As I sit down to write a blog post covering my article in the European Journal of International Security, The Swedish Covid-19 strategy and voluntary compliance: Failed securitisation or constitutional security management?, a new mutation of the virus, omicron, is spreading fear across the globe. New restrictions on international travelling and new national guidelines and precautionary measures are issued to once again restrict and cope with another mutation of the Covid-19 virus. This virus, which was announced to be the cause of the ongoing global pandemic since March 2020, has so far caused over 5 million deaths in the world according to the John Hopkins research center. As a researcher it was certainly challenging to investigate an ongoing crisis to which all countries in the world in the world responded to at the same time. Not only did we see a great variety in how countries responded but each country adjusted their policies over time, and there was, and still are, shifts back and forth between increasing public restriction and easing up. In direct relation to the management of the virus we may also consider the management and politics of vaccine programs on a national and international level.

My open access article in EJIS focuses on the Swedish Covid-19 strategy, or lack of strategy. It covers the initial management and policy response by Swedish government and authorities between March 2020 and September 2021. It was clear from the beginning that Sweden seemed to have taken a different route to “flatten the curve” which seemed to stand out in the Nordic or even European context. While some countries adopted strict regulations and extraordinary measures after declaring ‘states of exception’ and ‘national emergencies’, others relied upon mere recommendations and placing the responsibility for adjusting their social behavior at the individual level, without any forcing legislation. Sweden quickly became a world-known example of the latter and opted for a seemingly more relaxed and daring strategy, highly debated on the national and international level. The immediate question for me, guiding the article and investigation was why Sweden, a strong welfare state in Europe was unwilling or perhaps unable to formulate and implement laws that regulated social and public life in more forceful ways than mere recommendations and pleadings to individual responsibility despite an obvious security threat.

Was this an instance of a failed ‘securitisation’ process, or rather a sensible constitutional and political response to a severe security event? My point of departure for the article was securitization theory, and potential signs of failure to securitize the pandemic? The Copenhagen Security theory suggests that when there is a (security) issue of life and death and immediate urgency, political leaders may with successful framing and audience acceptance break rules and procedures to cope with the security issue. Security would then be extra-political. Such an approach might however lead us to what Andrew Neal calls the ‘Hobbesian trap’, blinding us to other ways in which security issues are managed in foremost democratic states. And, indeed there was good evidence that Sweden did identify Covid-19 as a serious security threat but failed to act accordingly. This shows that it is difficult, to distinguish between ‘failed securitisation’ in the empirical sense and a ‘failure of securitisation theory’ to account for weak responses to apparently serious security threats, such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

I therefore found it necessary to identify other theoretical perspectives, other than ‘failed’ securitization, that would enable a further analysis of the Swedish case. This would include historical institutionalism, path-dependency and logic-of-appropriateness as theoretical concepts to analyze the constitutional and institutional structures that may hinder central actors from breaking rules and procedures, even when they are struggling with a serious security issue. Even when states encounter something as frightening as a rapidly spreading virus, existing structures and crisis management systems are likely to bind political actors to common rules and procedures and crisis management organisation.

How can we then explain the patchwork of recommendations and minimal legal restriction that at times has generated unclear rules and signals as well as substantial friction and political debate In Sweden and abroad? I show in the article that the Swedish strategy, or lack of strategy, follows from bounded rationality and a logic of appropriateness in that political leaders and experts followed existing organisational, institutional, and constitutional restrictions of executive and sovereign power, which characterise the Swedish political system in general and the current crisis management system in particular. Whereas previous studies of the Swedish case have focused on Sweden’s administrative and cultural orientations, including a high level of trust in public institutions, the present study reveals that the Swedish Covid-19 strategy has emerged primarily from a combination of the dual administrative system, the present crisis management system, which focuses on societal security and small events, and a logic of appropriateness associated with acting correctly within existing institutional, constitutional, and organizational boundaries for political leaders and experts.

The theoretical implications of the present study are thus of great significance for the work of security scholars as it shows that rule following, not rule breaking, help us explain the management of Covid-19 in Sweden. Sweden may be an exceptional case in that the overall political system is characterised by weak executive power. However, the Swedish approach to crisis management illustrates that securitisation theory overly emphasises rule breaking and exceptionalism, thereby blinding us to the importance and effectiveness of rule following and democratic-minded leadership in responding to serious security threats.

– Oscar Leonard Larsson, Swedish Defence University

– Larsson’s article ‘The Swedish Covid-19 strategy and voluntary compliance: Failed securitisation or constitutional security management?‘ is published open access in EJIS