Study title

Decentralization of welfare policy - a comparative study of multi-level governance in Norway and other European countries. The project will: - Describe changes in multi-level governance in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Switzerland and France from the 1980s to the early 2000s. (The study can be further extended to Germany, Poland and Hungary, but per. 7 June 2005 this is not clarified.) The purpose is to identify different traditions and approaches to decentralization within welfare policy. The project will describe the different stakeholders roles (State, regional, local, and private commercial and non-commercial) when it comes to financing, planning, decision making and actual delivery of various welfare services. - Discuss the impact of changes over time in relation to their intentions in four policy areas: social security benefits, unemployment policy, geriatric care and immigration policy. The main question is: How can negative insensitives be avoided? - Examine changes in responsibilities between different levels of governance in terms of cost effectiveness, participation, client rights, working conditions of professionals and equality / inequality with respect to certain risk groups. To what extent can local democracy, regional equality, efficiency and user-friendliness be ensured at the same time? The project is a collaboration between partners in the respective countries. This summary applies collaborative project as such. The various partners will be responsible for their respective selected parts.