In recent decades, New Public Management and quasi-markets have become a central policy idea in the provision of social services. Sweden is a pioneer having one of the most unregulated welfare sectors and the most extensive tax-funded private production of welfare services in Europe (Blix & Jordahl, 2021). Despite their increasing political popularity, quasi-markets are both sensitive and fragile – they need more attention and care than regular markets, and, as a result, require regulation, organisation, and surveillance in various ways (Dickinson et al., 2021). Market organisation, market stewardship or market shaping activities broadly refers to “the actions and strategies employed by government and non-government actors to ensure that the quasi-market will meet the goals of the policy that it supports” (Malbon & Carey, 2021: 20). Thus, whether quasi-markets flourish, function or succeed depend on empirical conditions (Le Grand, 2011).

Following an “evaluative approach” (Cutler & Waine, 1997) research often use criteria such as quality, efficiency, choice, responsiveness, and equity to resolve the complex issue of policy effects, i.e. by deploying criteria used by policy makers themselves. In contrast, in this paper we seek to explore quasi-markets by acknowledging how they may define and change social realities, i. e. with a focus on “constitutive effects” (Dahler-Larsen, 2012).

Research has studied quasi-market arrangements focusing on the state or high-level decision-making processes. However, as argued by Mabon and Carey (2021: 18), “local actors, in particular street level bureaucrats, are a key part of the complex work of managing quasi-markets”. This is the case in Sweden, as well as in many other parts of Europe, and this paper attempts to contribute to a nuanced understanding of how this is done at the local level – by empirically exploring different forms of municipal organisation of local quasi- markets with a focus on the Swedish preschool sector.

The Swedish parliament decided on national quasi-market competition or free establishment for independent (for-profit- and non-profit) preschools in 2006. The municipalities, responsible for these markets, are governed by local elected political councils with far-reaching discretion to decide how municipal tax funds are spent and to govern welfare services, including preschools. This overall situation warrants that market organisation comprise ideological conflicts – especially so in municipalities with a left-wing political majority imbued with market scepticism that may manifest itself in practices and social relations. However, in a decentralised system, quasi markets can be articulated differently beyond ideological disagreements, meaning that the Swedish preschool system is in fact comprised of multiple interconnected local quasi-markets. For example, quasi-markets may function differently depending on administrative cultures, institutional preconditions, and characteristics of the public managers and employees (Lapuente & Van de Walle, 2020).

In this paper we use the idea of market stewardship as an analytical tool to explore quasi- market organisation. Market stewardship relies on work carried out on the street- level and it is based on and involves both formal rules and local informal cultural practices (Malbon & Carey, 2021). The latter involves the qualitatively different ways in which municipalities engage with private actors locally, i.e., how approval, inspection, support, dialogue, and service – what we label “market care” – is enacted by street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky, 1980).  

This paper aims to explore how municipalities facilitate, support and police the local preschool quasi-market and how such practices and the associated social relations between municipal and private actors evolve and result in different local modes of market organisation. To reach this aim, we ask: How do municipal administrative officers, representatives from independent preschool providers and membership organisations describe different modes of market organisation? What are the institutional underpinnings and the constitutive effects of different modes of market organisation?  

This paper is part of an ongoing research project entitled The Preschool as a Market (Carlbaum et al, 2020). The project includes four interrelated sub studies, and in this paper, we combine data from two studies aiming to A) analyse municipalities as facilitators of and key actors in local preschool markets and, B) analyse who the private independent preschool providers are and their rationales. For sub study A) we selected 30 municipalities characterized as having either a large private pre-primary sector (N=10), medium-sized (N=10) or few private preschool services (N=10). In this selection, we also strived for geographical variation and each of the three groups include municipalities located in different geographical areas of Sweden, with different contextual and demographical characteristics, etc. For sub study B) we selected 15 private pre-school organisations – five large-, five medium- and five small sized. We strived to capture a wide range of different private preschool providers, including large chains with up to about a hundred individual pre-schools, medium sized with more than two preschools and small organisations with only one pre-school. Different selection criteria were then used to capture variations in terms of for instance pedagogical profiles and different organisational forms (such as economic associations, parental or staff run cooperations and limited companies) as well as geographical location. Both studies are based on documents and interviews. The documents include a wide range of official and internal material from municipalities and private pre-school operators harvested through either public repositories and registers and/or websites. We interviewed municipal officers responsible for the pre-school sector and in some cases, staff working specifically with administrative tasks (N: 32). We interviewed representatives from private independent preschool providers, and, in some cases, staff working in closer contact with municipalities (N: 17). In addition, we interviewed representatives from organised interests (membership organisations and business associations) that support municipalities and private pre-school providers (N: 6). The documents and interviews have been analysed qualitatively via thematic content analysis involving several steps and including continuous discussions and interpretation between the project members on emerging categories and second order themes.

The preliminary analysis shows that quasi-market organisation may take different forms both when it comes to the enactment of statutory administrative tasks and market caring activities. Local administrative cultures and capacities influence the ways in which municipalities adopt NPM-reform. Hybrid forms of local governing result in forms of post-NPM administration where specialization, fragmentation and marketization are combined with coordination, centralization and collaborative capacity (Lapuente & Van de Walle, 2020). Representatives from the private sector and private preschool providers claim that quasi-market organisation must provide legally fair and predictable conditions. Hence, municipalities that offer a well organised structure for private actors and treat private and municipal pre-school equally are described as role models. Private actors also emphasise the instilment of values like trust and recognition. Such values are regarded important for co-operation and development to function productively. The paper thus demonstrate how market organisation is manifested in social relations where municipal officers may or may not enact “market care”. A tentative conclusion is that whether municipalities care for and care about the local quasi market have important implications. Municipalities with resources, knowledge and a market friendly culture appear to be better equipped to manage quasi-markets. Other municipalities, who lack such resources and knowledge – or for different reasons seek to exercise local self-government and resist marketisation – may enact a less caring market stewardship. Overall, these observations are linked to on-going discussions on “cultures of care” within the institutions, architectures and systems of governance (Greenhough, Davies & Bowlby 2023). We finish the paper by discussing what the insights from the Swedish case can contribute to in a wider European perspective, where different forms of quasi-market organisation also are politically cherished organisational options in national policy frameworks that are to be enacted, managed and “cared for” at local levels in various ways.

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