Corporatism and the Politics of Responsibility: The Swedish Model in light of the pandemic2020-2021
2022 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
The thesis will explore press conferences and press releases from the Swedish government during the first and second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Sweden against the background of the Swedish Model of governance. Throughout this research, we will analyse these discourses of high officials in the country in relation to the lived reality of healthcare workers during the pandemic. What role does this discourse play in this context, and what does it say about the meaning of the Swedish Model of governance? Our theoretical approach is based on corporatism, as theorised by Philippe Schmitter, and a critique by Cohen and Pavoncello. Three main concepts were adapted from this theory, ‘cooperation’, ‘exchange’ and ‘control’ and used in our analysis. Our thesis is a descriptive, explorative study of the Covid-19 pandemic, looking at the government discourse and the healthcare sector. The studyis qualitative and used closed coding based on our theoretical framework. The main findings of this thesis are that labour organizations were largely erased from state discourse on managing the pandemic, and that there was a shift between the first and second wave, where corporatist themes overall became less pronounced, and the corporatist structure served as a tool for the central state to diffuse responsibility and assign blame to other actors.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022. , p. 62
Keywords [en]
Sweden, Covid-19, Pandemic, Corporatism, Swedish Model, Healthcare, Elderly Care, Healthcare Workers
National Category
Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalisation Studies)
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hv:diva-18729Local ID: EIS501OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hv-18729DiVA, id: diva2:1677598
Subject / course
Political science
Educational program
International Programme in Politics and Economics
Supervisors
Examiners
2022-08-262022-06-282022-08-26Bibliographically approved