Political parties are indispensable actors in representative democracy. However, trust in parties has declined in many democracies. Ethics management is a potential mechanism for parties to keep or strengthen public trust. Previous research about how parties have developed internal ethics mechanisms to promote organisational integrity is scant. This article explores how Swedish parliamentary parties use ethical strategies to uphold standards of conduct for their members. Sweden is a high trust society, but its citizens perceive risks of corrupt influence as relevant. Amongst representative institutions, parties score the lowest levels of trust. Therefore, Swedish parties are interesting to study in order to understand how they uphold integrity standards and assure voters that they are ethical organisations. We show that parties increasingly use formal ethics guidelines to set integrity standards within their organisations and integrity pledges for candidates. Parties also use relatively well-developed monitoring instruments but reactively rather than proactively. Tools to enforce integrity are few and often concentrated on formal expulsion procedures, which are rarely used. Swedish parties have during the last 15 years incrementally developed their ethics management processes. It remains to be seen to what extent these changes will transcend formal rules and strengthen integrity in the long run.

This chapter has two aims. First, we describe the Swedish authorities’ management of the pandemic in 2020. Their approach deviated markedly from policies pursued in neighbouring countries, with respect to the authorities’ understanding of the virus; the measures adopted to counter the spread of the virus; the reliance on recommendations to citizens rather than legally binding instructions; and, most notably, the extensive delegation of policy-making by the government to a technocratic authority, the Public Health Agency. Second, we try to explain this policy deviation. We show that Swedish constitutional arrangements, with relatively autonomous, policy-delivering agencies, are a necessary but insufficient condition for explaining the outcome. Three additional conditions are needed: assertive leadership within the Public Health Agency; a weak and passive government; and citizens’ trust in public institutions, reflected in rallying around the flag and in supportive media coverage, all which cemented initial policy choices. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Sweden's management of the coronavirus pandemic, beginning in early 2020, has been much discussed because it deviated from other countries' equivalents. Set in the context of scholarly debate about the balance between politicians and experts in political decision-making, we argue that a necessary condition for this case of Swedish exceptionalism was the manner of policy-making adopted by the Swedish authorities. In this article, we describe this policy-making procedure, which involved a radical form of delegation by elected politicians to appointed experts, and seek to explain how it came about. We focus on the 1st year of the pandemic, and use media reports and other public documents, including parts of a public inquiry, as our empirical material.

This article studies two Swedish organizations with key roles in the facilitation and promotion of ethics management vis-à-vis other public-sector organizations. The study offers insights into how organizations combine and prioritize ethics management measures, involve submanagement employees, and consider external stakeholders, in contexts of democratic governance and public concern about corruption. Our findings suggest that these types of bird’s-eye view organizations studied are important as they are in a position less prone to ad hoc scandal-driven responses. They can thus promote strategies that consider a combination of aspects and avoid a narrow rules-based focus.

Storbritanniens styrelseskick förknippas traditionellt med en kraftfull verkställande makt med få inbyggda kontrollmekanismer. Detta brukar benämnas majoritetsdemokrati (eller Westminstermodellen). Utmärkande för styret är en monark som statschef med ceremoniella uppgifter, sammansmältning av den lagstiftande och verkställande makten, parlamentarism som tillsammans med majoritetsvalsystem och tvåpartisystem skapar starka regeringar och territoriet organiserat som en enhetsstat. Konstitutionen brukar beskrivas som ”icke-skriven”, eftersom den inte är kodifierad i en samlad lag med särskild ställning. Flera av styrelseskickets särdrag har dock förändrats mot fler inslag av maktdelning: mellan central och subnationell nivå där folkvalda församlingar i Skottland, Wales och Nordirland över tid tilldelats ökade befogenheter och mellan institutioner, där regeringen och parlamentets traditionella suveränitet har påverkats. EU-utträdet 2020 framhävde ytterligare spänningar i maktdelningen mellan olika styrelsenivåer och ökad diskussion om, och i så fall under vilka former, den nuvarande statsbildningen som en union av ingående delar kan bestå.