Diverging Scandinavian paths towards service coordination and potential consequences for youth with complex problems

Abstract Coordinated services are often seen as a solution to complex problems spanning organisational boundaries, such as preventing young people from being marginalised in education and employment. Based on secondary sources, we compare the three Scandinavian countries' paths from traditional public administration to new public management and then towards new public governance with its focus on service coordination. Our analysis shows: (A) Although the countries belong to the same welfare and activation regime, their shifts in governance paradigms are materialised in different coordination initiatives. (B) Given that coordination initiatives and their resulting organisational set‐up may affect opportunities for delivering coordinated services at the frontline, we expect the Danish, and to some extent, the Norwegian system to provide better opportunities than Sweden, but this is still to be documented. (C) Four specific dimensions of an organisational set‐up—authority, organisational integration, departmentalisation, and coordination mandate—can impact on opportunities to provide coordinated service provision.