institutional instability on growth. Using principal components analysis, we construct measures of institutional quality and instability from the political risk index of the International Country Risk Guide. A panel-data analysis of 132 countries during 1984-2004 reveals that institutional quality, especially with regard to the legal system and the protection of property rights, is positively linked to growth. As for insti…
Government size and growth
The Compensation Hypothesis Revisited and Reversed
This note describes how research on the link between economic openness and government size has changed over time. Early interpretations suggested that countries develop welfare states to compensate for volatility caused by economic openness (the compensation hypothesis). Recent findings have cast doubts on this interpretation. For example, more open economies are on average not more volatile, and economic openness does not unambiguously increase …
Municipally Owned Enterprises as Danger Zones for Corruption? How Politicians Having Feet in Two Camps May Undermine Conditions for Accountability
The market-inspired reforms of New Public Management have been particularly pronounced in Swedish local government. Notably, municipally owned enterprises (MOEs) have rapidly grown in numbers. Principal-agent theory gives rise to the hypothesis that the massive introduction of MOEs has impacted negatively on the conditions for accountability in Swedish local government. To study this, social network analysis was employed in mapping networks for 2…
Why Quality in Education – and What Quality? – A Linguistic Analysis of the Concept of Quality in Swedish Government Texts
This article analyses why the concept of quality has become such a central theme in Swedish education policy, and what quality or qualities successive governments have pursued between 1990 and 2010. The analysis is based on a close reading of a collection of policy texts from the late 1980s onwards.With a linguistic and historical perspective, the theoretical approach is inspired by Quentin Skinner (1988a, 1988b) and speech act theory.The study s…
On Inter‐ and Intra‐Individual Redistribution of the Welfare State
Objective. The redistributive effect of the welfare state is traditionally measured by comparing the gross and net distribution of annual income among adults. This standard approach does not account for the fact that a large share of the taxes paid by adults are paid back to the very same individuals later in life. The objective of this article is to examine the factors that determine the difference between redistribution according to the standar…
Swedish teachers’ and school leaders’ rebellion groups on Facebook- collective formations and administrators as gatekeepers
This article explores Swedish teachers’ and school leaders’ Facebook rebellion groups as a medium where professional needs and actions can be formulated. Data consist of interviews with administrators representing the rebellion groups. Based on a theoretical perspective of teacher agency we searched for experiences and visions related to contextual aspects expressed in the groups. The results indicate a common experience of lacking resources amon…
Higher Education Policy, Enrollment, and Income Inequality
Objective. The objective of this article is to examine whether public expenditure on higher education has an effect on income inequality by increasing enrollment. Methods. Combining data from the World Bank Development Indicators with data from the World Income Inequality Database version 2, we study the relation between government education expenditure and enrollment rates, as well as the relation between government education expenditure and the…
Retrenchment Without Liberalisation
Fifteen years ago, Bergh and Erlingsson (2009) argued that Sweden's period from 1980 to 2000 was characterised by ‘liberalisation without retrenchment’. This resulted from pragmatic policymaking, a consensus‐building governmental inquiry system and close links between policymakers and academics. We use new data to confirm that total tax revenue and economic freedom increased in Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s. After 2000, however, the trends re…
On collegial deliberation as a tool to counteract racism in education
This paper analyses and discusses the possibilities and challenges ofcollegial mutual deliberation among teachers as a way of counteractingracism. It takes its starting point in research on teacher collaborationthat emphasises the importance of creating conditions locally forcritical discussions, building on knowledge from different perspectivesand going beyond simple solutions. With a focus on the practical, theidea of deliberative communication…
Mine or ours? Unintended framing effects in dictator games
This paper reports results from a classroom dictator game comparing the effects of three different sets of standard instructions. The results show that seemingly small and typically unreported differences in standard instructions induce different perceptions regarding entitlement and ownership of the money to be distributed, and that these perceptions influence behaviour. Less is given when the task is described as a task of generosity and more w…
The Universal Welfare State
In the existing literature on welfare state typologies, the concept of the universal welfare state is not defined precisely enough to allow for comparisons of universality over time and between countries. In this paper, I discuss some problems with the way the term ‘the universal welfare state’ has been used and I suggest possible solutions. Among other things, I propose that the term ‘universality’ be used to describe the provision of a specific…
On Inter‐ and Intra‐Individual Redistribution of the Welfare State
Objective. The redistributive effect of the welfare state is traditionally measured by comparing the gross and net distribution of annual income among adults. This standard approach does not account for the fact that a large share of the taxes paid by adults are paid back to the very same individuals later in life. The objective of this article is to examine the factors that determine the difference between redistribution according to the standar…
On the Counterfactual Problem of Welfare State Research
To measure welfare state redistribution, it is standard to compare the income distributions before and after taxes and transfers. This approach incorrectly assumes that the pre fisc distribution is independent of the welfare state. This paper identifies four sources of bias in the pre/post-approach: 1) Welfare states redistribute both between individuals and between generations, 2) Labor supply responses vary between socio-economic groups and dep…
Explaining Welfare State Survival
Higher Education Policy, Enrollment, and Income Inequality
Objective. The objective of this article is to examine whether public expenditure on higher education has an effect on income inequality by increasing enrollment. Methods. Combining data from the World Bank Development Indicators with data from the World Income Inequality Database version 2, we study the relation between government education expenditure and enrollment rates, as well as the relation between government education expenditure and the…
Public Corruption in Swedish Municipalities – Trouble Looming on the Horizon
In the 1990s, several public corruption scandals were uncovered in Sweden. This article focuses specifically on local corruption, and our purpose is to examine whether a case can be made that problems of public corruption in Swedish municipalities have increased. By applying instruments from the institutional rational choice framework, we reach the conclusion that there are indeed reasons to suspect that retrenchment initiatives and organisationa…
The Growth Effects of Institutional Instability
Both institutional quality and institutional stability have been argued to stimulate economic growth. But to improve institutional quality, a country must endure a period of institutional change, which implies at least a little and possibly a lot of institutional instability. We investigate the growth effects of institutional quality and instability, using the political risk index from the ICRG in a cross-country study of 132 countries, measuring…
Full employment in Europe
Liberalization without Retrenchment
In 1980, Sweden was a highly regulated economy with several state monopolies and low levels of economic freedom. Less than twenty years later, liberal reforms turned Sweden into one of the world's most open economies with a remarkable increase in economic freedom. While there is resilience when it comes to high levels of taxes and expenditure shares of GDP, there has been a profound restructuring of Sweden's economy in the 1980s and 1990s that pr…
Towards a New Swedish Model?
Do liberalization and globalization increase income inequality
Good for Living? On the Relationship between Globalization and Life Expectancy
Government size and growth
Historical Trust Levels Predict the Current Size of the Welfare State
Despite the fact that large welfare states are vulnerable to free-riding, the idea that universal welfare states lead to higher trust levels in the population has received some attention and support among political scientists recently. This paper argues that the opposite direction of causality is more plausible, i.e. that populations with higher trust levels are more prone to creating and successfully maintaining universal welfare states with hig…
The Rise, Fall and Revival of the Swedish Welfare State
Why Quality in Education – and What Quality? – A Linguistic Analysis of the Concept of Quality in Swedish Government Texts
This article analyses why the concept of quality has become such a central theme in Swedish education policy, and what quality or qualities successive governments have pursued between 1990 and 2010. The analysis is based on a close reading of a collection of policy texts from the late 1980s onwards.With a linguistic and historical perspective, the theoretical approach is inspired by Quentin Skinner (1988a, 1988b) and speech act theory.The study s…
The growth effects of institutional instability
We study the effects of institutional instability on growth. Using principal components analysis, we construct measures of institutional quality and instability from the political risk index of the International Country Risk Guide. A panel-data analysis of 132 countries during 1984-2004 reveals that institutional quality, especially with regard to the legal system and the protection of property rights, is positively linked to growth. As for insti…
Beyond Welfare State Models – Transnational Historical Perspectives on Social Policy – Edited by Pauli Kettunen and Klaus Petersen
What are the Policy Lessons from Sweden? On the Rise, Fall and Revival of a Capitalist Welfare State
This paper discusses a number of questions with regard to Sweden's economic and political development:• How did Sweden become rich?• What explains Sweden's high level of income equality?• What were the causes of Sweden's problems from 1970 to 1995?• How is it possible that Sweden, since the crisis of the early 1990s, is growing faster than most EU countries despite its high taxes and generous welfare state?These questions are analysed using recen…
Is Globalization Reducing Absolute Poverty
Local quality work in an age of accountability – between autonomy and control
This article analyses a specific part of the actions taken to improve the quality of Swedish education, namely the expectations formulated in national policy documents for the quality work that local authorities, schools and teachers are supposed to undertake. For the empirical analysis of how these expectations have changed over the last two decades, two sets of theoretical concepts have been combined: management of placement and management of e…
Sick of Inequality
There is a clear trend in rich countries that despite rising incomes and living standards, the gap between rich and poor is widening. What does this mean for our health? Does increasing income inequality affect outcomes such as obesity, life expectancy and subjective well-being? Are rich and poor groups affected in the same ways? This book reviews the latest research on the relationship between inequality and health. It provides the reader with a…
Explaining the labor market gaps between immigrants and natives in the OECD
In most OECD-countries immigrants have lower employment and higher unemployment than natives. The gap in labor market outcomes is larger in countries with more immigrant friendly attitudes. This paper suggests that in countries where labor market institutions are less competitive, native workers face less direct wage competition from immigration. As a result, the general population is more immigrant-friendly and income inequality is dampened. On …
More politicians, more corruption
In the literature on political economy and public choice, it is typically assumed that government size correlates positively with public corruption. The empirical literature, however, is inconclusive, owing to both measurement problems and endogeneity. This paper creates a corruption index based on original data from a survey covering top politicians and civil servants in all Swedish municipalities. The effect of more politicians on corruption pr…
Municipally Owned Enterprises as Danger Zones for Corruption? How Politicians Having Feet in Two Camps May Undermine Conditions for Accountability
The market-inspired reforms of New Public Management have been particularly pronounced in Swedish local government. Notably, municipally owned enterprises (MOEs) have rapidly grown in numbers. Principal-agent theory gives rise to the hypothesis that the massive introduction of MOEs has impacted negatively on the conditions for accountability in Swedish local government. To study this, social network analysis was employed in mapping networks for 2…
Political science (33 obras) · Economics (29 obras) · Law (23 obras) · Politics (20 obras) · Sociology (16 obras) · Market economy (13 obras) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (12 obras) · Welfare state (12 obras) · Development economics (11 obras) · Welfare (11 obras)