Investeringar i kommunal infrastruktur: Förutsättningar för en målfokuserad investeringsverksamhet

Sammanfattning: Capital assets in local infrastructure constitute an overbearing concern for society, with the generation of benefits for the population being its prime purpose. Nevertheless, the conditions for the capital investment activities within local governments are diffuse. Which different kinds of investment goals actually exist? How to explain the priority of different capital investment goals? What explanations are there to understand variation in development of capital investment volume between different local governments? The overriding purpose is to analyse and systematise conditions for goal-focused capital investment activities within Swedish local governments. More specifically, the purpose is: i) to identify and classify the goals for the capital investments that are performed, ii) to explain variation in development of capital assets volume and iii) to explain the priority of different kinds of capital investment goals. The study was design with a combination of four inductive case studies and two deductive statistical generalisation studies. Data from a national database was used, as well as data generated by a questionnaire sent to all Swedish local governments. Hypotheses were generated from a new-political-economy framework. The case studies result in a classification for capital investments goals. The classification visualise the diversity of different kinds of investment goals. The conclusions from the generalisation studies is that decisive factors related to both population, finances and politics can explain variation in development of capital assets volume. Even the priority of different kinds of capital investment goals, can be understood by decisive factors related to population and finances. Conclusions about general conditions are that i) politicians tend to strive to attain balance between the capacity to provide service and the actual amount of population, ii) politicians tend to use all resources available for the single administration to attain determined goals, it happens while they consider the demands of attaining sustainable economic conditions and iii) politicians tend to strive for legitimacy, by accommodating to the demands from stakeholders, especially from trade and industry.