ABSTRACT
Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland not only share a long history but are also seen as representing one distinct Scandinavian (natives call it Nordic) model of public administration. From a political science angle, Robert Cox (2004) has reflected on the Scandinavian welfare state model. It is, he argues, a matter of universality, solidarity and market independence. Universal solutions, where all are included in the welfare state, solidarity is expressed in progressive and redistributive tax systems, and no citizen is left to finance and
buy from private firms its own share of welfare services, are at the core of the Scandinavian welfare states. In Table 2.1 below, an overall presentation of how each country has adhered to the basic NPM toolbox is made. The presentation suggests that Sweden and Finland have been more ready to apply NPM-like reforms than Denmark and Norway, and have done so more intensely. The intensity is indicated by stars; more stars represent higher intensity. Sweden had already initiated reforms akin to the Hood (1991) NPM doctrines in the mid-1980s, so Swedish adoption was early but still a few years after Finland’s (Yliaska, 2015). Sweden is often mentioned as a special case, but Finland’s NPM trajectory resembles the Swedish one. Agencification in government, a strong municipal autonomy, results-orientation and quantification, as well as privatization and marketization reforms, unite the two countries. Likewise, the hesitant accommodation of payment by results and turning citizens into customers also place the two countries close to each other when it comes to NPM inclinations. Denmark displays a somewhat mixed pattern. As Kure and Malmmose point out in Chapter 4, Denmark is by many commentators seen as a ‘tortoise’ or careful ‘modernizer’ rather than a ‘marketizer’. The OECD (2000) remarks that regulatory reform had been hesitant in Denmark and slowed by consensus-driven policy processes. In a direct comparison with Sweden, Green-Pedersen (2002) noted that market-type reforms have been greater in Sweden than in Denmark, not least in the health care sector. Greve (2003, 2006) also draws the picture of a rather flat NPM trajectory. However, as Skærbæk points out in the section on Denmark below, Denmark was engaged early on in NPM-like reforms, mainly taking place at the administrative levels in the Danish public sector. Norway is often described as a ‘reluctant reformer’ of NPM concepts (Christensen, 2003). In the last decades, the pressure on Norway to engage in public reforms has been comparatively low due to a healthy economic situation and a well-functioning supply of public services. However, there have been different waves of reform over the decades, usually with a pragmatic approach focusing on managerial tools (Laegreid et al., 2013). Christensen et al. (2008) characterize the Norwegian reform work as a gradual move, but
one that is still lagging behind typical NPM countries. Still, the hospital sector went through a restructuring in 2002 characterized by NPM ideas, calling for a number of successive management reforms. Further, the municipalities have shown a great willingness to experiment with internal structures since the 1990s. However, over the last decade there has also been a focus on structural issues such as interactions with central government agencies or with other municipalities (Bezes et al., 2013). In the following discussion on the nations, major reforms in each respective nation are presented. The section on Sweden begins with an overview of the institutional settings found in the Swedish public sector, in order to give the reader necessary points of reference when reading the Swedish chapters in the book.
