The Swedish government decided in 2012 that the importance of biodiversity and the value of ecosystem services should be integrated in planning and other decision processes latest in 2018. However, it is not self-evident how to implement the importance of biodiversity and the value of ecosystem services in spatial planning practice. The aim of this report is to explore how far Swedish municipalities have progressed regarding the integration of ecosystem services in urban spatial planning and what can be learnt from the efforts so far. The data for this progress re-port was gathered by means of a telephone survey. The results show that the integration of ecosystem services is in an early stage in Swedish planning practice. However, the lack of practical experiences makes many planners hesitant to get started. The overall picture is that most planners seem to regard it as a technical issue that can be solved by experts and assessment/ planning tools. For future spatial planning practice it is recommended that value of ecosystem services should be negotiated instead of assessed by experts.
The aim of the present study is to describe and analyze the attitude of local government officials to traffic safety and to their roles in the decisions being made with regard to traffic safety measures. The purpose is also to give an overall picture of the decision-making processes in connection with specific traffic safety measures in two municipal authorities. The study has been divided into two parts. The first part was an interview study in which twenty local government officials in eleven municipal authorities were subject to in-depth interviews. The second part consists of case studies of the planning and decision-making processes with regard to traffic safety matters in two municipal authorities, where the source material in each case consists of written documentation.
Most studies of emerging Swedish parties and politics have mainly focused on the Swedish Social Democrats and their struggle for democracy and political power, most as a prelude to the so called "Swedish Model". Competing parties have received attention from historians on the national level, but their local origin remains to large extent an open field. The aim of this study is to investigate how local political factors shaped the emerging liberal party organizations in two small Swedish towns. By a case-oriented comparison two towns are contrasted, Skövde in Skaraborg county and Filipstad in Värmland. This thesis suggests that the distinction between national politics and municipal government, based on the interests of economic elites, was transformed during the period 1880-1920. During this period local elections and local government became increasingly sites for political struggle between different parties, with new agendas. With a framework that considered parties in light of their functions rather than organizational types and theoretical concepts borrowed from the sociology of social movements, the thesis main results suggest that political mobilization and liberal party-formation was depending on the local political traditions. The theoretical framework made it possible to pinpoint both similarities and differences between the cases. The results of the study indicate that the historical tradition is central to parties to emerge and flourish. This suggests that it is more meaningful to focus attention on local and regional processes to understand the historical development than has previously been done. ; De svenska partiernas historia är relativt väl känd på nationell nivå, men deras lokala ursprung är mindre utforskat och inte minst gäller det borgerliga partier. I den här avhandlingen undersöks hur lokalpolitiska faktorer formade de framväxande frisinnade, eller liberala, lokalorganisationerna i Filipstad och Skövde. Avhandlingen visar att politisk mobilisering och politisk organisering i städerna i hög grad formades av lokala och regionala politiska traditioner. Den visar också att kommunerna var politiserade långt före att de nationella partierna tog hand om valen och kommunala frågor. Studien visar att det fanns en kontinuitet mellan äldre lokala partier och de lokalavdelningar av nationella partier som etablerades efter sekelskiftet 1900. Det var en kontinuitet som återspeglades såväl ideologiskt som organisatoriskt. Avhandlingens resultat pekar på att det är mer meningsfullt att fokusera uppmärksamheten mot lokala och regionala politiseringsprocesser för att förstå den generella politiska utvecklingen i Sveriges historia än vad som tidigare har gjorts. Anders Forsell är doktorand i historia inom Forskarskolan i regionalt samhällsbyggande. Det här är hans doktorsavhandling.
The relationship between the state and municipalities has for the recent decades become increasingly complex, strained and infected. The education policy has for several decades been surrounded by different governing logics and conflicts where the conflict between the state's pursuit of national equality and the local self-determination is prominent. This study examines how this conflict affects the municipal official's approaches to the state's control of the municipal compulsory school through aimed government grants. The study consists of a qualitative interview study of six municipalities with 23 respondents. In each municipality, I have conducted interviews with municipal officials, principals and municipal politicians. The findings show that the aimed government grants should be seen in the field of tension between state and municipality and between politics and professions. Conflicts arise between the municipalities' different conditions as well as their local needs and the state's pursuit of national equality between schools. The municipal officials are assigned significant power regarding how the state and municipal governance is to be put into practice and are therefore given a coordinating central position where they must balance between state requirements, local requirements and school's requirements. The findings indicate that they seem to prioritize the state's target of national equality in favor of the local target of self-determination. The relationship between the state and the municipalities gets exposed through the role conflicts of the municipal officials, which both compete and cooperate. The conclusion is that the municipal officials should be regarded as the state's extended arm, or as "state municipal officials". They possess a double loyalty to the state and local government and must, with this double loyalty, be the guardians of the local and national democracy at the same time. There is a risk that the municipal officials' double democracy loyalty demonstrates that the local democracy ...
The aim of the overview article is to encircle a research field focusing the role of local government in the Swedish national climate protection policy. First, the policy area of climate protection is historically identified as a part of a third generation policy areas. Secondly, relating to contemporary governance literature some steering measurements are presented. There is thus an increasing steering complexity containing hierarchical, market-based & network based steering. Thirdly, the role of local government is discussed in terms of reasons for engaging or not engaging in climate protection work. Political, institutional, financial & professional aspects are considered important in order to explain variations in municipal climate protection activities. Finally some research questions are put forth, such as how & why municipal leaders are handling uncertainty in certain ways, municipal leaders as network managers & local climate protection policy-making & implementation from perspectives of learning & democracy. References. Adapted from the source document.
The primary aim of this study is to provide a deeper and more complete understanding of why the great municipal amalgamation (storkommunreformen) during the 1940s became the political solution to the problem that the Government believed many of Sweden's municipalities had in satisfactorily providing for a local welfare society. The study also describes the results of this large-scale reorganization process. The events examined include the political decision-making process at the national level that took place during 1939-1949, as well as the regional/local realization of these decisions during 1946-1952. The parliamentary treatment of the municipal division issue should be viewed as a good example of what researchers have termed a Swedish decision-making model. One clear manifestation of this was the fact that the national commission that investigated the question primarily formulated the principles for the reform. The committee's proposal received strong endorsements in the reports from the reviewers of the proposal. The government authorities and many of the municipalities felt that a new division of municipalities was justified. Opposition that did occur came mostly from rural municipalities with small populations. Many of these municipalities believed that the present municipal divisions functioned well as they were. Of those municipalities that were affected by amalgamation, 39 percent of them did not agree with the decision. The majority of these could agree to merge with other municipalities, but not with the municipalities stipulated by the authorities. Considering the fact that the then current divisions were based on a long tradition, demands for retaining independence could have been greater. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that 66 percent of all larger municipalities were formed using some level of force. This still indicated a relatively widely distributed opposition to the amalgamation decisions, however.
This book, with the title Coalition rule - bloc rule - multiple rule, deals with the development of the forms of government that have been put into practice in Swedish municipalities during the period 1952-2002. Forms of government refer to how the power, in the form of chairmanship of local administrations, has been distributed between the majority and minority in the different municipal councils. Two levels are involved in this study. First a national investigation, which for the main part of the period is done in the form of a total survey. Second, more detailed case studies applicable to the development in the county of Kronoberg, Småland. As the title indicates the development of the forms of government in Swedish municipalities can be classified into three main phases. The first phase, coalition rule, means that the majority and the minority shared chairmanships of local administrations. This was valid at the time of the starting-point of the study and continued until the beginning of the 1970s. The second phase, bloc rule, was seriously modelled during the first half of the 1970s and implied that one of the traditional political blocs had all the chairmanships in a municipality. The third and last phase, multiple rule, can be said to have started in the mid 1990s. This phase was characterised by softened bloc politics, among other things as a consequence of the fact that the Green Party and various local parties had the position as the balance of power in considerably more municipalities. The theoretical framework of the study is composed by the concepts of conflict and consensus, political culture, practice, hegemony and coalition formation. These five elements seem to be interrelated, and they should serve as suitable instruments of analysis. This should make the empirical results more possible to generalise. Conflict and consensus can be connected to the political culture by the fact that the political culture in a municipality can be characterised by either conflict or consensus. The political culture can then lead to a certain practice. For example, under a long succession of terms of office, a system is applied with as far-reaching majority marks as the law allows, where one of the traditional political blocs always is in power in the municipality. There is also an ambition to develop the theoretical insights better, in particular in two cases. First, there is an effort to formulate ideal models of municipal politics on the basis of the conception of hegemony. Second, there is an attempt to integrate the human factor in the theories of coalition formation.
Coalition formation in a new municipal parliamentary landscape. Pragmatism in policy-related windows of opportunities Coalition building in Swedish municipalities has traditionally been dominated by two political blocks at the opposite sides of the ideological left–right scale (Bäck 2003; Wångmar 2006). The success of the Sweden Democrats in the last elections have challenged that pattern. Statistics on coalition formation since the 2014 election indicate that the traditional policy scale no longer dominates local government. Coalitions of parties closely situated next to each other on the left–right scale are not as common as before. Interviews with 19 leading politicians in five Swedish municipalities that formed majority coalitions, including parties on the left as well as the right block, indicate that neither the traditional left–right scale nor the GAL–TAN dimension played a decisive role in these coalition formation processes. Instead, the ability of political parties to cooperate within the coalitions and building on personal chemistry, was considered the most important factor in the coalition building process on the municipal level. ; Sociologisk Forsknings digitala arkiv
This dissertation is about municipal procurement of construction projects. Public procurement is often portrayed as inefficient since public organizations can have several, potentially conflicting, objectives. In this dissertation, I use Uppsala municipality as a case to study how procurement worked during a time when municipal procurement was not regulated by law. The main interest is how the administration balanced procedural and outcome-related objectives and how its choices can be explained. Earlier research has suggested that public organizations use discretionary decision-making and so-called low-powered incentives (negotiations and cost-plus contracts) to a lesser extent than private clients do, making procurement less efficient. Rigid rules and fear of corruption are usually mentioned as explanations. The results of this dissertation show that low-powered incentives and discretionary decision-making became more common when there were more rules and a more bureaucratized administration. It is suggested that the structure and institutions of the construction sector, in combination with government financing policies and the municipality's organizational capability, can explain the pattern. The results have implications for the literature on public procurement as well as on the development of the public administration in Sweden. First, they indicate that the relationship between formal rules and procurement practices is more complicated than previously suggested. Second, they highlight how discussions about the public administrative system can benefit from incorporating the local level as well as informal institutions and practices.
The European Union (EU) Directive 2001/42/EC on the assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment (hereafter called the SEA-directive) that came into effect on 21 July in 2001 has started a policy implementation process in the 27 member states. In Sweden the spatial planning in municipalities and their comprehensive planning activities will be a major arena for implementing the SEA directive. The aim of the thesis is to investigate the planning practice emanating from the implementation of the SEA-directive into Swedish municipal planning. The aim is also to shed light on SEA as a steering tool for change. The results from the discourse analysis of the policy expectations of the SEA implementation as expressed in the preparatory works to the law picture a national SEA discourse that wants to above all promote efficiency in the municipal comprehensive planning processes. The message from the discourse is however contradictory. On the one hand a no change picture is outlined on the other hand is outlined major benefits for planning. In relation to sustainable development the role of SEA is down sized. Another study shows how the implementing officers at the local authorities perceive the coming change when SEA is introduced into Swedish municipal comprehensive planning. They foresee difficulties with financing the extra work, new personnel and education, with a greater need for inter-and intra organisational communication, difficulties with political climate and economic environment, as complications with tiering, since the Swedish planning system is not particularly tiered at present. The implementers also have difficulties in understanding the purpose of SEA and how to tackle contradicting objectives, such as more consultations and faster planning processes. The above brief description leads to questions relating to what kind of implementation that will be the results of this situation? In 2007 twelve municipalities, out of a total of 290 had made their first attempts to implement the SEA directive as part of municipal comprehensive plans (MCP). First results or policy outcomes can thus be explored. The main focus of this study is the planning documents, including the environmental report (ER), as they represent the written part of the planning process and the results of the local SEA practice. The empirical focus of the main empirical study are the contents of the SEAs in 24 plans made before the introduction of the SEA directive and the contents of the first 12 municipal comprehensive plans that have implemented the Swedish SEA legislation based on the SEA directive. The result is a change in perspective towards more specific environmental issues in the later plans as compared to the ones made before the demands of SEA. The transparency of consultation has increased and consultations with the County Administrative Board have been held by many of municipalities. By taking a policy implementation perspective, the importance of context is made obvious, for the role that SEA implementation can take and what space for action the implementers have in developing their SEA-practice. The discourse perspective helped to "uncover" and display the character of the governments SEA discourse and thus also to, in more detail, outline the discursive governmental input to change of planning and SEA practice in the municipalities.
