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This paper analyses public leadership in Scandinavia during thelatest two pandemics, the swine flu pandemic in 2009 and thecoronavirus pandemic in 2020, by compiling and contrastingnational proxies of media visibility among pandemic responseactors. Concretely, the paper taps into key media databases todevelop indicators of how often national leaders and leadinghealth experts are mentioned in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedishmedia reports about the 2009 and 2020 pandemics.The study reveals a high degree of continuity of public leadershipin Sweden during the two pandemics. In contrast, Norway and inparticular Denmark both moved from a predominately expertdriven media presence in 2009 to a much stronger top-downministerial leadership presence during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. In addition, Sweden also displays the most balancedmedia representation of health experts and cabinet ministers during both pandemics. The paper concludes by discussing the prosand cons of the outlined differences in public leadership and thepossible practical implications with regards public debateand trust. ; Expert Government Agencies' contribution to public deliberation: balancing the need for expertise with political equality

COVID-19 outbreaks forced governments into epic policy choices conciliating democratic legitimacy and science-based policies. We examine how pervasive crises like this pandemic shape public discourses, proposing two ideal-types that discourse may tend toward. One is pluralism, which includes authoritative voices that represent viable alternative policies and credible reasons for them. The opposite is monotony, where authoritative voices offer credible reasons for one policy option only. Two crucial cases for monotony are analysed, where news media represents public discourse. In initial COVID-19 responses, Denmark pursued hard lockdown while neighbouring Sweden enacted voluntary distancing. Pluralism in public discourses could be advantaged while solutions remained uncertain and social and economic disruptions high, in polities with mature democratic and scientific institutions. The empirical analyses show that Denmark's elected leaders and Sweden's leading health scientists publicly represented their respective national responses. Yet in sampled public discourses on highly disruptive policies on school closures and crowding limits, both leaderships focused on justifying national choices rather than elucidating options. In turn, other sources skewed toward justifications for national policies rather than attention to alternatives. We suggest finally that such skews toward discourse monotony create risks to democratic legitimacy and long-term response efficacy. ; Expert Government Agencies' contribution to public deliberation: balancing the need for expertise with political equality

COVID-19 outbreaks forced governments into epic policy choices conciliating democratic legitimacy and science-based policies. We examine conditions for citizens to deliberate over pandemic response policies and propose two ideal-types that public discourses may tend toward. One is pluralism, which includes authoritative voices that represent viable alternative policies and credible reasons for them. The opposite is monotony, where authoritative voices offer credible reasons for one policy option only. To characterize epistemic and political leading voices in relation to these ideal-types, the article asks: (i) were elected leaders or leading experts the official voices of COVID-19 response, and what did they say? And (ii) have national COVID-19 discourses represented arguments for policy alternatives evenly, or skewed in favour of national policy? ; COVID-19 outbreaks forced governments into epic policy choices conciliating democratic legitimacy and science-based policies. We examine how pervasive crises like this pandemic shape public discourses, proposing two ideal-types that discourse may tend toward. One is pluralism, which includes authoritative voices that represent viable alternative policies and credible reasons for them. The opposite is monotony, where authoritative voices offer credible reasons for one policy option only. Two crucial cases for monotony are analysed, where news media represents public discourse. In initial COVID-19 responses, Denmark pursued hard lockdown while neighbouring Sweden enacted voluntary distancing. Pluralism in public discourses could be advantaged while solutions remained uncertain and social and economic disruptions high, in polities with mature democratic and scientific institutions. The empirical analyses show that Denmark's elected leaders and Sweden's leading health scientists publicly represented their respective national responses. Yet in sampled public discourses on highly disruptive policies on school closures and crowding limits, both leaderships focused on ...

Citizens' adherence to deliberative civic values fulfils a vital function in deliberative democratic systems. We propose a way to measure the prevalence and variations of such values as a first step to better understanding how this works. Based on survey data, we demonstrate that, in Sweden, adherence to the values of reasoning and listening is stronger than adherence to the strategic rhetorical, non-deliberative values. This may have important implications for our understanding of how deliberation and democracy work in this particular context. There are also, however, important individual-level variations of adherence to deliberative civic values related to age, education, gender and Swedish background. Taken together, this opens up for a new research agenda where comparative analyses of deliberative civic values and how it relates to political behaviour are particularly encouraged.

What should count as legitimate forms of reasoning in public deliberation is a contested issue. Democratic theorists have argued that storytelling may offer a more accessible form of deliberation for marginalised citizens than 'rational argumentation'. We investigate the empirical support for this claim by examining Swedish citizens' use of storytelling in written communication with the political establishment. We test whether stories are used frequently, as well as by whom, and how they are used. We find that storytelling is (1) rare, (2) not more frequent among people with nonmainstream views, and (3) used together with rational argumentation. In line with some previous research, we show that stories still play other important roles: authorising the author, undermining political opponents and, most often, further supporting arguments made in 'rational' form. The results suggest that people rely more on rational argumentation than storytelling when expecting interlocutors to be hostile to their views.

Distributed, networked learning processes are widely touted as a basis for superior performance. Yet we know relatively little about how learning networks operate in the aggregate. We explore this issue by utilizing a unique data set on learning among Swedish municipalities. The data indicate that geographic proximity and county are the basic structuring properties of the global network. Municipalities learn from their near neighbors, especially from neighbors in the same county, and these two principles produce a high degree of local clustering in the municipal learning networks. At the same time, we also find evidence that Swedish municipalities are a small world linked together on a national basis. Two mechanisms knit the Swedish municipalities together. First, county seats serve as hubs that link local clusters together. Second, local clusters aggregate into regional clusters. Despite a high degree of local clustering, hubs and regions provide a structural basis for the national diffusion of policy ideas and practices among Swedish municipalities.

Do local governments learn from their successful peers when designing public policies? In spite of extensive research on policy diffusion and learning, there is still a lack of studies on how success relates to learning patterns. We address this deficiency by examining which other governments local administrative units draw lessons from. More precisely, we investigate whether public managers learn from the experiences of local governments whose citizens are satisfied with government services. Using a large dyadic dataset on all Swedish municipalities from 2010, we find that senior public managers in local administrations learn from similar local governments and from neighbours. But we also find clear evidence that they learn from local governments whose citizens are pleased with local public services. This indicates that best practices are spread among local governments.

Diversity has powerful advantages, but may also generate internal tensions and low interpersonal trust. Despite extensive attention to these questions, the relationship between diversity and trust is often misunderstood and findings methodologically flawed. In this article, we specify two different mechanisms and adherent hypotheses. An individual might base her decision to trust on her perceived social similarity in relation to others in the community, that is, a similarity hypothesis. However, in a homogenous context, she might expect trustworthy behavior irrespective of her own social position due to signals of low degrees of social conflict and dense social networks, that is, a homogeneity hypothesis. Prior research has pinpointed only one of these mechanisms. The homogeneity hypothesis has not been explicated, and when the intention has been to test the similarity hypothesis, the homogeneity hypothesis has unintentionally been tested instead. The results are straightforward. While the homogeneity hypothesis is strongly supported, the findings speak against the similarity hypothesis.

This article focuses on how institutions matter in generating relationships of trust in an environment of unequal power. Trust is seen as the truster's expectation that the trustee will act trustworthily out of moral commitment and/or interest in continuing the relationship. Using cross-sectional data from a survey conducted in 2006 on Swedish employment relations the authors show that perceived power asymmetries between an employee and his or her superior have a negative impact on trust. However, perceptions about the enforcement and fairness of institutional constraints — rules for dismissal, conflict resolution, wage setting, and promotion — have conditioning effects. When the respondents perceive the rules as fair, trust is less influenced by increasing power asymmetries between an employee and his or her superior. The results have important implications. By designing institutions that are considered fair, distrust may be mitigated even in situations characterized by extensive power asymmetries.

This study tests three hypotheses on data from a survey on employment relations conducted in Sweden in 2006. The first hypothesis implies that the extent to which an employee perceives formal institutions as fair and duly enforced increases the probability that he/she will behave cooperatively. The second hypothesis states that an employee's trust in the opposite party should have equivalent effects. The last hypothesis holds that an employee's perception of formal institutions as fair and duly enforced increases his/her trust in the opposite party. All three hypotheses are supported by the data. The interpretation is that there is indeed an effect on cooperative behavior and willingness to enter into flexible contracts from perceptions of fair and enforced institutions, but it is indirect and mediated by attitudes of trust.