No More Political Compromise? Swedish Commissions of Inquiry 1990–2016

Abstract

This article studies recent trends in the composition and uses of Swedish commissions of inquiry in preparing policy for the government. For much of the 20th century, commissions with representatives of major parliamentary parties and other policy stakeholders served as an arena of negotiation and compromise between the government, the opposition parties, and organised interests. Drawing on a unique data set of 2,087 commissions appointed between 1990 and 2016, we show that their representativeness has declined significantly. We also document a significant decrease in the inclusion of politicians and an increase in the presence of civil servants. Governments have also increased their control over commissions by issuing more directives. We further document a dramatic decline of reservations and dissenting opinions in the commission reports. This may be due to a combination of including fewer potentially dissenting voices and restricting commissions' scope. We conclude that commissions are no longer the arenas of compromise‐seeking that they were for most of the 20th century.

The “boy problem” in public policy

“…Arguably, these trends again reflect broader patterns in the implementation of evidence‐based policy making in the two countries (see Karseth et al., 2022). Whereas calls for “evidence” in public policy have contributed to an academization of the Norwegian commission system, including orientation in some commissions toward evidence‐oriented “what works” reviews (Christensen et al., 2022), and influenced review and recommendation practices in parts of the Swedish knowledge regime (e.g., within government agencies), there are few signs that academic experts have consolidated or strengthened their role relative to other actors in Swedish policy advice generally (e.g., Svallfors et al., 2022), within educational policy, or within the SOU system (Dahlström et al., 2020). This sheds light on how the Norwegian School Performance Commission ended up with a mandate and composition that prioritized analyses produced in disciplines such as biology and economics, especially those based on experimental studies promoting strict notions of causality, whereas the Swedish commissions delivered reports anchored in feminist approaches and critical scholarship from the humanities and social sciences and embedded in gender order theory.…”