Contradictions in government steering : analyzing the Swedish establishment reform

• In December 2010 significant parts of Swedish migration policy were changed. Through ”establishment reform” a centralization was implemented in which the national level took over the responsibility of municipalities for the establishment of newly arrived immigrants. In today's system, the responsibility is shared between several authorities, and the municipalities, the Swedish Public Employment Service, the County Councils, the Swedish Migration Board, and publicly financed private services are the central actors. Recent governmental reports have described the current situations as being characterized by coordination problems and shortcomings in accountability. Having that said, this policy creates an institutional landscape that spans both vertical and horizontal dimensions, reflecting several levels of the public administration and, simultaneously, actors that originate from the governmental, regional, local, and private sectors. In this article we present one of the first Swedish studies on this reformed policy area and apply theoretically founded ideal types for analyzing the governing within the reform. Hence, the focus of the article is to analyze the complex steering processes that arise when the two quite contradictory elements of centralization and governance emerges. We examine one Swedish region in which parts of the establishment reform was applied as a pilot project before being applied to the rest of Sweden. Results are theoretically unexpected, both giving results of traits of governance steering but also of top-down perspectives and great restrictions for involved actors.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap -- Statsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science -- Political Science (hsv//eng)

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

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