A natural pandemic experiment in Scandinavia : comparing public policies in Denmark, Norway and Sweden in their fight against Covid-19

Abstract

This thesis would seek to examine how Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, three relatively similar countries with a long history of close socialisation and cooperation, suddenly unaligned their public policies, which shaped different economic and health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. To do so, the thesis has adapted a “most similar system design” comparing the three countries along five phases of the pandemic and evaluating their performance with a metric ranging from 1 to 4, depending on the harshness of the individual measures. Throughout this investigation it will encounter a slightly different governance structure in the Scandinavian countries. This is given since Denmark and Norway have a centralised ministerial governance system, with a “main rule” that keeps the agencies dependent on the ministries when implementing policies. Sweden, on the other hand, has a collectively decentralised governance system, with the “main rule” that gives the Swedish agencies independency from the ministries when implementing policies, which separate the Swedish agencies from the ministerial hierarchy. This difference in-between the governance system has therefore allowed investigation to come across three main findings. First, the less influence of the government in the public policies did not necessarily result in a better economic outcome. Second, the lower interference by the government in the public policies resulted in a higher morbidity and mortality. Third, there is a limit as to where the type of public policies implemented has a counterintuitive effect on the economy.