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Guest Professor of political science, Ersta Sköndal Bräcke Univ. College, Stockholm, Sweden.
Dr. Pestoff examined the relations between party systems and voluntary organizations in the Nordic countries in his PhD. Later he explored the political and democratic aspects of voluntary organizations cooperatives in the social economy.
2021: Co-production and Japanese Healthcare. Work Environment, Governance, Service Quality and Social Values; Routledge: London & New York, ISBN: 978-0-367-56737-8. 2018: Co-production and Public Service Management: Citizenship, Governance and Public Service Management.; Routledge: London & New York, ISBN: 978-0-815-39504-1. 2014: Social Enterprise and the Third Sector. Changing European Landscapes in a Comparative Perspective; J. Defourny, L. Hulgård, & V. Pestoff (eds); London & New York: Routledge, 279 pp. + xv; ISBN: 978-0-415-83156-7 (pbk). 2012: New Public Governance, Co-Production and Third Sector Services; V. Pestoff, T. Brandsen & B. Verscheure (eds.); London & New York: Routledge, 403 pp. + xviii. ISBN: 978-0-415-89713-6 (hbk), 978-0-203-15229-4 (ebk). 2008: A Democratic Architecture for the Welfare State: Promoting citizen participation, the third sector and co-production; London & New York: Routledge*; ISBN: 0-415-47595-2 (hbk), 0-203-88873-1 (ebk).
Personal Information
Victor Alexis Pestoff, is an American born Swedish political scientist. Pestoff received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from California State University at Long Beach in 1963 and defended his Ph.D. in political science at Stockholm University in 1977. He served as Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science (1978-82) and as Associate Professor at the School of Business (1982-96) at Stockholm University. He became Associate Professor at the Department of Politics, Helsinki University in 1985 and was a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Economics in Kanazawa, Japan in 1998. He became full professor of Political Science at Södertörns högskola in 1999 and later at Mid-Sweden University in Östersund (2002). After retiring he became a Guest Professor at the Center for Civil Society Research, Ersta Sköndal Bräcke University College in Stockholm (2008 - ). He was also Adjunct Professor at Roskilde University (2014-2020) and Visiting Professor at Osaka University (2014 – 16). His selected publications include: • Co-production and Japanese Healthcare. Work Environment, Governance, Service Quality and Social Values (Routledge, 2021); ISBN 978-0-367-56737-8, */**. Healthcare in most developed countries faces a complex and partly contradictory mix of financial, social and political challenges. This volume explores a possibility to address these challenges from a new perspective that emphasizes greater collaboration between the staff and patients. It is one where professionals and patients/clients act as ‘partners to co-produce healthcare through their mutual contributions’. Japan has a unique system of two user-owned or cooperative healthcare providers with nearly 200 hospitals, 500 clinics and 50,000 beds, or more hospital beds than all of Denmark and Sweden combined. This volume compares cooperative and public healthcare providers at ten hospitals across Japan with survey data from the staff, as well as data from the patients and volunteers at four of them. It documents how and why these three providers differ from one another in terms of their work environment, service quality, governance models and the social values they promote. These findings suggest the contours of a new post-Covid model of healthcare, one based on co-production. • Co-production and Public Service Management. Citizenship, Governance and Public Service Management (Routledge, 2018); ISBN-13: 978-0-815-39504-1, */**. This volume compiles a dozen essays by one of the most prolific proponents of co-production as a solution to many of the challenges facing public services and democratic governance at the outset of the 21st century. Neither the government nor citizens can resolve them on their own, they need to work together. It discusses issues related to the successful development and implementation of a policy shift toward greater citizen participation in the design and delivery of the services they depend on in their daily lives, as well as their involvement in resolving some tenacious problems facing society today. Moreover, it explores how participatory public service management can empower the front-line staff providing public services. Together with users/citizens they can promote the democratic governance of public service provision. • Social Enterprise and the Third Sector. Changing European Landscapes; J. Defourny, L. Hulgård & V. Pestoff (eds) (Routledge, 2014); ISBN: 978-0-415-83155-0 & 978-0-415-83156-7, */**. The concepts of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship are attracting rapidly increasing attention from academic spheres and policy-makers as well as field workers who are setting up new initiatives or reshaping their organizations. These concepts are perceived as a defining innovative and dynamic response to major global challenges in today’s societies. Although the debate is now developing at the world level, the research and field-level landscapes still differ very significantly among regions, and diversity also exists within specific regions such as Europe. This volume presents the most comprehensive set of contributions reflecting the European side of this world debate, with frequent connections to developments in other parts of the world. It compiles the result of pioneering work carried out by the founding members of the EMES International Research Network. • New Public Governance, the Third Sector and Co-Production; V. Pestoff, T. Brandsen & B. Verschuere (eds) (Routledge, 2012); ISBN: 978-0-415-89713-6 & 978-1-138-95207-2, */**. Public management research in a variety of disciplines pays increasing attention to the role of citizens and the third sector in the provision of public services. This edited volume systematizes the growing body of academic papers and reports that focus on various aspects of co-production and its potential contribution to New Public Governance. It includes the findings of 26 authors from 11 countries in 20 chapters with an interdisciplinary focus - including business administration, policy studies, political science, public management, sociology, third sector studies, etc. In particular, it addresses the following concerns: What is the nature of co-production and what challenges does it face? How can we conceptualize co-production? How does co-production work in practice? What are the positive and negative effects of co-production? More specifically, it considers how co-production can contribute to service quality and service management in public services, and what it potentially means for growing citizen involvement and development of participative democracy. • A Democratic Architecture for the Welfare State (Routledge, 2009); ISSBN: 978-0-415-47595-2, */**. This volume addresses the need for a more democratic architecture for the European welfare state in general, and Sweden in particular. It opens new perspectives for developing alternative channels for direct citizen participation at the sub-municipal level of service provision and governance. It notes that neither democratic theory nor welfare state theory devote adequate attention to the contemporary role of the staff or third sector as service providers, nor to the need for greater citizen participation in the provision of welfare services. It shifts the focus of analysis from the input to the output side of the political system and explores new ways to promote a greater role for the third sector and more citizen participation in the provision of universal, tax financed welfare services. • Co-production. The Third Sector and Delivery of Public Services; V. Pestoff & T. Brandsen (eds) (Routledge, 2008); ISBN: 978-0-415-56856-2, **. Public management research in recent years devoted increasing attention to co-production and the role of the third sector in providing public services. This volume was the first of several subsequent international comparative studies to address these important issues in the 21st Century. It brought together nine scholars from seven countries on three continents, to discuss services like childcare, eldercare, road safety, etc. Co-production was first explored by Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues in the 1970s.; but it was overshadowed during more than two decades by New Public Management (NPM). This volume clearly contributed to re-establishing co-production as a legitimate multi-disciplinary approach to the study of public administration and management, one based on greater citizen participation in public service provision, rather than market mechanisms. The shared interest and findings of these scholars helped to spark a renewed interest in this important phenomenon and enhanced the debate by distinguishing between co-production, co-management and co-governance. • Beyond the Market and State. Social enterprise and civil democracy in a welfare society (Ashgate, 1998); ISBN: 1-84014-575-7, */**/***. This volume reports the findings of a research project called Work Environment and Cooperative Social Services (WECSS), undertaken in the early 1990s, at the outset of privatizing the Swedish welfare state. It employed survey techniques to explore the potential contribution of consumer and worker co-ops, as well as nonprofit organizations to enriching the staff’s work environment and empowering consumers. After introducing several key concepts, e.g., co-production, multi-stakeholder organizations and social auditing, it contrasts the experience of the (244) staff and (590) parents at 60 social enterprises that provide childcare in six different parts of Sweden. It explores parents’ motives for choosing one type of provider over another and compares their evaluation of the services, to derive a service profile for each type of provider. It also contrasts the staff’s experience of their work environment from the perspective of the Karasek & Theorell demand control model. Compared with municipal services, both the parents and staff claim that the service at their current cooperative provider is better, much better or very much better than what they experienced previously at municipal childcare providers. These findings suggest that there are clear benefits for both the staff and clients from cooperatizing public services rather than privatizing them. • Reforming Social Services in Central and Eastern Europe – an Eleven Nation Overview, V. Pestoff (ed.) (Krakow Univ. Press, 1995); ISBN: 83-903900-0-0, */**. This edited volume reports the findings of scholars from a dozen Central and Eastern European universities, who collaborated in the Public Economy and Public Sector group of UCEMET, an academic exchange network run jointly by the School of Business, Stockholm University and the Krakow Academy of Economics. This comparative study of social service reforms in post-Communist countries focuses on the initial phase of the transformation process. It documents how social policy needs were either met through emergency measures, adjustments within existing institutions or institutional building. CEE countries replaced an employment based, institutional welfare state that provided universal coverage with a residual social safety net system reserved for the ‘deserving poor’. The latter model was actively promoted by the IMF, World Bank and European Union and resulted initially in rapidly increasing levels of poverty. However, there was notable variation between the countries and social policy arenas. Three distinct patterns emerged at the sectoral or meso-level: incremental change in old-age security and family assistance, radical change in unemployment programs and rapid decline in healthcare and housing. This volume documents that these different trajectories depend on the prior existence of basic state institutions and whether the state withdrew for fiscal or ideological reasons. • HIV/AIDS handbook/directory – organisationer och aktiviteter/organizations and activities; D. Walden-Laing & V. Pestoff (Stockholm: Folkhälsomyndighet, 1993); ISBN: 3-593-34400-9, **. This volume documents the Swedish contribution to a six nation study known as Managing AIDS. It focuses on initial societal responses to a healthcare epidemic that caught so many states unprepared for its multiple challenges. It illustrates the successful contribution of 55 national nonprofit organizations (NPOs) to the government’s efforts to manage this healthcare emergency. Sweden relied heavily on corporatist traditions to collaborate with and mobilize civil society to meet these challenges. NPOs became involved in a variety of activities, including prevention, care and social services, control, surveillance, monitoring and/or policy advocacy. Most important, NPOs were capable of reaching out to risk groups that were reluctant to work directly as individuals or groups with public health or social welfare authorities, due to the stigma involved with this illness and their special group characteristics. The Swedish study shows that NPOs successfully contributed to curtailing the spread of HIV/AIDS compared with most other countries in this study. • Between Markets and Politics. Co-operatives in Sweden (Campus & Westview, 1991); ISBN: 3-593-34400-9 & 0-8133-8294-7, */**/***. This volume compares and contrasts membership participation in the three established forms of cooperatives in Sweden during the post WW II period, i.e., the consumer co-ops, the agricultural co-ops and the building and tenant co-ops. The first part employs standard social economic background factors found in survey data, in order to study member participation in more than a dozen Swedish voluntary organizations. It documents a unique pattern of participation for cooperative members. The second part shifts attention to the growth of cooperative organizations over several decades to better understand the implications of their structural developments. Both the consumer and agricultural co-ops promoted major structural reforms that resulted in greatly expanded organizations, but rapidly declining opportunities for member participation. The building and tenant co-ops, by contrast, were limited by law from doing this, so they retained much stronger membership structures and higher levels of participation. This study documents the importance of organizational size. Smaller local cooperative organizations facilitate membership participation that help make cooperative membership meaningful. • Näringslivsorganisationer och politiken i Sverige (TCO, 1989); ISBN: 91-7168-367-4, */**. This volume describes and analyzes the untold story of a ‘thoroughly organized society’ - the role played by Swedish business interest associations (BIAs) in post WW II politics. Sweden is a country known for its strong trade unions and cooperatives, but there were less than 100 such organizations nationally. Yet, despite competition on the market, business was very successful in promoting its common, collective interests. There were nearly 1,000 independent BIAs in the 1970s, and they developed a dozen ‘meta-organizations’ to coordinate their branch and national interests. They had nearly unlimited resources at their disposal and often wielded more power than the three non-socialist opposition parties combined. This allowed them to set the political agenda in between elections and aid the campaign effort of the non-socialist parties to achieve this agenda during an election year. • Konsumentinflytande och konsumentorganisering. Den svenska modellen (Dept. of Finance, 1984); ISBN: 91-38-08541-0, */**. This volume explored the Swedish model of consumer influence and consumer organizations. Post-war Swedish consumer policy was based on a corporatist approach of promoting balanced representation by business and consumers. But, in lieu of a broad independent consumer organization, it relied on trade unions and consumer co-ops to represent the interest of their members as consumers, and to balance them against the commercial interest of business organizations. This report focuses on consumer representation on a dozen national boards mandated to promote and protect consumer interest, and documents their development from the end of WW II through the 1970s. The Swedish model of organizing consumers often provided a more robust model for representing consumer interests than championing small, vocal consumer advocates. It disappeared when Sweden joined the European Union. • Voluntary Associations and Nordic Party Systems. A study of overlapping memberships and cross-pressures in Finland, Norway and Sweden (Stockholm University, 1977); ISBN: 978-91-628-7820-7 & 08785535418, */**. This volume problematizes the widely subscribed pluralist hypothesis of overlapping memberships and cross-pressures as a key element of post-war political stability in Western democracies. Several leading pluralist scholars reiterated it without providing any systematic empirical evidence. The author performed secondary analysis that compared two election studies (Norway, 1965 & Finland, 1966) and a primary analysis of an original Swedish survey (1971), with a sample size that varied from 1,623 to 3,600. These surveys included questions about membership in existing organizations that allowed for a focus on the nature and strength of connections between membership and voting behavior. First, based on survey data on elections in ten Western democracies, it documents the complete lack of multiple memberships as an empirical phenomenon, rather than a theoretical hypothesis. Second, despite the much anticipated pluralist pattern of cross-pressures, this research provides evidence of ‘party-integrative organizations’ (PIOs) in all three countries, based on membership in occupational organizations like trade unions and farmers’ organizations. They help to integrate their members into the political subculture of a specific party in all three Nordic countries. Membership in other types of organizations had no clear political consequences. This volume concludes that, contrary to the pluralist hypothesis, PIOs provided the basis of systematic political stability in these countries. *catalog record at Library of Congress, ** catalog record at Libris, Royal Library of Sweden, *** translated to Japanese.
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