Researchers have repeatedly found that corruption has a wide range of negative consequences, not least in developing countries where corruption typically constitutes an endemic part of people’s lives. However, much less is known about the prevalence and effects of corruption in mature democracies. While such states regularly find themselves at the top of anti-corruption rankings, they are not immune to corruption scandals related to, for instance, recruitment to public positions, procurement, the issuance of permits, etcetera.

Against this backdrop, some scholars have argued that the size of the corruption problem in mature democracies may be underestimated. One common and underlying argument is that corruption in these settings takes on hidden and ‘sophisticated’ forms that are difficult to expose, hard to prosecute, and therefore, difficult to measure. Accordingly, corruption in mature democracies has largely been downplayed or overlooked, and hence constitutes a blind spot for most practitioners and corruption scholars. That said, when scholars have paid attention to corruption in mature democracies, the tendency has been to focus on theoretical discussions rather than rigorous empirical research. As a result of measurement problems and data limitations, scholars have found it difficult to assess the extent of corruption in settings characterised by more sophisticated forms of corruption.

As a means of addressing this research gap, the overarching purpose of this thesis is to apply research strategies that allow us to quantify the prevalence and potential effects of corruption risks at the micro level in the context of a mature democracy – Sweden. This is achieved by employing large-scale administrative data combined with statistical methods that measure corruption risks at the granular level of individuals, firms, and processes. I maintain that the approaches employed in the thesis have at least two advantages vis-á-vis the lion’s share of existing corruption research: 1) it makes it possible to detect corruption risks in areas where the presence of corruption has previously been downplayed or unknown; and 2) it estimates corruption risks at the micro level, which allows for a more granular understanding of variations in corruption risks, between both municipalities and organisations.

Ultimately, the results of the thesis show the prevalence of corruption risks in the Swedish public sector in the areas of recruitment to public sector jobs, the rental housing market, and public procurement. Moreover, the thesis also shows that perceived corruption in Swedish municipalities is associated with lower levels of entrepreneurship. In line with a decent amount of previous research, the thesis’s main findings support the notion that subnational variations in institutional quality and impartiality are relevant even in mature democracies.

The dominant ‘sand in the wheels’ view holds that entrepreneurship is strongly inhibited by corruption. Challenging this, the ‘grease the wheels’ view maintains that corruption might increase entrepreneurship in highly regulated economies. We extend the basic predictions of these theories by examining entrepreneurs’ start-up decisions, as well as their location choices, in a seemingly low-corruption environment: Swedish municipalities. Combining a validated index of corruption perceptions in local government with population data on new entrepreneurs, nested logit models reveal that even in a low-corruption setting such as Sweden, perceptions of corruption can deter latent entrepreneurs. We also find that a minority of entrepreneurs relocate from their home municipalities to establish their start-ups elsewhere. Surprisingly and contrary to expectations, these relocating entrepreneurs often relocate from relatively low-corruption municipalities to others that are more corrupt. Implications for future research and public policy are discussed.

Previous research has shown that corruption risks may distort market incentives in high-risk contexts. However, there is a dearth of evidence on the potential impact of corruption in settings characterized by low corruption and high-quality institutions. Against that background, this paper delves deeper into the alleged consequences of corruption by examining the link between corruption risks in public procurement and the profitability of firms in the Swedish construction industry. We introduce a novel measure of corruption risk based on the share of single bidder contracts that a firm has won. Validity analysis confirms that our measure is correlated with an alternative corruption measure and local tender winners. Our results reveal that firms that win many single bidder contracts have higher profitability than other firms in the sector: 10 percentage points higher single bidding rate firms have a 0.2–0.6-percentage-point higher sales margin. The findings underscore that public procurement corruption risks distort markets and economic incentives, and that this risk is present even in low-corruption contexts such as in Sweden.

Do kinship ties affect one's chances of acquiring a public sector job and do they, in such cases, trump formal qualifications? These questions have been subject to scrutiny by both scholars and policymakers, but to date, mainly as a result of data limitations, the empirical evidence is scarce and unclear. This paper explores the role played by kinship in relation to qualified administrative public sector jobs in the context of Sweden, an egalitarian society and top-ranked meritocracy. The paper examines whether an individual's chance of acquiring a public sector job increases if one of his/her parents is already employed in the same part of the public sector and/or organisation. The analysis employs detailed register data that contain complete information on kinship relations. It focuses on state agencies and municipalities in Sweden between 2001 and 2016 and explores the mechanisms behind the intergenerational transfer of public sector jobs in an egalitarian and low-corruption setting. The results reveal that the probability of acquiring a job in the state sector in general increases by about 5-6 percentage points when a parent is employed in a qualified position at a state agency. A parental effect, although lower, is also found for employment in the less prestigious local government. This parental effect can in part, be explained by an increased probability of obtaining employment specifically at the parent's agency and by a higher probability of having acquired valuable work experience prior to graduation.  

Sverige anses regelmässigt tillhöra världens bäst fungerande demokratier. Med det sagt tillsätts återkommande statliga utredningar med uppgift att granska demokratins funktionssätt. Inte sällan uppmärksammas problem och utvecklingsområden. Ett område som regelmässigt uppmärksammas är den ökande koncentrationen av uppdrag i händerna på några få individer ute i de svenska kommunsektorn. 

Mot denna bakgrund syftar föreliggande rapport till att undersöka uppdragskoncentration i svenska kommuner. Den gör det genom att kartlägga koncentrationen av politiska uppdrag samt utforska kopplingen mellan organisationsstruktur och uppdragskoncentration. 

Författarna uppmärksammar bland annat att uppdragskoncentration har begränsningar som indikator på maktkoncentration då måttet inte tar hänsyn till ojämlikhet i fördelningen av uppdrag mellan politiker inom en given kommun. Vidare är sambandet mellan kommunstorlek och uppdragskoncentration inte lika tydligt som det kan verka vid första anblick. Författarna framhäver att uppdragskoncentration inte bara är kopplad till kommunstorlek, utan är starkt korrelerad med hur en kommun väljer att organisera sig. Ett viktigt och delvis nytt resultat jämfört med tidigare forskning är sålunda att kommunerna själva har en betydande möjlighet att påverka koncentrationen av uppdrag. 

För att stärka demokratin och öka inslaget av maktdelning i kommunsektorn bör därför lokala partiorganisationer se över sina interna nomineringsförfaranden och kommuner bör noggrant granskar sin egen organisationsstruktur. Båda dessa faktorer påverkar förekomst av uppdragsojämlikhet och koncentration av makt inom kommunen.

Facing the threat of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines are important for limiting the spread and consequences of the pandemic. In this study, we provide a descriptive overview of the within-country variations of vaccine rates by examining to what extent voter turnout , support for an anti-establishment political party (Sweden Democrats), presence of first-generation immigrants, and Evangelical religiosity are associated with the within-country variation in vaccine uptake rates. We use official register data for municipality-level vaccine rates and municipality-level regressions with regional fixed effects. Our analyses show that vaccine uptake, on average, is lower in municipalities where the anti-establishment political party Sweden Democrats has higher vote shares and where a larger share of the population is first-generation immigrants. We discuss that potential explanations for these associations between vote shares for an anti-establishment party and shares of first-generation immigrants could be lower levels of trust in institutions and language barriers.

Local governments are increasingly relying on municipally owned corporations (MOCs) to provide public services. Some describe this development as a rational response to austerity challenges and emphasise the cost-efficiency of MOCs (‘the optimistic view’). Others identify complications and associate MOCs with weak supervision, lack of accountability, and corruption risks (‘the sceptical view’). Hitherto, no studies have analysed these opposing claims on MOCs in the one and same inquiry. We address this gap by focusing on Sweden, which has experienced a dramatic growth in the number of MOCs. We examine the association between the number of MOCs, the business climate, satisfaction with local government, local tax rates, and a corruption index for all 290 Swedish municipalities. Putting the ‘optimistic view’ into doubt, results indicate that municipalities relying heavily on MOCs are associated with more perceived corruption and higher taxes but do not have more satisfied citizens nor a better business climate.

Being elected to a governing body for the first time has been described as both a unique and transforming experience. Accordingly, theorists of elite political socialisation assume that deepened political participation fosters internal political efficacy and satisfaction with democracy. Does this assumption hold for individuals who step up from being grass-root members to become local councillors? In a novel, explorative approach to the question, a longitudinal panel design is employed where perceptions and attitudes of 71 elected and 66 unelected candidates that stood for the 2014 local elections in Sweden are traced over a four-year period. The respondents answered three surveys: right before the 2014 election, mid-term 2016, and close to the 2018 election. We test if the elected newcomers’ internal efficacy and satisfaction with decision-making structures became stronger the more deepened, formal political experience they got. However, this hypothesis is solidly rejected. Contrary to theoretical expectations, strengthened internal efficacy and increased satisfaction with decision-making structures do not follow from four years of formalised political experience as a councillor.

The market-inspired reforms of New Public Management have been particularly pronounced in Swedish local government. Notably, municipally owned enterprises (MOEs) have rapidly grown in numbers. Principal-agent theory gives rise to the hypothesis that the massive introduction of MOEs has impacted negatively on the conditions for accountability in Swedish local government. To study this, social network analysis was employed in mapping networks for 223 MOEs in 11 strategically chosen municipalities, covering a total of 732 politicians. The analysis reveals substantial overlaps between principals (representatives of the ultimate stakeholders, citizens) and agents (the boards of the MOEs). Hence, corporatization of public services seems to imply worrisome entanglements between the politicians who are set to steer, govern, and oversee MOEs on the one hand, and the board members of MOEs on the other. The increasing numbers of MOEs may therefore have adverse effects on accountability in important and growing parts of Swedish local government.

Several scholars have highlighted the idea that energy consumption in general and consumption of renewable energy (RE) in particular may be a potential driver of economic growth. In this paper, we examine the relationship between RE production and economic activity in Canada between May 1966 and December 2015. By applying quantile causality (Troster, 2018), we adopt a nonlinear approach considering all quantiles of the distribution and analysing monthly data consisting of RE production and the Canadian Industrial Production Index (IPI). We find evidence of a nonlinear relationship in Canada, an important result that widely-used linear models fail to capture. Our main findings imply a unidirectional relationship going from the IPI to RE production, which supports the Conservation hypothesis. The directionality between RE and economic growth is sensitive to the market conditions in Canada.

Transparency is recognized as a crucial condition for accountability, good governance and democracy. As right to information (RTI) laws have spread, it has become crucial to ask whether ambitious legislative frameworks translate to de facto transparency. In this article, we test how well local governments in Sweden – a ‘most likely country’ for implementing RTI laws – comply with its comparatively ambitious Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act. As a side effect, we also gauge if New Public Management reforms, exemplified by increased public ownership of enterprises in local government, imply lessened compliance with RTI legislation. Requesting information from 462 randomly selected public administrations and municipally owned enterprises, counterintuitive findings were observed. Fewer than half of the organizations respected the RTI legislation, and no significant differences were found between the public administrations and publicly owned enterprises. The findings have methodological as well as empirical implications. They highlight the importance of not only studying legislative frameworks – as has frequently been done in previous work – but also of analyzing actual implementation of RTI frameworks in everyday situations. Additionally, the findings demonstrate that problems relating to openness can be observed in low corrupt, mature democracies with strong bureaucratic capacity. Lastly, and contrary to conventional wisdom, the findings indicate that publicly owned corporations do not necessarily imply an ‘accountability deficit’.

Offentlighetsprincipen beskrivs ofta som en hörnsten i den svenska demokratin. Den innebär bland annat att journalister och medborgare har rätt till tillgång till information om den offentliga verksamheten i stat, kommun och landsting. Den principen tar sig framförallt uttryck i allmänna handlingars offentlighet. Möjligheten att granska makten på det sättet utgör en viktig förutsättning för ansvarsutkrävande, och ansvarsutkrävande är i sin tur en förutsättning för en välfungerande demokrati. Sålunda kan argumenteras, att om offentlighets-principen inte efterföljs, kan det skada demokratins kvalitet.

Mot den bakgrunden är kommunalt ägda företag av särskilt intresse. År 1995 reformerades möjligheten till insyn i kommunala bolag, så att offentlighetsprincipen också omfattar dem. Lagändringen till trots, har flera studier uppmärksammat hur besvärligt det kan vara för journalister och allmänhet att få ut allmänna handlingar från kommunala bolag. Det är otillfredsställande i ljuset av att kommunala bolag blivit allt fler under perioden 2003–2016, och därigenom fått en ökande betydelse för kommunerna och deras invånare. Att kunna granska offentliga verksamheter som förvaltar stora samhällsvärden är en central förutsättning för ansvarsutkrävande. Det gäller givetvis också verksamheten i kommunalt ägda bolag.

Emellertid dras huvuddelen av tidigare forskning med ett grundläggande metodologiskt problem. Endast de kommunala bolagen har undersökts. Sålunda görs ingen jämförelse med regelefterlevnaden i kommunal förvaltning. Så, visst, vi vet att kommunala bolag inte är särskilt bra på att följa offentlighetsprincipen. Men vi vet inte om förvaltningar är så mycket bättre.

I syfte att justera denna skevhet i tidigare forskning, har vi genomfört ett slags ”stresstest”, där vi har begärt ut allmänna handlingar från både kommunala bolag och kommunala förvaltningar. Våra resultat är något överraskande och går delvis emot standardantaganden om sämre tillgänglighet till information om verksamheten i kommunala bolag. Båda driftsformerna tycks nämligen ha ungefär lika stora problem med att uppfylla kriteriet på skyndsam utlämning av det material vi önskade ha: cirka hälften av båda undersökningspopulationerna klarade inte vår måttstock om skyndsamt hanterande av utlämnandet.

Implikationen av resultaten att man kanske inte enbart ska rikta kritik mot kommunala bolag vad avser öppenhet, insyn och möjlighet till granskning. Givetvis finns förbättringspotential där, det har vi ingen ambition att ifrågasätta. Men kritiken äger större allmängiltighet än så. Trots vackra ord om den svenska offentlighetsprincipen, verkar förvaltningar i praktiken ha brister när det kommer till utlämnande av allmänna handlingar. Rapporten väcker sålunda viktiga och generella frågor om den praktiska och vardagliga efterlevnaden av offentlighetsprincipen.