Demokratiskt beslutsfattande?
En studie av beslutsprocesserna i tre storskaliga infrastrukturprojekt i Sverige
Torstensson, Niklas (2012): Anledningar till olikheter mellan Svenska kommuners skolkvalitet (Causes behind the differences in Swedish municipality´s quality of school) Örebro University.This essay is an explorative case study that will compare four Swedish municipalities quality of local school system against the municipality ´s backgrounddata and a governing document: Skolplan. This study begins in a previous benchmarking study made by one of Sweden?s teachers unions Lärarförbundet. This is a statistical study that ranked the Swedish municipalities against each other?s according to their accomplishments in a number of areas related to their school systems. Its name is Bästa skolkommun 2011 and has been made for the last 10 years. In my own study this ranking will be used to sort out one representing municipality for each quartile of the total 290 in Sweden. To get the municipality ´s as similar as possible I then took the largest town in that quartile for comparison. Therefore the three biggest Swedish cities have been examined (Stockholm, Malmö, Gothenburg) and as well a major university town of Sweden (Lund). The main purpose of this study is to track down possible causes behind the ranking in Bästa skolkommun 2011. In the first part of the essay I compare the municipality´s background´s data. This is a quantitative part where data hailing from Swedens statistical authority?s. According to this will all the following factors grant a higher level of ranking in the Bästa skolkommun 2011 study: Low crime rates, a large group of the population with higher education, high voting figures in national democratic elections and low amount of days at home due to sickness. Strange enough doesn?t high taxing and high income in the populace have an impact on the ranking.The second part of this essay is a mostly conceptual study that will examine the municipality´s local school governing document the: Skolplanen (School planning). Before the Swedish change of law 2011 this was a document, in law demanded to exist. But the local authorities had a large freedom to shape them themselves. Therefore this is an ideological document where the local authorities can make their politics heard. I made a closer examination of the documents to see if any possible explanation to the municipality´s ranking could be found in the documents. In this we could peer a few things: Size was an important matter. The worst ranked was the largest document in text and the second worst ranked was the smallest. A moderate usage of content seems to have been optimal. I could as well find a connection when I performed a minor content analysis and this connection was that a Skolplan with a commanding attitude was superior the documents that didn?t had one or drowned it in size.The results are only indicating in nature due to the essays limited size. But what is found is quite interesting. That the local economic muscles seem to have a limited impact on the schools performance and that it rather is the society as a whole that grants a good ranking is interesting. It indicates that you only can use money to a level and then it is quite useless without a stabile society and a high social capital. Also what we found on the local government document Skolplanen was interesting that when you give shape to an important document make sure it is moderate in size and have a direct commanding attitude.