Governing During the Pandemic : Changes in Risk Governance and Power in Sweden during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract: Background: The COVID-19 pandemic showed that disastrous events can develop in ways both new and surprising. It demonstrated that an infectious disease can easily spread over the globe in a matter of weeks. While there has been a surge of policy changes during the COVID-19 pandemic there is uncertainty regarding which of these changes will remain permanent and which will be terminated. The pandemic highlighted the complex structures of governance in modern societies and raised new interest in how institutions of governance work. The COVID-19 pandemic has opened a window of opportunity for politicians and leaders to transform institutional settings.    Aim: This thesis will bring further insight into potential policy change, during a protracted crisis. The aim is to examine the role of COVID-19 pandemic in enabling changes on the agenda regarding risk governance, the Swedish crisis management system, and the overall organisation of governmental responsibility through a qualitative content analysis of governmental reports. The study investigates the policy process and agenda setting during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic at the Swedish national government. The focus is on the beginning of the crisis before the issue became better known.    Method: This study has been conducted through a qualitative case study design. The information has been retrieved from documents, that were analysed through a qualitative document analysis. Based on the case (Sweden and its national Government and Parliament), the information has been documents provided by these government bodies. In total 72 documents were chosen based on specified inclusion and exclusion criteria. These documents were then coded in NVivo 12.    Results: The analysis resulted in different themes, labelled here as: risk constructs, risk governance, crisis management, power, responsibility policy stream, political stream, and problem stream. The overall picture is that issues related to COVID-19 were at a low level during the beginning of 2020, with an increase beginning I March and apart from a drop in May, continued to rise in prevalence reaching its hight in June 2020. The data show that the COVID-19 pandemic is described in tones of great uncertainty, that it was something that could be used for learning or improvement. The data further showed discussions regarding jurisdiction and co-operation and that it started discussions on how to manage a crisis. The different risk governance strategies that came through were discursive strategy, precaution strategy, prevention strategy and risk-based strategy. Where the risk-based strategy was the most prevalent. The data show a general positive stand towards giving the Government a clearer and wider mandate to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. There is also focus on voluntary actions, safeguarding democracy and human rights.   Conclusion: This study reveals that the discussions on the coded themes coincide with the reported infection rates of the virus. The COVID-19 pandemic is argued to have caused an increase on the agenda regarding power, responsibility, and risk governance. It opened a policy window for an increase in centralisation for the national government.