Mid Sweden University

A policy entrepreneur is a distinct political actor aiming to affect change. The theoretical narrative regarding policy entrepreneurs is underpinned by their commitment to a policy solution, the multi-dimensional strategies they use to promote that solution, and a suite of attributes and skills facilitating their actions. Policy entrepreneurs reveal themselves through their attempts to transform policy ideas into policy innovations and, hence, disrupt status quo policy arrangements. Indeed, policy entrepreneurs share sensibilities with entrepreneurs in the market, whose conceptualisation serves as a heuristic for their counterparts in policy and politics. The emphasis on change borne out of innovative solutions distinguishes policy entrepreneurs from many other actors who aim to maintain current institutional settings and power relations. The growing scholarship on policy entrepreneurship assumes intentionality as inherent to the policy entrepreneur and their actions, foregrounding the image of the tenacious political actor set on steering their a priori pet policy to a suitable problem. This article draws from the market theory on entrepreneurship, contrasting proactive policy entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship by opportunity) and reactive policy entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship by necessity). We conduct a comparative social network analysis of three municipalities in southern Sweden focused on flood risk mitigation. We demonstrate two different logics of policy entrepreneurship (as a result of seizing opportunities versus as a reaction to vertical pressure), and we explore the consequences for enhancing our understanding of policy entrepreneurship

While national policy styles have (re)gained academic attention in recent comparative public policy work, the concept still needs a widely accepted operationalization that can allow the collection and analysis of data across contexts while steering away from construct validity threats. We build on Tosun and Howlett's (2022) work and employ a mixed-methods approach, which relies on exploratory factor analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis. We put forth an operationalization, using Bertelsmann's Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) as proxies, that achieves conceptual clarity and distinctiveness, informational robustness, and statistical power. Ultimately, we construct two composite indicators—mode of problem-solving and inclusiveness—calculate them in 41 countries and present policy style classifications based on their combinations. We report the distribution of countries across four policy styles (administrative, managerial, accommodative, adversarial) and conclude with an analysis of the clusters, assessments of robustness, and comparison with other national policy style classification schemes.

Experiments have long been recognized as effective tools in teaching natural sciences and, to a lesser degree, in social sciences. However, understanding the role of immersive simulation experiments in undergraduate degree programmes demands more scholarly attention, given the pace of technological advances and research literacy in immersive simulation. The purpose of this article is to illustrate the potential of integrating immersive simulation laboratory experiments in social science education and specifically in a risk and crisis management undergraduate degree programme. Based on the work of Claire Dunlop, we demonstrate how an experiment with a high degree of experimental realism was a fruitful vehicle for initiating conversations about sensitive subjects in a safe environment and made teaching more inclusive, while high mundane realism made teaching risk and crisis management fun, and, we argue, fostered practical aspects of risk and crisis management. 

Why do countries respond differently when they face the same pandemic? In this article, we comparatively investigate the effects of policy styles in shaping responses to the COVID-19 crisis in two European countries: Greece and Sweden. Extending the concept of policy styles to extraordinary policymaking, we argue that political trust and policy styles result in national responses that range from centralization to decentralization. The combination of policy styles and political trust inevitably raises questions about the role of experts in shaping responses to pandemics. We conclude with implications for theories of national policy styles, political trust and crisis management.

Theories of policy processes are typically underpinned by assumptions of bounded rationality in which only a fraction of the available information on a policy issue can be absorbed, comprehended, included, and communicated by any given policy community. From a scientific point of view, this boundedness is convenient, as it helps policy process scholars identify actors, define the problem, and frame a narrative. The problem is that some of the major current policy issues, such as climate change, food production, and migration, are wicked problems that cannot be resolved within limited boundedness—they are simply too big and globally interconnected. A question that comes to mind is to what extent existing policy-process theories are equipped to analyse such significant policy challenges. This paper discusses some of the inherent conceptual and operationalisation challenges in the study of wicked problems and policy processes. On the empirical side, I pay particular attention to administrative, political, and technical aspects characterising wicked problems as well as challenges related to public expectations and communication. As an illustration, I use ongoing work for the UN on the uptake of scientific knowledge in policies on disaster risk reduction.

The Swedish model of policy making consists of (1) an extensive and universal system for social protection, (2) political compromises based on pragmatism and (3) a wide use of expert knowledge in the formulation of public policies. The results have been very positive when it comes to the standard measures of human well-being. Even though Sweden faired quite well compared with other European countries, the high level of mortality among the elderly during the pandemic has been a much discussed weakness of the country’s handling of the pandemic. This chapter addresses the rationale underpinning the Swedish pandemic response including divergences from comparable countries as well as implications of this approach for the Swedish model of policy making.

In this article, we statistically examine the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) implemented by the national governments of Greece and Cyprus during 2020 to (a) limit the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and (b) mitigate the economic fallout brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. Applying a modified health belief model, we hypothesize that behavioral outcomes at the policy level are a function of NPIs, perceived severity, and social context. We employ a Prais-Winsten estimation in 2-week averages and report panel-corrected standard errors to find that NPIs have clear, yet differential, effects on public health and the economy in terms of statistical significance and time lags. The study provides a critical framework to inform future interventions during emerging pandemics.

The Swedish response to the pandemic at the national level has attracted considerable international attention, but little focus has been placed on the way municipalities dealt with the crisis. Using Hay's dimensions of politicization, namely the capacity for human agency, deliberation in the public domain, and social context, we analyze the politicization of the municipal response to the pandemic in Sweden. We do this based on the analysis of the decision making process to activate (or not) an extraordinary crisis management committee. We find inter alia, that (i) only a quarter of the municipalities activated the committee while a majority of them had an alternate special organization in place; (ii) support to the existing organizational structure was more salient than creating an extraordinary organization, and (iii) a robust municipal structure was deemed to be one able to withstand shocks without resorting to extraordinary governance arrangements. We find a ‘conditioned politicization’ of the response, privileging administration over politics.

This chapter discusses the literature on national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding the societal and political dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitates intellectual engagement from disciplines beyond the health sciences and medicine. As fundamentally devastating as this pandemic has been, the universal character of this complex and multifaceted policy problem constitutes a natural experiment, a fruitful empirical field for research with the aim to understand and explain the variation of national responses to the pandemic. Divergence of varying degree was also observed in within-country, albeit federal, contexts. In the United States, the response to the pandemic was left entirely to the states. An analysis by Capano et al. finds that the diversity of responses concerns not only the kinds of policy instruments or the combination of instruments different countries used but also differences in the timing, sequence, and speed of adoption of measures as well as the stringency of these measures.