Governance with two directions? : A policy analysis of the Swedish Migration Agency’s gender mainstreaming action plan (2016-2018)

Topics concerning gender mainstreaming are highly debated throughout political sciences. Studies imply that gender mainstreaming is implemented in an era of New Public Management which, according to different sources, takes away from the politics of gender equality. Due to the nature of the NPM framework, efficiency and productivity reduce gender mainstreaming to a technicality, rather than actually questioning the underlying structures of gender inequalities. In light of NPMs shortcomings in this aspect, a growing number of studies examine the possibilities Public Value Management has to offer. This framework articulates public value as the most important aspect of public administration. This study performs a policy analysis of the Swedish Migration Agency and examine how the agency deals with gender mainstreaming in terms of implementing a NPM and/or PVM oriented approach. The analysis in this paper is based on Carol Bacchi’s theoretical framework “What’s the problem represented to be?”, which helps isolate causes of the agency's problems regarding gender mainstreaming. Results of the analysis show an unwillingness to conform solely to factors such as efficiency and productivity, but controversially, the agency also heavily relies on the principles of the NPM framework. Conclusions can be made that the structural architecture of the agency prevents a full adoption of the PVM framework.Statsvetenskapliga institutionen, Umeå Universite