Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

The changing role of for-profit and nonprofit welfare provision in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and consequences for the Scandinavian model

Thu, June 30, 3:30 to 5:00pm, Ersta Skondal Conference Center, Cederschioldssalen

Abstract

This paper focuses on changes in the shares of welfare services provided by the public, for-profit and nonprofit sector in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and what policy changes that cause differentiation of the welfare mix. A Scandinavian welfare model can be recognized as a set of common ideals concerning equal access for all to high quality core welfare services funded and regulated by the public sector. In addition, users should have rights to participation in decision-making and to adaptation of services to individual needs, interests and preferences. Another objective is to decentralize governance to the municipalities. In addition, the Scandinavian countries, influenced by global trends since the eighties, have implemented similar NPM-tools to regulate relations between public purchasers and providers of welfare services from nonprofit, for-profit and public sector. EU-directives and stronger national regulation of public procurement are important reasons for this.

The analysis is based on data on changes in share of service employment between the private, nonprofit and public sector. Sources are Statistics Norway, Statistics Sweden, Statistics Denmark, ILO Labor Statistics, OECD, public policy documents and data from research on particular services in each of the Scandinavian countries.

Despite common welfare ideals and the similar changes in regulation to other EU-countries, this paper will show that there are large differences in welfare mix between the Scandinavian countries. This is partly a result of historic differences. Denmark has the largest shares of nonprofit welfare provision on a level between the other Scandinavian countries and the European continental model. Norway has a mixed model, there is a strong dominance of public welfare provision in some areas combined with a small share of nonprofit actors, but increased use of quasi-markets and open tendering in some areas has brought for-profits on the rise. Sweden has turned completely around from strong public sector dominance with probably the highest share of public provision of any western, democratic, advanced welfare state, and has since year 2000 opened up for strong growth in profit-oriented private services. In addition, different modes of regulation are used in different service areas in each country.

While some argue that “welfare states might plausibly move out of their 'regime container' by opting in favor of similar solutions and responses” (Henriksen, Zimmer, & Smith, 2012), the Scandinavian countries seem not to follow a uniform pattern. The situation resembles a natural experiment where different modes of regulation are used in different countries and service areas in order to better reach the same welfare goals. This paper focuses on changes in national policy and differences between service that have caused a transformation of the welfare mix through a rapid expansion of for-profit provision in Sweden and not in the other Scandinavian countries.

In the conclusion the findings will be related to more general discussions about NPM, neoliberal reforms, marketization, the social investment agenda, and welfare mix. This will make the implications for other contexts than Scandinavia easy to see.

Henriksen, L. S., Zimmer, A. & Smith, S. R. (2012). At the Eve of Convergence? Transformations of Social Service Provision in Denmark, Germany, and the United States. Voluntas, 23(2), 458-501.

Author