Abstract
Relations between the public sector and the market have a long history in Sweden. The chapter’s opening section discusses relations between public and private governance at the national level across the past four decades in Sweden. Next, the discussion is narrowed to the municipal park and road sectors of the local municipalities, as the early marketization reforms were initiated there. In the closing section several lessons are discussed. First, the actual selling-off of public companies on the open market primarily relates to the national level, while corporatization and market imitation have been increasingly common features of the local administrative level. Second, in local government discussions of management form characterized the early period, while outcome and quality control dominated in later years. Third, contracting-out has taken place due to procurement regulations. For the local road sector, the level of external contracting has been roughly the same throughout the period, while for the park sector we found an increase from 3% in 1987 to 28% in 2015. This can be interpreted as the park sector imitating the road sector, which had been practicing external contracting for decades.
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Notes
- 1.
This exercise has been conducted by following up on references in known reports, to find out what has been written since the 1980s about marketization in general, but also about the park and road sectors specifically. In particular, we have been looking for ‘trends’, ‘the talk’, numbers and quantitative indicators.
- 2.
Results from the Innovation in public and private collaboration project (INOPS) can be found at https://vbn.aau.dk/da/projects/innovationer-i-det-offentlige-private-samspil-inops. INOPS was co-financed by Aalborg University, Denmark, and Hedeselskabet—a large Danish non-profit foundation. Also relates to Chapters 3 and 4 of this book.
- 3.
The independence of the administrative agencies in Sweden is still today protected by the constitution. Their primary tasks are to implement the decisions and laws that have passed the parliament (the Riksdag). However, the Government also gives the agencies yearly instructions through annual “budgetary letters” (regleringsbrev), finally decided upon by the parliament in December every year. No minister is allowed to point out directly what the agencies should do or decide, which stands out in contrast to the Danish and Norwegian traditions (Foss Hansen 2011: 123).
- 4.
The municipal sector had expanded from 11% of GDP in 1960 to 24% of GDP in 1978, often financed by increasing municipal taxes (Agurén and Broms 1982). This was a result of the expansion of child-care and elderly care, which had often been delivered by house-wives and servants in the past. When more female labour was demanded in the industrial sector during the 1970s and 1980s, the care sector developed at the municipal level.
- 5.
The business spanned industries from mining to forestry and wharfs.
- 6.
By doing this, we have in part been searching in the archives, specifically for reports and surveys dealing with the park and road sectors from the 1980s onwards. Reports were found at the National Archive, Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm. Searches were made in LIBRIS. Search codes were ‘municipal parks’ and ‘municipal roads’. Reports found often included references that were followed-up. Together with the INOPS data, these various sources of data will be contrasted over time and across the two sectors.
- 7.
In earlier, peasant societies, private provision was the norm. Still today, water provision in the countryside is a responsibility of the home-owner. Moreover, roads in the countryside have for a long time been the responsibility of local road associations, even if the municipality plays the dominant role in local road management (cf. Hansson and Knutsson 1991: 7). See also The National Association for Private Roads, www.revriks.se.
- 8.
One such example was Vägverket (the former Road Agency, today the Transport Agency) from whom the local municipality would frequently buy road maintenance services in the 1970s.
- 9.
Municipalities already provided services to their citizens through local enterprises in the mid-1850s (Hallgren 1997: 9). Services traditionally supplied such companies included railways, trams, harbours, water and sewage systems, garbage, slaughterhouses, market-halls (saluhallar), electricity, swimming halls, sport arenas and housing.
- 10.
For decades the municipalities have had a responsibility to ensure that all citizens are provided with housing. Hence, the public housing-stock in Sweden is constituted by larger volumes than just social housing, which relates to the European norm. 43% of Swedes live in detached houses, while 51% live in an apartment. Within the category of apartments, 29% are publicly owned and rented (SCB 2015).
- 11.
Examples of ‘common space’ include roads, parks, squares, public parking and biking-lanes. All public areas should be defined in detailed local planning documents (PBL 2010: 900).
- 12.
Green spaces were governed by the following actors, according to Hansson (1990): Municipalities (49%), single-homes (31), cooperative housing (12), the church (3), the regions, landsting (2), national defence (2), and the folkparks, NGO and semi-municipal management (1).
- 13.
There have been regulations on public procurement in Sweden since at least the 1800s, which were updated in 1952, 1973, 1980 and 1986. In 1973 the Swedish Association for Local Authorities (SKL) recommended general public procurement procedures, but these recommendations were not mandatory (Sundstrand 2013: 39).
- 14.
Under situations of austerity and cutbacks, these responsibilities are very likely to be re-negotiated with the local civil society. Other examples are snow-cleaning, playground maintenance, electric jogging paths, swimming sites and housing maintenance, sport arenas and parks (Hansson and Knutsson 1991: 37). A drawback of this management form is that the users normally lack the competence needed or the long-term responsibility. Hansson and Knutsson reported that in two-thirds of the municipalities a share of their technical maintenance was dependent on user production.
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Bretzer, Y.N., Persson, B., Randrup, T.B. (2020). Sweden: Local Marketization 1980–2018, Incremental Tendencies and Deviances. In: Lindholst, A., Hansen, M. (eds) Marketization in Local Government. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32478-0_6
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