Green public procurement has been criticized for its excessive reliance on detailed technology specifications, which can distort incentives in the short term and discourage innovation in the longer term. Economists therefore tend to prefer technology-neutral procurement, which rewards outcomes rather than technologies. However, technology-neutral procurement can also be problematic in practice. The present study investigated green public procurement of waste management, a rapidly growing field. In one of the most sophisticated models for technology-neutral procurement applied in Sweden in recent years, different environmental impacts were assigned weights, but no weight was given to the particular technology employed. Even here, however, potential inefficiencies were found where the scoring rule could have led to arbitrary, and presumably unwanted, outcomes. Explicitly assigning monetary surcharges to desirable and undesirable environmental effects may be a better way to reach environmental targets.
A policy entrepreneur is a distinct political actor aiming to affect change. The theoretical narrative regarding policy entrepreneurs is underpinned by their commitment to a policy solution, the multi-dimensional strategies they use to promote that solution, and a suite of attributes and skills facilitating their actions. Policy entrepreneurs reveal themselves through their attempts to transform policy ideas into policy innovations and, hence, disrupt status quo policy arrangements. Indeed, policy entrepreneurs share sensibilities with entrepreneurs in the market, whose conceptualisation serves as a heuristic for their counterparts in policy and politics. The emphasis on change borne out of innovative solutions distinguishes policy entrepreneurs from many other actors who aim to maintain current institutional settings and power relations. The growing scholarship on policy entrepreneurship assumes intentionality as inherent to the policy entrepreneur and their actions, foregrounding the image of the tenacious political actor set on steering their a priori pet policy to a suitable problem. This article draws from the market theory on entrepreneurship, contrasting proactive policy entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship by opportunity) and reactive policy entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship by necessity). We conduct a comparative social network analysis of three municipalities in southern Sweden focused on flood risk mitigation. We demonstrate two different logics of policy entrepreneurship (as a result of seizing opportunities versus as a reaction to vertical pressure), and we explore the consequences for enhancing our understanding of policy entrepreneurship
An emerging literature argues that street-level bureaucrats can develop and advocate for policy innovations that change policy in meaningful ways, calling this phenomenon “street-level policy entrepreneurship.” This argument is at the heart of the present special issue, which features contributions to developing the theoretical underpinnings of street-level policy entrepreneurship and empirically examining evidence for this phenomenon. While the traditional understanding of street-level bureaucrats views them as administrative functionaries, lacking motivation or resources for innovation, this new perspective recognizes that street-level officials' deep knowledge of a given policy domain and involved stakeholders uniquely positions these officials to advocate for policy innovations affecting the domain and its constituents. We urge scholars to take street-level policy entrepreneurship seriously and to examine questions at the frontiers of our knowledge about these entrepreneurial officials, including what motivates them, what strategies for policy advocacy they find most effective, and how their behaviors are shaped by different institutional contexts.
Electricity is critical to almost all other critical infrastructure. Disturbance in the power supply would likely have devastating effects on all areas in society. Assurance of electricity to vital societal functions requires policies to manage power shortages. Such policies exist in only a handful of countries. This study focuses on one of those countries. In Sweden, the policy for power shortages, Styrel, includes all levels of society, all responsible institutions, and expert organisations. The policy is governed from the top down. We are primarily interested in how Styrel affects municipalities in their planning processes and supports decision making at the local level. The study is an interview study with key informants at the municipal level. The results show that the policy is supportive under certain conditions, depending on how the actors carried out previous processes. Lack of knowledge and support, and time pressure, characterise the process, although participants also have a sufficiently positive attitude to allow a more relaxed method of handling the process. The study provides insights on challenges that municipalities must manage in their work with policies for critical infrastructure protection.
Purpose
This paper aims to explore and develop knowledge about implementing and applying a quality management system (QMS) in the public sector.Design/methodology/approachA study was conducted including 16 qualitative in-depth interviews with 18 respondents, all working with QMSs in the Swedish public sector.
Findings
The study identified five main themes that are problematic in relation to the implementation of the statutory QMS in the public sector. The identified themes show that there exists a gap between theory and practice regarding how the statutory QMS needs to be implemented and applied.
Practical implications
Based on the analysis of the findings, the authors propose a model of core values and supporting elements for QMS in the public sector to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
Originality/value
The study identified problems when implementing statutory QMSs in the public sector and presents a model of improvement. Further research is needed regarding statutory QMS in the public sector.
This paper demonstrates a multi-disciplinary co-creation approach to explore local governance of future regional development in remote areas. This study aims to increase the understanding of factors that can accelerate or hamper regional development. In particular, the inquiry focuses on local decision-makers’ perceptions about a future society, regional cooperation, and reasons for the influx of people, businesses and industries. The results reveal discrepancies and similarities between local perceptions and regional necessities. The study thus contributes valuable insights about crucial issues for future development of remote areas, such as strengthening local identities so that local communities fit together in a region appearing as a complete entity to potentially interested parties.
The protection of infrastructure that is critical to society’s functionality, survival and progression has gained significance because of its large-scale and interdependent nature. This complex system-of-system (SoS) imposes extensive requirements on governance efforts to foster critical infrastructure protection (CIP). This paper uses the kaleidoscope for integrative system analysis (KISA) to investigate a Swedish approach for CIP against power shortages, called STYREL. Based on multiple sources of evidence, such as documents with regard to the case, interviews and a survey with involved experts, the analysis focuses on the system of emergency planning and the usage of the resulting plan. The results deliver insights into the governance of the multi-level planning, including issues regarding policies, the management and operation of STYREL, and accelerating problems in the adaption, emergence and entropy of the SoS, during and between process iterations. Since this large-scale approach largely fails to involve the private sector to enhance the resilience of the society, this proceeding results in uncalculated consequences. In addition, the current design of the approach hampers transparency and evaluation, which poses obstacles to the cultivation of mutual trust, collective learning and a shared understanding as well as proper risk communication with the wider public.
Critical infrastructure systems—such as transportation—are the backbone of society. Infrastructuredevelopment can thus be acknowledged as a common societal concern in the field ofgovernance, and its recognition as a policy problem is crucial to proper decision making. This studyaims to build an in-depth understanding of the multi-level system concerned with transportation andapplies a soft systems methodology to structure the investigation. The system analysis and conceptualmodelling rests on publicly available documents and policies, group meetings and a workshop withstakeholders from the local, regional and national levels. The paper provides a thorough analysis ofthe Swedish transportation system through public policy and the perceptions of municipal officials. Inaddition, it proposes a novel conceptual framework of the transportation system, including a detaileddiscussion of stakeholders, activities and perspectives. Although transportation is vital for manystakeholders, improving only transport infrastructure does not guarantee regional growth. Therefore,the proposed framework constitutes a novel basis for constructive dialogue among concerned partiesregarding improvements to transportation. Thereby, the paper provides an understanding of asociety’s transportation system that can be used to inform agenda setting for critical infrastructuregovernance. Further discussion in the scientific community and with officials entrusted with publicadministration could further validate and deepen the proposed understanding of the perspectivesand constraints in the examined context and beyond.
Various societal functions, such as healthcare, freight transports, water supplies and electricity, ensure the daily life, endurance and progress of modern societies. The protection of such critical functions requires comprehensive information processing. Based on evidence from documents on the Swedish planning process STYREL and interviews with entrusted decisionmakers at county administrative boards, municipalities and power grid operators, this study aims to crystallise information pathways and flaws to highlight information filtration and alteration. Analyses of the material reveal a set of information-flawing filters, such as information withholding or loss when sharing, information scarcity in criticality assessments and ad-hoc information creation due to scarcity. Because of these filters, the Swedish process causes an altering of information that affects the quality of decisions and the emergency response plan that relies on them. Thus, this study indicates deficiencies that relate to information sharing, information security and decision-making that pose risks to citizens and businesses.
Failures in the power supply threaten the safety of developed countries, as they are increasingly dependent on electricity to maintain important societal functions through critical infrastructure. To protect electricity-dependent critical infrastructure, Sweden has implemented a multi-level planning, called Styrel, which involves national-, regional- and local-level actors. This study focuses on interactions among key actors and their roles in the planning as well as the Swedish crisis management system. With evidence from interviews and a survey among the actors, analyses indicate blind spots in the current proceeding, such as the reliance of the outcome of the process on the actors’ commitment to achieve a common understanding of the importance of infrastructure assets and participate in collaborations. This paper reveals that actors lack awareness, knowledge, capability and resources to fulfil their roles in the national planning for critical infrastructure protection. By highlighting interrelations, this study contributes to the international discussion of identification, prioritisation and protection of critical infrastructure to mitigate consequences of power failures for a depending society.
Electricity is a key resource for the majority of societal functions and constitutes an important sector in the critical infrastructure of modern societies. Disturbances in power supply can have cascading effects on interdependent public sectors and ordinary citizens. However, it seems nearly impossible to completely prevent the occurrence of power shortages. Strategies to address temporary power losses are therefore essential. This paper aims to increase the understanding of national policies to manage the early consequences of power outages. Therefore, we critically review the Swedish national policy called Styrel as part of Swedish Crisis Management System. In the scientific literature, there are few examples similar to Styrel for handling emergencies in the electricity system. Particularly, we seek to discover related risks and benefits, conditions and constraints, as well as effects for specific stakeholders. We argue that the approach cannot yet be considered as fully developed. Three areas requiring improvement are identified. First, the scope and terms of the process must be specified. Second, (better) quality management seems necessary. Third, people responsible for identifying and prioritizing power consumers critical to local society need better decision aid. Improvements could facilitate risk-communication and collaboration among actors as well as decision-making and organisational learning.
This paper highlights the difficulties in the studies of the crisis management system. Our focus is on the Swedish planning process in the case of power shortage, called Styrel. Our paper depart from a research project entitled From Authorities to Citizens and Back. The aim of the project is to increase the knowledge on the decision-making processes within Styrel with a focus on how the actors co-operate within the planning process, and what consequences the priorities of socially important objects have for society and its citizens. Methodologically, the project is based on document studies, interview with security officers in forty-seven municipalities, three coordinators at the County administrative board (CAB), and representatives for local power grid companies. Furthermore, a survey has been conducted with all coordinators at the CAB. The intended objective has also been to take part of the planning documents in order to investigate if there are any differences between how the objects were prioritized by the municipalities and how they were finally prioritized. Our experience from the study reviles problems with availability of relevant planning material, lack of knowledge due to deficient continuity at the local level regarding those responsible for Styrel, and finally difficulties in following individual objects during the planning process.
This paper highlights major methodological obstacles to studying and performing critical infrastructure protection (CIP) in general and CIP governance in particular. The study simultaneously examines a research project on and practice in the context of Swedish CIP. The complex planning approach of interest is called Styrel, a Swedish acronym for Steering Electricity to prioritised power consumers. It aims to identify and prioritise power consumers of societal importance, collectively referred to as critical infrastructure (CI), to provide an emergency response plan for the event of a national power shortage. Methodologically, the investigation uses material from document studies, interviews and a survey, which involved many actors from the Swedish case. For the analysis of the methodological obstacles, this study applies an abstracted research and development process that encompasses four steps: data collection, data assessment, decision-making and evaluation. The paper mutually maps the insights from the research project to the empirical evidence from the case study. Through this reflective analysis, the findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the challenges that significantly impede research and practice in the context of national and international CIP, for example, insufficient information sharing and knowledge exchange among parties, a lack of integrated and advanced methods, and uncertainty in policies that induces a variety of local approaches. In addition, since empirical research on implemented CIP plans is limited, this paper addresses this gap. It reveals five general obstacles for both research and practice: a) the access to high-quality data, b) the loss of knowledge over time, c) the interpretation and evaluation of processes and methods, d) the transferability and comparability of data, results and insights; whereas all culminate in 5) a lack of collective intelligence. The accumulation of these obstacles hinders a detailed assessment of decision-making for CIP and its consequences on society. For this reason, this study emphasises the need for enhancing mutual understanding among the various parties in the area of CIP while respecting relevant security issues when inventing novel methods that facilitate collective intelligence.
Purpose: This paper aims to explore whether the key drivers identified in digitalization policies are being prioritized by practitioners in health and social care and to what degree the goals of the policies are being enacted. Design/methodology/approach: The investigation comprised two stages. First, the key drivers of digitalization in the national policies were identified. Second, a survey was disseminated to practitioners within health and social care, asking them to indicate their stance on each key driver (using Likert scales). Findings: The findings of this paper are twofold. First, they demonstrate that practitioners more readily enact the key drivers centered around their everyday operations, such as improving services and care and increasing efficiency. Second, it shows that key drivers of a more rhetorical nature, such as “becoming the best,” do not yield benefits for practitioners. Practical implications: This paper shows that for policies to have an effect in practice and to contribute to change, they should be rooted in key drivers centered around practitioners’ everyday operations, promoting specificity over abstraction. Originality/value: While previous studies have involved policy analysis, few studies investigate the enactment of policies, how they are implemented and whether they contribute to changes in practice.
Public-sector digitalization has gained traction over the years, and with it has come a flood of official documents (policies and grey literature) highlighting what the (digital) future is supposed to look like and proposing a range of digital solutions to inspire action. Such policies and strategic documents propose what will be important in future societies. In this paper, we employ the policy-analysis framework, ‘what’s the problem represented to be’ (WPR), first developed by Bacchi. We conducted a workshop with a Swedish municipality, inviting key actors to work with the idea of digitalization to re-read their digitalization policy in light of the WPR framework. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what surfaced when the policymakers and public servants used WPR to dissect their own digitalization policy. The results show that the key actors’ reflections centred around the value of the policy itself, and the WPR framework seemed to enhance their ability to reflect upon the usability of the policy and the work needed to implement and evaluate it. Furthermore, they pinpointed that the digitalization policy appeared rather naïve in terms of contextual factors (lack of recontextualisation on the municipal level) and hindrances (lack of resources to tackle existing hindrances).
Digitalization is associated with structural changes in society, and a variety of policies on the topic have emerged on different levels of government (EU, national, regional, local) in recent years. Research suggests that government policies on digitalization are often overly optimistic about the transformational effects of technology. Hence, there is a need to scrutinise such policies. The purpose of this paper is to examine how objectives are expressed in digitalization policies in the welfare sector. To do so, an objectives-oriented approach is utilised to analyse four Swedish welfare policies. A directed content analysis was conducted using a theoretical framework based on five types of objectives from decision theory. The results reveal that common objectives in the policies studied were to change the status quo or use the people involved (citizens and healthcare staff) as a point of departure. At times, the policies combine goals of increased efficiency and better care, with a discourse that makes digitalization resemble a strategic goal (in itself). Moreover, few alternatives to digitalization presented in the material studied. Hence, although a range of actors is presumed to be part of changing the status quo, the results suggest that these actors have little choice due to a lack of alternatives to the prescribed path towards a digital welfare society. The results of this research have implications for both theory and practice. The absence of alternatives ought to be considered in future policy making. An interesting area for further research is to investigate how these policies are enacted in practice.
This article studies the response by public sphere institutions in democratic societies to far-right parties, focusing specifically on public broadcasting organizations in Germany and Sweden. With the upsurge of far-right parties these types of institutions are faced with difficult decisions on how to balance norms of inclusivity, impartiality and pluralism while also safeguarding substantive norms related to the protection of equal human dignity and non-discrimination. Public sphere institutions, and public broadcasting in particular, are of key importance for well-functioning democracies. They are also settings where democratic dilemmas appear that have received less attention in the existing literature on democracy's protection. We develop our contribution through a comparative study of the response by public broadcasting organizations to the far-right in Germany and Sweden. Results point to continuing difficulties in navigating dilemmas related to the response to these parties, especially as they are becoming an increasingly normalized part of the political landscape.
Large scale societal crises, like the COVID‐19 crisis which is classified as a global pandemic, demand collaboration among organizations in order to manage the crisis. A community’s ability to recover from such a crisis and enhance resilience depends on organizations coordinating their crisis communication and collaborate on establishing adaptive capacity through activity coordination (Jahn & Johansson, 2018). The scale of emergency and technology development influence what new approaches to developing community resilience are implemented. Also, the division of responsibility among involved organizations may hamper activity coordination. This study focuses on the activity coordination of crisis communication in Sweden during the first months of the COVID‐19 crisis in spring 2020. A large number of telephone conferences with organizations coordinating their crisis communication are analyzed together with selected interviews of organizational representatives from public health organizations, national crisis management organizations, regional and local organizations. The results illustrate the challenges these crisis managers face when coordinating their crisis communication and the success factors of effective crisis communication coordination. The study contributes to enhance our knowledge on crisis communication coordination as a means of crisis management in order to establish resilient and sustainable communities.
Bakgrund: Konsumtionen av sötsaker, läsk, energidryck och snacks kan vara relaterad till olika slags sjukdomar på grund av energi- och fettmängden samt tillgången till dessa livsmedel. Kunskap om konsumtionsmönster och konsumtionsplatser för dessa livsmedel saknas för gymnasieelever. Syfte: Målet med denna studie var att kartlägga gymnasieelevers konsumtion av sötsaker, läsk, energidryck och snacks. Metod: En tvärsnittsstudie med tio enkätfrågor om konsumtionsmönster och konsumtionsplatser för sötsaker, läsk, energidryck och snacks genomfördes på 74 gymnasieelever i årskurs två under två dagar. Resultat: I resultaten kom det fram att det vanligaste stället att köpa sötsaker och läsk som konsumerades på skoltid var vid elevfiket. Det som konsumerades på fritiden var vanligast köpt i affärer. Det framgick också signifikanta skillnader i hög- och totalkonsumtionen mellan könen och mellan praktiska och teoretiska program. Diskussion: Mer forskning behövs för att säkerhetsställa studiens fynd och för att statistiskt säkert kunna generalisera studiens fynd till övriga gymnasieskolor runtom i Sverige. Slutsats: Det kan finnas signifikanta skillnader i konsumtionen av sötsaker, läsk, energidryck och snacks mellan könen och mellan praktiska och teoretiska program.
The aim of the study is to describe and analyse personal reflections on vocational rehabilitation in Singapore and Sweden as described by employees who have been on sick leave. Further, the study investigates what similarities and differences can be discerned from the accounts provided by the participants in the different countries. Interviews were conducted with five Singaporeans and five Swedes undergoing rehabilitation due to musculoskeletal problems. The most significant result is that more differences than similarities were identified; e.g. the Singaporeans had fewer days of sickness absence, they were diagnosed more swiftly, treatment and the rehabilitation process began earlier and there were no queues for treatment. The conclusion is that the Singaporean system seems to be more effective with respect to returning people to work. However, the Swedish system creates more security for all groups of people.
The aim of the study is to describe and compare the health care, social security and rehabilitation systems in Singapore and Sweden. Two fundamental differences can be identified. First, the system in Singapore are strongly oriented towards a free market system, while Sweden's demonstrates strong public control. Second, following from how the systems are oriented, Singaporeans are expected to have a higher degree of independence and control over their health care, social security and rehabilitation. It appears that Singapore has had greater success in attaining and maintaining a system of health promotion, which influences the three systems. However, the Swedish welfare system provides greater security to those who are in need of health care, social security and rehabilitation.
Research shows that Total Quality Management (TQM) is becoming more common in the public sector. Government agencies have recently begun to recognize the importance of customer focus which has led to numerous improvement initiatives. Today research is available to show how the start-up of improvement initiatives in the public sector should be conducted. However, there is a shortage in the research that clarifies how to lead improvement initiatives within governmental agencies.
This qualitative case study has investigated the role of change management in the implementations of Lean within two Swedish governmental agencies, Försäkringskassan and Migrationsverket. The study was conducted through semi-structured interviews and review of existing literature and documents.
The results show that the government agencies had worked differently while implementing Lean. The analysis also demonstrates that the two agencies were successful in different areas which were related to the specific conditions and the change management approach used in the implementation. Finally, our findings suggest that change management and the implementation process play a major role in the outcome of the change initiatives.
The study’s results are an input to other organizations in the public sector wishing to implement major changes.
In their efforts to affect policy change, policy entrepreneurs employ a series of strategies, which have been well documented in the literature. However, little is known regarding the relationship between the types of strategies policy entrepreneurs use and the institutional contexts in which they operate. The Interreg Europe programme aims to promote policy changes and thus offers a space for policy learning and experimentation to policy entrepreneurs. Using a mixed methodology that includes a survey addressed to the sixty-five Interreg Europe projects in research and innovation during the programming period 2014–20 and twelve follow-up semi-structured interviews, this article explores the strategies used by policy entrepreneurs in different institutional contexts. The study, rare in the policy entrepreneurship scholarship with its quantitative aspects, highlights the most widely-used strategies by policy entrepreneurs in research and innovation policy changes. Findings suggest that the strategy of storytelling is more widely used in high-innovator regions than in low-innovator regions and in Northern European regions compared to Southern European regions. Moreover, policy entrepreneurs who employ the storytelling strategy find it easier to introduce a policy change.
Dynamics of entrepreneurship have attracted growing attention from scholars of political science, policy studies, public administration and planning, as well as more recently, from the realms of international relations and foreign policy analysis. Under the banner of political entrepreneurship, this volume considers and maps out conceptual approaches to the study of entrepreneurship drawn from these fields, discusses synergies, envisages new analytical tools and offers contemporary empirical case studies, illustrating the diverse political contexts in which entrepreneurship takes place in the polis. Drawing upon an international cast of senior academics and cutting edge young researchers, the volume takes a closer look at key aspects of political entrepreneurship, such as, defining political entrepreneurs, how it relates to change, decision-making and strategies, organizational arrangements, institutional rules, varying contexts and future research agendas. By highlighting the political aspects of entrepreneurship, the volume presents new exciting opportunities for understanding entrepreneurial activities at regional, national and international levels. The volume will be of particular relevance to scholars and students of political science, policy studies, public administration, planning, international relations and business studies as well as practitioners interested in the nexus and utility of entrepreneurship in the modern-day political world.
Utvärderingen av länsstyrelsens interna krisledningsarbete av Covid-19 pandemin under perioden mars till augusti 2020 visar att stora delar av arbetet fungerade bra, men att det också finns ett antal utmaningar där främst enkätsvaren och intervjuerna visar på förhållanden som behöver ses över inför liknande situationer. Arbetet i staben verkar ha fungerat bra. De största problemen som tas upp är 1)balansen mellan det ordinarie arbetet och stabsarbetet, 2) otydligheten mellan stab och ledning 3) oron inför stabsarbetet bland dem som tidigare inte arbetat i stab, samt 4) behovet av utbildning för att sitta i stab. Vi ser också att det finns ett mer strukturellt problem med ”ledningsmodellen i svensk förvaltning”. Ser vi till upplevelserna kring arbetets utförande lyfts flera förbättringsområden fram. Främst gäller detta den upplevda stressen, den initiala upplevelsen av brist på kompetens och utbildning samt den upplevda frånvaron av uppskattning för utfört arbete. Vidare finns även en upplevelse att den kritik och feedback som lyfts fram, särskilt initialt, inte alltid har tagits tillvara. Gällande stabsarbetet lyfts brist på erfarenhet och kompetens av att arbeta i stab fram. Flera uttrycker en initial osäkerhet vad som förväntades och hur uppdraget skulle utföras. Samverkan mellan stab och ledning är ytterligare ett problem som lyfts fram. Dessa brister är inte ovanliga vid en kris. De problem som lyfts fram upplevs ha påverkat det interna arbetet och därmed även utförandet av det uppdrag länsstyrelsen har. I några fall lyfter respondenterna fram att problemen till viss del åtgärdats under arbetets gång, men att länsstyrelsen behöver se över vissa delar i det interna arbetet vad gäller hur uppdraget kring pandemin utförts. Vidare framkommer att kunskapsnivåerna varierat både inom och mellan de olika frågorna som tagits upp i enkäten. Det är dock det viktigt att betona att det finns flera områden där svaren skiljer sig stort.
Modern society has developed a growing dependence on electricity in order to carry out important societal functions. This implies the risk of cascading failures to society in the case of power shortage. The creation of a resilient and sustainable power energy system is therefore crucial. Equal crucial is the preparedness for the event of power shortage. As a part of the Swedish crisis management system, the Swedish Energy Agency (EM) has developed a planning system, Styrel, to identify social important objects in order to ensure important social functions in the case of power shortage. This article examines Styrel as a policy network and as a planning system to ensure a sustainable and resilient power supply. The study focus on the design of the system, the implementation of the system based on the results from the two rounds completed in 2010 and 2014. Using interviews with coordinators at the local and regional level in three counties and a survey including all 21 coordinators at the regional level, it indicates that the design of the planning system reviles opportunities for improvements of the planning system. The study also indicates that the coordinators at the local level lack trust in the planning system depending on both the lack of resource and the lack of feedback. This in turn indicates challenges for the system from a resilient and sustainability point of view.
STYREL är en planeringsprocess som syftar till att minimera konsekvenserna för samhället vid en situation av elbrist. Processen har utvecklats av Statens energimyndighet (EM) i samarbete med Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskap (MSB) och Svenska kraftnät (SvK). Länsstyrelsen spelar en viktig roll i Styrel genom sin uppgift som samordnare på regional nivå. Följande kapitel syftar till att ge en kort beskrivning av Styrel som en del av det svenska krishanteringssystemet samt att ge en bild av hur de samordningsansvariga på länsstyrelsen uppfattar sin roll i Styrel.
Kapitlet utgår från en mer omfattande studie under rubriken Från myndighet till medborgare och tillbaka. Syftet med projektet är att
Studien omfattar dokumentstudier samt intervjuer med STYRELsansvariga i kommun, region/landsting och länsstyrelse samt ansvariga på utvalda myndigheter.
Crises are often characterized as low-probability/high-consequence events (Weick1988), as they typically strike suddenly, are unexpected prior to their occurrence andare difficult to prepare for (Brown and Eriksson 2008). Compared to emergencies, crisesrequire a great deal of effort to cope with (Kendra and Wachtendorf 2003) and thereforewe develop crisis plans.Power supply is vital for the society to function, even more today with our reliance ontechnical inventions in almost all parts of our life. Disturbance in the power supply willmost probably have devastating effects in all areas in society (Rinaldi et al., 2001). Eventhough the power grid is rigid and redundant, it is vulnerable to various impacts, such aswhether conditions, aging of components, demolition, and cyber-attacks. Even if it isunlikely that power outages will occur, there is a need to plan for consequences ofpower shortage.STYREL is the Swedish planning process to manage early consequences of power outages.It is part of the emergency planning to build up preparedness in advance (MSB, 2011). Itintends to locate key consumers for functions of national importance. The processincludes all levels in the society, municipalities, county administrative board, expertorganizations such as Svenska kraftnät and Energimyndigheten, and the Government. Itis top down governed; however, information about what establishments that needs tobe protected comes from the municipality. In this paper, we focus on how STYREL cansupport decision making at the local level in case of power shortage. Since STYREL is atop-down process, we are primarily interested in the planning process at the local level.We focus on the integration of “STYREL” in the municipal emergency planning. How isSTYREL involved in the emergency planning process? How does the STYREL process,defined at higher-level authorities, affect the municipalities in their planning process?and How well do the STYREL process cover the municipality’s needs of support in case ofpower shortage?
Electricity is a key resource for the majority of societal functions and constitutes an important sector in the critical infrastructure of modern societies. Disturbances in power supply can have cascading effects on interdependent public sectors and ordinary citizens (Rinaldi et al., 2001; Cohen, 2010; Ghanem et al., 2016). However, it seems nearly impossible to prevent the occurrence of power shortages. This has been evident in the aftermath of the hurricane Lee and the hurricane Maria in 2017. Because of the changing climate, an increase of hurricanes, flooding, and high river flows, are expected. The need of a national energy policy have been addressed (see e.g. Hoffman, 2015), including policy for manual power cut in the case of power shortage. The Swedish Energy Agency has developed a national policy for handling national power shortage. The policy, called STYREL is part of Swedish Crisis Management System. This paper focus on the Swedish power shortage policy, STYREL in relation to national policies in Germany and the USA. The aim is to compare the three countries policies in the event of power shortage. The focus is on the organization of the planning process, which actors are part of the process, and how the societal important users are identified and ranked. Policy networks, including actors from both public and private sector are of special interest.
The aim of the study is to describe and compare the health care, social security and rehabilitation systems in Singapore and Sweden. Two fundamental differences can be identified. First, the system in Singapore are strongly oriented towards a free market system, while Sweden’s demonstrates strong public control. Second, following from how the systems are oriented, Singaporeans are expected to have a higher degree of independence and control over their health care, social security and rehabilitation. It appears that Singapore has had greater success in attaining and maintaining a system of health promotion, which influences the three systems. However, the Swedish welfare system provides greater security to those who are in need of health care, social security and rehabilitation.
This book explores the reasons behind the variation in national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, it furthers the policy studies scholarship through an examination of the effects of policy styles on national responses to the pandemic.
Despite governments being faced with the same threat, significant variation in national responses, frequently of contradictory nature, has been observed. Implications about responses inform a broader class of crises beyond this specific context. The authors argue that trust in government interacts with policy styles resulting in different responses and that the acute turbulence, uncertainty, and urgency of crises complicate the ability of policymakers to make sense of the problem. Finally, the book posits that unless there is high trust between society and the state, a decentralized response will likely be disastrous and concludes that while national responses to crises aim to save lives, they also serve to project political power and protect the status quo.
This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of public policy, public administration, political science, sociology, public health, and crisis management/disaster management studies.
Public policies affect all of us, regardless of who we are or where we live. The study of public policymaking necessarily entails the study of the entire political system and to this end, researchers employ a multitude of frameworks, theories, and models, which tend to be complementary rather than mutually exclusive. The focus of this dissertation is on political entrepreneurship as an actor-based framework to examine and understand policy change. The dissertation’s main aim is to conceptually enhance entrepreneurship and the entrepreneur in the polis by leveraging them in the Swedish political context. In this research, political entrepreneurship and the political entrepreneur are examined in the background of the Swedish corporatist policymaking system with its consensual sensibilities. The five (two theoretical and three empirical) papers as well as the cover essay comprising this dissertation attempt to answer the following questions: first, how do contextual factors inform the realization of entrepreneurial agency? Second, how do contextual factors inform the strategies entrepreneurial actors use to affect change? Third, what is the role of political entrepreneurship and the political entrepreneur in macro-level theories such as critical junctures and policy transfer? Contextual factors here are understood to be the general political system; the level of governance; the substantive policy sector, and the stage of the policy process. Predominantly qualitative methods and a variety of analytical tools, ranging from formal social network analysis (SNA) to process tracing are used to investigate the research questions in the national, regional, and local levels of governance and in the fields of crisis management, risk governance, and economic development respectively. Findings suggest that overwhelmingly, political entrepreneurs come from the ranks of public officials and thus political entrepreneurship is a feature of the policy implementation stage rather than the agenda setting stage of policymaking. There is not a place for the outsider, single issue entrepreneur in the Swedish consensual system, which provides for extensive inclusion, but of actors organized in interest groups. Political entrepreneurs are action-oriented, problem solving doers, characterized by perseverance and resourcefulness and are key in consolidating policy change in the aftermath of a crisis. Though in broad terms the strategies political entrepreneurs use in the Swedish context are concomitant with the ones used in pluralistic contexts, specificities diverge. In the Swedish corporatist consensual system, political entrepreneurship becomes a conduit facilitating interconnections among a multitude of actors; opens up additional channels of communication, while the political entrepreneur is a network maker. Finally, political entrepreneurship is focused on forging a consensus rather than winning the competition: the art of quiet cooperation and collaboration.
The Swedish response to the COVID‐19 pandemic is different not only to the response of other European countries, but also to other Scandinavian countries, which are geographically proximate and culturally similar. The question that emerges from an analysis of the Swedish case concerns the reasons why the country chose to take such a relatively liberal crisis response to the onset of the pandemic compared to the rest of Europe. In this paper, I treat the national response to the pandemic as the outcome variable, which I seek to explain through an analysis of the intersection of dualism in the model of Swedish public administration and the devolved governance system that bestows operational autonomy on public agencies and local public authorities. The duality that characterizes the relationship between politics, policy, and administration in Sweden resulted in a response that was necessarily decentralized. The decentralized response in conjunction with high political trust among the citizenry necessitated, and was conducive to, broad guidelines. I conclude the article with a discussion placing the Swedish response in perspective for further comparative research.
This article examines the role of policy entrepreneurs in promoting change in flood risk mitigation at the local level in Sweden through a comparative study of two Swedish municipalities with different approaches to flood risk governance; as a technical issue or a social issue. The municipality in which flood risk mitigation is addressed as a social issue exhibits a larger size of the network mitigating flood risk, more diverse actors involved, and a more central location of the politicians and senior management. Moreover, the analysis points to the salience of a bureaucratic policy entrepreneur in promoting this shift toward addressing it as a social issue, and shows how they use relational strategies to frame the issue as relating to climate change action. The article operationalizes sociability and credibility, two of the attributes of policy entrepreneurs, and thus, contributes to the theoretical and methodological discussion of policy entrepreneurs in general, and as they pertain to environmental policy in particular.
The study of policy entrepreneurs as agents of change has developed greatly in recent years, supported by increasingly more sophisticated theoretical and empirical research. In this article, we first consider how the concept of the policy entrepreneur can be integrated into broader theories of the policy process, with particular focus on the compatibility of the concept with the narrative policy framework. We then propose that further empirical research on policy entrepreneurs focus on five tasks:(1) Delimiting policy entrepreneurs as a distinct class of actor; (2) investigating contextual factors that encourage the emergence of policy entrepreneurs; (3) further specifying the strategies policy entrepreneurs deploy; (4) improving the measurement of the impact policy entrepreneurs have in the policy process; and (5) identifying when policy entrepreneurs prompt widescale change. New theoretical and empirical contributions along these lines could do much to advance our understanding of agency and structure in contemporary politics.
Central to policies relating to risk governance at the regional and local levels is the interactions between the public and private sectors also referred to as networked governance. At the same time, the role of political actors in general and policy entrepreneurs in particular in terms of policy change has gained considerable traction in recent policy scholarship. The purpose of this study was to investigate the change in governance arrangements resulting in the formation of a coordination network in regional flood risk management—the first of its kind in Sweden. Our research is guided by the following questions: first, would the policy change (the establishment of the networks) have taken place if a policy entrepreneur were not part of the policy transfer process? Second, what is the role of policy entrepreneurship in the implementation of the policy after its nationwide adoption? Third, what other factors played a role in the variation of the results in the implemented policy that is, the enforced networks? We find the role of a policy entrepreneur key in the policy transfer from the regional to the national level. In order to investigate the resultant networks, we draw from B. Guy Peters (1998) and his conceptualization of factors which affect the politics of coordination. In addition to the presence of a policy entrepreneur, we compare: (i) pluriformity of network members; (ii) member interdependence; (iii) redundancy of structures, and (iv) degree of formality (in terms of meetings). Our findings suggest that entrepreneurs contribute to the variation in the functionality of the enforced river groups, though other factors play a significant role as well. Most importantly, perhaps, we did not identify entrepreneurs in any of the river groups which were not functional.
Following its achievement of Self-Rule status in 2009 Greenland embarked on a series of measures to diversify its economy with an eye towards eventually gaining full independence from Denmark. Tourism was underlined as a key sector for reaching this goal and, consequently, over the last few years there has been a concerted effort to develop the island as an important polar destination. Significantly, the Greenlandic government created the tourism development policy for 2016-2020, which it views as a key instrument for shaping the sector’s future. In this paper, we adopted a policy network approach to determine the relational architecture among various stakeholders from the public and private sectors who are seen as relevant to tourism’s development. Inter alia, we examined how these actors were linked to each other while examining what kind of tourism networks existed in Greenland and what obstacles might hinder or foster their formation. A thematic analysis of qualitative data on Atlas.ti reveals that though there exist networks in the Greenlandic tourism sector, they are not policy networks and that the Greenlandic government’s approach to developing this tourism policy has been top-down, reflecting a ‘government’ rather than a ‘governance’ approach. Barriers to the formation of policy networks included lack of a shared image for the future; lack of trust among actors; lack of time and spatial fragmentation hindering iterative interactions, and lack of institutional enabling of information and knowledge sharing.
Experiments have long been recognized as effective tools in teaching natural sciences and, to a lesser degree, in social sciences. However, understanding the role of immersive simulation experiments in undergraduate degree programmes demands more scholarly attention, given the pace of technological advances and research literacy in immersive simulation. The purpose of this article is to illustrate the potential of integrating immersive simulation laboratory experiments in social science education and specifically in a risk and crisis management undergraduate degree programme. Based on the work of Claire Dunlop, we demonstrate how an experiment with a high degree of experimental realism was a fruitful vehicle for initiating conversations about sensitive subjects in a safe environment and made teaching more inclusive, while high mundane realism made teaching risk and crisis management fun, and, we argue, fostered practical aspects of risk and crisis management.