From Co-Operation to Competition: The Division of Labour between “Public” and “Private” Providers in Swedish 20th Century Alcoholism Treatment1

Abstract

The development in the alcoholism and drug abuse treatment system in Sweden during the 1980s was called “the privatization of the century”. This paper tries to gain a perspective on this characterization. It looks both at the roles given to different types of providers in the legislation, public reports and Parliamentary debates and at the relative shares of the state, the municipalities, different organizations and private enterprises in treatment provision in Sweden during this century. The conclusion is that there has never been a public hegemony within alcoholism treatment provision in Sweden. Treatment has been produced jointly by different types of “public” and “private”, or semi-public, half-private providers. The “privatization” epithet was the result of an illusion, created by policy goals and misleading statistics from the 1970s and early 1980s. The 1980s introduced the new concept of “competition” between different welfare system sectors in the Swedish debate. The author argues that even competition seemingly was managed within the “common sector” of alcoholism treatment.