Compliant Municipalities? Exploring Variations in Timely Compliance with Court Rulings in the Swedish Welfare Sector

What factors can explain why public authorities swiftly comply with some court rulings while the implementation of other rulings is significantly delayed? Such delays are problematic since they prolong the denial of justice for the individuals concerned and undermine the legitimacy of judicial decisions. This paper i) develops a theoretical framework for explaining variation in timely compliance with court rulings and ii) investigates factors influencing the ‘speed of compliance’ among Swedish local governments. We employ an original dataset containing information about how many days local governments take to comply with court rulings in the eldercare sector.