Depopulation and shrinkage are a common socio-spatial phenomenon in many Northern localities and are frequently accompanied by a stigmatization of the affected localities and their populations. This editorial introduces the special issue on depopulation and shrinkage in a Northern context that takes its point of departure from the Nordic Geographers Meeting 2022 on multiple geographies and its keynote lecture by Josefina Syssner on the question: What can geographers do for shrinking geographies? The special issue displays a range of contributions from Northern context that discuss and evaluate the heterogenous processes of shrinking localities from multiple perspectives within and beyond geography. Through broad, yet empirically detailed and multiscalar focused assessments it stresses that shrinkage as a phenomenon is a fundamental character of Nordic and other societies, which requires a rethinking and should be acknowledged as a ‘natural’ development trajectory in planning and development.

Denna rapport handlar om villkor och förutsättningar för folkhälsoarbete i svenska kommuner. Kommunernas roll i folkhälsopolitiken är komplex, föränderlig och saknar tydlig reglering. Samtidigt som rollen är oklar, ansvarar kommunerna för mycket av det som påverkar befolkningens hälsa, såsom skola och utbildning, sociala verksamheter, fritid och stadsplanering. Dessutom möter Sveriges kommuner idag ökade förväntningar när det kommer till att hantera en tilltagande ojämlikhet i hälsa bland barn och unga. I rapporten undersöks de institutionella och organisatoriska villkor som påverkar kommunernas folkhälsoarbete genom en fallstudie av Generation Peps pilotprojekt Pep Kommun.

Pep Kommun är ett pilotprojekt initierat av Generation Pep, en icke-vinstdrivande organisation. Pilotprojektet syftar till att utveckla och testa insatser för att främja barns och ungas hälsa i sex kommuner. Genom fokusgruppsintervjuer med deltagare från de sex deltagande kommunerna nås en djupare förståelse för de spänningar och ibland skiftande logiker som formar villkoren för hur lokalt folkhälsoarbete kan bedrivas.

Rapporten visar på en klyfta mellan det strategiska, kommunövergripande arbetet som Pep Kommun haft för ambition att utveckla, och det operativa arbetet med framförallt barn och unga som bedrivs inom ramen för kommunernas välfärdsarbete med skola, fritid och social verksamhet. Framför allt identifieras utmaningar i att implementera och utveckla lokala arbetsformer för folkhälsoarbete i relation till den sektoriserade förvaltningen. Denna utmaning förstås som en spänning mellan den traditionella och sektoriserade välfärdspolitiken visavi den tvärsektoriella folkhälsopolitiken.

Resultaten innebär inte att tvärsektoriellt och strategiskt folkhälsoarbete är helt skilt ifrån det sektoriserade välfärdsarbetet. Men det innebär att olika delar av kommunal verksamhet med bäring på barn och ungas hälsa vilar på olika traditioner, olika former för styrning, olika professionell kunskap liksom skilda organisatoriska och politiska kontexter. Detta behöver hanteras för att ett tvärsektoriellt och kommungemensamt folkhälsoarbete ska kunna utvecklas.

Avslutningsvis diskuteras behovet av att förstå den lokala kontexten som en dynamisk spelplan liksom vikten av att hantera förändring istället för att etablera en fixerad ordning för lokalt folkhälsoarbete. Vi menar också att det krävs ett kontinuerligt arbete att skapa klarhet kring vad kommunerna vill med sitt folkhälsoarbete (exempelvis i form av medverkan i Pep Kommun). Därtill menar vi att en större konceptuell klarhet kring vad kommunalt folkhälsoarbete är och förväntas vara måste utvecklas i dialog mellan statliga myndigheter, regioner och kommuner.

Sammanfattningsvis bidrar rapporten med kunskap om villkor och förutsättning för folkhälsoarbete på kommunal nivå genom att peka på centrala institutionella och organisatoriska spänningar. Samtidigt pekar rapporten på att det finns ett stort behov av att fortsatt – i framtida praktiknära forskning – utveckla förståelsen för lokalt folkhälsoarbete genom att integrera kunskap om interventioner och medicinska aspekter av hälsa, med kontextuell och implementeringsinriktad kunskap om folkhälsoarbetets kommunala styrning och organisering.

Local development practitioners in local government administration play a significant role in the governance of local development. This category of public officials – development officers, managers, strategists, secretaries, etc. – have received some attention in the local development literature. However, the directions in the literature are just as varied as the descriptions of the different aspects of local development governance they are taking part in. That means that the overarching understanding of what local development practitioners actually do is blurred, and is left to detailed case studies with very little or no conceptual ambition. Against this backdrop, the ambition of this article is to grasp what the local development practitioner role consists of at a conceptual level.

This article offers a better understanding of what local development practitioner roles in particular consist of and how these roles relate to existing theories of governance and public administration. In order to do so, we first clarify and refine what the literature has stressed about local development practitioners’ roles and functions, and cluster the findings into three theoretically separated roles: the coordinator, the creator and the inside lobbyist. Second, we bridge these roles with recent trends in public administration research. Finally, we discuss how this conceptualization informs us about governance modes of local development, as well as ‘new and modern’ public official roles in local government administration.

Underhålla av infrastruktur är viktigt, men ofta upptäcks behoven för sent.

There is a growing maintenance debt of ageing and critical infrastructures in many municipalities in European welfare states. In this article, we use the multidimensional concept of local capacity as a point of departure to analyse how and in what ways Swedish municipalities work with the routine maintenance of infrastructures, including municipal road networks as well as water and sewage systems. For the road networks, maintenance is generally outsourced to contractors and there is also a large degree of tolerance for various standards on different road segments within and between the municipalities. Less used road segments are not as prioritised as those with heavy traffic. For the water and sewage systems, in-house technical capacity is needed as differences in water quality are not tolerated. Economies of scale mean that in-house capacity is translated into the creation of inter-municipal bodies. As different forms of capacities tend to reinforce each other, municipal capacity builds up over time in circular movements. These results add knowledge to current research by pointing to the ways municipalities are overcoming a run-to-failure mentality by building capacity to pay off the infrastructural maintenance debt.

This paper aims to contribute to a qualitative understanding of rescaling and its impact on planning strategies and governance relations across scales. By investigating the effects of rescaling for the old scale 'left behind' - through the case of public transport planning in Sweden - this paper illustrates how rescaled tasks continue to engage the scale 'left behind' (and is a source of 'tensions'), long after a rescaling process has taken place. Through the lens of rescaling, three main points of discussion are highlighted in the paper: Firstly, processes of rescaling are intertwined with policy layering, and can as such be a source of both 'good and evil' for the continued planning on the scale 'left behind'. Secondly, this calls for an increased geographical sensitivity in research when investigating the effects of rescaling, as the formal and practical outcomes of rescaling can be spatially unequal for planning bodies with similar formal mandates on the same scale. Thirdly, the development of governance relations and 'tensions' between new and old scales, are by no means static in time nor space, and calls for increased dialogue across planning scales to aid in the transition of responsibilities from the old to the new scale.

The relationship between the Swedish government and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR) has sparked debates, particularly regarding the agreements established in the healthcare sector. These agreements strive to ensure national equivalence while allowing municipal influence in governance. However, the agreements entail closed negotiations and bestow decision-making authority upon SALAR – a non-public employers’ and interest organization funded by tax money – representing the municipalities. Despite their significance, limited research has explored the utilization and repercussions of these agreements, especially concerning their democratic implications. This knowledge gap is striking given the regional authorities’ substantial management of tax revenues and primary responsibility for healthcare, as regional democracy has received scant attention in political science research and society.

Therefore, this thesis aims to bridge this gap by mapping and evaluating the democratic legitimacy of the agreement development process between the government and SALAR. The focus of analysis is on the 2023 agreement relating to maternity care and women’s health. The empirical material includes accessible documents, as well as interviews with individuals knowledgeable about the decision-making process and those anticipated to have gained insights.

Through reconstructing the decision-making process and employing two contrasting democratic ideals – the traditional representative model and the network-based multi-actor model – this study uncovers the challenges encountered in upholding these ideals during the agreement development. Notably, the democratic values of accountability, openness, and transparency were significantly compromised. Therefore, the decision-making process can be assessed as lacking full democratic legitimacy.

With potential of increased efficiency and a broader range of services, inter-municipal cooperation is often presented as a universal solution to public welfare challenges. Today, all Swedish municipalities are involved in inter-municipal cooperation in various policy areas. However, little is known about the municipalities’ capacity to coordinate their cooperation arrangements in the complex network of institutions and overlapping territories that characterise the regional level of governance. Building on the institutional collective action framework and the concept of governance capacity, this study examines how the municipalities’ capacity for regional coordination of upper secondary education in the city region of Örebro County varies depending on the institutional structures, the opportunities for cooperation and the social capital that embed the inter-municipal arrangements. The empirical study is based on a mixed method approach; where a qualitative content analysis of public documents is combined with interviews of representatives from different inter-municipal arrangements in Örebro County.

By analysing how inter-municipal cooperation on upper secondary education has emerged and developed in Örebro County, this study shows how the municipalities have established institutions at two different levels. In Örebro County, regional networks and contracts operate in parallel with local agreements and municipal associations with delegated authority – only including a few municipalities in the city region. Several of the cooperation arrangements also include actors from the private sector and different levels of governance. The emergence of these inter-municipal cooperation arrangements can be interpreted as an institutional outcome of the municipalities' intrinsic motives to ensure a wide range of education to their local citizens as well as the need to secure the supply of skills and workforce in private and public sector. But it can also be interpreted as a strategy for the smaller municipalities to ensure their influence and governance capacity in the city region – which has a built- in power asymmetry linked to the municipalities’ heterogeneity. The emergence of the cooperation arrangements also illustrates a path dependent development, where the municipalities’ historical collaboration tradition determines which institutions that emerge and to which degree social capital can be established. Particularly noteworthy in the emergence of the inter-municipal cooperation in Örebro County is the presence of government, which manifests itself through conditional financing of the inter-municipal cooperation arrangements.

Thus, within one and the same geographical city region, and within one and the same policy area, there is an overlap of different inter-municipal collaborative arrangements and functional regions, which has emerged in a symbiosis of both horizontal and vertical relations. As a result, the regionalisation that the municipalities create “bottom up”, through voluntary cooperation, work in parallel with the regionalisation that is created “top down”, through formal regional institutions.

Stadsregioner har under senare decennier blivit centrala arenor for samhällsorganisering och samverkan. En stadsregion består av en stad med kranskommuner, vilka binds samman av bland annat bostadsmarknad, arbetspendling och politiska samarbeten. Med utgångpunkt i teoretiska perspektiv om stadsregionalism undersöker denna rapport hur samverkan i stadsregioner utvecklas, med fokus på hur detta involverar och beror kommuner. Rapporten har två mal: 1) att öka förståelsen för de samhällsprocesser som formar kommuners samverkan i stadsregioner samt 2) bidra till lärdomar om hur kapacitet till samordning och styrning kan byggas upp i samverkan.

Rapporten baseras på en fallstudie om kommuners samverkan om yrkesutbildning och kompetensförsörjning i Göteborgsregionen – en stadsregion som geografiskt kan avgränsas till Göteborgs stad och dess tolv kranskommuner. Rapporten avgränsas till att undersöka samverkan inom Göteborgsregionens kommunalförbund (GR). Fallstudien baseras främst på intervjuer med 25 representanter från offentliga och privata organisationer som samverkar om yrkesutbildning och kompetensförsörjning i Göteborgsregionen. Analysen av fallet bygger dessutom på en genomgång av tidigare studier, utredningar och formella samverkansavtal.

Resultatet från fallstudien visar att kommuners samverkan i Göteborgsregionen har vuxit fram och förändrats i takt med stadsregionens ekonomiska expansion och nya politisk-administrativa strukturer. Studien visar att samverkansstrukturerna grundas på en lång tradition av samverkan mellan offentliga aktorer och näringslivet i Göteborgsregionen. Under de senaste decennierna har samverkan institutionaliserats och formaliserats genom mellankommunala avtal, förbund och bolag samt tvärsektoriella nätverk och projekt.

Samtidigt som samverkan kan härledas till kommunernas strävan att främja regional kompetensförsörjning och skapa en effektiv välfärdsservice med hög kvalitet, har samverkan även formats av externa faktorer. Samverkan om yrkesutbildning och kompetensförsörjning inom Göteborgsregionen har bland annat utvecklats i ett samspel med utvecklingsprocesser som drivits av Västra Götalandsregionen. Samverkan har också uppmuntrats av statliga bidrag och EU-finansierade projekt. Fallstudien visar aven att ekonomiska och samhälleliga kriser främjar samverkan. I Göteborgsregionen har exempelvis fordonsindustrins omställningsbehov och utbrottet av Covid-19 ökat mobiliseringen av omställnings- och yrkesutbildningsinsatser.

Göteborgsregionen kan beskrivas som ett väloljat samverkansmaskineri. Kommunernas olika samverkansnätverk inom GR binds tydligt samman med varandra samt med tvärsektoriella samarbeten med näringsliv och arbetsmarknadens parter. Strukturen upplevs skapa en hög samverkanskapacitet, det vill säga förmåga att samla aktörer, mobilisera resurser, skapa gemensamma aktiviteter och hantera regionala kompetensutmaningar. Samverkan kompliceras dock av att ett stort antal aktörer och verksamheter ska koordineras. Likaså finns inslag av konkurrens i samverkan, där frågor om inflytande och kommunalt självstyre gör sig påminda.

I rapporten presenteras fem lärdomar om vad som främjar kapaciteten till samordning och styrning av ett regionalt ’samverkansmaskineri’. Dessa beror 1) formella samverkansstrukturers potential att öka samverkans effektivitet och legitimitet, 2) vikten av att väga regional samordning mot kommunalt självstyre, 3) betydelsen av professionell samordning av samverkan, dar en aktör tar särskilt ansvar för koordinering och processledning, 4) den potentiella framgången i att samverka i en heterogen konstellation dar en större kommun blir ett ”nav” för samverkan, samt 5) vikten av att samverkansparter själva formulerar en regional vision för att därefter, genom delägarskap och aktivt deltagande, formera den stadsregionala samverkan efter regionala förutsättningar.

This study was conducted by using a qualitative textual analysis on UNICEF Sweden’s website with the purpose of problematizing the role of UNICEF Sweden in today’s globalised society. This was done in the context of how organisations of civil society have gained influence. Following questions were answered: How does UNICEF Sweden legitimise its operation? Which strategies does UNICEF Sweden use to encourage involvement and donations?

The study shows how UNICEF Sweden legitimises its work by promoting a unique influence, their unique methods of work and by showing how the organisation helps the most disadvantaged children. This is interpreted as strategies to establish donor trust. UNICEF Sweden encourages involvement and donations by packaging relief efforts into products that conveys a sensation of helping others, which can be understood in relation to the consumer society. UNICEF Sweden’s role in society appears to be significant. It is problematic though that the donor phenomenon tends to simplify the social problems and reduces aid efforts into commercialised products.

I denna uppsats redovisas resultat från en enkätundersökning besvarad av 648 fullmäktigeledamöter och bolagstyrelseledamöter i 30 svenska kommuner. Vi visar att det råder betydande oenighet bland kommunpolitiker kring huruvida ledamöter i kommunala bolagsstyrelseri första hand bör representera kommunens eller bolagets intressen. Oenighet råder även om i vilken utsträckning bolagsstyrelseledamöterna bör representera sitt partis intressen,därpolitiker från s, v och mp är mer benägna än politiker från övriga partier att anse att styrelseledamöterna bör representera sitt partis intressen. Resultaten är tankeväckandei ljuset av attkommunala bolag har funnits länge i Sverige, attantalet är trendmässigt stigandesamt attallvarlig kritik har riktats motatt majoriteten av bolagens styrelseledamöter rekryteras på politisk grund. Vissaar påpekat att de kommunala bolagens styrelser saknar adekvat kunskap om vad det innebär att bedriva företag, andra har uppmärksammat att det riskerar att politisera bolagensamt kortsluta förutsättningar för ansvarsutkrävande. Styrelseuppdraget kompliceras av att kommunala bolag verkar under både offentlig och privat rätt. Observationerna i uppsatsen utgör ett viktigt bidrag tillforskningen om kommunala bolag. Det vi ser kanutgöra potentiella problemeftersom det är enkeltatt föreställa sig att intresse-och målkonflikter uppstår avseende huruvida en styrelseledamot ska låta sina ställningstaganden styras av partipolitiska hänsynalternativtkommunens eller bolagets intressen.

Municipally owned corporations (MOCs) exist across the globe and have become increasingly common. They are motivated by the need for flexibility, a desire to cut costs and to increase efficiency. This article summarizes Swedish experiences with MOCs. It shows that the stated motivations are not necessarily wrong, but that relying heavily on MOCs may have unintended and adverse side-effects. Such side-effects include blurring the role of local politicians, increasing corruption risks and giving rise to complex organizational structures within local governments. Ultimately, transparency and democratic accountability may suffer because of an excessive reliance on MOCs. In particular, councillors, mayors and MOC chief executive officers will benefit from reading these results, and ask themselves what kind of MOCs their municipality should operate, how many MOCs are appropriate to run, and also how members of MOC boards need to be educated. Over the past 30 years, the use of municipally owned corporations (MOCs) has increased rapidly in Sweden. Proponents of MOCs claim that they promote efficiency. However, at the same time, critics stress that MOCs risk blurring accountability, harbour anti-competitive elements and may negatively affect public ethics. The authors review and summarize contemporary research into Swedish MOCs. They highlight that municipalities that create and own relatively more MOCs have higher perceived corruption levels-but not lower taxes, more satisfied citizens or a better business climate. Municipalities with relatively more MOCs display less transparent and more complex organizational structures, where the same politicians hold offices as both principals and agents simultaneously. This runs the risk of short-circuiting accountability chains, thus making it difficult to hold decision-makers accountable. Ultimately, the article contributes to the literature by highlighting the need for taking adverse and unintended side-effects of MOCs into account to better understand their implications for public administration ethics as well as accountability.

I synnerhet inom anglosaxisk samhällsvetenskap är public choice ett inflytelserikt perspektiv för att förstå och förklara utfall i politiken. Inom svensk förvaltningsforskning, däremot, har perspektivet använts mycket sparsamt. Traditionen tog form på 1960-talet bland amerikanska forskare. Det går tillbaka till verk som med tiden har kommit att bli klassiker inom fältet, såsom Anthony Downs Inside Bureaucracy (1964), Gordon Tullocks The Politics of Bureaucracy (1965), William Niskanens artikel "Nonmarket decision making. The peculiar economics of bureaucracy" (1968) samt dennes bok Bureaucracy and public economics (1971/1974). Enkelt uttryckt bygger public choice på idén att politiker och byråkrater är individer med egna mål och värderingar, mål och värderingar som inte nödvändigtvis är i linje med vad som förväntas av deras yrkesroller eller står i samklang med allmännyttan. Enligt public choice-traditionen kan detta ta sitt uttryck i att enskilda byråkrater regelmässigt förordar beslut som går i linje med dessa individers egna och högst privata intressen. På motsvarande sätt är de beredda att obstruera beslut och instruktioner om de går emot samma intressen. I detta kapitel kommer vi att ge William Niskanens idéer om den budgetmaximerade förvaltningen stort utrymme. Niskanen menade att tjänstemännens - och i förlängningen förvaltningens - beteende primärt kan förstås utifrån deras egenintresse (framför allt att maximera lön, status och prestige). Vår ambition är att illustrera hur public choice - avseende bestämda frågor och under vissa omständigheter - kan utgöra ett fruktbart verktyg för att begripliggöra den offentliga förvaltningen.

Local governments are increasingly relying on municipally owned corporations (MOCs) to provide public services. Some describe this development as a rational response to austerity challenges and emphasise the cost-efficiency of MOCs (‘the optimistic view’). Others identify complications and associate MOCs with weak supervision, lack of accountability, and corruption risks (‘the sceptical view’). Hitherto, no studies have analysed these opposing claims on MOCs in the one and same inquiry. We address this gap by focusing on Sweden, which has experienced a dramatic growth in the number of MOCs. We examine the association between the number of MOCs, the business climate, satisfaction with local government, local tax rates, and a corruption index for all 290 Swedish municipalities. Putting the ‘optimistic view’ into doubt, results indicate that municipalities relying heavily on MOCs are associated with more perceived corruption and higher taxes but do not have more satisfied citizens nor a better business climate.

Previous studies have stressed the role of a child's family environment for future political participation. This field of research has, however, overlooked that children within the same family have different experiences depending on their birth order. First-borns spend their first years of life without having to compete over their parents' attention and resources, while their younger siblings are born into potential rivalry. We examine differences in turnout depending on birth order, using unique population-wide individual level register data from Sweden and Norway that enables precise within-family estimates. We consistently find that higher birth order entails lower turnout, and that the turnout differential with respect to birth order is stronger when turnout is lower. The link between birth order and turnout holds when we use data from four other, non-Nordic countries. This birth order effect appears to be partly mediated by socio-economic position and attitudinal predispositions.

Studies repeatedly find that women and men experience life in academia differently. Importantly, the typical female academic portfolio contains less research but more teaching and administrative duties. The typical male portfolio, on the other hand, contains more research but less teaching and administration. Since previous research has suggested that research is a more valued assignment than teaching in academia, we hypothesise that men will be ranked higher in the peer-evaluations that precede hirings to tenured positions in Swedish academia. We analyze 861 peer review assessments of applicants in 111 recruitment processes in Economics, Political Science, and Sociology at the six largest Swedish universities. Our findings confirm that the premises established in previous research are valid in Sweden too: Women have relatively stronger teaching merits and men relatively stronger research merits, and also that, on balance, research is rewarded more when applicants are ranked by reviewers. Accordingly, male applicants are ranked higher compared to female applicants.

Facing the threat of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines are important for limiting the spread and consequences of the pandemic. In this study, we provide a descriptive overview of the within-country variations of vaccine rates by examining to what extent voter turnout , support for an anti-establishment political party (Sweden Democrats), presence of first-generation immigrants, and Evangelical religiosity are associated with the within-country variation in vaccine uptake rates. We use official register data for municipality-level vaccine rates and municipality-level regressions with regional fixed effects. Our analyses show that vaccine uptake, on average, is lower in municipalities where the anti-establishment political party Sweden Democrats has higher vote shares and where a larger share of the population is first-generation immigrants. We discuss that potential explanations for these associations between vote shares for an anti-establishment party and shares of first-generation immigrants could be lower levels of trust in institutions and language barriers.

This paper investigates how non-industrial agrarian traditions and practices are reworked and recontextualized in a contemporary context. Explorative in its nature, the paper uses in depth interviews with practitioners in eastern Sweden, several of whom are engaged in work to keep practices of the past alive, to discuss how the concept of revitalization can bear on sustainability. Traditional practices are revived as an alternative to industrialized agriculture, and as having a bearing on resilient cultivation systems as well as social relations. They are seen as means of increasing food security and reversing the negative biodiversity development caused by increased monoculture. We understand tradition as a process of negotiation and adaptation to the present, where revivals to some extent necessarily change the traditions that they attempt to revive. Tradition is thus a dynamic concept, always made in the present, never fixed but constantly evolving. In the challenges created by climate change and environmental degradation, it is increasingly voiced that true sustainability requires a transformation of the cultural system. In many cases, people are turning to tradition for sustainable alternatives to industrialized ways of life and to protect a diversity threatened by a dominant and unsustainable lifestyle.

The increasing fragmentation and the rising number of organizations in society create major challenges when implementing knowledge structures. In this article, we propose that the concept of metagovernance is useful when addressing these challenges. The enhancement of knowledge structures in the Swedish social services is our study object. Networks at national, regional and local levels have been organized and facilitated by national resources and agreements since 2003. The shifting of participants, switching assignments and ambiguity about the networks purposes created difficult conditions for successful implementation. In this paper, we argue that fragile top-down government and shifting local network organization provide limited opportunities to ensure that new knowledge structures will have an impact on social work practice. Research is based upon monitoring a national program that started in 2003, affecting five universities and their surrounding regions and municipalities. The article is also based upon observations and interviews among national and regional actors. Results show that national agencies are hands-off, but still in control by setting up legal and discursive frameworks for those networks. It is argued that this creates new challenges for participating organizations and professionals in social work.

This study examines the link between women’s representation in national parliaments and their possibility to participate in civil society. Utilizing panel data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset, covering 1975–2019, we investigate how the presence of women in parliaments influences the possibility for women to participate in civil society, especially in non-liberal democratic settings. The results indicate a positive association post-1990, coinciding with an international emphasis on civil society and a rise in women’s parliamentary representation in both liberal democracies and autocratic regimes. The study however highlights that in hybrid and autocratic regimes, increased female representation can also be used to project a gender-equal image without genuine democratization intentions. These findings suggest a correlation between the increase in women in parliaments and greater opportunities for their participation in civil society, but do not imply that the results reflect processes towards democracy. The findings contribute to understanding women’s possibilities in non-democratic regimes and underscores the need for further qualitative analysis to fully grasp the implications of these trends.

Vissa barn idrottar, tävlar och drömmer på sina egna villkor. Andra får vara med om det bidrar till deras uppfostran. Organiserad spontanidrott mot sociala problem blir allt vanligare. Projekten blottlägger ojämlikhet och den svenska idrottsmodellens utmaningar.

Today, sport activities are performed as instruments for social objectives. In this article, we examine Midnight Football, a sports-based intervention promoting social inclusion and crime-prevention. Based on interviews with participants and on-site observations, we examine how young participants understand their participation in relation to the overarching ambitions of the intervention. Participants emphasize that football is fun, enables social relationships, and opportunities of development, and not primarily the instrumental utility of the practices noted to underpin the intervention. In the tensions between the different discourses, the hegemony of instrumentality which conditions the activities can be challenged. At the same time, the instrumentality of sport utilized on the explicit premise of social objectives challenges the traditional and competitive notions of sport practices. This dual resistance is principally discussed with respect to sport provided as a right or premised as an instrument of specific policy objectives.

Den 24 februari 2022 var vi inbjudna som gäster hos kulturutskottet med anledning av riksdagens forskningsförmiddag. Besöket innebar för vår del en möjlighet att presentera forskning om civilsamhället, särskilt idrottens sociala dimensioner och potential att "vara brottsförebyggande och motverka utanförskap för barn och unga", som det stod i inbjudan. Temat för vår presentation var "Idrottens kraft i ojämlikhetens Sverige". Vi ville dels lyfta fram de mönster och villkor för ojämlikhet och exkludering som formar samhället i idag och präglar idrotten som sådan - och ungas deltagande i den, dels problematisera tilltron till idrott som ett instrument för att förebygga brottslighet. Vi ville i det senare avseendet peka på att idrottsaktiviteter kan ha stora värden, och på olika sätt bidra till att förhindra brott, men också reflektera över hur en instrumentell syn på idrotten utestänger andra möjliga sätt att se på idrott. Mot denna bakgrund ville vi diskutera om stöd till idrotten kan legitimeras på andra grunder än dess eventuella instrumentella nytta - kan idrott på lika villkor vara en rättighet för barn och unga? Och även diskutera hur detta nyttotänkande, som skapas av ekonomiska incitament, blir en del av idrottens självbild, och hur det ligger till grund för ständigt ökade förväntningar på vad deltagande i idrott kan bidra till. Inte minst ville vi rikta blicken mot de ojämlika villkor för ungas deltagande i idrott som präglar samhället i dag. Unga i mer välbärgade delar av befolkningen kan delta på egna premisser. Unga i andra samhällsklasser tar del av idrott som social insats, på villkor att det ska bidra till att minska deras förmodade brottslighet.

Sport-based interventions are often integrated into systems of social policy, welfare, education, and control in modern societies, most notably in crime prevention. In this chapter, we take a closer look at how Midnight Football is formed as a means for the surveillance and observation of young people deemed to be at risk, based on a Foucauldian and Deleuzian framework. Using the context of Midnight Football, as organized in disadvantaged suburban areas in Sweden, the chapter emphasizes how technologies of discipline and control are characteristic of modern societies, and how the football programme presents opportunities for various societal agencies to visit, come into contact with and observe the young people present.

This book analyses the increasing use of sport in European and Western welfare states as a tool of social policy and its promotion as a solution to social problems.

Midnight Football is a sports-based intervention targeting social inclusion and crime prevention in young people aged 12–25 in Sweden. This book takes a close look at its organization, pedagogy and potential outcomes. Drawing on cutting-edge research into Midnight Football in Sweden, and exploring other community sport programmes including Midnight Basketball in the United States, this book shines new light on broader social transformations regarding urban segregation and social exclusion, social policy and the governing of welfare and social policy.

This book also offers new perspectives on how sport and the lives of young people intersect with and shape broader shifts in welfare and social policy in Western states, shifts that are manifested in increased inequality, social polarization and profound changes in urban geographies.

This is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in the relationships between sport and wider society, or in sport development, sport policy, social policy, public policy or youth and social work.

In this chapter, we pay attention to girls’ social exclusion and perceived social problems, by examining how social inclusion is formed and managed through sports-based interventions in Sweden. The aim is to explore and analyse the conditions for girls’ participation in two sports-based interventions aiming for social inclusion, focusing on construction of norms concerning ways of being a participant (football) girl.