Får de verkligen LOV?

Sammanfattning: This paper examines three cases of backsourcing of elderly-care in Swedish municipalities In all of which the right-wing party Moderaterna has taken the decision to remove the ability for private actors in local elderly-care. Since the moderate party’s ideology in general is in favor of the allowance of private actors in the public sector, the decision to not allow private actors could be described as going against their fundamental ideology. Even though earlier research on backsourcing argues that backsourcing is done primarily for pragmatic reasons, the decision-makers still have to legitimize their decision being coherent to the party's ideology in order to not embrace left-wing politics. When analyzing the arguments used by the moderate politicians, our result shows that the moderate politicians tend to “blame” the circumstances rather than their ideological set of ideas about privatization itself. By doing this, they can withhold their ideological preferences while at the same time showing power of action.