Varför en myndighet inte styr över sin egen verksamhet

Sammanfattning: My thesis aims to examine the steering of the organisation and activities of the governmental agency ‘svenska ESF-rådet’, the agency responsible for the administration of the European Social Fund in Sweden. The main part of the organisation and its activity takes place on the regional level and my thesis is a case-study of the region ‘Sydsverige’ which encompass the counties of Scania and Blekinge. Having governmentality as an overall theoretical framework, the thesis uses Røvik’s concept of a modern organization and Kingdon’s understanding of the policy process as theoretical concepts of understanding the material. The case-study is based on the fulcrum of activity of the European Social Fund on the regional level, the regional plan. The policy process in creating the regional plan is dominated by civil servants from the county of Scania, which has been awarded the opportunity by the Swedish government to create it. The overall claim of the thesis is that in using their agenda-setting power, the policy process in creating the regional plan is entirely dominated by the civil servants from Scania. Therefore there is no room for the governmental agency. Simultaneously there is an ongoing debate on the national level if there is an actual need for the governmental agency ‘svenska ESF-rådet’. There is an argument to be made that the agency no longer performs some of its main functions and there is a danger of closing the agency, or drastically diminishing its scope, after the current programme. One of the questions that requires further research is whether the concept of regional growth is being used as discourse to transform Swedish labour market policies into the purview of Scania, and in that case, by who?