Decentralised elderly care in transition

Abstract

Since the early 1980s and onwards, there has been a decentralization of power and responsibility to the municipalities for care for the elderly (i.e. there has been a de- crease in central state control). However, at the end of the 1990s and onwards, there were signs of a reversal in this trend as the government presented action and development plans concerning the municipalities’ performance with regard to elderly care. The question investigated in this article is through which policy instruments this governing took place. According to the literature on governance, it is likely that governing will take place through “soft” policy instruments such as “information”, “agreements” and “projects”. The argument made by the literature on governance is supported by an empirical investigation of the content of the government’s action and development plans. In addition, interviews with key figures responsible for the government’s action and development plans show that the governing performed by the central state could be interpreted in terms of a compromise between two incompatible goals: on the one hand to increase central state level control to combat cases of poor performance within care for the elderly; on the other hand to respect the principle of municipal self rule.