The governance of policy integration and policy coordination through joined-up government: How subnational levels counteract siloism and fragmentation within Swedish migration policy

Abstract

Modern welfare states struggle with fragmented policies and siloed governments, as well as with the need to deal with wicked problems. We argue that addressing such problems from the perspective of central government can be facilitated by notions of joined-up government that, combined with vertical aspects of modern governance, provide a basis for analysis. To embark upon such challenges, we examine policy integration and policy coordination within the complex area of Swedish migration policies in light of the European migrant crisis. Through a content analysis of an extensive qualitative material (interviews and documents), we show that policy integration is weakly associated with joint objectives and decision-making. As a contribution to prior knowledge in the field, we emphasize the unintuitive finding that counteracting siloism and fragmentation in Swedish migration policy is not achieved through coherent governance ranging across tiers, functions, and sectors but mainly at subnational levels through policy coordination relying on a bottom-up approach.