Global education policies emphasising individualism and freedom of choice are seen to dominate education policies everywhere (Forsey et al., 2008), including in the Nordic countries. The Nordic countries share remarkable commonalities as being archetypal representatives of the social democratic welfare state (Arnesen et al., 2014; Blossing et al., Telhaug et al., 2006), and even so they have experienced radical versions of the liberal market economic models of education policy. Despite their common anchoring in a universal type of welfare state or maybe even due to this, we find that this could premise more radical approaches to neoliberal reforms and could cause new amalgams between welfare and competition state policies. 

Thus, there are also important differences between the policies of the Nordic countries – degrees of privatisation, comprehensiveness (Dovemark et al., 2018), and/or distinctions between systems of general and vocational education (Nylund et al., 2018) – emanating from the local social, political, economic, and historical contexts. These differences are particularly pronounced in the way the systems of upper secondary education are structured and governed and therefore provide an argument for comparison. The differences add to the uneven consequences that apparently similar reforms have when enacted in different contexts (Ball, Maguire, & Braun, 2012; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010).

Especially since the 1990s, the societal and political preoccupation with freedom of choice has evolved immensely, with an increasing demand for knowledge about the ways school choices are made, where and for whom the freedom of choice applies, how students experience choice, and what freedom of school choice does to the structures of education. This has happened parallel to other moves linked with globalization of the economy that have profoundly changed the governance structures of education (Clarke, 2019; Lawn and Grek, 2012; Rizvi, 2022). In a Nordic context, this has involved transnational moves from focusing on values and benefits of the welfare state to market forces and individualism (Beach, 2010, 2018; Dahlstedt & Fejes, 2019; Krejsler, 2021; Rasmussen & Lingard, 2018). Such moves are seen to challenge the Nordic welfare states’ vision of ensuring access to education and provision of free education for all (Rasmussen & Dovemark, 2022). 

On this background, we – like many other scholars before – consider the Nordic countries relevant cases for a critical study of market-oriented education political reforms. However, comparing is not a straightforward process but one that necessitates much consideration on parameters and levels to compare.  

The paper proposal aims to follow up on existing comparisons on the phenomenon of school choice as understood, practiced, and experienced in the Nordic countries, where the free provision of education for all constitutes a welfare state pillar. It focuses specifically on exploring and comparing freedom of choice as central policy issue in the education systems of the Nordic region and addresses how education policies of freedom of choice appear and can be compared in the Nordic countries, how the policies influence and structure the ways students and parents ‘choose’ schools, and – in the light of freedom of choice policies – what happens to the welfare state visions of providing general and free access to education? 

In the proposal the methodological challenge concerns the critical case study approach as a comparative tool. How can comparison be meaningfully done, when the studies that are to be compared are loosely structured and not easily comparable? According to Barlett and Vavrus (2017) there is a necessity to a conceptual shift in the social sciences, specifically in relation to culture, context, space, place, and comparison. They pose the questions; What is a case? and, What is a case study? where they, among other things, direct strong criticism to the idea of how to delimit the object of study, the case as a bounded system. Barlett and Vavrus critically review literature on case studies and argue for an approach called the Comparative Case Study approach (CCS). The CCS attends ‘simultaneously to macro, meso, and micro dimensions of case-based research. The approach engages two logics of comparison: first, the more common compare and contrast logic; and second, a “tracing across” sites or scales’ (p. 2) as individuals, groups, sites or states. They argue that comparative case studies need to consider two different logics of comparison. The first may identify specific units of analysis and then compare and contrast them. The second, processual logic seeks to trace across individuals, groups, sites, and time periods. With reference to Barlett and Vavrus we contend that boundaries are not found; they are made by social actors, including by researchers. In our paper, we focus on the policies in Denmark and Sweden as critical case countries, where our focus is the methodology of comparing the policies – how can this be meaningfully done? We will use several examples from the two countries, including the comparison of different administrative units (municipalities, institutions, etc.) and will in this respect include ethnographic approaches as a central dimension. Our aim can be summed up as comparing educational governance in Denmark and Sweden with a special focus on the phenomena of school choice, and with special regard to the very process of comparison. Our intention is to compare and contrast for which reason we must depart in the critical case study (Stake, 2008). It is the comparison itself (the method) that is in focus - i.e. the method comparing policies and its outfall across countries.

School reforms in the Nordic countries widely adhere to the mentioned global education policies that prioritise accountability, standards, and individual choice. Freedom of choice has become a mantra that is largely unquestioned, although it involves massive complexities for both those having to choose and those governing education. Much is at stake for the students, institutions, and both regions and communities trying to ensure that education possibilities are as widely available as possible. When opening school choice for students, the schools must compete for applicants and in response to the challenge the schools do what they can to targeted students (Dovemark & Holm, 2017; Dovemark & Nylund, 2022). The reforms have decentralised the schools’ governance, as decisions regarding distributions of students and provision of education programmes have been widely delegated to local levels of government, the schools themselves, or private investors. However, schools are also subject to general objectives and legislation obliging them to strive to meet efficiency criteria including high quality and high completion rates, while ensuring the provision of varied and geographically available educational opportunities. To understand the workings of transnational education policies intended to introduce market-oriented education (Krejsler, 2021), Nordic countries provide exemplary and critical cases. They retain some features of traditional universal welfare states and are often highlighted – including in their self-understanding – as model societies with high levels of happiness, social equality, and democratic commitment, together with low levels of corruption and free education and health care for all (e.g., OECD Better Life Index).

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