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The education sector has been increasingly affected by legal discourse, new managerialism, litigation, burgeoning regulation and accountability involving inspections and audits, and rises in lawsuits. These processes have been described as juridification and have complex effects. In this paper we focus on juridification’s impact on preschool governance during times of increased privatisation in Sweden. We aim to unpack links between juridification and privatisation by analysing the multifaceted issues of how law, litigation and legal discourse become manifested and are navigated by various actors in local preschool quasi-market governance. The results show how intricate connections between juridification and privatisation tend to make public and private relations more legalistic, contract-based and competitive. Juridification and privatisation also increase conformity in terms of, for instance, pedagogical profiles, practices and organisational structures. In addition, these inter-related processes promote and largely benefit corporate group formation and expansion as legal knowledge and economic resources to navigate local preschool quasi-market governance become increasingly essential. This starkly contrasts with the core ostensible objectives of privatisation and marketisation reforms – to promote diversity, pluralism, and a wide range of preschool options for parents.

Research topic/aimIncreasing health issues among school children is a critical concern, given its profound and far-reaching implications across multiple domains. As principal organisers, the 290 Swedish municipalities are responsible for student health provision in theirschools. Still, they often struggle with the complexities of various health promotion strategies and preventative measures,addressing problems such as bullying, absenteeism, and low academic achievements, as well as hiring staff to implementsuch measures. In this context, commercial entities offer a range of student health resources to municipalities. Still, we knowvery little about which and how such commercial resources are purchased, used, and experienced in schools and municipalities. This paper, therefore, aims to undertake an initial exploration of experiences associated with the sale,procurement, and utilization of commercial resources in student health, from the perspective of Swedish municipalities.

Theoretical frameworkAnalytically, we use the notion of projectification (Fred & Godenhjelm, 2023), encompassing the increasing reliance in thepublic sector on projects, seen as ‘temporary organisations’ (Sahlin-Andersson & Söderholm, 2002). Located in the widerliterature on Scandinavian institutionalism (Czarniawska & Savon, 2005), projectification is used as a lens to “scrutinise thelogic, politics and power behind temporary (or temporalities of) initiatives as well as their practices, contexts andconsequences” (Fred & Godenhjelm, 2023, p. 8).

Methodological designThis study is part of the project Student health as a market (VR 2022-03782), and we draw on interviews from 30 municipalstudent health officers (or equivalent) from municipalities with varying demographic and socio-economic conditions. Thesampling was based on Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions’ categorisation of municipalities. The interviews,lasting around 60 minutes, included questions on purchases and motives, but also more generally on the organisation andexperience of municipal-private actor interaction in the context of student health services.

Expected conclusions/findingsThe analysis shows that for instance staffing, different forms of consultancy and digital systems often are purchased fromprivate actors. There are certain and important variations in the interview data, relating to contextual and geographicalcharacteristics in the studied municipalities. Still, certain commonalities are also to be found, for instance on the rise ofdigitally based solutions marketed by private companies argued to resolve challenges that Sweden’s municipalities arefacing. The informants identify both challenges and benefits in relation to the commercial school health solutions, which weseek to unpack and problematise.

Relevance to Nordic educational researchThe paper sheds light on the evolving commercial landscape of student health, and thereby contributes to the broaderdiscussion of the many faces of public-private interactions in education – issues of central relevance to all Nordic countriesand beyond.

Under de senaste decennierna har frågor om marknadisering alltmer kommit i blickfånget i den offentliga debatten om skola och utbildning. Ofta har diskussionen rört grund- och gymnasieskolan, men denna utveckling rör också i allra högsta grad förskolan. Detta kapitel behandlar hur förskolan som marknad styrs och hur detta tar sig uttryck med ett fokus på kommunens centrala roll som marknadsorganisatör. Därigenom vill vi ge läsaren en referensram och en begreppsapparat för att beskriva och förstå förskolans marknadsutsättning samt att stimulera till vidare reflektion och diskussion om hur denna situation i förlängningen kan påverka förskoleverksamheten och de yrkesverksammas arbete.

Tax-funded private provision of welfare services in Sweden is among the most extensive in Europe. This paper focuses on a contradictory example of how discrepancies between neoliberal ideals and practice are embedded in the governance of Swedish preschool. Over time, national and local regulations in Sweden have become increasingly comprehensive and moved toward managerial systems. Using Alain Enthoven’s model of managed competition, and drawing on documents and interviews, this paper focuses on two right-wing, urban municipalities with a very high share of preschools operated by private actors, and their organization of local preschool quasi-markets in terms of so-called sponsors concerning five functions: establishing rules of equity, approving all participating private pre-schools, managing the enrollment process, creating price-elastic demand, and managing risk-selection. The findings show how instead of limiting bureaucratic power, municipal managers have been empowered to plan and optimize the organization of the preschool sector in ways discordant with neoliberal ideas.

National policies aiming at marketisation and privatisation in welfare sectors such as Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) require governance and organisation to be realised. In Sweden, the municipalities are key but largely under-researched organisers for preschool quasi-market infrastructures. This study explores the different ways in which Swedish municipalities act as quasi-market organisers in the preschool setting. Following organisational theory, we analyse their market shaping activities in translating national regulations in efforts to influence, support and control their local preschool quasi-market. Documents, websites, and interviews with public officials from 30 municipalities characterised as having either a large (N = 10), medium (N = 10), or small (N = 10) private ECEC sector are analysed. The analysis highlights large variations on how municipalities act as market makers, which is further discussed in the form of three ideal types: the Frontier, the Keeper, and the Endorser. We conclude that municipalities' varying and hybridised market shaping activities and local characteristics are important to understand the implications that emerge in terms of different rules of the game, stakeholder interdependencies and relationships, composition of market actors etc. Attentiveness to the sub-national/local actors are essential in understanding different welfare quasi-markets within national policy frameworks of marketisation and privatisation.