Full Description
This book offers a critical examination of the collaborative turn unfolding across the Nordic welfare states. Focusing on co-production—partnerships between citizens, public authorities, and civil society—the volume explores how this approach is reshaping policies, institutional arrangements, and the role of civil society in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark. While co-production is increasingly promoted as a solution to persistent challenges—such as policy complexity, democratic deficits, and fiscal pressures—the Nordic experience reveals important variations in its scope, forms, and implications. Is this shift a genuine transformation of the welfare state, or an adaptive strategy cloaked in collaborative rhetoric? Drawing on comparative perspectives, the book highlights how Nordic traditions of universalism, egalitarianism, and strong public institutions create distinct conditions for collaboration—conditions that differ markedly from those in liberal or residual welfare regimes where co-production theories have largely been developed. In doing so, it challenges dominant frameworks and argues for a reconceptualization of co-production through a Nordic perspective.
Aimed at scholars, policymakers, and practitioners, this volume offers a significant contribution to welfare state and civil society research and invites reflection on the promises and limits of collaborative governance in times of change.
Contents
Chapter 1.- Introduction.-The Collaborative Turn in the Nordic Welfare States.- Critical Perspectives on Policies, Civil Society, and Institutional Changes .- Part 1.-Roots and Trajectories of Co-production.-Concepts and Definitions.- Chapter 2.-Co-production in the Nordic Welfare States.- Critical Perspectives on Policies, Civil Society, and Institutional Changes .- Chapter 3.-The Market, the Forum and the Commons.- Institutional Models of Public Management Reform .- Chapter 4.-Co-production and Public Sector Reforms. From the Market to Civic Engagement? .- Chapter 5.-Co-production and the marketisation of welfare sectors in Sweden and the other Nordic countries.- Part 2.-Co-production in National and Nordic Welfare State Contexts: Policies and institutional Changes.- Chapter 6.- Navigating between Collaboration and Responsibilization: Exploring policy narratives in three Nordic welfare states .- Chapter 7.- Co-Production in Swedish Health and Welfare.- An Overview of Research and Practical Applications.- Chapter 8.-Organizing inclusion of vulnerable citizens through cross-sector co-production.- Chapter 9.-Who cares? Examining social and health professionalism in the context of citizen co-production.- Chapter 10.-Challenges for co-production in the Nordic welfare states.- Part 3.-Multi-level Impacts of Co-production.-Democracy, Public Sector, Citizenship and Civil Society.- Chapter 11.-Facilitators of co-production between public sector and civil society's organizations in the Nordic context.- The case of Search and Rescue in Norway.- Chapter 12.-Can training bridge the gap between rhetoric and practice in co-production? Lessons learned from promoting co-production in a non-profit welfare service provider in Sweden.- Chapter 13.-Rural social innovations. Co-production where the welfare state is distancing.- Chapter 14.-From Ladder to Mobiles: Towards a Situated Understanding of Co-creation.- Part 4.-Conclusion and discussion.- Chapter 15.-The Collaborative Turn in the Nordic Welfare States.
