WGA 2020 | Sweden | Conclusions

Conclusions

Question:
Overall, in what ways and with what success has your country implemented a WGA? What would you consider the success factors underpinning a WGA in your country?

Sweden Expert

Lars Niklasson

Senior Researcher, The Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies (SIEPS), Stockholm

Lars Niklasson is a Senior Researcher at the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies (SIEPS) as well as Deputy Professor of Political Science at Linkoeping University. Before joining SIEPS and Linkoeping University, Lars was a Policy Analyst for several Swedish ministries, agencies and consultancies. He is also a National Expert for the OECD. His research focuses on the global role of the European Union, including its relations to Africa and its role in the global implementation of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. He teaches International Political Economy and Comparative Politics with a focus on global challenges and governance. Lars earned a PhD at Uppsala University in 1992, and has been a Visiting Researcher at a number of European and American universities, as well as at the University of Nairobi. His latest book is Improving the Sustainable Development Goals: Strategies and the Governance Challenge (Routledge 2019).

Sweden
Report
PDF

Sweden’s WGA-related policies have been severely criticised. The 2003 policy was investigated by the Agency for Public Management (APM) in 2014, which argued that the goals are too visionary and fail to specify what should be done and by whom. Furthermore, the APM concluded that the policy is too much of a statement on aid policy rather than on a broader spectrum of policies and instruments – in other words, that it isn’t really an example of a genuine WGA. The APM suggested that the other ministries should report on how their policies relate to the common ambitions and how they can contribute further to their achievement. In addition, it said that the inter-ministerial working group has an unclear mission, especially in relation to the home ministries, and it argued that the promotion of certain values in and the development of other countries need to be further supported via standard mechanisms of domestic coordination (which, for example, are more focused on short-term funding). Lastly, the APM noted that more resources must be devoted to fostering better coordination. At the time of writing, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs had one civil servant tasked with coordinating a number of ministries. The coordination function was redesigned in 2015 and 2018, and the biannual reports to parliament were structured along the lines of the SDGs in 2016 and 2018 (Statskontoret 2014).

The 2007 strategy (Regeringens skrivelse 2007a), on the other hand, was investigated by the National Audit Office (NAO) in 2011. This agency argued that the strategy’s goals are too general in that they only indicate which missions Sweden should contribute to rather than what they should achieve. Furthermore, the NAO argued that there should be a comprehensive report on what the missions accomplish that relates to the strategy, noting that it is reasonable to expect the same level of analysis as the government demands for its aid policy. The funding streams are fragmented, the NAO continued, which makes it difficult to control costs. Other criticism were: that only parts of the military-related costs are reported and decided by parliament; that it is unclear what the government expects from collaboration; that the format is insufficiently defined; and that a lack of coordination in the Government Offices leads to a situation in which field officers are left with the task of performing any needed coordination themselves. Lastly, the NAO argued that the Folke Bernadotte Academy has insufficient resources to perform its ambitious mandate (Riksrevisionen 2011).

In 2011, the Agency for Public Management also carried out a general evaluation of the instruments used by the Government Offices to guide its agencies in the area of international development cooperation. The evaluation’s general finding was that there were too many overlapping strategy documents, and that this reduces the overall effect of the messages sent by the cabinet (Statskontoret 2011). Some of the problems have been noted in other reports on the situation in Sweden (see, e.g., Veron and Sheriff 2018; Prontera 2016).

In sum, one can say that Sweden’s instruments of coordination are generally weak compared to the forces for the autonomous pursuit of the goals of individual organisations. These include, for example, the constitutional autonomy of the agencies and the ministries, the results-based management of each organisation, and the lack of staff rotation across ministries and agencies.

Sweden Report