SWEDEN

Government decision-making in general tends to be a mixture of long-term strategic planning and short-term programs and specific measures. The Central Government Office (CGO, Regeringskansliet) staff emphasizes in interviews and questionnaire responses that short-term thinking and strategies tend to become more important, at the expense of more long-term strategic planning. This is not to suggest that long-term planning is being considered as not very important. In the Finance Ministry and the prime minister’s secretariat, there is extensive financial and political planning. Also, the CGO has currently embarked on internal reform to enhance its internal coordination and its capacity to steer agencies. But the CGO has to deal with day-to-day politics and is exposed to the media. That means that short-term considerations play a large role in the decision-making although often short-term decisions are embedded in more long-term plans.
A related factor to bear in mind when assessing meetings with strategic planning staff and the head of government in Sweden is the collective nature of the government. The government (cabinet) makes all decisions as a collective body. That means that strategic planning staff may not meet only with the head of government but with the Cabinet as a whole.
Traditionally, the backbone of strategic planning in Swedish politics was the so-called “Royal Commissions” (Swedish Government Official Reports, SOUs). The frequency of such commissions declined in the most recent past. And in contrast to the past, in contemporary commissions, party politicians dominate. Hence, the inclusion of interest groups and scientific experts is diminishing. The incumbent center-right government switched the planning strategies from SOUs to institutionalized advisory councils, one example being the introduction of the Swedish Fiscal Policy Council (in which exclusively economists are engaged who prepare specific reports and report annually on fiscal policies in Sweden) or the Globalization Council (which is institutionally linked to the CGO and in which scientists provide particular studies, and in which politicians as well as selected members from interest organizations formulate policy recommendations).

Academic expertise in policy making appears to be less sought today compared to previous years. There are certainly instances where the government creates councils where scholars meet and produce papers that form a base for policy choice. A case in point is the “Globalization Council” created by the current government shortly after it came into office. The center-right government introduced new forms of scholarly advice beyond the traditional system of “Royal Commissions.” It remains to be seen if these new forms will ensure more scholarly advice or if these councils are used instrumentally in the political campaign. It is noteworthy that the center-right government introduced an independent council to regularly assess the fiscal policy process. It will probably always be true that academic advice will have a place in the policy process and that such advice is “filtered” through a political assessment of the value of that advice. Even with that observation in mind, however, it does seem to be the case that government rather rarely solicits advice from the academic community.

Policy coordination among line ministries is considered the main problem in the Central Government Office (CGO). Ministries seem to be tentative about sharing information, control or resources. At the same time, there are procedures in place to increase coordination such as informal inter-ministerial groups drafting parts of governmental bills. A case study on the drafting of a bill on economic growth policy showed that the bill that was eventually submitted to parliament was version number 56 of the bill.
There is currently a reform process underway in the CGO, the so-called “RK-Styr” reform. The objectives of the reform are to significantly increase coordination among line ministries in order for them to be more apt at steering the agencies. Lack of coordination means a lack of steering capacity. Since the PMO does not have day-to-day policy coordination as a main responsibility, coordination becomes more middle-level and ad hoc.
The challenge of efficient coordination is exacerbated by a growing number of overarching policy objectives – so-called mainstreamed goals – that all bills and directives to Royal Commissions should adhere to. The first mainstreamed goal, economic growth, was adopted in the early 1990s. Today, there are 16 such mainstreamed goals, including gender equality, sustainable development and ethnicity. The latest cluster of mainstreamed goals to enter the list was the U.N. Bill of Rights. The main problem with this arrangement is that with the exception of gender equality there is no organization or part of any organization that “owns” the issue. Thus, while all bills drafted in the CGO are expected to promote all 16 mainstreamed goals there is no person or body assigned to make sure that this actually happens.
Coming back to an observation made earlier, the CGO in Sweden, which comprises the PMO and the line ministries, acts as a collective body in most aspects of decision-making. In terms of organizing the drafting of governmental bills or preparing Cabinet decisions, this work is typically done in the line ministries with little substantive oversight from the PMO. The role of the PMO is to control the flow of bills through the Cabinet and to the parliament and, to a lesser degree, to ensure that there are no inconsistencies or overlaps among the bills. Much of the policy coordination is done in inter-ministerial groups at the middle-level of the organizations.
Another source of coordination is the Ministry of Finance. The Ministry of Finance (MoF) took a higher profile within the CGO during the financial crisis in 1992 and has kept and even expanded that position since then. MoF routinely reviews bills and directives to Royal Commissions.

The PMO, and more specifically the senior political leadership, has full control over policy matters and can return items on several different grounds. Since Sweden has been traditionally governed by a minority government with an elaborated collaboration between two partners (1998-2006) or coalition governments (since 2006) it has been very easy to observe the degree of political control over policies. Issues that could not be settled among the parties through middle-level discussions were “lifted” to bargaining among the party leaders. More broadly, the party leadership monitors the policy process and intervenes at strategic steps of the policy process.

As mentioned earlier, the PMO is not continually involved in policy coordination. Its role is more of ensuring that there is a steady flow of bills into parliament, to offer administrative support to the prime minister and to have a longer strategic view on policy developments. Coordination takes places at the intermediate level of ministries and only if there is disagreement on some specific matter will the senior levels of the ministries become involved. Also, the Ministry of Finance plays a very important coordinating role.
This arrangement – a PMO not continuously involved in policy coordination – may well be part of the coordination problems in the CGO. There are still “gaps” between the line ministries and each ministry maintains its own subculture. Even when ministries are merged it takes a long time before those subcultures disappear. Nevertheless, the informal coordination procedure still ensures that the PMO in line with the Ministry of Finance has an important role in policy developments. Especially in times of coalition cabinets, as in the period under review, the PMO crucially coordinates policies.

In Sweden, the Cabinet is the final institution of appeal on a wide range of matters. Since all Cabinet decisions must be made “in pleno”, this means that the Cabinet decides on more than 100,000 issues annually. All matters that are subject to Cabinet decisions are meticulously prepared in order to ensure swift decision-making. However, most of this work is not done by committees but by individual civil servants or groups of political appointees. There are no standing cabinet committees or ministerial committees in the Swedish CGO.

Again, the Cabinet is legally required to rule on a large number of issues in its role as the last instance of appeal. This work is well prepared and done swiftly. The Cabinet tends to have specific meetings devoted to strategic discussions; the traditional Thursday lunch meetings with the Cabinet where there is no formal agenda but where policy and strategy are discussed more openly have been considered very important in this respect.

Effective coordination is a challenge and a problem in the Central Government Office (CGO). Task forces of civil servants play an important role in the complex process of coordination. When issues cannot be settled on that level they are “lifted” to the political level. However, not even these arrangements automatically help to solve the coordination problem. One explanation might be that the PMO is not sufficiently active in a coordinating role; another explanation might be that coordination becomes problematic because it is often handled at the civil servant level and is not “lifted” to the political echelons of the system unless there is disagreement among civil servants from different ministries. Both explanations suggest that there is a leadership deficit in the CGO and that the coordination problem is first and foremost a manifestation of that problem. Besides the CGO, the civil servants of the Ministry of Finance play a crucial role in coordinating policy developments.

Informal mechanisms of coordination are common and important in the Swedish system, although they may not always be effective. Such informality occurs both at the civil servant level as well as at the political level. Informal coordination procedures effectively filter many but not all policy proposals.

RIA aims at improving the quality of regulation and legislation. The EU Commission has been promoting RIA for several years as an instrument to reduce paperwork for private business. The Swedish experience with RIA appears to be mixed. The results were recently described as “rather modest.”

The only evidence available on the usage and impact of RIA in Sweden suggests that these assessments have yielded only modest results. In addition to RIA, the Department of Enterprise, Energy and Communications has for several years worked with a project called “Simplex.” This project aims at identifying private business regulation which obstructs the creation of new businesses or which place an excessive administrative burden on private businesses.

RIA is not fully and systematically implemented in Sweden. Regulatory assessment appears to be done more systematically in other forms, for instance the aforementioned “Simplex” project.

Intensive forms of consultation between the Swedish state and organized societal interests have a long history. The corporatist system was historically influenced by the development of Swedish state structures (lean ministries) and became most clearly visible in the 1936 tripartite “Salstjöbaden Agreement.” Since the 1970s, the institutional frame for consultation eroded gradually.
Societal consultation still matters in contemporary politics. Representatives of major societal organized interests are still (albeit to a lesser extent than previously) invited to participate in Royal Commissions investigating policy problems and presenting policy proposals. Also, Royal Commissions’ reports are still circulated according to the so-called “remiss” procedure, where all societal actors (public as well as private) that are affected or at least potentially affected by a Royal Commission’s policy proposal are invited to submit their opinion to the government. In addition, there are numerous meetings, formal and informal, where societal actors are invited to voice their opinion on policy developments. Governments of both left and right have had informal meetings with leading business organizations during the most recent past to get their views on how to promote economic development and to mitigate business regulation. Similarly, the national association of regional and local authorities (SKL) has frequent meetings with societal interests in their policy fields, such as unions for teachers and health-care personnel.
The center-right government implemented a number of impartial councils to strategically prepare policy decisions (Globalization Council, Fiscal Policy Council for example). Representatives from organized interest groups were still members in these councils, however, the role scientific advice played in these forms of organized consultation increased. During the global fiscal crisis, the center-right government did not rely on formalized consultations with organized interest groups. However, informal negotiations did certainly take place.

In Sweden as in most other advanced democracies, there has been a noticeable tendency over the past several years to centralize communication on policy matters, particularly through the media. Civil servants in the ministries are extremely reluctant to speak to the media, as they might not convey the correct and approved version of a particular policy. Controlling the flow of communication has become a matter of importance to the political elite of the system; handling communication and speaking to the media has clearly become a political dimension of the CGO’s work.
The center-right coalition contains four parties. Surpisingly, such a broad coalition does produce incoherent policy communications in contested policy fields. During the period of review, some communicative frictions became obvious (for example, the different policy positions regarding the use of nuclear power plants in Sweden or the goals and fiscal endowment of the Swedish army). Nevertheless, the center-right coalition could effectively coordinate policy communication between different ministries.

If policy coordination in the Central Government Office (CGO) is the biggest current problem in the Swedish government, policy implementation in the form of steering the agencies is the second biggest challenge. These problems are strongly related, a lack of coordination leads to a lack of executive capacity and poor steering by the agencies. According to the original idea in the constitution, the CGO was supposed to engage in long-term policy planning while the autonomous executive agencies (which Sweden has had for more than 200 years) in policy implementation. Over time, however, the CGO has become more and more bogged down in day-to-day matters on policy while the agencies have enjoyed a growing staff, a concentration of expertise and insulation from the media. As a result, expertise on policy today rests just as much with these agencies as with the CGO. This complicates the CGO’s capacity to steer the agencies, and the result has been that exchanges between the CGO and the agencies are more characterized by mutual consultation and informal dialogue than by strict command and control exercised by the CGO. Thus, agencies are still highly effective instruments of policy implementation but they are, to a growing extent, also involved in the design of the policies they are to implement.

The Swedish Cabinet acts in concert on all important policy matters; policy formulation and accountability are collective processes. In the political debate, individual ministers certainly pursue policies relevant to their portfolio but cabinets tend to be evaluated collectively. The fact that both the center-left and center-right blocs in Swedish politics are becoming increasingly coordinated on policy decisions and strategic policy goals strengthens this development of collective political action further.

The PMO exercises some control over the line ministries. More importantly, the Cabinet as a collective body monitors and controls line ministries very thoroughly. Equally important, the Ministry of Finance monitors line ministries very closely; hence, the Ministry of Finance became very important in this respect in the past years. The budgetary process is generally seen as a key coordinating and monitoring process within the CGO. Thus, there is a rather high degree of monitoring which, however, is not primarily conducted by the PMO - the Ministry of Finance is important in this respect, too.

Agencies report to the ministries and, in a strictly cconstitutional sense, are subordinate to the ministries and the CGO. In the daily practice of policy formulation and implementation, however, the relationship between ministries and agencies is less hierarchical and more built on dialogue and the sharing of expertise and information. Given that state of actual affairs, the notion of monitoring becomes an issue when the legally hierarchical pattern is supplemented by mutual dependencies.
The relationship between ministries and agencies has been subject to recent reforms. One reform objective has been to introduce more diversity among the agencies in terms of how closely they are monitored. The argument has been that agencies with only 10 civil servants and a limited budget do not need to be monitored as closely as the biggest agencies with a couple thousand civil servants and huge annual budgets. Another reform objective has been to reassess the structure of the agency system, including the so-called staff agencies whose main role is to provide the CGO with information and statistical analyses. In both cases, there is the general idea that ministries could, and should, steer agencies more closely than is presently the case.

The extent to which central government imposes unfunded mandates on regional and local governments has long been a topic of heated debate. Sub-national governments in Sweden enjoy extensive autonomy in relationship to central government; indeed, that autonomy is written into the opening article of the constitution. Sub-national governments insist that unfunded mandates are an imposition on that autonomy since it forces local government to redistributes its tax resources. Local government and their national association emphasize what they call the principle of full compensation. However, the assignment of tasks and the financial arrangement pertaining to those tasks are frequently negotiated and renegotiated between central and subnational government.

Except for the occasional disagreement over mandates that are not funded and the extremely rare case of direct intervention in local taxes (as has happened only on very few occasions), central government fully respects the values of local autonomy. To be sure, when these issues are discussed or researched, the question has not so much been whether central government allows local government to exercise its autonomy but rather to what extent local government transgresses its role (and consequently undermines fiscal solidity). The constitution does not define any limits for local government action. Instead, those boundaries become defined whenever citizens appeal local government decisions to the courts. Central government does not question the principle or the exercise of local autonomy.

Public services have been extensively decentralized over the past couple of decades with the decentralization of first and secondary education in 1989 and 1990 being the most prominent cases. Once services are transferred from central to local government auspices, safeguarding national standards and even defining and sustaining those standards becomes problematic. National agencies monitor closely the services delivered by local government. Thus, monitoring is largely done as performance evaluation, i.e. a sort of ex-post steering. Agency reports are posted on websites so that, for instance, parents planning which school they should send their children to can find ample information about the performance of different schools and local governments. This is a kind of “name and shame” performance control which may build on comparisons that are not always fair – schools in economically and ethnically challenged local governments may for instance perform less well compared to schools in more affluent local governments – but there is certainly monitoring and control that reflects the Swedish tradition of open information to all citizens.
One of the problems encountered by central government agencies in this monitoring process is that they frequently lack effective corrective instruments. Public services delegated to local governments become part of the local autonomy – indeed, adaptation of service to local needs and the local diversity was one of the reasons they were decentralized in the first place – which makes it difficult for central agencies to introduce new forms of steering. Local diversity has increased somewhat, but still Swedish governments guarantee high standards of uniform levels of quality throughout the country.

Since Sweden joined the EU in 1995 there has been extensive adaptation of Swedish regulation to EU rules. Today some 70 per cent of all Swedish regulation is EU harmonized. In terms of structural adjustment, the government has taken all steps required by the EU. However, most of the harmonization has been less structural and more a matter of adapting policy to the EU rules and coordinating domestic policy with EU policy. The main challenges associated with this harmonization have been integrating rules and the EU modus operandi. The EU does not prescribe any specific domestic structural adjustments. The Union has so far not advocated any particular model of public administration other than the still evolving “European administrative space” (EAS).

Sweden has a tradition of being a lively international partner and is deeply involved in international collaborative work in terms of foreign aid, fighting poverty, addressing environmental issues or promoting human rights. The preferred strategy for international work is to participate in collective efforts such as UN sponsored projects. Sweden has used supranational structures like the EU (Sweden was chairing the Union from July through December 2009) as opportunities to launch collective international policies and projects. During the global fiscal crisis, the center-right government emphasized the need to tackle the crisis by international coordination. The Swedish government efficiently promoted international measures helping to contain the Icelandic crisis.

The past several decades have seen almost continuous reform in the Swedish state. A key element of the reform process has been the monitoring and evaluation of existing institutional models both horizontally (the relationship between the Central Government Office and the agencies) and vertically (the relationship between the CGO and regions or local authorities). As a result, the past couple of years have been devoted to a reassessment of the agency system both in terms of steering and structure. There has been a strong effort to reduce the number of agencies by 10 percent. Central government has also taken a higher profile in the steering of primary and secondary educational systems, which were transferred from the state to local authorities during the 1990s.

In addition to the reassessment of the agency system as a whole, there has also been institutional reforms to enhance the strategic capacity of the Central Government Office by reorganizing the group of so-called staff agencies (primarily the agencies for public management reform [Statskontoret] and financial management [Ekonomistyrningsverket]). In this context, it is also important to note the reform currently underway inside the CGO (“RK-styr”) which seeks to enhance coordination among line ministries in order to make steering and control of the agencies more effective.

The Swedish population has a strong interest in politics. Election turnout is high by most international comparisons and knowledge of issues and candidates is also high. Given the state-centric nature of the Swedish society, citizens are aware of the role of politics in the governing of society and the differences between different constellations of parties in the election campaigns. Studies show that voters tend to decide which party to vote for increasingly late in the election campaigns, a pattern which suggests that voters want to have as much information as possible about the parties’ positions on issues that matter to the voters before they make their vote decisions.

Parliamentary committees, and indeed every Swedish citizen, are entitled to see all government documents which are not classified. Sweden has long been a forerunner when it comes to public access to government documents. A policy goal of Swedish governments is to strengthen this principle even on the EU level.

Parliamentary committees have the right to summon members of the government. Committee hearings are a fairly recent procedure in the Swedish parliament (Riksdag). Today they occur regularly and are often broadcast live by public service television. The committees extensively publish the results of the hearings.

Riksdag committees may summon experts, either in pleno (which is not so common) or through the committee staff who may solicit experts’ information and/or advice.

There is no perfect overlap between the ministries and the parliamentary committees. The task areas of ministries change along with changes in the party composition of government and with changes in the number of ministries. The parliamentary committee system is characterized by much higher stability than the ministry organization. The prime minister can decide for him/herself how many ministries there should be and what their task area should be. Reorganizing the parliamentary committee structure is a far more complicated process.

The National Audit Office in Sweden was for a long time a government agency which reported to the government, not to parliament. At that time, parliament had only a minor audit function. In 2003, the audit agency was abolished and a stronger audit office reporting to parliament was created. There are still agencies that are engaged in auditing but the key audit function today is the parliament’s National Audit Office (Riksrevisionen).

It is no exaggeration to say that Sweden invented the ombudsman (indeed “ombudsman” is a Swedish word meaning “an official speaking on your behalf”). Over time, the ombudsman system has grown considerably. Today there are ombudsmen offices for complaints related to the exercise of legal authority, gender equality, ethnic equality and equality owing to sexual preference.

Together with Norway and Japan, Sweden ranks as one of countries with the highest consumption of newspapers. Unlike other media, newspaper ownership is dispersed and there is a good coverage across the country. The public service company from the start and up until the 1980s controlled TV and radio. In the 1990s, the media market was partially deregulated and today there is widespread competition between public and private media. The consensus view seems to be that this has not improved quality; if anything, quality has deteriorated somewhat.
Politics and government activities and decisions receive a lot of attention. Both the public service company and at least some of its private competitors have both news shows and more in-depth programs covering politics and government. That having been said, there is a tendency in the media to use the “vox populi” strategy, i.e. asking the man on the street, rather than interviewing experts when commenting on political news.

At the time of writing, Sweden was heading into the 2010 election campaign and parties (for the most part as constellations of parties; the center-right incumbent “alliance” and the “red-green” trio of parties on the political left) presenting platforms and policy ideas. There is the inevitable flirting with the voters but overall parties seem to make a strong effort not to make promises beyond what can be delivered without jeopardizing the economy. The past two years have been very difficult to the economy with the international financial crisis forcing the public budget into deficit and causing increasing unemployment. Under these circumstances, acting responsibly appears to have more political currency in both political camps than being generous with the state’s fiscal resources.

Sweden has a corporatist tradition, meaning that interest associations are more or less perennial players in the policy process. For this system to work it is essential that organized interests take some degree of responsibility both in terms of the quality of their proposals and supporting the implementation of public policy. While corporatism overall has been weakened during the 1990s and 2000s, the major interest associations in Sweden still participate regularly in the policy debate and have extensive contacts with central and subnational governments. Private business associations belong to this category of associations. They have a long history of being consulted on policy matters. It is difficult to assess their actual influence on policy decisions but it seems clear that governments of both the political left and right are open to major business associations.
That having been said, the key role of these associations is first and foremost to promote the interests of their members. Given the long history of corporatism they do have understand what policymaking and responsibility is about. Nevertheless, from time to time they present policy proposals which are more reflective of their constituency’s interests than the best interests of the country as a whole. A very similar pattern applies to the major unions, both blue-collar and white-collar. Nevertheless, for the period under review we can assess that most economic interest associations formulate reasonable policy alternatives.

Sweden has a large number and wide variety of interest associations that are small and big, old and new, single issue and comprehensive. The quality of their policy proposals is reflective of that heterogeneity and the large number of associations. Some associations have the staff and expertise to produce reasonable and appropriate policy proposals, others do not. Overall, interest associations in a post-corporatist society probably understand that there are opportunities to influence policy, provided that the proposals put forward are reasonable and not just reflective of the interests of the associations’ members.