Jessika Wide is Associate Professor and appointed as Qualified Teacher. Her research interests mainly deal with politics and administration in Swedish municipalities and regions.
My research interests focus on politics and public administration in Swedish municipalities and regions, with a particular emphasis on local democracy, women’s political representation, elderly care and healthcare, marketization, and crimes against elected officials.
My doctoral thesis examined women’s political representation from a comparative perspective. Later, I studied female representation in Swedish politics, more specifically, the political parties’ gender quotas and candidate selection at the local level. I contributed a report on social representativity to the 2014 Swedish Democracy Investigation (SOU 2015:96). Additionally, I participated in the SNS Democracy Council 2022, which addressed the challenges of Swedish local democracy.
Several of my recent publications focused on elderly care, marketisation, and user participation. This research was conducted in two projects investigating municipalities that have implemented the Act on System of Choice (LOV) in home-care: One project looked at the municipal home-care act in the context of competition from private providers (funded by Forte), while the other project explored participation and influence by pensioners organizations on issues related to the marketized elderly care (funded by MUCF).
Another research interest of mine involves the organisation and governance of Swedish healthcare, which is being explored in a project (funded by Forte), examining how national agreements between the central government and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR) impact the status of local self-government for the regions. I am a member of the Network for Research and Development of the Governance and Organisation of Swedish Health Care Services (funded by Forte).
I am also involved in an interdisciplinary project investigating crimes against elected officials – including violence, threats, and harassment – in Sweden, and how this issue is addressed legally and institutionally (financed by the Swedish Crime Victims’ Fund).
Since 2016, I have been placed as a Qualified Teacher at Umeå University.
I teach various courses in political science at the department as well as courses in public administration within the Programme for International Crisis and Conflict Management and the Programme in Healthcare Counselling. Additionally, I supervise and examine student theses and examination projects in political science at all levels.