Victor Pestoff - Brief Bio
Victor A. Pestoff received his B.A. in political science from California State University at Long Beach and defended his Ph.D. in political science at Stockholm University in 1977. He taught at Stockholm University for nearly 20 years: six years at the Department of Political Science and 13 years at the School of Business. He became a Research Associate at Helsinki University, Finland in 1988 and was a Research Fellow at Kanasawa University, Japan, in 1998. In the mid-1990s he joined the faculty of the newly opened Södertörns högskola and became a Professor of Political Science. He was appointed Full Professor of Political Science at Mid-Sweden University in Östersund, in 2002 and left there in 2008.
He was a member of the Swedish Fulbright Commission between 1995 and 2006. Currently he is a Guest Professor at the Institute for Civil Society Studies at Ersta Sköndal University College in Stockholm. His current research interests focus on citizen participation and co-production of welfare services as well as the (re-) democratization of the welfare state.
He was a member of the TSFEPS research group of EMES that undertook the comparative project, the Politics of Family Policy and Social Solidarity. He was also a member of the ESF/EQUAL Partnership to Promote the Social Economy in Stockholm County (www.Slup.se) between 2002 – 2005, where he focused on social accounting and reporting. He is also the co-organizer of the Third Sector Study Group of the European Group for Public Administration, or EGPA. He contributed to the 1st EMES International PhD Summer School on Corsica in July, 2008.
Dr. Pestoff examined the relations between party systems, popular movements and voluntary organizations in the Nordic countries in his Ph.D. dissertation. For 30 years he explored the political and democratic aspects of voluntary organizations, cooperatives, third sector organizations and the social economy. He published several reports and articles on Swedish consumer organizations and consumer influence; several articles and two books on Swedish cooperative movements; several articles and reports on Swedish business interests organizations; several articles on the negotiated economy in Scandinavia, several articles and a book on the transformation of the public sector in Central and Eastern Europe and two books on the third sector and welfare state. Many of his articles are translated to different languages and three of his books are available in Japanese.
Selected Recent Publications:
2004 The development and future of the social economy in Sweden, The Third Sector in Europe, A. Evers and J-L. Laville (eds), Cheltenham, UK & Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
2005 Globalization and Swedish Business Interests Associations in the 21st Century, Governing Interests: Business association facing internationalization, W. Streeck, et al. (eds), London & New York: Routledge.
2005 The Future of Consumer Co-operatives in Post-Industrial Societies and a Globalized Economy?, Consumerism versus Capitalism? Co-operatives seen from an International Comparative Perspective, Ghent: ACAT of an International Congress, Amsab-Institute of Social History.
2006 Co-production. The Third Sector & the Delivery of Public Services; London & New York: Routledge, V. Pestoff & T. Brandsen (eds), Public Management Review, v. 8/4, reprinted in 2008 by Routledge.
2006 Citizens and Co-Production of Welfare Services: Childcare in eight European countries; Public Management Review, v. 8/4: 503-520; reprinted in 2008 by Routledge.
2008 Co-production, the third sector and functional representation in Sweden, The Third Sector in Europe. Prospects and challenges, Osborne, S. (ed.); London & New York: Routledge.
2008 (Defourny, J. & V. Pestoff) Towards a European conceptualization of the third sector, Images and Concepts of the Third Sector in Europe; Defourny, J. & V. Pestoff (eds), Liege: EMES Working Paper series n. 08/02.
2008 The Political Significance of Cooperatives – a Scandinavian Perspective, Garda, Italy: ICA Conference, conference paper.
2009 A Democratic Architecture for the Welfare State. Promoting citizen participation, the third sector and co-production; London & New York. Routledge.
2009 Democratic Governance: Citizen Participation and Co-Production in the Provision of Personal Social Services in Sweden, Annals of Public and Cooperative Economy.
