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Since the 1980s, European transport policy has transformed significantly due to market liberalization, deregulation, privatization, and increased competition. These changes have impacted administrative structures and relations between the State and interest groups. In Sweden, a 1979 traffic policy shift redistributed socio-economic costs, requiring rail and road traffic to contribute only their marginal costs while infrastructure expenses were covered by the State budget. In this context, the introduction of the government agency the Transport Council in 1980 aimed to enhance coordination and supply the government with analyses of the demand for transport but was abolished in 1991 due to conflicts with other government agencies and transport sector interest groups. This chapter analyses the Council’s inception and closure, identifying driving forces behind government reorganization in the Swedish transport sector.

I artikeln studeras hur köpsågverk i Norrland organiserat sina intressen på marknaderna för råvara och färdigprodukter. Både externa (statlig inblandning) och interna (konkurrens mellan företag i kartellen) drivkrafter påverkade i vilken utsträckning kartellsamarbetet utvecklades. En avgörande händelse inträffade 1993, då Sverige inför EU-medlemskapet behövde anpassa sin konkurrenslagstiftning, vilket fick långtgående konsekvenser för köpsågverken. Resultaten bidrar till vår kunskap om komplexiteten i och de institutionella förutsättningarna för industriell utveckling. 

This article addresses how private sawmills that did not own forests (merchant sawmills) managed the supply of raw materials, timber prices, and market conditions in the late twentieth century, when faced by tougher international competition, increased concentration, demands for new production technology, and large-scale production with greater capital investment. Why did some firms survive longer than others? How did they deal with changing market conditions and a new political climate? We analyse how merchant sawmills in the Swedish county of Västerbotten tried to organise their interests to influence the supply and price level of their raw material. The study focuses on the interest organisations whose archives we have had access to, AB Sågverksintressenter (ABSI) later Sågab, which primarily worked to secure access to timber and influence price levels. In this context, the government also played a major role since the Swedish timber market was divided into price areas. The sawmills, through their cartels, negotiated the price in each area with the sellers through the forest owners' associations. The decisive moment came in 1993, when Sweden was to become a member of the EU and needed to adapt its competition legislation, which had far-reaching consequences, especially for the merchant sawmills. Our investigation shows some merchant sawmills tended towards concentration and large-scale operations, while the differences in size among the remaining merchant sawmills in the early 2000s still varied greatly. The coordination of the merchant sawmills by ABSI and Sågab could have offset some of the disadvantages of smallness in the markets. Sågab succeeded in coordinating the supply of raw materials, electricity contracts, and the negotiation of the sales price of woodchips, while other types of cooperation were not thought important – for example there is no sign that Sågab coordinated the purchase of production technology or the like. Both external forces (state involvement) and internal forces (intracartel competition) influenced the extent to which cartel cooperation developed. The results contribute to our knowledge of the complexity and institutional conditions of industrial development.

We explore the decisions in Parliament about the Swedish tax deduction for commuting since the 1980s. The aim is to explain the continuity of the tax regulation despite several attempts from motions in Parliament and public investigations to reform it towards environmental goals, e.g., reduced emissions of CO₂. When reforms have been proposed, the political majority in Parliament has regardless of political colour voted against and retreated to the original motives for the tax deduction; economic growth and the enlargement of regional labour markets. The interests of Swedish mass motorisation succeeded in finding the arguments to slow down reforms and at the same time reinforce the path dependency by adding new legitimacy to the regulation. If the attempts to reform the tax deduction had been part of a broader reform of the transport sector and the tax system, they might have succeeded in breaking with the old path.

Köpsågverk, det vill säga relativt små privata sågverk som inte äger skog, har sedan mellankrigstiden hamnat i kläm mellan å ena sidan råvaruförsörjning och timmerpriser och å andra sidan avsättningsvillkoren på främst regionala men också nationella och internationella marknader. Utvecklingen i hela den svenska skogsindustrin präglades särskilt under 1950- och 1960-talen av hårdare internationell konkurrens som i sin tur drev fram ökad koncentration, ny produktionsteknik, samt stordriftsproduktion med större kapitalinsats. För att hantera konkurrensen har de små köpsågverken försökt organisera sina intressen för att framför allt påverka tillgång och prisnivå på råvaran. Vi vill här beskriva hur köpsågverk i Västerbotten samarbetat inom ramen för den svenska skogsindustrins utveckling mot mer kapitalintensiv produktion och en allt starkare koncentration av verksamheterna. Hur såg kampen om skogsråvaran ut i praktiken? 

During the last years, many governments have set targets for increasing the share of biofuels in the transportation sector. Understanding consumer behavior is essential in designing policies that efficiently increase the uptake of cleaner technologies. In this paper we analyze adopters and non-adopters of alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs). We use diffusion of innovation theory and the established notion that the social system and interpersonal influence play important roles in adoption. Based on a nationwide database of car owners we analyze interpersonal influence on adoption from three social domains: neighbors, family and coworkers. The results point primarily at a neighbor effect in that AFV adoption is more likely if neighbors also have adopted. The results also point at significant effects of interpersonal influence from coworkers and family members but these effects weaken or disappear when income, education level, marriage, age, gender and green party votes are controlled for. The results extend the diffusion of innovation and AFV literature with empirical support for interpersonal influence based on objective data where response bias is not a factor. Implications for further research, environmental and transport policy, and practitioners are discussed.

Planning the use of university faculty time and allocating it to various tasks can be challenging since university teachers typically have a complex mix of different tasks that also often change. In this context, some Swedish universities have turned towards time management software solutions as tools for planning department activities. This paper describes the introduction of such a web-based time management system at a Swedish university, and reports from a system evaluation comprising interviews with department leaders and staff planners. The empirical material implies that the advent of time management systems in higher education give rise to challenges for academic leaders aiming for efficiency, transparency and control, while trying to maintain flexibility and autonomy among faculty members.

This study explores the strategies employed by the Swedish Railway Council to influence national railway policy from 1902 to 1967. The Council was a corporatist arrangement and functioned as a broker between industrial and regional interests and the public railways. The results show that though the Council's policy influence in many cases was marginal, there were occasions when the members could use the Council as a tool to influence railway policy, most notably the division of the network into profitable and unprofitable lines, with different forms of government subsidies. The Council's influence increased through a shift in arguments, from a position that tariffs should be high enough to deliver a return on the invested capital, to an emphasis on having tariffs that could support national and regional economic development, even if it created commercial losses. When Swedish transport policy shifted in the 1960s, the Railway Council gradually lost its importance and eventually dissolved.