Stefan Svallfors

• Professor
• Professor at Institute for Futures Studies

This paper analyses the process in which expert reports on health care governance are commissioned, produced and received in a Swedish setting. Based on an empirical analysis of interviews with commissioners and producers of such reports, the paper argues that the typical process in which expert reports on health governance come about is fraught wi...

This paper analyses the process in which expert reports on health care governance are commissioned, produced and received in a Swedish setting. Based on an empirical analysis of interviews with commissioners and producers of such reports, the paper argues that the typical process in which expert reports on health governance come about is fraught wi...

Background In order to support decisions regarding governance, organization and control models of the healthcare system, the Swedish government, as well as regional-level agencies, regularly commissions expert reports that are supposed to form the basis for decisions on new steering forms in healthcare. Aim The aim of this study was a) to perform...

This article analyzes the emergence of the Swedish “national system for knowledge‐driven management.” We argue that the system is best understood as a meta‐instrument that is underpinned by an “instrument constituency,” a coalition held together by a joint interest in a particular policy solution. Based on interviews and documentary analyses, we sh...

The article analyzes the commissioning and production of expert reports about Swedish health care management and governance. We show that these reports are rarely solitary stand‐alone products, but tend to form clusters in an evolving discourse centered around specific policy solutions. We also show that the most important producers of such reports...

Background: Over the course of several decades, the organization of health care in Sweden, as in many other countries, has changed, from a dominant logic of professional dominance and political control towards managerial control through market mechanisms. A crucial motive was to increase cost efficiency. The Swedish government, as well as regional-...

This article analyzes career paths and career considerations among policy professionals in Sweden. It builds on a longitudinal dataset where the professionals' careers are mapped and interviews conducted over a six‐year period. We found that: (1) skills such as the ability to navigate the political system make policy professionals employable in a v...

In this article, we analyse the striking resilience of for-profit care and service provision in what has often been seen as the archetypical social democratic welfare state: Sweden. We focus on the strategic discursive activities of private companies and their business organizations as they try to influence perceptions, organize actors and facilita...

This article focuses on “partisan policy professionals” (PPPs), i.e. people who are employed to affect politics and policy, and analyzes their particular motivations and skills. This article focuses on the occupational practices of PPPs: what are their main motivations and driving forces, and what are the key skills they deploy in their work? The m...

The article analyses the orientations of political employees in Sweden. It finds that their roles are diffuse: there is no agreement among political employees about whether they are politicians or not, and their mandate is fleeting and unclear. They hold the average politician’s intellectual abilities in low regard, and sometimes take on clearly pa...

In this paper, Sweden is used as an example of how organised politics has changed quite dramatically in the last couple of decades. The paper argues that there are a number of points that has recently changed Swedish organised politics in rather fundamental ways. These changes entail a new actor constellation in Swedish politics and policy-making,...

Välfärdsservicen och dess utveckling i Sverige och Finland kännetecknas av stora likheter ifråga om institutionella lösningar. Artikeln, som analyserar diskussionen i svenska och finländska dagstidningar, visar dock på olikheter i sättet att i offentligheten argumentera för olika servicepolitiska lösningar och indikerar därmed skillnader i de grunda...

This article focuses on “policy professionals”—people employed to affect politics and policy making rather than elected to office, and their career motivations and considerations. What do they see as career opportunities and limitations? What resources do policy professionals offer on the job market? How are status and hierarchy on their particular...

The paper analyses how perceptions of government quality – in terms of impartiality and efficiency – impact on attitudes to taxes and social spending. It builds on data from the European Social Survey 2008 from 29 European countries. The paper shows a large degree of congruence between expert-based judgments and the general public's perceptions of...

Capitalist Diversity on Europe's Periphery. By DorotheeBohle and BélaGreskovits. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012. 304p. $75.00 cloth, $26.95 paper. Creative Reconstructions: Multilateralism and European Varieties of Capitalism after 1950. By OrfeoFioretos. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. 264p. $49.95. Making Markets in the We...

Using data from the European Social Survey, we analyse the link between basic human values and attitudes towards redistribution, and how that link differs among classes and across countries. We assess whether and why the class-specific impact of self-transcendence and self-enhancement values on attitudes towards redistribution differs across a sele...

The welfare state is a trademark of the European social model. An extensive set of social and institutional actors provides protection against common risks, offering economic support in periods of hardship and ensuring access to care and services. Welfare policies define a set of social rights and address common vulnerabilities to protect citizens...

JamesConnelly and JackHayward (eds.) (2012), The Withering of the Welfare State: Regression. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. £57.50, pp, 220, hbk. - Volume 42 Issue 2 - STEFAN SVALLFORS

This article reports findings about Swedes' attitudes towards the welfare state from 1981 to 2010, building on data from the Swedish Welfare State Surveys. Attitudes towards social spending, willingness to pay taxes, attitudes towards collective financing and public organization, suspicion about welfare abuse, and trust in the task performance of t...

In most democracies, classes tend to vary with respect to an array of attitudes and behaviours, and differences are large within a number of European polities. What mechanisms lie behind these differences? Do they relate primarily to individuals’ material interests, as assumed by traditional class theories, or instead, to socialization and self-sel...

This paper tests contested arguments within the institutionalist literature about the relation between institutional and attitudinal changes, using the reunified Germany as a case. Eastern Germany constitutes a case approaching a ‘natural experiment’ for the social sciences, being twice the receiver of externally imposed institutions. It, therefore...

Beautifully written and meticulously researched, The Failed Welfare Revolution is a strong and innovative contribution to contemporary welfare state literature. It is an engaging piece of historical sociology, a convincing example of the combinatory strength of institutional and cultural analysis, and a biting social critique, all wrapped in one. S...

This article analyses age differences in attitudes towards public policies to support older people and to support families with children in Sweden. It is shown that support for older people becomes increasingly popular over time, so that it is more popular in all age groups than support for families with children, and that age and class differences...

A comparative analysis of the political attitudes, values, aspirations, and identities of citizens in advanced industrial societies, this book focuses on the different ways in which social policies and national politics affect personal opinions on justice, political responsibility, and the overall trustworthiness of politicians. How have socio-poli...

This chapter compares attitudes to market inequality in different classes in four Western countries: Sweden, Britain, Germany, and the United States. Drawing on Robert Lane's argument that market distributions often cause little dissatisfaction, it examines whether class differences in attitudes to various aspects of market inequality are larger in...

This concluding chapter analyzes the results presented in the book in relation to the development of political sociology. It argues that the papers together represent a “fourth generation” of scholarship in the field, where institutional feedback effects in general, and public policies in particular, are analyzed in a comparative perspective. Polit...

Analyzing Inequality summarizes key issues in today’s theoretically guided empirical research on social inequality, life course, and cross-national comparative sociology. It describes the progress made in terms of data sources, both cross-sectional and longitudinal; the new instruments that make inequality research possible; new ways of thinking...

This paper compares class patterns of ‘conformism’ in four Western countries, taking as its point of departure arguments, which suggest that conformism/authoritarianism is more prevalent in the working class than other classes. Data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) are used in order to compare class attitudes towards sexual behav...

A research framework for eliciting the links between class and social attitudes is proposed. It is argued that: such analyses should be based on a concept of class as qualitatively distinct positions in terms of employment relations; such an enterprise should be restricted to the following four broad attitudinal domains: attitudes to production/wor...

One of the most important arenas for contemporary class politics is the welfare state. In this article, attitudes towards welfare policies among different classes in Sweden are compared with other Western countries and over time. In the first part of the article, attitudes towards state intervention among different classes are compared across four...

The article compares attitudes towards welfare state intervention in eight Western nations, using data from the 1996 module of the International Social Survey Program. Countries are chosen to represent four "twin pairs", approximating four "welfare regimes": the social democratic (Norway/Sweden), the conservative (Germany/France), the radical (Aust...

The effects of institutions extend beyond being the “rules of the game,” played by actors with preconceived interests. Institutions also affect attitudes and perceptions, through their way of functioning and by their embodiment of social norms. Institutions affect our perceptions about what exists, what may be achieved, and what is good and just. I...

In this study we analyse employment commitment and organizational commitment in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, using data from the International Social Survey Programme (1997). We begin with an institutional comparison of the three countries, where it is concluded that a strong institutionalized commitment to work is of longest standing in Sweden and...

Why a Swedish journal of sociology?The article discusses the problems of the journal “Sociologisk forskning”, such as low scientific impact, and proposes a change of publishing policy in order to change the journal into a policy-oriented forum.

The article discusses the problems of the journal "Sociologisk forskning", such as low scientific impact, and proposes a change of publishing policy in order to change the journal into a policy-oriented forum.

For many years, there has been an intense debate over the importance of social class as a basis of political partisanship and ideological divisions in advanced industrial societies. The arguments of postmodernists and disillusioned socialists have been combined with those of numerous empirical researchers on both sides of the Atlantic—and in both s...

Attitudes towards redistribution, and their links to political trust, are compared in Sweden and Norway using data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). Attitudes towards redistribution are quite similar in both countries at an aggregate level, but class differences and differences between left and right party sympathizers are larger...

Welfare regimes and welfare opinions - a comparison of eight western countriesThe article compares attitudes towards welfare state intervention in eight Western nations, using data from the 1996 module of the International Social Survey Program. Countries are chosen to represent four ”twin pairs”, approximating four ”welfare regimes”: the social de...

In this paper attitudes to redistribution in eight Western nations are analysed, using data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP).The paper begins with a discussion of various ‘regime types’as presented by Esping- Andersen and Castles and Mitchell, among others. Gauntries are then chosen to represent four ‘twin pairs’of countries, app...

Sweden, by many regarded as the archetypal welfare state, has recently experienced severe problems of weak economic performance, sharply rising unemployment and cutbacks in social pohcies. In this paper, data from national surveys over the last decade are analysed in order to assess whether recent changes in the political arena point to more long-t...

Attitudes to inequality are compared in Sweden and Britain, using evidence from the International Social Survey Program. Using a more multidimensional model and more representative samples than before, the article starts out from various arguments about greater egalitarianism in Sweden compared to Britain and assesses the arguments in the light of...

The article analyzes attitudes to Swedish welfare policies, using data from a survey conducted in 1986. In the first section, a number of indices tapping various aspects of attitudes to welfare policy are constructed. In the second section these indices are used to give an empirical assessment of competing theories about the impact of different str...