Suchergebnisse

A characteristic of the Nordic states is their ambition to provide their citizens with a variety of good quality welfare services. A significant part of the responsibility for arranging reliable local solutions is devoted to the municipal level irrespective of the size of the municipality. This means a great variation in local capacity to meet different types of requirements. Especially small municipalities, which also face depopulation and an ageing population, are increasingly challenged to find renewal strategies and action plans to secure both municipal service obligations at reasonable cost per capita and competent staff. Besides rearranged internal steering, organizational frameworks, and working instructions, new solutions may be launched based on resource mobilization and a striving for improved performance in a wider spatial context. This paper explores how three municipalities in the north of Sweden have developed a voluntary intermunicipal collaboration and how it relates to alternative collaborative options in the regional context. The strengths and weaknesses of the chosen approach and its outcome are discussed based on interviews with the local government commissioners and their executive civil servants in different positions. The strength of the achieved collaborative profile is that it meets needs for higher cost efficiency and competence among staff within some municipal sectors. Further is noted that the chosen collaborative profile is not challenging the democratic accountability in each municipality. However, a weakness is that the collaborative results achieved after ten years of collaborative intentions are of marginal importance for all involved municipalities. These experiences are reflected upon with advantages and disadvantages of a merge alternative in mind.

A characteristic of the Nordic states is their ambition to provide their citizens with a variety of good quality welfare services. A significant part of the responsibility for arranging reliable local solutions is devoted to the municipal level irrespective of the size of the municipality. This means a great variation in local capacity to meet different types of requirements. Especially small municipalities, which also face depopulation and an ageing population, are increasingly challenged to find renewal strategies and action plans to secure both municipal service obligations at reasonable cost per capita and competent staff. Besides rearranged internal steering, organizational frameworks, and working instructions, new solutions may be launched based on resource mobilization and a striving for improved performance in a wider spatial context. This paper explores how three municipalities in the north of Sweden have developed a voluntary intermunicipal collaboration and how it relates to alternative collaborative options in the regional context. The strengths and weaknesses of the chosen approach and its outcome are discussed based on interviews with the local government commissioners and their executive civil servants in different positions. The strength of the achieved collaborative profile is that it meets needs for higher cost efficiency and competence among staff within some municipal sectors. Further is noted that the chosen collaborative profile is not challenging the democratic accountability in each municipality. However, a weakness is that the collaborative results achieved after ten years of collaborative intentions are of marginal importance for all involved municipalities. These experiences are reflected upon with advantages and disadvantages of a merge alternative in mind.

A characteristic of the Nordic states is their ambition to provide their citizens with a variety of good quality welfare services. A significant part of the responsibility for arranging reliable local solutions is devoted to the municipal level irrespective of the size of the municipality. This means a great variation in local capacity to meet different types of requirements. Especially small municipalities, which also face depopulation and an ageing population, are increasingly challenged to find renewal strategies and action plans to secure both municipal service obligations at reasonable cost per capita and competent staff. Besides rearranged internal steering, organizational frameworks, and working instructions, new solutions may be launched based on resource mobilization and a striving for improved performance in a wider spatial context. This paper explores how three municipalities in the north of Sweden have developed a voluntary intermunicipal collaboration and how it relates to alternative collaborative options in the regional context. The strengths and weaknesses of the chosen approach and its outcome are discussed based on interviews with the local government commissioners and their executive civil servants in different positions. The strength of the achieved collaborative profile is that it meets needs for higher cost efficiency and competence among staff within some municipal sectors. Further is noted that the chosen collaborative profile is not challenging the democratic accountability in each municipality. However, a weakness is that the collaborative results achieved after ten years of collaborative intentions are of marginal importance for all involved municipalities. These experiences are reflected upon with advantages and disadvantages of a merge alternative in mind.

This book analyses the spatial consequences of current transformation of the industrial structure and of public intervention in Sweden. The analysis is based on a number of empirical studies, not only in Sweden but for comparative reasons also in the state of North Carolina in the US, i.e. representing an environment with a more farreaching influence of market forces. The results indicate the development of a more fragmented and less predictable pattern of problems and options in Swedish regions. Especially the intermediate socio-economic regions - between the metropolitan agglomerations and the traditional peripheral rural areas - are highlighted and hypothesized to include certain comparative advantages in the new context

Northern Sweden is increasingly influenced by competing social interests striving for advantages and claiming territorial influence through "scalar politics". The strategic deployment of scalar conceptions is an integral part of policy making and implementation. Increasing use of varying scalar conceptions follows from "new spatial planning" practices. Set territorial delineations and administrative responsibilities are opened up to complex associational relationships with varying spatial claims. Focusing on territorial policies, this paper examines what orientations there are in territorial policy development in and for northern Sweden. The 29 municipalities embraced by the two northernmost counties Norrbotten and Västerbotten are the geographical delimitation of the study. As the analysis shows, the dominating scalar constructs relate to national and EU territorial policies rather than to competing constructs focused on Nordic, Barents and Arctic territorialization. ; publishedVersion

Northern Sweden is increasingly influenced by competing social interests striving for advantages and claiming territorial influence through "scalar politics". The strategic deployment of scalar conceptions is an integral part of policy making and implementation. Increasing use of varying scalar conceptions follows from "new spatial planning" practices. Set territorial delineations and administrative responsibilities are opened up to complex associational relationships with varying spatial claims. Focusing on territorial policies, this paper examines what orientations there are in territorial policy development in and for northern Sweden. The 29 municipalities embraced by the two northernmost counties Norrbotten and Västerbotten are the geographical delimitation of the study. As the analysis shows, the dominating scalar constructs relate to national and EU territorial policies rather than to competing constructs focused on Nordic, Barents and Arctic territorialization.

In 2011, Sweden released its first-ever Arctic strategy, in preparation for taking over the chairmanship of the Arctic Council, an eight-state cooperation organization. The recent political development that will include Sweden more extensively in Arctic regional cooperation makes it relevant to review and comment on the image of the areas involved from a Swedish viewpoint and to improve the often very brief descriptions of northernmost Sweden in Arctic literature. In this paper, we contrast descriptions of the Arctic in the Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR) with descriptions of northern Sweden in established domestic demographic and regional development research. The study shows that many of the assumptions in the first AHDR to the effect that the eight "Arctic" regions are rather directly comparable in fact reveal substantial differences between areas, with northern Sweden standing in sharp contrast to many of the descriptions. Instead of having a population that is very small, young, and rapidly growing because of a high birth rate, northern Sweden is characterized by relatively dense habitation with a stable and aging population of long-term residents. Moreover, it has a very small and relatively integrated indigenous population with largely the same health situation as in Sweden overall. While depopulation and urbanization are evident in its less populated areas, migration from the region is partly directed at the larger regional centres in the area, following a pattern seen in the Western world at large. ; En 2011, au moment où elle se préparait à assumer la présidence du Conseil de l'Arctique, un organisme de collaboration entre huit pays, la Suède a mis en oeuvre sa toute première politique relative à l'Arctique. L'événement politique récent qui a fait en sorte que la Suède devra jouer un rôle plus grand dans la collaboration régionale de l'Arctique incite à analyser l'image des régions qui entrent en jeu du point de vue de la Suède, à porter des commentaires sur cette image ainsi qu'à améliorer les descriptions souvent très brèves de la partie la plus au nord de la Suède que l'on retrouve dans la documentation au sujet de l'Arctique. Dans cet article, nous contrastons les descriptions de l'Arctique figurant dans l'Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR) avec les descriptions du nord de la Suède émanant de travaux de recherche établis sur le développement régional et la démographie intérieure. Cette étude permet de constater que de nombreuses hypothèses du premier rapport AHDR selon lesquelles les huit régions « arctiques » sont plutôt directement comparables révèlent en fait des différences considérables entre les régions, le nord de la Suède représentant un contraste marqué par rapport à grand nombre des autres descriptions. Au lieu d'être doté d'une population très petite, jeune et en croissance rapide attribuable à un taux de natalité élevé, le nord de la Suède est caractérisé par une habitation relativement dense et une population stable et vieillissante composée de résidents de longue date. Par ailleurs, le nord de la Suède comprend une population indigène très petite et relativement intégrée affichant à peu près la même situation de santé que l'ensemble de la Suède. Bien que le dépeuplement et l'urbanisation s'avèrent évidents dans les zones moins peuplées, la migration en partance de cette région est partiellement orientée vers les plus grands centres régionaux de la région, conformément à la tendance générale enregistrée dans le monde occidental.