The Scandinavian Model in Healthcare and Higher Education:

Recentralising, Decentralising or Both?

Authors

  • Dag Olaf Torjesen Department of Political Science and Management, University of Agder, Norway
  • Hanne Foss Hansen Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen
  • Rómulo Pinheiro Department of Political Science and Management, University of Agder
  • Karsten Vrangbæk Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.v21i1.14887

Keywords:

De(re)centralising, Hospitals, Universities, Higher education, Health care, Denmark, Norway

Abstract

The public sector in the Nordic countries has been subject to substantial reform in recent decades. The article explores the changing reform dynamic in Denmark and Norway, focusing on centralising and decentralising trends in two prominent sectors: higher education and health care. The main question is: How can the reform dynamics over the last decade explain changes surrounding decentralisation and/or re-centralisation? A new trend can be observed in both sectors, namely the rise of re-centralisation and the concomitant growth of state responsibility in matters pertaining to political and fiscal decision-making. Both hospitals and universities have been given increased (procedural) autonomy. At the same time there is stronger centralised planning and management of performance management, which means that (substantive) autonomy has been reduced.

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Author Biographies

Dag Olaf Torjesen, Department of Political Science and Management, University of Agder, Norway

Dag Olaf Torjesen, PhD, is Associate Professor at Department of Political Science and Manage- ment, University of Agder. Torjesen has more than 15 years teaching and supervision experience at the master level and is heading an executive master program in health management at University of Agder. Torjesen is supervising the Phd-project: “Local adaption to a national health care reform”, and involved in comparative research within the Nordic region, e.g. governance and institutional change in Nordic healthcare systems, integration between primary and secondary health care provid- ers and the role of users in healthcare.

Hanne Foss Hansen, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen

Hanne Foss Hansen, Ph.D, is professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Co- penhagen. Her research interests include public sector organization, reforms and change as well as evaluation and evidence-based policy and practice. She has worked both with overall public sector analyses and studies of higher education and research.

Rómulo Pinheiro, Department of Political Science and Management, University of Agder

Rómulo Pinheiro, is Professor in Public Policy and Administration at the University of Agder, Norway. He is also a Senior Researcher at Agderforskning, a Visiting Professor at the University of Tampere, Finland, Associate Member of the ExCID's research group at the University of Oslo, and a long-time collaborator of HEDDA - an European consortia of research centers in the field of higher education studies. Romulo's research interests lie at the intersection between public policy and administration, organizational studies, regional science and innovation, and higher education studies.

Karsten Vrangbæk, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen

Karsten Vrangbæk, is professor at University of Copenhagen, head of Center for Health Economics and Policy and theme leader in Center for Healthy Aging at University of Copenhagen. His research interests include comparative health policy, health economics and public administration. He has published extensively in international journals and books on these topics.

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Published

2017-03-01

How to Cite

Torjesen, D. O., Foss Hansen, H., Pinheiro, R., & Vrangbæk, K. (2017). The Scandinavian Model in Healthcare and Higher Education:: Recentralising, Decentralising or Both?. Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration, 21(1), 57–80. https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.v21i1.14887

Issue

Vol. 21 No. 1 (2017): Responses to the Global Financial Crisis – Lessons From the Public Sector in the Nordic Countries

Section

Original Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Dag Olaf Torjesen, Hanne Foss Hansen, Rómulo Pinheiro, Karsten Vrangbæk

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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