Beyond the turning point of activation : Describing the characteristics and changes of Active Labour Market Policy in Sweden between 1991-2017.

Sammanfattning: This paper tries to contribute to the collective knowledge on Bonoli’s (2010) concept “The Activation Turn “, both as a phenomenon and a turning point for ALMP in Sweden. It is argued that the Activation Turn has been legitimized in four phases in Sweden (Identification, First organisation, Second organisation and Stabilisation phase, between years of 1991-2017). This thesis argues that the blueprint for understanding and exploring the Activation Turn as a phenomonenon is to capture and compare the discourse and how it has developed within the state during these four phases. Using two guiding research questions: How can we describe the characteristics of ALMP during each phase? And how have ALMP have changed in Sweden since the beginning of the 90’s? This paper has tried to answer these two questions by doing a content analysis that captures the dominating characteristics of ALMP during each phase and how they have changed. The analysis has been done with a help of a coding scheme, which is derived from a theoretical framework on the three elements of institutional legitimacy: regulative, normative, and cognitive element. After counting the number of coded references from 38 state documents, and then analysing and discussing the results, we came to two overall conclusions. First, there has not been an Activation Turn, shift or transformation of ALMP, since the beginning of the 90’s within the state discourse. Second, the development of ALMP in Sweden can be characterized as fairly stable and resilient against changes.