1.
Johansson, Håkan
(författare)
I det sociala medborgarskapets skugga : Rätten till socialbidrag under 1980- och 1990-talen
2001
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Universalism, social rights and social citizenship are often considered as key concepts to describe the Swedish welfare state. However, in the beginning of the 1990s, the Swedish welfare state experienced a severe economic recession. In only a couple of years, the unemployment rate increased sharply as well as the number of social assistance recipients. These changes constitute the background for this thesis, which aim is to analyse the changed rights and duties of the recipients of social assistance in the Swedish welfare state during the 1980s and 1990s. The object of study is then the Social Service Act from 1982 and how the Supreme Administrative Court, the National Board of Health and Welfare and two municipalities have interpreted the Act. The study is based on official documents, reports and guidelines from these "interpreters". The two municipalities are Linköping and Norrköping. Theoretically, this thesis builds on T.H. Marshall's essay on social citizenship and social rights. Three different perspectives on how social assistance could be analysed as a social right are being discussed: (i) a poor-law perspective, (ii) a welfare state perspective and (iii) a legal perspective. One of the main findings in the dissertation is that there has been a clear shift concerning the interpretation of the right to social assistance. In the 1980s, the municipalities as well as the Supreme Administrative Court and the National Board of Health and Welfare tried to define the right to social assistance as if it was a social security benefit. They asserted that the means-tested feature of the social assistance system should be limited and tried to implement the routines of the social security system, i.e. they tried to adopt the principles of universalism. This way of defining the right to social assistance was abandoned in the early 1990s. The municipalities enforced clear obligations for the recipients and developed local work-projects. They also emphasised that means-testing was an important and central feature of the social assistance system. This shift was to a certain degree codified in the revised Act from 1998. Thereby, this study indicates that the Swedish welfare state has moved away from what has been seen as its ideal.
2.
Johansson, Mairon, 1956-
(författare)
I dialogens namn : idén om en överenskommelse mellan regeringen och ideella organisationer
2011
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Many European countries have a model of formal agreements between the state and voluntary organisations involved in the core field of welfare, regarding their relative roles and cooperation. This dissertation analyzes the establishment of a Swedish agreement and how the cooperation leads up to the agreement. The cooperation process, known as the dialogue process, took place during more than a year, with the government inviting around eighty voluntary organisations. The theoretical framework of the dissertation is mainly what is know as institutional theory and a line of thought describing how ideas are not transferred and spread but translated and spread. The theoretical focus is on how original ideas are interpreted and why they gain a foothold in new contexts. With the help of empirical material in the form of documents, observations and interviews the dissertation shows how the idea of an agreement was spread from England to Sweden and how the government and the voluntary organisations acted during this process. One of the study’s conclusions is that the voluntary organisations took the initiative to create an agreement about “the role of game” but that the government transformed the voluntary organisations’ idea of an agreement to justify their own political goals. The Swedish agreement can therefore be seen as a step in clarifying Swedish social policy as regards responsibility for welfare. Voluntary organisations that have signed the agreement commit to contribute to securing welfare production. The dissertation shows that this role is appreciated by some of the voluntary organisations, while others question it.
