A Case study: Implementation analysis of labour market policies in Lund municipality.

Abstract: One by one, municipalities around Sweden have started their policies and activities to tackle unemployment. Lund municipality has since 2020 expanded its employment services. This study analyses the employment services implementation in Lund municipality's local government regime. The analysis is done mainly through the lenses of the implementation theory of Lipsky’s (1980; 2010) on street-level bureaucrats and Mazmanian and Sabatier’s (1989; 1983) top-down theory in the implementation The data is gathered through interviews with managers in charge of the employment services and a questionnaire survey distributed to the labour market consulter in Lund municipality. The findings suggest that LMCs have some discretion, and the results for clients are meaningful for them. There are indications of a shortage of resources in the implementation process, and the requirement for documentation partly interferes with the main work. The possibility for LMC to influence policy formulation is limited, but the responsibilities are clear. Finally, there is a lack of collaboration with other relevant actors in implementing services.