No description available.

During the 90’s, several reforms took place in order to change the educational system. The reforms intended to increase the freedom of choice and to facilitate the start-up process for driving independent schools. A broad alliance of political parties from left to right supported these reforms. Twenty years later, the independent schools constitute a substantial part of schools in Sweden. However, recently there has been a debate about the expanding number of independent schools and whether these schools should be allowed to make profits or not.   In an official statement in the autumn of 2012 the Social Democratic Party announced their new policy declaring that independent schools and freedom of choice are important parts of the educational system. To prevent independent schools from making big profits, the Social Democratic Party launched ideas such as stringent quality requirements. This enquiry analyses the motions written by members of the parliament representing the Social Democratic Party in order to distinguish the pursued policy regarding independent school during the period 2006 - 2012. In this study, I draw the conclusion that members of the parliament representing the Social Democratic Party pursued different policies in the question regarding independent schools. It turned out there was a dividing line between those who pursued traditional working class politics and those who pursued a liberal middle class politics. The former were more eager to criticise the expansion of the independent schools than the latter. Making profit in publicly funded independent schools was something that most members of the Social Democratic Party disliked, but none of them raised their voices for a prohibition.

Over the past few decades, the Swedish welfare system has undergone a process of marketization, characterized by the implementation of choice reforms. In order for citizens to be able to utilize their freedom of choice, a set of requirements have to be met. However, while it is argued in the literature that the conditions for choice reforms are worse in rural areas compared to urban areas, there is a lack of empirical studies examining these requirements in a rural Swedish context. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the market diversity requirement and the overproduction requirement in rural Swedish municipalities that have set up a system of choice for home care services in accordance with The Act on Systems of Choice (LOV). The results show that out of the sixteen municipalities included in the study, both requirements for functioning freedom of choice were fulfilled in four rural municipalities. Most commonly, the market diversity requirement was violated because of the absence of multiple established home care service providers. In some municipalities, the same requirement was also violated because providers failed to offer a variety of services. Further, the study shows that because some providers have restricted their operations to certain geographical areas within some municipalities, the ability for rural citizens to utilize their freedom of choice can differ within a municipality. All providers were able to accept new elderly clients, meaning that the overproduction requirement was fulfilled in all sixteen rural municipalities.