Brukermedvirkning i norsk eldreomsorgspolitikk: om utviklingen av retorikken om individuelt medansvar

During the last decades, user participation has developed from a marginal phenomenon to a well-established concept in public welfare politics. Based on discourse analyses of Norwegian white papers concerning older people and elderly care during the last 50 years, this article discusses changes in discourses. It is found that before ‘user participation’ became a recognized policy objective, the politics implied a social-citizen discourse. This was replaced later by a discourse about individual safety and later again by a discourse about co-production between the user and care worker. These changes in discourse show how the politics have shifted responsibility from the state to individual older people themselves.