This article argues that the social construction of user participation policies includes both differences and similarities regarding three user groups: older people, disabled people and people with mental health problems. The article is based on a historical discourse analysis of national documents in Norway. It points at a democracy/social rights discourse, based on the idea of social citizenship, as a common and historically stable discourse for all three user groups and relates this to the specific characteristics of Norwegian welfare policies. A contrasting consumer discourse, stressing users’ consumer role and related to the impact of New Public Management reforms, is only evident in the case of older people and from the 1990s. A co-production/co-partnering discourse, stressing user/professional-partnership, is evident in the current policies directed at older people and those with mental health problems. Both the consumer and co-production discourse remain marginal in the case of disabled people.
ProfessorAvdeling for pedagogikk og sosialfag, Høgskolen i Lillehammer Ole.Petter.Askheim@inn.no SAMMENDRAG Artikkelen analyserer argumentasjonen for brukermedvirkning slik den framkommer i statlige policydokumenter på velferdsområdet. Den stiller spørsmålet om hvilke diskurser som har satt sitt preg på argumentasjonen og om de er preget av kontinuitet eller brudd. En hovedkonklusjon er at dokumentene er kjennetegnet av en samproduksjonsdiskurs der individets rettigheter til innflytelse over eget liv i kraft av å vaere en fullverdig samfunnsborger kobles sammen med individuelt ansvar for så vel egen velferd som for fellesskapet. Diskursen knyttes til en sosialdemokratisk samarbeidsideologi som det har vaert betydelig konsensus om på tvers av ulike regjeringskonstellasjoner. Det stilles spørsmål om en slik konsensusorientering er under press ved at en konsumenttenkning og en liberal medborgerskapsforståelse i større grad kommer til syne etter at Høyre-Frp-regjeringen kom til makten fra 2013.
Stikkord brukermedvirkning, diskurser, velferdspolitikk, policy-dokumenter
ABSTRACT
User involvement discourses in Norwegian welfare policyThe article analyses the argumentation for user participation, as this appears in Norwegian public documents in the welfare area. The question is asked which discourses have mainly influenced the argumentation and whether they are characterized by continuity or breaks. A main conclusion is that the documents are influenced by a co-production discourse where the individuals' rights to influence their lives as citizens of full value are connected with individual responsibility for their own welfare, as well as for the community they are part of. The discourse is connected to a social democratic ideology that has had conside-
The concept of empowerment has been closely linked to the development of personal assistance (PA) and the independent living ideology. However, the use of the concept of empowerment has been disputed as it has begun to be used in both the marketization of the PA scheme and as a government strategy to promote active partnership. In this article, we take a closer look at the concept of empowerment and how different approaches capture different relationships between the state and the users of PA. We distinguish between empowerment as a form of resistance, as a form of consumer choice, as co-productions and as a liberal strategy of dominance in the modern society. The analysis indicates how the different notions of empowerment run alongside each other in the development of the PA arrangement in the Scandinavian countries and that the different perspectives will have different consequences when PA is to be analysed as a tool of liberation for disabled people.
Personal assistance (PA) has been characterized as a melting pot consisting of, on the one hand, a social rights discourse with its basis among disabled people, and, on the other hand, a consumer directed market discourse increasingly putting its stamp on welfare policy in the Western world. In the realm of welfare politics, these discourses are, in many ways, opposites, but have found common ground in the demand for a more individual and consumer friendly provision of services. Within a shared welfare state model, the application of PA has developed divergently in the Scandinavian countries and relates to the two discourses in different ways. In this article, PA in Denmark, Norway and Sweden is presented and similarities and differences are discussed and analysed. Questions raised include: How can the differences between the countries be understood? What dilemmas within welfare policy do they illustrate? How do the different discourses put their marks on the different PA-models in the Scandinavian countries? How do the PA programmes seem to develop further and what kind of PA will the Scandinavian countries end up with in the future?
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.