Asymmetric Mutuality: User Involvement as a Government—Voluntary Sector Relationship in Norway

Abstract

User involvement (UI) has been introduced as a measure to ensure more focused, efficient, client-oriented, service-minded health and welfare services. User involvement as participation in planning and decision making requires collective action on behalf of more or less formally organized groups of people for whom welfare policy is targeted, for instance people with long-term somatic or mental health problems or impairments. User involvement is thus to be understood as a specific kind of government-voluntary relationship. By utilizing a combination of social movement perspectives and neoinstitutional perspectives, the article explores the conditions behind the growth of UI and the characteristics of the relationship of UI compared with other government-voluntary relationships in the field of health and welfare—philanthropy and corporatist relations.