Jan Olsson

• Professor (Full) at Örebro University

This chapter introduces the research problem by arguing that public policy processes are increasingly pervaded by value conflicts that need to be managed somehow by public officials. It is argued that Weberian bureaucratic principles and rationalistic methods tend to dominate, which evokes the following critical question: why not ethical reasoning?...

This chapter develops green public ethics as the normative approach of this book. This approach acknowledges the importance of ethical pragmatism and pluralism for making sense of practical policy problems and to manage public value conflicts. In developing this approach, three fields of literature are utilized: public administration ethics, public...

This chapter discusses how institutionalized rules, norms, and organizational solutions impede the possibility to adopt green ethical reasoning in policy processes. It is argued that despite decades of reform activities, three fundamental Weberian ideals tend to persist, which limit the possibilities for ethical reasoning in policy processes: instr...

Greening public organizations demands the acknowledgment and reconciliation of tensions and conflicts between core values. This is a challenge that public pension funds have come to face as the call for sustainability has reached the finance sector. Building on the value pluralism debate and institutional theory this article provides a theoretical...

Consequences of public officials’ policy influence have been at the center of debates on political–administrative relations. Based on a survey of public managers in Swedish local government ( N = 1,430), this study examines whether policy politics hollows out political neutrality. The analysis shows that although managers are highly involved in pol...

Are public pension funds taking sustainability values into serious consideration? This question is addressed by analyzing annual reports of The Council on Ethics in the Swedish public pension system, which has a clear mission from The Swedish Government to consider sustainability values. The council was established in 2007 and supports four funds w...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore and elaborate on how institutional conditions work to the advantage and disadvantage of disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies on different levels in two countries. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative case study design is used to study empirically two countries with very different traditions...

Continued unsustainability and surpassed planetary boundaries require not only scientific and technological advances, but deep and enduring social and cultural changes. The purpose of this article is to contribute a theoretical approach to understand conditions and constraints for societal change towards sustainable development. In order to break w...

Public organizations in the 21st century, are increasingly complex in terms of multiple institutional rules, norms, and practices. This complexity constitutes a difficult challenge for civil servants to find and determine appropriate identities, roles and relationships in their everyday work. For this special issue we made a call for scholars to co...

This book theorizes on the institutional phenomenon of green inside activism and how it can contribute to a more sustainable development by altering institutional rules, norms, and practices but also securing institutions perceived as favorable to green values. Green inside activism is a theoretical concept capturing the political agency of public...

This chapter presents a case study about sustainable land-use planning, showing how green inside activism can work productively in processes of institutional change. A central argument is that combative actions are useful and effective in policy and planning processes if they are wisely handled in relation to dominant institutions. In that sense, w...

This chapter develops theoretical arguments about how green inside activists can work for institutional change by using strategies and mechanisms of both a combative and adaptive character. We develop theoretical ideas on micro-mechanisms of change, followed by a discussion about how inside activists can use these mechanisms to produce institutiona...

This chapter makes a critical assessment of how different versions of new institutionalism understand and conceptualize agency. We argue that they lack a more nuanced understanding of human agency and how it relates to institutions. We further argue for the need to take political agency seriously, to perceive institutional change and stability as b...

This chapter focuses directly on agency in different respects by reviewing and assessing highly interesting conceptualizations of public officials as creative political agents, such as policy entrepreneurs, administrative guerillas, and street-level actors. We discern differences and similarities between these concepts and inside activism, and furt...

In this chapter, we discuss both legitimacy problems of green inside activism and how it can be legitimized. We review various grounds to legitimize inside activism and identify four legitimacy dilemmas that need to be reconciled with principles of democracy and rule of law. We theorize about three alternative logics for legitimizing inside activis...

This chapter theorizes the contexts that give rise to green inside activism. We first argue that we can expect it to occur when public officials have access to various power resources, are working in policy areas in which environmental problems are addressed, and in situations where important green values are at stake. We also discuss whether insid...

In this final chapter we summarize and conclude on the main themes of the book: how and to what extent green institutional change can follow from inside activism; what contexts that tend to give rise to green inside activism and how it may be legitimized. We further discuss future research needs, in terms of mapping the importance and relevance of...

This book considers how public sector institutions can be transformed to better support sustainable development by exploring the concept of green inside activism and its importance for institutional change. The phenomenon of inside activism has been shown to be crucial for green policy change and this book focuses on public officials as green insid...

Organizational reforms in public administration have been high on the agenda for decades. A popular example is the municipal service center (MSC) which brings citizen– government interaction together in one location, physically and virtually. Previous research has mainly focused on the organizational solution and operation of MSCs. This article con...

This chapter discusses what contexts tend to give rise to subversive action. The main conclusion is that subversion is a fairly common phenomenon ‘under the surface’ in the daily life of public organizations: on different levels of organization, in different policy areas, and among various policy actors. However, we can expect subversive actions to...

This chapter deals with agency in new institutionalism, often argued to be sparsely theorized. A critical assessment is made of the micro-level theorizing of the dominant versions of new institutionalism. After that we present and assess the argument of Vivienne Lowndes and Mark Roberts (2013: Why institutions matter: The new institutionalism in po...

This chapter theorizes on how subversive action in combination with other micro-mechanisms can explain institutional stability and change. A central argument is that when subversive ideas are more or less in place within organizations minor changes in the environment can trigger them into subversive action in support for stability or change. Differ...

This chapter elaborates on the nature and meaning of subversive action—a micro-mechanism which is political in nature in that it secretly undermines some institutions to open up for alternative ideas, values, and interests or secures existing institutions by secretly undermining adversaries. The meaning of the concept is discussed in relation to ot...

This chapter starts with a summary of the main arguments and findings as well as some reflections on ethical aspects on subversive action. In discussing future research needs, it is argued that we should develop a new political institutionalism, based on systematic empirical research on subversion in combination with other micro-mechanisms behind i...

’In a compelling and accessible, grounded and theoretically informed style, this book opens up new lines of research into the micro politics of institutional change efforts, both resistant and transformative. Students of social change will be building upon, debating and extending this book for many years.’ – Professor John Forester, Department of C...

Green radicalism among local environmental officials in Sweden is examined with the aims of theoretically elaborating on different dimensions of Green radicalism in the context of public administration, exploring the dimensionality of Green radicalism among officials, and examining the extent to which Green radicalism is associated with policy infl...

In this article, we call into question evidence-based practice as a working strategy for relevant applied knowledge in social work. We argue that evidence-based practice suffers from a dilemma whereby a narrow view of evidence is prioritised at the cost of relevance to social work. Instead, we suggest that praxis-based knowledge informed by differe...

This article contributes to the debate on evaluation use by analysing temporary national programmes in Swedish social work. Previous empirical research shows a gloomy picture of evaluation use, thus supporting an evaluation paradox: evaluations are not used for learning and development, but are continually prioritised. The aim of this article is to...

To further our understanding on policymaking and policy change we need to recognize the significance of individual key actors in policy and planning processes. This article theorizes on the characteristics and policy influence of inside activism in which individual public officials act strategically from inside public administration to change gover...

With this paper we aim to further our understanding of local environmental governing by analysing green inside activists who use expert-based authority, networks, and a professional position within public administration to green government policy and action from the inside. Using new survey data, we identify and analyse who these actors are and whe...

This article contributes to an understanding of policy change. Exploring a local land planning case, it investigates how an environmental advocacy coalition effectively challenged road and housing plans, with the result that an area was instead developed into a nature reserve. In the course of the article, the value and practical effectiveness of t...

This article makes a comparative analysis on how the global idea-complex of sustainable development is interpreted and institutionalised on the local level. Local institutionalisation is analysed from the theoretical framework of new institutionalism's theme of policy diffusion and adaptation. From a most different case-study design, the article an...

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) is assessed and elaborated by applying it to the Swedish forestry policy subsystem, a dynamic subsystem in which environmental interests have challenged a dominating production coalition. Forest policy has changed as new ecological values and modes of governing have been introduced through an incremental, prag...

This article assesses the possibility of implementing biodiversity policies using voluntary, informative policy instruments. The case is the Swedish forest sector, a policy area where vital national economic interests as well as important ecological values are at stake. The results show that informative policy instruments affect the behaviour of fo...

Democracy as well as modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) are two issue-areas that have each been high on the Swedish political agenda for quite some time. Sweden is often described as a good democratic example in terms of having well-informed and interested citizens and a high degree of public participation in elections. In mod...

The maintenance of biodiversity by securing representative and well-connected habitat networks in managed landscapes requires a wise combination of protection, management, and restoration of habitats at several scales. We suggest that the integration of natural and social sciences in the form of "Two-dimensional gap analysis" is an efficient tool f...

Why has the regional issue become important in Sweden, a unitary state with strong central and local levels? This question is analysed with help of three explanatory theses: Europeanization, intra-national driving forces and regional mobilization from below. The argument is that underlying intranational forces of decentralization and regional compl...

This article examines the EU structural fund system from a democratic point of view and starts theorizing on the nature of basic democracy problems. The analysis is guided by a parliamentary, a pluralistic and an e´lite-democratic model. None of these models seems to fit well with how the system works in practice, summarized as top-down and technoc...

Partnership has become a central principle of European Union (EU) policies, particularly in relation to the structural funds. This article considers the diffusion of the partnership principle in the EU, focusing on Britain and Sweden. It is concerned with two questions. First, has the partnership principle led to a process of harmonisation across s...