In this article we analyse changes in the Swedish welfare state through the example of the municipal social care services for older persons. It is shown that one can trace a transformation to three different processes (layers) of change. When looked upon as complementary phenomena they show why and how administrative practices have become the dominant locus in the re-shaping of the welfare state. The incorporation of managerialism as the prevailing mode for delivering the services and organizing social policy leads to the main conclusion, that we are witnessing the move away from a moral/political to an administrative welfare regime. In the ending paragraph, we argue that this move weakens social citizenship and transfers values and principles in social policy to the administrative sphere. We further argue that this focus has some broader implications in characterizing and analyzing cross-national differences as to welfare regimes.
The care manager reform and the case manager reform are new reforms in the social care services in Sweden, which are evolving during the 2000s. Together they shape the social care services introducing a new way of decision-making where representatives for the organisation (care manager) and the users (case manager) negotiate. The reforms have been analysed in two studies with results presented in this article. Using the concepts of role, orientation, function and assignments, it is argued that the managers come to the negotiations on rights from different positions that are both conflicting and complementary. They further mediate the development towards a welfare mix, where the market, social networks and users interact to obtain the public welfare provision. Through this negotiated rights model, it is argued that traits of a representative welfare state emerge, with the distinction of moving the focus to the administrative practices and their differences away from political ideologies.
For many economists, the Stockholm School came to an end around 1937 when Bertil Ohlin gave it a name and based it on earlier contributions by Swedish economists. The “battle” was then lost to John Maynard Keynes, whose method, while less genuinely dynamic, was easier to handle. A discussion of the macroeconomics of the Stockholm School up to 1937 still appears to be of interest and underlines the role of Bertil Ohlin, Erik Lindahl, and Erik Lundberg as prominent members of the School. To restate the critique of the Stockholm School by Johan Åkerman implies focusing on a very special part of the work carried out within the School. To understand his critique, we cannot restrict ourselves to the years before 1937 and to merely the macroeconomics of those years. When Åkerman is critical toward the Stockholm School, he is critical toward a method and a microeconomic construction. During the years following 1937 the Stockholm School came to be associated with a method within Sweden. The cornerstones of that method were plans, periods, and expectations. They were microeconomic concepts and were fully elaborated after 1937. Maybe it would be wise to talk about a “late Stockholm School” in this context (see Petersson, 1987). The idea of change within the Stockholm School is not a new one. Otto Steiger (1971) suggested such a division and Björn A.