The transition to community services in Norway

Abstract

The social policy debate in Scandinavia is undergoing ideological changes. The traditionally strong support for the distinctive features of the Scandinavian welfare states, like equality, centralization, and universal social programmes, are gradually declining, and are being replaced by values that emphasize individual freedom and diversity, community and network, and decentralization of public services. There is growing political support for private and voluntary arrangements as alternatives to the public sector. These ideological changes are not merely Scandinavian phenomena. Decentralization and privatization have been general features in most western countries in the 1980s (Goldsmith and Newton, 1988; Kuhnle, 1990), and Communitarianism and the renaissance of the idea of Civil Society seem to be dominant ideologies in the 1990s (Bellah et al., 1991; Seligman, 1992; Selznick, 1992; Coles, 1993; Etzioni, 1993).