Civil Society Regimes and School Choice Reforms: Evidence from Sweden and Milwaukee

Henrekson Ebba (), Andersson Fredrik O., Wijkström Filip and Ford Michael R.
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Henrekson Ebba: Ersta Skondal University College, Stockholm, 100 61, Sweden
Andersson Fredrik O.: Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indianapolis, IN, 46202-5199, USA
Wijkström Filip: Management & Organization, Stockholm School of Economics, Box 6501, Stockholm, SE 113 83, Sweden
Ford Michael R.: University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Oshkosh, WI, USA

Nonprofit Policy Forum, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 37

Abstract: We examine the effects of school choice reforms implemented in the early 1990s in two different settings: Sweden and Milwaukee (WI, U.S.). We show how both the ideological and theoretical arguments for choice reform were similar in the two contexts, yet the consequences in terms of the organizational outcome and institutional sector configuration ended up strikingly dissimilar. While the new group of actors in the Swedish school system consisted primarily of large-scale for-profit schools, with only a minor share of the expansion being catered to by nonprofit actors, the Milwaukee school choice program became dominated by small-scale nonprofit schools operated by religious communities. We seek to explicate these differences by drawing on the welfare state literature and social origins theory, as well as from organizational and historical institutional theory. We argue that the resulting composition of providers is directly related to the deep-seated differences in the civil society regimes operating in the two contexts.

Keywords: civil society regime; school choice; new public management; nonprofit schools; faith-based organizations; education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1515/npf-2019-0042

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