Hans Knutsson

The implementation of market solutions has been widely attempted in many different parts of the public sector. This chapter concerns a groundbreaking social reform, which introduced personal assistants for ‘functionally impaired’ people. It was a far-reaching and liberating reform aimed at making disabled people part of society. It replaced collective institutional care with individual choice, in turn built on a number of market-oriented mechanisms. The reform, though, soon grew costly and has been plagued by fraud and public mistrust. The chapter discusses how ideas of market mechanisms are not equal to ready-made solutions; they may come ill-conceived and before long be in need of revision and negotiation. The chapter provides a case of a major Swedish social reform, which illuminates, first, an experimental full-scale policy implementation and, second, how market ideas easily become confused with and substituted for the idea of individual choice.