@misc{9226946,
  abstract     = {{In the early 1990s, Sweden undertook a major reform of care and support services for persons with disabilities: the so-called LSS reform. The aim of the Act concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments (1993:387) was to give such individuals better opportunities to live their lives on equal terms as persons without disabilities. The Act has therefore been designed as rights-based legislation, consisting of ten specific forms of support intended to guarantee good living conditions for those within the statutory target group. A person covered by the Act can thus apply to the municipal social welfare committee for a support measure that he or she needs. If granted, the favorable administrative decision takes immediate effect and should thus, in principle, be implemented without delay. In practice, however, immediate implementation has proven to be more of an aspirational norm than a legal reality.

Already at the time of the Act’s enactment, it had become apparent that municipalities did not always comply with court rulings concerning granted support measures. Individuals who had successfully appealed administrative decisions and been declared entitled to support could nevertheless experience delays in implementation – a phenomenon commonly referred to as municipal defiance of court judgements. To address this unlawful practice, several enforcement mechanisms were tested, including measures under the Enforcement Code (1981:774) and the Act on Penalty Fines (1985:206). By the early 2000s, however, the problem had become sufficiently widespread for a dedicated administrative sanction to be introduced: the “special fee”. The sanction is based on the premise that granted support measures must be provided within reasonable time. A few years after the fee’s enactment, its scope was expanded to include cases where municipalities delay implementation of their own favorable administrative decisions – so-called municipal defiance of statutory obligations.

This thesis conducts an impact analysis of the special fee. It begins by mapping the intended rights structure of the LSS framework. It then examines the fee’s legal components, which are analyzed in relation to the provision’s central criterion: the assessment of reasonable time. The findings are subsequently analyzed in relation to the results of an empirical study of all cases concerning the special fee decided by the Administrative Court in Gothenburg between 2021 and 2025. Finally, the thesis problematizes its conclusions in light of the overarching research question: is there a discrepancy between the legal structure of the special fee and its practical application, and if so, what effects does this have on the actors concerned?

Without anticipating the conclusions in full, it may already be stated that the fee’s intended effect has not been entirely convincing. The principal rule of immediate implementation has gradually shifted into an average (un)reasonable delay of sixteen months. A change is therefore warranted, and the author argues that the solution lies primarily in adjusting the sanction’s punitive dimension.}},
  author       = {{Karlsson, David}},
  language     = {{swe}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Den som väntar på något gott väntar alltid för länge? - En effektanalys av den särskilda avgiften och det (o)skäliga dröjsmålet i LSS}},
  year         = {{2026}},
}