The Choice Revolution
Privatization of Swedish Welfare Services in the 1990s
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11196264 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Paula Blomqvist (0000-0001-6714-6854, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 139-155 |
| Publication date | 2004-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Policy and Administration (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0144-5596 • E-ISSN: 1467-9515 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9515.2004.00382.x |
| OpenAlex | W2077591435 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 189 |
| References cited | 12 |
During the 1990s, the Swedish welfare state was declared by some to be in a “crisis”, due to both financial strain and loss of political support. Others have argued that the spending cuts and reforms undertaken during this period did slow down the previous increase in social spending, but left the system basically intact. The main argument put forward in this article is that the Swedish welfare state has been and is still undergoing a transforming process whereby it risks losing one of its main characteristics, namely the belief in and institutional support for social egalitarianism. During the 1990s, the public welfare service sector opened up to competing private actors. As a result, the share of private provision grew, both within the health‐care and primary education systems as well as within social service provision. This resulted in a socially segregating dynamic, prompted by the introduction of “consumer choice”. As will be shown in the article, the gradual privatization and market‐orientation of the welfare services undermine previous Swedish notions of a “people's home”, where uniform, high‐quality services are provided by the state to all citizens, regardless of income, social background or cultural orientation
Argument (complex analysis · Business · Economics · Egalitarianism · Market economy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public economics · Retrenchment · Social Welfare · Welfare · Welfare state · Healthcare innovation and challenges · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Public Administration · Social Policy and Reform Studies
Seven Financing Models
Health Politics
Hospitals, Doctors and Nurses
Healthcare Expenditure and Insurance Coverage
Funding Healthcare
Healthcare Provision
Healthcare Reforms over the Last Thirty Years
Conclusions
Financing and Provision
Comparative Health Systems
Equality and Choice in Public Services
Enhancing Public Innovation through Collaboration, Leadership and New Public Governance
Sweden
Toward a Worldwide View on the Politics of Social Investment
Does Out-Contracting of Welfare Services Promote Active Citizenship?
A Social Democratic Response to Market-Led Education Policies
Towards a More Diversified Supply of Welfare Services? Marketisation and the Local Governing of Nursing Homes in Scandinavian Countries
Towards a New Swedish Model?
Explaining Welfare State Survival
Social workers' attitudes to privatization in five countries
Economic growth and welfare state
Promoting Active Citizenship
Narratives and Regimes of Social and Human Rights
Mobilising for change in vocational education and training in Sweden – a case study of the ‘Technical College’ scheme
Reframing Social Citizenship
Social Innovation or Social Exclusion? Innovating Social Services in the Context of a Retrenching Welfare State
Social Innovation
The Socialization of Childcare and a Missed Opportunity Through Path Dependence
Conflicts Around Elder Care in Mass Media
Older people’s decisions of the community care
Contracting out welfare services
Decentralised cooperation between industries and local governments in a statist skill-formation system
Trade union struggle for workwear in Swedish elder care
Privatization of Public Services
The continuation of perceived deviance
Finding the structure of parliamentary motions in the Swedish Riksdag 1971–2015
Contracting for Welfare Services in Italy
To Co-Opt or To Be Co-Opted? The Role of Professional Elites in Strengthening Professional Control Vis-à-Vis Clients
Volume 11 Issue 3 (2021)
Mirror of the state or independent image? – Conceptual perspectives on the question of a legitimacy shift to the output dimension in local democracy
Market failure in a universal welfare state? Ownership, quality, and regulation in Danish social services
Paradoxical outsourcing? – outsourcing in left-leaning municipalities
Universalism in Welfare Policy
Welfare State Supporter and Civil Society Activist
Welfare user roles in a conservative welfare state. Are Germans citizens, consumers or co-producers
Civil Society Regimes and School Choice Reforms
Fabricating the motivated client
The long shadow of lobbying
Exploring the Intersection of Marketisation and Central State Control through Swedish National School Inspection
Facing “a tipping point”? The role of the OECD as a boundary organisation in governing education in Sweden
Extended Writing Demands – A Tool for ‘Academic Drift’ and the Professionalisation of Early Childhood Profession
Becoming a special educator – Finnish and Swedish students’ views on their future professions
Customers, partners and rights-holders
Performative policy
Middle class and welfare state – discursive relations
Navigating the market of welfare services
Academisation
Why the initiative of free childcare failed to be an effective policy implementation of universal childcare in South Korea
Business as usual? Civil society organizations in a marketized Swedish welfare state
Two-front individualization
Europeanize for Welfare? EU Engagement among Swedish Civil Society Organizations
School sports is the solution
Shrinking Religious Communities and Thriving Interreligious Social Work in Postsecular Sweden
Postmaterialist Influences on Welfare Adequacy and Political Trust in Hong Kong
The Nordic Model
Universal health coverage and equal access in Sweden
The Risks of Managing Uncertainty
Investigating International Health Markets
Young People, Class and the News
New Moral Economies of Welfare
Towards the Universal Care Course Model
Distinction recapped
The Reactivation and Reimagination of Military Conscription in Sweden
Ett pris man får betala
When the Clients Can Choose
Towards Developing New Partnerships in Public Services
Outsourcing, bureaucratic personnel quality and citizen satisfaction with public services
Public Versus Private Providers
Rethinking the ‘open functional’ approach
Exit and Voice in Local Government Reconsidered
Patient Choice in Healthcare in England and Sweden
Interpreting performance information
Building ‘implicit partnerships’? Financial long-term care entitlements in Europe
Social investment in the knowledge-based economy
Feedback Effects and Coalition Politics in Education Reforms
The Expansion of “Private” Schools in England, Sweden and Eastern Germany
Towards a Paradigm of Democratic Participation
Traits of a representative welfare state
Marketisation policies in different contexts
The impact of the use of the social welfare services or social security benefits on attitudes to social welfare policies
The specialisation of needs-assessment in Swedish municipal care for older people
Politics as organised combat – New players and new rules of the game in Sweden
The neoliberal turn and the marketization of care
Políticas sociales de atención a la dependencia en los Regímenes de Bienestar de la Unión Europea
Home care for older people in Sweden
Independent sector mental health care
The complementarity norm
From social security to individual responsibility
The Young Finns Party and the Plan for Neoliberal Retasking of the Welfare State in Post-Cold War Finland
Family policy, employment and gender-role attitudes
Capitalism and Freedom
In The Name of Liberalism
The Political Theory of Swedish Social Democracy. Through the Welfare State to Socialism
Whose Keeper
Political trust and attitudes towards redistribution
Privatization
The Swedish model”
Policy-making in the European Union
The European Social Model
The three worlds of welfare capitalism
Dismantling the Social Democratic Welfare Model? Has the Swedish Welfare State Lost Its Defining Characteristics
| Unique citing works | 189 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 9 |
| Citation span | 2005 - 2026 (22) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 178 |