In this article, we analyse a recent industry-driven initiative in Sweden for the organisation and operation of Vocational Education and Training. In the context of a statist and schoolbased system for VET, this is an initiative which seems to be an example of an anomaly in the present system. The initiative is called the Technical College scheme and is a certification scheme for upper secondary school education in technology. The aim of this article is to describe and explain the establishment of the Technical College scheme in Sweden from a historical institutionalist approach. Based on this approach, the case is analysed as a process of incremental institutional change, with a focus on initiatives and strategies by different stakeholders driving the invention and implementation of the scheme, the importance of the power balances between central interests, and how the process has been shaped by institutional conditions. Our study shows how previously marginalised actors in a VET system can mobilise for change without radically changing the rules of the game. The process that we characterise can be explained by changes in the power balances between key actors, but also by changed institutional conditions that have provided windows of opportunity for new initiatives.

The scholarly debate about cooperation between different stakeholders in Vocational Education and Training has primarily focussed on the national level, and much less on local and regional levels. This article aims to contribute to our understanding of the conditions and mechanisms of decentralised cooperation in VET systems, through a comparative case study of two partnerships between local government and industry at two industrial schools in Sweden. We want to understand how and why companies and municipalities engage in this kind of cooperation , in a national structural context which provides few incentives for doing so. Our analysis is guided by two research questions. Firstly, what have these collaborations meant in terms of the involvement of firms and commitment from local government? Secondly, what factors can explain the similarities and differences between the establishment and upholding of these two collaborative arrangements? Our study shows that the partnerships can be characterised by different dynamics in relation to the scope of participation and depth of commitment of the partners. We also show that two conditions are especially important for understanding variations between the cases: the structure of local industry, and the characteristics of the relationship between local government and the industrial companies.

There is a growing recognition of the importance of evidence to support allocative policy decisions in health care. This study is based on interviews with politicians in four regional health authorities in Sweden. Drawing on theories of strategic use of knowledge, the article analyses how politicians perceive and make use of expert knowledge represented by the National Guidelines, embracing both a scientific and a political rationale. As health care is an organisation with a dual basis for legitimacy - at the same time a political and an action organisation - it affects knowledge use. We investigate how the context of health care priority setting influences the conditions for knowledge use among regional politicians. Our findings illustrate the dilemma of political decision-makers and how they prefer to use expert knowledge. The politicians use this policy instrument in a legitimising fashion, as it will fit into the current political debate on more equal care. As an instrument for resource allocation the politicians noted that 'facts' per se could not provide them with a sufficient basis for legitimising their governing of health care. The dualistic organisational context makes knowledge important as a political weapon in negotiations with the medical profession.

This study focuses on the formation and institutional changes of governance for regional development in three secondtier city-regions in Sweden. It explains the spatial relations of such institutional change. It integrates concepts from historical institutionalism in a spatial approach and investigates the path dependency of institutional change. This involves conceiving the mechanism of feedback effects and institutional changes of layering, conversion and recombination, and of how these play out differently within the three city-regions. The conclusions highlight the relations at different scales of different institutional changes.

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