Civilsamhället, demokratin och välfärden

Sammanfattning: Changes in the welfare state and what should comprise areas of welfare is a recurring topic on the political agenda. Not the least in Sweden there is a lively debate about changes in the welfare area and new players who enters the arena. While there has been a relatively widespread discussion of private actors in the welfare area has nonprofit actors come to be sidelined. However, we can now see a political will that the nonprofit takes a bigger role in the welfare sector. The purpose of this paper is that based on a normative approach to discuss the potential value conflicts that may arise with the nonprofit as welfare producer. This is done by a number of normative democratic criteria defined and justified , which then forms the basis for the analysis and valuation. Three key democratic values of this paper are developed, transparency, accountability and pluralistic civil society. It is possible to see that a certain amount of conflict can arise through increased government control of the nonprofit sector that leads to, it can be argued, the opportunity for greater accountability while this control can challenge the plural civil society in terms of independence and diversity.