This article applies Hirschmans’ concepts exit, voice and loyalty to a Swedish case of housing renovation in an estate with comparatively strong tenants. Renovations can be considered as shocks or critical junctures to an existing tenant-landlord relation, and therefore expose power relations on the housing market. Renovation processes are complex both technically and socially, and our study indicates that the exit, voice and loyalty framework is a useful tool for analysing such processes. In the case studied, tenants were not able to affect the renovation process per se, but tenant voice did affect the outcome in other respects. We argue that this strong tenant group represents an extreme ‘most likely’ case, making it possible to test the limits of tenant influence.

This article applies Hirschman's model of exit, voice and loyalty to a Swedish case of housing renovation in a building with comparatively well-off tenants. Hirschman's framework is particularly well suited for understanding the housing market with its heterogeneity and high transaction and attachment costs, and accordingly strong loyalty and voice. Our study indicates that the exit-voice-loyalty framework is a useful tool for analysing renovation processes, since these trigger both voice and exit behaviour. We argue that renovations can be considered as critical junctures to an existing tenant-landlord relation, thereby exposing power relations on the housing market. In the case studied, tenants were not able to affect the scope of the renovation directly, but tenant voice did affect the process as well as the outcome in other respects. The capable tenant group makes this a "most likely case" for testing the limits of tenant influence in housing renovation processes.

A fundamental distinction in welfare state research is the one between universal and selective policies. Consequently, housing researchers often categorize national housing regimes under one of these headings. However, since housing is typically distributed via markets – although with state correctives – and not directly by means of state distribution, the borderline between universal and selective housing policies is seldom clear-cut. This article proposes a framework that can be applied both to housing and other welfare sectors, based on the distinction between a broad and narrow policy field and applicable to institutions, discourses and outcomes on different political levels: national welfare regimes, sector regimes (like housing) and policy instruments.In the article, this framework is applied critically to the Swedish housing regime, which is often understood as being universal. Swedish housing policy and its central policy instruments are analysed in terms of universality and selectivity, together with the housing discourse and the social and economic outcome. The article also discusses how the development of recent years, for example, the increased commercialism of public housing, the spread of so-called social contracts and the recurring ideas about “social housing” can be understood in terms of universal and selective housing policy.

Transaction costs, responsive housing supply, rent controls, tenant protection, and access to credit affect residential mobility these different parts of housing policy are included in what has been defined as housing regimes, which embrace regulations, laws, norms, and ideology as well as economic factors. In this chapter, we investigate how these regimes change by using institutional theories of path dependence. We use Sweden as an example and study three Swedish housing market reforms during the past decades that may have affected residential mobility, each related to one of the main institutional pillars of housing provision: tenure legislation, taxation, and finance. More precisely, we study the development of the rental regulation since the late 1960s, the tax reform in 1991, and the new reforms on mortgages since 2010. What caused these reforms? What were the main mechanisms behind them, and why did they occur at the time they did? We argue, besides affecting residential mobility, these reforms have the common feature of including interesting elements of path dependence and forming critical junctures that have led the development on to a new path. Institutions of tenure legislation, housing finance, and taxation are often claimed to have effects on residential mobility. Although they are seldom designed with the explicit aim of supporting (or counteracting) residential mobility, they may sometimes do so as more or less unintended consequences.

Housing institutions and the durable structures of housing are often subject to long-term processes of decade- or even century-long incremental change. Nevertheless, housing studies have largely focused either on static analysis in the form of single case or comparative snapshots of policies, or, more recently, on the inertia of institutional path dependence, while processes of incremental change have been almost entirely neglected. Social scientists like Wolfgang Streeck, Kathleen Thelen and James Mahoney have proposed a typology of patterns of incremental institutional change, and this paper explores the applicability of this typology to housing provision. This is done, more specifically, by analyzing two dominant processes of gradual change in recent decades: the slow but steady rise in homeownership and the gradual decline of public and social housing, taking as country cases the comparatively static and path dependent housing regimes of Germany and Sweden. The typology is found helpful for analyzing the different processes being at work in both countries. We conclude with some critical observations on how to analyze gradual change in housing.

I tretton kapitel utmanas rådande problemformuleringar om vad som utgör hindren för att skapa en mer tillgänglig bostadsmarknad och rimligare boendesituation åt alla. Är ökad marknadsekonomi lösningen på bostadsbristen? Måste vi sänka kvalitetskraven för att alla ska få tak över huvudet? Hur hänger bostadsfrågan och frågan om integration och segregation ihop? Är gentrifiering en naturlig förändring av staden? Rådande "sanningar" om fler avregleringar, lägre skatter och ökad marknadsfrihet har kommit att stå i vägen för nytänkande. Det behövs fler röster i debatten. 13 myter om bostadsfrågan ger alternativa tolkningar som kan föra in nya perspektiv på bostadskrisen. Boken ges ut av Förlag Dokument Press, med illustrationer av Sara Granér.

Housing renovation is a common concern to owners, tenants and to society at large. In addition to the high economic costs, the implementation of housing renovation usually have a long-term impact on the society and the built environment. This is a theoretical paper that develops a system model for understanding sustainable housing renovation as a system phenomenon which has multiple sustainability goals, complicated dynamic processes, diverse actors, and a sophisticated institutional environment. It identifies the key challenges of a sustainable housing renovation system, namely the conflicting sustainability goals and the conflicting stakeholder interests. To address these two challenges, the paper suggests an innovation approach in which the process of innovation (linear versus organic) and the typology of innovation (product versus process and business versus social) toward sustainable housing renovation are discussed.

Housing renovation, in contrast to new construction projects, has to take good care of the tenants who are already living in the building. What are the theoretical and practical implications concerning the transformation from a technology-and-engineering-focused renovation approach to a more user-oriented one? What are the mechanisms of strategy change? Based on our case we argue that the mechanisms of strategy change are based on the interplay between external disturbance and internal renewal. External disturbance is the trigger of strategy change, but it does not, in itself, necessarily lead to strategy change, and particularly not for an innovative new strategy. The internal new competence is the source of changing from an old strategy to an innovative new strategy. The real estate industry needs to undergo a transformation from the rationalistic technology- and engineering-focused renovation model (TEF model) to a more inclusive approach. We suggest a user-oriented model (UO model) where user involvement is seen as integrated in the whole process of renovation.

This article presents and empirically evaluates an analytical experiment in which we seek to translate individual-level explanations of differences in political participation to an organizational level. Utilizing the Civic Voluntarism Model, we analyse the consequences of voluntary associations' politically valuable 'resources', 'motivation', and 'recruitment networks'. Using data from a survey of ethnic associations in Stockholm, Sweden, results suggest that the overall logic of how associational-level political participation is encouraged resembles corresponding mechanisms on the individual level. We conclude that both our theoretical argument and empirical findings merit further analyses of civil society actors' political participation with the approach taken in this study.

In this article, we discuss the role of solidarity in collaborative housing in relation to the trajectory and discourse of the Danish idea of co-operative housing (andelstanken). Our analytical perspective draws on the concept of social mechanisms and a framework suggested by the social scientist Steinar Stjernø. We argue that collaborative housing based on individual (home) ownership of shares and user-rights to apartments are susceptible to the mechanism of “conflicting interests between different categories on the housing market”. Moreover, we suggest that this mechanism has a tendency to further the economic interests of residents, at the expense of the external solidarity with groups looking to access affordable housing. Our argument is supported by theoretical reflection, the historical trajectory of co-operative housing in Scandinavia and empirical analysis of the Danish case.

This theoretical paper introduces a conceptual framework for empirical study and comparison of collaborative civil society housing (CSH). We suggest that CSH communities satisfy four criteria to a lesser or higher extent: (1) autonomy, (2) participatory democracy, (3) internal solidarity and (4) external solidarity. Drawing primarily on empirical examples from the scholarly literature on co-operative housing, we claim that all CSH communities face challenges that may lead to the erosion of these civil society criteria. We argue that such challenges are general social mechanisms that manifest themselves in various types of situations, for instance, when apartments are transferred or refurbished.

Co-operative housing in Sweden and Norway are true success stories of civil society housing in terms of market shares. This stands in stark contrast to some other European countries, where attempts to promote co-operative housing have consistently met with difficulties, both politically and in the market. The paper explores the history of co-operative housing in Sweden and Norway since 1945 through the lens of path dependence. Notably, co-operative housing changed gradually in both countries between the 1950s and the 1990s, when cooperative companies went from being civil society organisations espousing the ideals of self-help, democracy, non-profit and solidarity, towards becoming more market oriented and profit seeking. We argue that two drivers, 'the logic of conflicting member interests' and 'the logic of competition and growth', contributed decisively to this development. These drivers may also be good candidates for general mechanisms of civil society housing based partly on collective or individual ownership - if they are not kept at bay. In our view, there seems to be some trade-off between the pursuit of civil society objectives and market success. This should serve as a marker for advocates of civil society housing.