Traditionally, the different government branches in Sweden are marked by admin- istrative dualism. The roots of the principle are actually predemocratic and can be traced all the way back to how the Swedish state, in its heyday as a mid-1600s empire in the Baltic Sea area, organized its state institutions. It is generally accepted that in 1634, under the reign of king Gustavus Adolphus II, the principle of admin- istrative dualism was instated in administrative structures of the Swedish state and that this constitutional principle represents a remarkable path dependency in its administration.7 Administrative dualism also survives on the vertical dimension.
Although a unitary state for more than 400 years, Sweden has a tradition of local political autonomy, which for long has given local government a pivotal role in Swedish administration. This has to do not least with the local right to levy taxes, which is another institutional path at least as old as the Swedish state, and one that in modern times has been crucial to the implementation of welfare state policies.8 Also in terms of implementing reform, local government is far more important than state ministries and agencies. This has produced a whole new set of problems for administrative reform in Sweden as the social structure and climate of the coun- try is changing and public administration goes looking for new ideas.
The government of Sweden currently operates according to constitutional prin- ciples adopted in 1974. The affairs of the government are directed by a cabinet of ministers, which is led by a prime minister. The cabinet and the prime minister are responsible for their actions to the legislators in parliament (Riksdagen). The ministries, currently numbering 13, operate as policy-making bodies that comprise
the Swedish Government Offices. The Government Offices provide direction to state agencies responsible for policy implementation. Before implementation can begin, however, each agency is tasked with independently analyzing new govern- ment policies for legal and practical implications. Local government has wide lati- tude in all areas not regulated by the central state government and is responsible for all service delivery at the local level. It is within this system of governance that horizontal and vertical aspects of dualism simultaneously exist with regard to pub- lic administration.
In the present Swedish system of governance, there are four equally important spheres of influence with respect to administrative dualism and reform: (1) the central government, (2) the state agencies, (3) the independent commissions, and (4) local government.9, 10 Because the first three spheres of influence operate at the national level of government, their respective influence constitutes the horizontal dimension of dualism. The relationship between local government and the state constitutes the vertical dimension.
The first sphere of influence is the central government (Regeringen), which decides national policy and determines the goals and guidelines for the civil ser- vice. With legislative direction from parliament, the central government decides public policy and issues policy instructions to and for state administrative agencies, appoints their directors general, allocates resources, and is ultimately responsible for the successful implementation of tasks in public administration. Although each of the approximately 250 state agencies is constituted by authority of a ministry, ministries may influence agencies only by making policy and providing guidelines.
That is, consistent with the principle of dualism, state agencies cannot be told by central government how and when to go about their administrative business.11 This effectively gives public administrators within state agencies a constitutionally guar- anteed level of discretion vis-à-vis the ministries of central government on one hand and the Swedish parliament on the other. This institutional arrangement and the legally prescribed relative autonomy of administrative agencies combine to charac- terize the role and nature of the civil service within the Swedish system.12, 13 Appli- cation of the principle of administrative dualism also contributes to a greater degree of depoliticization in Swedish administration when compared to the majority of other European countries.14 As such, the principle of dualism has been historically resilient in times of political turmoil, most notably when Sweden evolved into a constitutional monarchy (1809), a democracy (1921), and a modern constitutional democracy (1974).15, 16
The relationship between government ministries and agencies is also specifi- cally designed to protect public administration in Sweden from political spoils. The Swedish Government Offices are comparatively small, as they currently employ only approximately 4,600 persons altogether. As a result, and much because of their relative independence, Swedish government agencies can be described as courtlike in their behavior and ways of organizing practical work.17 There is, however, good
reason to emphasize the term relative independence when referring to Sweden’s state agencies:
Each agency is headed by a director general appointed by the Gov- ernment, usually for a six-year term. Sometimes a director general is chosen from the political sphere. The board of an agency consists of the director general as chairperson, a number of the senior officials from the agency itself and representatives of organizations or population groups with a special interest in the agency’s activities, and sometimes politicians. All board members are appointed by the Government, as are most senior officials of the agencies. Other officials are hired by the agencies themselves.18
Swedish politicians can thus influence government agencies directly by the power of appointment. This has for long been a major bone of contention between the political opposition in parliament and several consecutive Swedish governments insofar as political influence in administrative agencies of the state, in effect, makes the central government agencies a second sphere of influence in their own right. For example, the Social Democratic Party, with its responsibility for several minority governments, has come under attack in the national media for politicizing public administration by predominantly appointing known Social Democrats as directors general and senior officials of national agencies. For decades, the defensive position of government has been to emphasize the legalistic character of work in the national agencies, in conjunction with their relative independence from direct government steering, as safeguards against politicization. The government’s defense has also highlighted that directors general and other senior civil servants must be as correct and diligent as their employees and are, in effect, protected from corruption by the very nature of the practical aspects of work performed in a government agency. As no direct legal verdicts or blatant corruption scandals have appeared, the system has survived as described and is continuing to do so, despite changes in political power between ideologically opposed governments in 1976, 1991, and 2006.
The third sphere of influence underpinning administrative dualism and reform in the Swedish state is taken up by the regular commissions of inquiry (Statens Offentliga Utredningsväsende, SOU), which are tasked by government with investi- gations into specific issues related to reform. Again, the government draws up the guidelines, provides the financial backing, and appoints key personnel. Although temporary and specific, SOU commissions have the same administrative status as government agencies. The Swedish government appoints either an individual or a group of people to set up, research, and publish the results of an SOU inquiry.
Central government also provides monies and administrative personnel resources.
The choice of individuals to serve on the SOU varies but is at the discretion of the Swedish government. The commission has great liberty to explore different routes
of inquiry, which culminates in a final report in which the SOU makes recommen- dations to central government. Although the SOU process of inquiry is formally closed to the public and to parliament, there is a tradition of openness to the media while the work of the commission is in progress. The final SOU report, however, is open to full public and parliamentary scrutiny.
Once the report is printed, in most cases after a one- to three-year period, govern- ment sends it to various state agencies and other social and economic organizations in Swedish society for their opinions, the so-called remiss. Individuals and organi- zations that have not been directly asked may also express their opinions about the results and recommendations from the SOU. Moreover, because state agencies are responsible for analyzing and communicating to central government the legal and administrative implications of all SOU recommendations, public administrators within those agencies play an important role in shaping and informing public pol- icy. The SOU process therefore not only provides Sweden’s central government the ability to sound the depths of political waters prior to changing a policy or suggest- ing a new law to parliament but also promotes effective policy implementation by gathering the perceptions and opinions of interested actors prior to making policy decisions or issuing instructions to administrative government agencies.
The main reason the commissions of inquiry have been so widely used in the Swedish system is that they are perceived to contribute elements of rationality, legitimacy, and consensus to the processes of reform. For informed observers of the Swedish system, however, it is a well-known fact that the SOUs have at differ- ent points in time been used by successive Swedish governments to bury difficult issues or, in some cases, to avoid engaging in public debate or making difficult and unpopular decisions.19 As a consequence, the current trend is to use the SOU instrument less frequently and to provide the commissions with less time and fewer resources to perform their tasks. This has, not surprisingly, led to recent commis- sion reports being generally of lower quality.20 Importantly, as compared with three or four decades ago, the SOUs also seem to have lost some of their political weight with the advent of administrative reform. Nonetheless, Sweden’s regular commis- sions of inquiry should still be regarded as a vital and relatively independent force in the nation’s processes of governance.21
Local self-government, which operates along the vertical dimension of dualism and represents the fourth sphere of influence on reform, represents a history that goes even further back than that of administrative dualism. There is a centuries-long Swed- ish tradition of cities, parishes, and local farm communities administering all affairs not explicitly owned or usurped by the state, such as determining land use, providing schooling, offering relief to the poor, and upholding the law. As the modern era broke in with industrialization and large-scale social change in its wake, the Swedish gov- ernment was quick in formalizing a new administrative role for local government that was more synchronized with a modern industrializing nation. Issued as an instruc- tion from the Swedish king in 1862, a parallel structure of approximately 2,500 cities, parishes, and municipalities was codified and given constitutional status. The
aim was to facilitate Sweden’s adaptation to the growing need for education, social welfare, and structural change. This structure then lived on past democratization in the 1920s and was by and large left untouched up until 1952.22
The present system of subnational government in Sweden emerged as the result of two major reforms in 1952 and 1974. As well as removing some of the older forms of governance such as independent parishes and cities, the number of local units was gradually reduced to fewer than 300 by 1974.23 The current system and size of subnational government in Sweden has been described as follows:
Apart from the national level, there are two tiers of local government, a municipal level with 290 municipalities (kommuner) and an intermedi- ate level consisting of 19 county councils (landsting) and two regions (regioner). The island of Gotland is both a municipality and a county council. Municipalities vary in size between 2,600 and 771,000 inhab- itants, with an average of 30,200 inhabitants. The smallest intermediate level authorities have 127,000 and the largest 1,9 million inhabitants.
The average size is 430,000.24
Despite a long historical tradition of subnational self-government, federalist ideas have never been applied to intergovernmental relations in Sweden.25 To the contrary, the different subnational levels of governance in the Swedish system can alternately be seen as “state integrated” in that their autonomy is circumscribed by subjection to either direct or indirect national regulation or as a mixed, semiau- tonomous, and semi-integrated form of governance.26 Until the 1980s, subnational government in Sweden was heavily regulated because it was regarded by the state as an instrument in the management of core state welfare functions. In the course of that decade, however, Social Democratic governments began to experiment with shifting the balance of power from the state to regional and municipal govern- ments and increasing local levels of administrative autonomy. Therefore, subna- tional autonomy today is derived from a combination of legally authorized local discretion in all areas not regulated by the state in concert with a high level of direct local influence over the implementation of state welfare policies and programs.
At the local level, Swedish municipalities and county councils are responsible for providing primary and secondary schooling, care for the elderly, and nurseries.
The county councils are primarily charged with policy implementation in the areas of medical care, public health, regional cultural institutions, dental services, and care for the disabled. It is estimated that 80 percent of the county council bud- gets cover these areas. Within this integrated design for local government, some administrative areas are more tightly regulated by the state than others. Less regu- lated areas for the municipalities include, for example, local land use and the plan- ning of infrastructure. Subsidies to public transport systems and general regional
development initiatives are examples of areas in which county councils may use discretion because of fewer regulatory controls.27
It would be inconsequential to refer to subnational government, because of its self-government status, as a path dependency in Swedish administration. At the same time, it is impossible to disregard the vertical dimension of administrative duality in the country. The municipal and county council governments are directly elected bodies with the constitutionally guaranteed right to levy taxes on their con- stituents. These elected officials and their administrative personnel have developed strong professional and political competencies demonstrated through accountabil- ity-based performance before the local electorate. As a consequence, they have wide discretion in allocating tax receipts not controlled by the state.
Comparing employment numbers at the national and subnational levels of government adds further clarity to the significance of local government in Swe- den. In 1999 the total number of employed persons in the country amounted to 4.2 million. Of these, 63 percent worked in the private sector. The public sector, including state and local government, employed 37 percent, with less than 9 per- cent employed in state government and the remaining 28 percent employed at the local level. Thus, in 1999 more than one quarter of total employment throughout Sweden was provided by local governments and their related institutions.28 Local government is therefore an influential force in governance by virtue of its sheer size combined with its perceived competence in administering a wide range of social policies and programs. It is the significance of local government that constitutes the vertical dimension of administrative dualism and the fourth sphere of influence in Swedish administrative reform.