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In the public and academic debate, the liberalization of Swedish school policy is often equated with privatization and -- to a lesser degree -- differentiation. The first is associated with the rapid growth of a semi-private free school sector, driven by slogans such as freedom of choice, cost-efficiency, parental influence and market competition. The second is associated with the decentralization of power and goal- oriented governance, aiming to achieve a variegated and flexible school system that is better equipped to meet individual needs, interests and preferences. The article examines this widespread conception of the liberalization of Swedish school policy. More precisely, the objective is to position central school policy developments over the last two decades in the liberal field through a tripartite typology. I argue that the mainstream conception exaggerates the privatization type of liberalization, while neglecting another, less visible but very influential type -- namely universalization. Adapted from the source document.

In the quest for individualization and liberalization, policies within the Swedish public sectors have since the late 1980's been marked by market-like reforms. Despite earlier intense debates between Swedish parties on these reforms, parties across the political spectrum currently support the "choice agenda", as the reforms are known. To understand the process of how parties have come to mutually support choice reforms, I analyze the arguments of the Swedish Social Democratic and Conservative parties on private and public, in relation to the question of individual choice, from the late 1970s until today. The analysis reveals that the Social Democrats show continuity in the way that they attribute essential values to the state in regards of the state's capability of guaranteeing the desirable outcome (an equally distributed welfare), but a marked change in the instrumental values assigned to the market. Although the Conservatives show ambivalence regarding the desired functions of the state, it has not had the same impact on the conservative significance of the concept of choice and therefore the conservative ideology can appear as more coherent. For both parties, it seems, however, that the welfare society still requires a welfare state. Adapted from the source document.

Welfare, and the role of social democracy in defining its content and meaning, is often described as one of Sweden's distinguishing features. However, in the quest for liberalization and marketization, reforms in past decades have substantially changed the political landscape. These developments have led many to question the viability of describing the main political actors and their attitudes towards the welfare state in terms of left or right. This dissertation contributes to the understanding of ideological convergence and past and current political cleavages by analysing the welfare debate on freedom of choice between the two main political opponents in Swedish politics over three decades. Using a morphological approach, where ideologies are viewed as distinctive configurations of political concepts creating specific conceptual patterns depending on how they are combined, the analysis focuses on the content of the concept of choice by examining the conceptual relationships between political concepts such as choice, the public and the private, equality, equity and need. The analysis reveals a convergence suggesting that the parties have united around a narrower concept of freedom of choice that relates to how it is implemented in welfare services, that is, the choice between different providers of welfare services. However, important differences remain, which are expressed in the parties' differing conceptions of the power resources citizens need to become truly free individuals. These findings suggest that, while freedom of choice has become a central concept in the political debate, it is not central to the parties' ideologies. Instead, the core of the parties' ideologies appears to be articulated in e.g. the political cleavages that remain, which can be described as differing views on the role of politics and competing conceptions of need and equality. It is how these cleavages are translated into policies that will determine possible welfare choices in the future.