Easier to walk with the wind in your back : Does irrational public opinion affect the Swedish democracy?

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H Ö G SKO LA N I JÖ N KÖ P I N G

E a s i e r t o w a l k w i t h t h e w i n d i n

y o u r b a c k

Does irrational public opinion affect the Swedish democracy?

Bachelor thesis in Political Science Author: Fredrik Karlsson

Tutor: Benny Hjern

Bachelor thesis in Political Science

Title: Easier to walk with the wind in your back – Does irrational public opinion affect the Swedish democracy?

Author: Fredrik Karlsson Tutor: Benny Hjern Date: January, 2009

Keywords: irrationality, rationality, public opinion, leadership

Summary

In The Myth of the Rational Voter, Bryan Caplan concludes that irrational public opinion leads to bad policies, that are overall bad for the country and the citizens. By irrational public opinion, he essentially means that people have opinions that are plain wrong. By taking a stand against the government based on these faulty opinions, the government is forced to adopt bad policies, in order to stay in power.

By looking at four different cases, I attempt to see if the situation can be deemed to be similar in Sweden, albeit with a different approach to what is rational, than the one used by Caplan. The question I ask is if irrational public opinion forces the government to adopt bad policies? I expand the view of rationality from the economic view to be more consid-erate of other factors and priorities that are very much part of everyday life. The emphazis is on the gathering of information, which is facilitated by widespread access to the Internet and relatively high levels of education. The aspect of leadership, or the possible lack thereof, is also considered.

The examined issues are; The new law about communication surveillance (FRA-lagen), the lowered limit on health insurance, the changes in unemployment compensation and the vote to enter the European Monetary Union. While it can be seen that there were likely ar-guments antagonistic to the viewpoint of the government, they are unlikely to have had any major effect. Instead, the protests that were possibly of any consequence, were typically well-informed, from sources that we would expect to be familiar with the issue at heart. As for leadership, it is more often than not the case that the intentions are good, but the “sales-effort” is lacking. In some aspects, we might even claim that the government failed at its job.

Ultimately, the conclusion we reach is more optimistic than the one Bryan Caplan reached. While it is true that this might be mainly because we use different definitions of rationality and different sources of evidence (and examine different countries), it does not serve to undermine the result. Despite the fact that the cases were chosen on the basis that they were likely to prove the existence of irrationality, they did not.

Content

1

Introduction ... 1

2

Rationality ... 5

2.1 Alternatives and utility. ... 5

2.2 Information. ... 6

3

The role of leadership ... 9

4

The questioned issues ... 11

4.1 New law about communication surveillance (FRA-lagen) ... 12

4.1.1 The issue ... 12

4.1.2 Arguments in favour. ... 14

4.1.3 Arguments against. ... 15

4.1.4 Conclusion ... 16

4.2 Lowered limit on health insurance ... 16

4.2.1 The issue. ... 16

4.2.2 Arguments in favour ... 17

4.2.3 Arguments against ... 18

4.2.4 Conclusion ... 19

4.3 Changes in unemployment insurance (a-kassa) ... 20

4.3.1 The issue ... 20

4.3.2 Arguments in favour ... 21

4.3.3 Arguments against ... 22

4.3.4 Conclusion ... 22

4.4 The vote to enter the European Monetary Union ... 23

4.4.1 The issue ... 24 4.4.2 Arguments in favour ... 24 4.4.3 Arguments against ... 25 4.4.4 Conclusion ... 26

5

Analysis... 27

6

Conclusion ... 29

References ... 30

1

Introduction

The idea for this bachelors thesis came to be as I came across the work of Bryan Caplan. In his book The Myth of the Rational Voter, he claims that democracy is perhaps not as great as we would like to think. On the premise of economic rationality and supported by empirical data from a survey made in the Washington Post in 1996, called the SAEE, he determines that democracies make bad and often detrimental policy choices (Caplan, 2007). This is be-cause of pressure from public opinion, that is systematically biased in relation to econo-mists opinions. Meaning that, on the basis of economic rationality, voters behave irrational and force their government to respond with bad policies, because that is what the public believe works. Leaders are forced to balance what the public think works and what actually works (Caplan, 2007, p. 162).

While Capan makes an interesting argument and based on the viewpoint that is naturally adopted by an economist, plenty of evidence is offered to support his claim. The debate of what constitutes rational behaviour based on different aspects is not, however, one that is given much room in Caplan’s book. Caplan has chosen the economic approach because economics is a the dominating issue on any modern democracy’s agenda. While he might be correct, the economic and public choice theory of rationality seem to be at odds with reality, when it comes to explain the behaviour of voters. The paradox of voting (Mueller, 2003; Evans, 2003) is one example of where the theories do not quite add up, while there are plenty of attempts to reconcile this problem.

Regardless of what complaints one might have about the framework being used and whether it agrees with the “common man”, an interesting idea is raised by Caplan; Do de-mocracies make bad policy choices because the people want them to? Based on Caplan’s research, which is focused on the USA, the answer is yes. The argument is that if politicians and economist were given free roam in their areas of expertise, society would be better off (Caplan, 2007). Is this true for other countries, and more specifically Sweden?

We often pride ourselves with the Swedish democracy, and according to organizations such as Freedomhouse, which gives us top-scores (Freedomhouse, 2008), rightfully so. With Caplan’s argument in mind, though, we could wonder if our democracy is as universally good as many would like to think. One might refer back to Freedomhouse and say, “no, our democracy is surely the greatest, as we have been given high scores on civil liberties, political rights and such!”. The essence of Caplan's argument lies, however, in that fact. It is the public pressure on the government, which presumably would like to stay in power, that leads to a kind of output that is less than optimal, due to biased beliefs of the population. Due to this, we have here an interesting area of study that deserves attention. We might have all the rights and freedoms in the world, but if we as a voters and as human beings make bad, or even irrational, choices we can ask ourselves just how good things are. This question requires us to dig deeper into a few areas. What constitutes and appropriate defi-nition of rationality? What responsibility does leaders have? Can we find evidence of the Swedish democracy “producing” policies or decisions from the government that are, shall we say, less than optimal?

1.1 Background

The two main fields that this thesis concerns, rationality and leadership, both have a long and rich history of previous literature. The concept of rationality and what constitutes ra-tional behaviour has been reflected upon by people like Anthony Downs, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud. With this I am not saying, however, that they shared the same opinion. Some of the difficulty here lies in the fact that there is a myriad of different opinions on what constitutes rationality and rational behaviour. Downs, who finds his basis in economic theory, states that rational behaviour is when an individual uses as little input as possible for as much output as possible, in accordance with the knowledge available to him (Downs, 1957). This must be interpreted as a positive view of what is rational. In con-trast to this, Nietzsche displays, in his book Beyond Good and Evil, that he holds a certain de-gree of contempt for rationality and rational “knowledge”. He believed it to be potentially blinding to the intellectual works of man and that it could restrict us to habitual behaviour, proving to be detrimental to our progress. Still, he also recognized rationality as a principal tool in mankind’s survival (Nietzsche, 1990). I will go deeper into relevant research done on rationality when developing the model I will use in this thesis, but I felt it is important to initially show that there will be differences of opinion on a matter such as this, and as such, a certain degree of debate and disagreement is always to be expected.

Perhaps one of the most famous works on leadership was done by Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote what is essentially a handbook for leaders, the Prince. His work has inspired many, and a re-imagination of his work was made in 2003 by Carnes Lord, called Modern Prince: What Leaders Need to Know Now. In this book it is explained why leadership is impor-tant, as it fulfils symbolic necessities as well as provides an important venue for authorita-tive decision making, it is vital in times of difficulty and it co-ordinates political knowledge in relation to political business (Lord, 2003). What has been a dominant view for a while is the “power-school”. That is, politicians and the like struggle to get into a position as leaders for the sake of acquiring and maintaining power. While one may find plenty of historic ex-amples of such leaders and literature that argues in favour of this, there are some notable points of criticism. First, there are also examples of people we would call leaders that are not in possession of any kind of power that comes with being in any high political office. Examples like Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mohandas Gandhi. Additionally, the power-school has received criticism for not being able to satisfactory explain what is expected of leaders. To merely define leadership as en exercise in power is to say that pieces are being moved, but we have no idea about why (Mughan & Patterson 1992).

1.2 Problem

There are a few questions we need to ask ourselves, but the main one is this: Is the respon-siveness of the Swedish government in relation to the population of such a character that biased public opinion leads to the creation and implementation of bad policies, alternatively the rejection of good ones, and consequently is the population in a sense, irrational? The answer to this question is heavily dependent of a few things and many of them are, unfor-tunately, rather normative. The outcome is perhaps mostly dependent on what definition of rationality we mean to apply. The answer will be different, should we use theories of economic rationality, than if we would use a theory that takes matters such as social aspects or ethical standpoints in mind. Basically, from an economic standpoint we would almost exclusively attempt to maximize our utility when choosing where we stand on any political issue or where we cast our vote in an election. It is on this premise that Caplan declares that voters are irrational. If we assume that at a degree of loss of personal utility we are

of-fered some kind of personal satisfaction by improving the situation for others and we act while being perfectly aware of this, one can make the argument that this is rational as well. Thus we must first ask what constitutes rationality. Relevant is also the roll of our leaders, as they are the ones we have elected to, paternalistic as it may sound, protect us and have our best interest in mind. It is, however, also expected that our leaders heed our wishes to the greatest extent possible, and come election time they are punished should we feel they have failed us. So is the role of leaders in a modern democracy to strictly follow public opinion, in which case however bad a policy choice may be, as long as it is supported by the people, we can claim success. Or is it so that the role of leaders is to do what they pre-sumably do best and that they should be allowed to make decisions with the best of society in mind, regardless of how the general population feel about it (and whatever reason for feeling that way there may be)?

Depending on the answer we choose, because we do choose the answers as they are merely as good as their argument and not inherently right or wrong, the answer to our main ques-tion is affected. Depending on our definiques-tion of raques-tionality we can determine whether the public is opposed to the actions of the government based on rational arguments or irra-tional ones. That is, are they justly opposed or is this a result of biased beliefs? Furthermore is it the job of our leaders to make sure that we understand when and why we might be wrong, something few like to hear? Subsequently, we might be looking at a failure of the people in our democratic nation or a failure of our democratically elected leaders and in the end perhaps a failure in democracy itself.

In sum, we have three questions: What is rational?

What is the role of leaders?

Has “popular irrationality” lead to the Swedish democracy making bad choices?

1.3 Purpose

The purpose of this essay is to look into the existence of a potentially troubling element in modern democracy. By no means do I intend to refute Caplans theory that democracies choose bad policies, nor do I intend to show any kind of detrimental trend. Any attempt to battle Caplans fundamental theory or results in this study would not only be ill-founded, but inappropriate, as I mean to adopt the underlying idea to a different situation with a dif-ferent model of rationality and difdif-ferent sources of evidence. As for trying show a harmful trend in the Swedish democracy, it is well beyond the scope of this thesis.

Rather, the purpose is to give an initial glance at what could be a problem. Problem in a sense that if the theory should prove correct, that biased beliefs have a harmful impact on decision-making, we could be looking at a vicious circle. Habitual beliefs, regardless of how biased they are, find strength in tradition and conformity derived thereof, and thus, the longer such a belief is allowed to have an impact on the decision-making process, the greater the potential damage and the harder to battle.

As such, I would hope that by the end of the thesis, there are grounds for debate and fur-ther consideration of the matter.

1.4 Method

In order to answer the questions stated in chapter 1.2, I will first formulate a definition of rationality that is appropriate to the issue we are interested in. I find that the strictly eco-nomic approach employed by Caplan in his book is somewhat awkward in its application, with issues like perfect information and the voting paradox. Because of this I will briefly review some different approaches to rationality, in order to explain and motivate my choice of a model to use in this thesis.

By going into leadership in a similar fashion, with some review of existing research and dif-ferent strengths and weaknesses, I will make arguments about the role of leadership. This will be important for the final discussion on potential failures of our democracy.

In tackling the main issue, that is the output of the Swedish democracy and whether it is good or could be better had the voters taken a more rational position on the subject, I will focus on a few cases in which the proposals put forth by the government suffered critique from the the public. This is because these are the instances in which we would expect a competent government to have made suggestions with the best of society in mind, but the public failed to share their understanding of the matter. By looking into the arguments made by the government and those opposing the issue, and hopefully be able to deduce which side was most likely correct, we can draw conclusions as to the “output of our de-mocracy”. That is, did the government buckle under the pressure, even though the pro-posal would have increased the overall quality or well-being of the Swedes.

Several sources of information will be used to answer the questions we pose. In order to define rationality and leadership, literature on these subjects are studied. Among others, the classic work of Anthony Downs. As for the examined issues, the bulk of the information will be retrieved from official web sites, such as the web site of the Swedish Government. Additionally, news articles will be used to shed some light on public opinion and reactions in relation to the questioned issues.

Should we find that the arguments were flawed (based on our model of rationality from chapter two), but that relentless public pressure lead to the government backing down on what they wanted to do, we have evidence of less than optimal output on irrational grounds and can claim that the democracy is, in a sense, flawed.

1.5 Disposition

Thus, in chapter two I will go into the concept of rationality and formulate the definition that will be used when answering the questions I ask in this essay. I will briefly look into different approaches to rationality and their strengths/weaknesses in order to explain and motivate my choice of model.

In chapter three I turn my attention to leadership in modern democracies. Here, as well, I will look at some different approaches in order to adopt an appropriate standpoint on the role of leaders as it will be relevant in the discussion about the results later on.

Finally I will in chapter four deal with the issues in which I hope to find evidence to sup-port or refute the claim that irrationality in the general public cause democracies to adopt bad policies. For each case, arguments in favour and against will be reviewed, in order to reach a conclusion concerning the issue.

In chapter five I will briefly review the main characteristics of the cases in order to discuss whether they serve to support or refute the question, as well as possible ambiguities. All this pave the way for chapter six, in which I answer the question, based on the four cases that we will go through.

2

Rationality

As it is not possible to construct and defend any form of universal model for human ra-tionality, it is necessary in a thesis such as this one to clearly define the framework from which we derive our model. An inherent problem with any subject that touches upon ra-tionality is that the model and the arguments can be tailored to fit the situation and the purposes of the writer. It is thus also necessary to clearly state the arguments and thought-process that has led to the choice. As a consequence, I will in this chapter primarily focus on the reasoning behind the stipulation of the criteria for rationality that will be used.

2.1 Alternatives and utility.

We will start by adopting some assumptions that were stipulated by Anthony Downs in his book An Economic Theory of Democracy. Here he defines economic rationality as an individual who seeks to maximize utility, using as little input as possible, and adds five criteria (Downs, 1957, p.6):

1. When faced with a list of alternatives, the individual can always make a decision. 2. The list of alternatives are ranked according to the individuals preferences.

3. The ranking is transitive. That is option 1 ranks higher than 2, and this he will also prefer option 1 over option 3, and so on.

4. The alternative chosen will always be the one that is ranked highest according to the preferences.

5. When the same situation is repeated, the same choice will be made continually. While these criteria are used by Downs in his economic model, it does not follow that they are only relevant to models that adhere strictly to an economic sense of rationality. We will be using the five criteria in our model of rationality. This is because we assume that an in-dividual has an idea of his/her desires and will make choices accordingly. For the sake of simplicity we eliminate the idea of indecisiveness with nr.1, but that does not exclude inac-tivity, as this might be a valid option in relation to whatever situation we are faced with. What is important to notice is that the actor here chooses to not act, rather than being unable to decide how to act and thus does nothing.

Then there is the matter of maximizing utility. We should be careful not to relate utility ex-clusively to personal or economic gain. In an economic context utility is typically viewed as “gain” or “benefit”, but there are situations where this way of thinking makes it hard to ex-plain the rationality of certain actions. In this thesis, utility is characterised more by the idea of the “good” that an action produces, as well as the satisfaction that an individual might receive, even though it was due to a personal loss of some kind.

This leads us to the idea that there are not only reasons governed by objective interests or needs (desire-independent reasons) but also reasons that are altruistic, in the sense that they

are derived from whatever desires or values we possess. Joshua Gert, previous lecturer at Johns Hopkins University and currently associate professor at Florida State University De-partment of Philosophy, provides the example that it is not irrational for a person to save others at the cost of his own life, should his motivation to save them be strong enough (Gert, 2004). Perhaps it is because it is easiest to make sense of the idea when the example includes something as admirable as the desire to save and protect another human life, but by the logic of the argument this is by far not the only situations where such “extreme” be-haviour can take place. In the example it was the individuals motivation to save other peo-ple that led to him sacrificing his own life. Hence it was not the reason which influenced the decision, but the motivation the individual had to see the objective realized. By this logic the reason is not necessarily something so grandeur, as long as the motivation is strong enough and the alternatives offer no other way out. The point is that it is important not to brand behaviour as irrational because the objective is at odds with our own percep-tion of what is important, and thus we will focus our discussion of rapercep-tionality and irrapercep-tion- irration-ality on the means, rather than the ends, which is also what Downs did in his model, be-cause of the difficulty to test behaviour in relation to the results. We do, however, need to know the intended results in order to determine what behaviour is rational or not (Downs, 1957).

As such, we have a second criteria for our model of rationality. An individual will act to maximize perceived utility, in accordance with the desires held by the individual. I say per-ceived utility because it goes beyond (but includes) the quantifiable gains of money or some such, and into personal gain in the form of satisfaction derived from doing what is per-ceived to be “right”, be it at the personal loss, like money or even life.

2.2 Information.

One of the main issues here is to make an appropriate decision on how much information we would expect a rational person to want to acquire. There are a number of factors that influence the individuals motivation and possibility to acquire and process information, and this must be taken into account. According to Martin Harrop and William L. Miller there are three reasons why people think about politics at all; understanding, social adjustment and self-expression (Harrop & Miller, 1987, p. 102). Understanding is described as the need to make sense of the information received through the media, concerning the political process and related matters, in order to understand the process itself and what role we play in it as voters. It is, however, often the case that we seek information that supports and confirms what we already believe, as well as new information. The second function serves a more non-political purpose and is less clear. The function of social-adjustment is the proc-ess of social acceptance, based on shared beliefs and values. An example of this is given by Harrop & Miller, in the case of families and how shared opinions appear within a family. Thirdly, the function of self-expression reflects how politics can be used to give a means to express sides of ourselves. For example, one might chose to support the Green Party and thus indicates environmental values. Should an individual not be particularly involved in politics, this typically means that the need for social-adjustment is greater than the need for self-expression (Harrop & Miller, 1987).

If we consider this for a minute we can find that there are two needs that encourages the acquisition and processing of information while there is one that perhaps merely encour-ages acceptance of presented “facts”. The need to understand and the need for self-expression would be the two that encourages information-seeking to a higher degree. The need to understand should appear as self-explanatory, as we can not claim to attempt any

form of understanding should we not also attempt to acquire all (or a satisfactory amount) of information concerning the subject. In relation to this we can make the jump to self-expression, as we would assume anyone that seeks to express a side of his/her personality, to seek information concerning appropriate ways to do so. In contrast to this, social-adjustment does not really require a high degree of accuracy in information received, as the need does not reflect the need to understand a particular set of information or individually identify the part of the political sphere that I am likely to “belong” to. Rather, the informa-tion we would expect to be subjected to here is what flows from the group with which we desire to belong. As a consequence, we would in this case expect a higher degree of “faith”, rather than active processing of information, be it in favour of or antagonistic to the social group we wish to belong to. The difficulty here is telling what affects an individuals motiva-tion to do research and how much.

We should not, however, expect any major efforts from the average person to find and process any larger amounts of information to make an informed and “correct” choice in political matters. This is because understanding, while to some degree encouraging re-search, does not extend beyond grasping the very basics. Once a rudimentary idea of how the system works and what function you fill in it, the motivation to move on and deal with other everyday issues that occupy a more central area of focus is greater than ever. Fur-thermore, it is no secret that some just do not care about politics at all, and to most it is merely a peripheral issue. As for self-expression, the gathering of information is likely to stop once a field of politics that is to the persons liking has been discovered. At this point it is not unreasonable to expect biased information to be adopted and perhaps perpetuated. Social adjustment, as stated, hold little reason to go above and beyond the call of duty, so to speak. The idea that the hunt for proper information is often performed poorly is sup-ported by literature on Swedes mentality, such as time-perception and the idea of activity (Harrop & Miller, 1987).

According to anthropologist and ethnologist Gillis Herlitz there is a great emphazis on ac-tivity and being active. This is a demand that has only risen in importance as the choices available to us have increased. In addition to this, time is typically considered to be very important and not to be wasted. It is perceived as very professional to be able to properly plan your time, and this, in combination with pressure to be a good citizen, be active and not loiter around, helps in explaining the low effort people can be expected to make to gather information on political affairs. Not only is it likely to be, to some extent, a waste of time should it not be related to the individuals occupation, but it would be a waste of time that we do not have, or are not “supposed” to have(Herlitz, 1992). There are also theories that some degree of political indoctrination might have taken place in Sweden, after long periods of control by the social democratic party. This is supposedly because of a low de-gree of anxiety or emotionality in Swedish traditional culture, as well as a focus on practi-cality and empiricism (Daun, 1996). While this is not something that I intend to elaborate on, it could indicate a certain degree of “habitual content”, which would mean that people trust those in power or at least trust them to do an adequate job, and thus the interest in politics is, to some degree, not necessary.

Recently mentioned are factors that could show how the interest in politics can be ex-pected to be low and the same can be said about the effort made by people to become well-informed. This is important to take into consideration, but the mere formulation of the question in this thesis takes the edge of this problem, at least a bit. This is because the ones that would be in focus here are those with an outspoken interest in politics (or at least some parts of the agenda) as they are either openly arguing for or against a proposition or

decision made by those in power. The logic here is that anyone who openly takes a stand for or against an issue on the political agenda, can reasonably be expected to have an inter-est great enough to, at least, gather information relevant to the issue. Still, it may be the case that the search for information will primarily be to find evidence to support the al-ready existent opinion or viewpoint. We will take the liberty to assume that a rational agent will make at least a minimal effort to control acquired information and maybe even look for contradictory information, through different sources. This is made easier, and thus more expected, by access to the Internet.

According to the Statistics Central Bureau (SCB) in Sweden, as of 2005 about 73% of Swedish households have access to the Internet and some 57% use it daily (Statistiska cen-tralbyrån, 2005) . This places Sweden third among the Nordic countries that are generally considered to have a very high general access to the Internet and as follows, easily accessi-ble information is just a little short of everywhere, perhaps redundant. With such an amount of easily accessible information, in addition to regular newspapers, television news broadcasts and radio, we should be able to feel relatively safe in the assumption that any-one with an interest in a political issue will go to some lengths to become informed in the matter. As the cost of becoming informed, in the form of lost time and some such, be-comes lower when it bebe-comes easier to access information fast. Thus we borrow yet an-other list of steps from Downs theory of rationally deciding how to vote. Note that Down’s original list is for how to make rational decisions on what political party to vote for. Because of this, the steps have been slightly modified to be more appropriate to the everyday situations when we might be faced with decisions from the government which we want to find out if we are in favour of, or opposed to, by gathering relevant information. The main steps are as follows:

1. Gathering information relevant to the decision that will be, or has been, made. 2. Selecting the relevant information from what has been collected.

3. Analyze the information to come up with alternatives and their consequences, based on facts.

4. Estimate the consequences of every alternative in relation to the goals. This is an estimate based on the values of the individual doing the estimation, and not strictly a factual estimate.

5. Actually taking position for or against the issue.

To further our expectations on information gathering, we will briefly turn our attention to education. This is because education is typically considered to have a positive effect on both quantity and quality of political thinking. Particularly higher education has been ob-served to have a notable effect on political thinking, knowledge and sophistication (Harrop & Miller, 1987. p. 103). In 2007, between the ages of 16 and 74, the amount of the popula-tion with an educapopula-tion on a college level or above, was little above 30% (Statistiska central-byrån, 2008). While this is by no means a majority, it is a relatively large portion of the population and a reason for us to have slightly higher expectations on information a ra-tional person would gather. Both in aspects of quantity and quality.

In summary, we have a few expectations that we will be making about a rational agent. 1. A rational agent will act in order to maximize perceived utility, or benefit. The

rea-sons that arise from this can be evaluated as desire-independent rearea-sons as well as altruistic reasons, depending on the situation and the motivations of the individual. 2. A rational agent has a clear list of preferences (detailed on page 5).

3. A rational agent will make an effort to gather and process information (see above) relevant to the area of interest, prior to forming an opinion, alternatively, change his opinion as more information changes the situation.

3

The role of leadership

We will now briefly turn our focus on the role of leadership and to what extent it can be expected to lower the demands we can reasonably have on “regular” citizens, as far as po-litical knowledge and decisions are concerned. This is, of course, because we elect leaders to make decisions for us and, hopefully, we have elected competent people to do so. The purpose of this chapter is to try to shed some light on how much potential blame can be shifted from the public to the leaders (or vice versa), as we consider democracy to be a process in which no single side can be blamed for mishaps, except in some exceptional cases. As far as a definition of leadership goes, there is no universally agreed upon defini-tion. There are, however, two characteristics that are typically agreed upon (Mughan & Pat-terson, 1992, p.13):

1. Leadership is a relationship between one or more individuals who can/do exercise influence and one or more individuals who submit to that influence.

2. This relationship is best studied within the framework of the dynamics of group in-teraction.

“… the prince should […] determine to avoid anything that will make him hated or de-spised” (Machiavelli, 1999, p.58). This quote from Niccolò Machiavelli’s classic book The Prince, neatly sums up the premise that allows us to ask the question, if public (biased) opin-ion is detrimental to “democratic output”. That is, that leaders allow for decisopin-ion to be made on faulty grounds to avoid being disliked, or even hated, by the public. It is true that Machiavelli to a greater degree meant for this advice to be a safeguard against conspirators, something we would think to be rare in modern Sweden, but the advice nevertheless holds firm: It is to some extent in a leaders best interest to avoid being disliked. The question we must ask ourselves is; To how great an extent can a leader just do what the public believes is right, whether it is or not, and when must he suffer criticism to do what is right? It is ar-gued that leaders must find a balance between doing what the public think works and what actually works (Caplan, 2007, p. 162). This is because if the leader solely makes his deci-sions based on public opinion, which we expect to be incorrect more often than “profes-sional opinion”, then he will eventually be accused of incompetence and is unlikely to stay in power. Conversely, if a leader chooses to base his decisions solely on his and other ex-perts “enlightened” opinion, the lack of responsiveness to public opinion will lead to him being disliked by the public and, once again, he should not expect to be re-elected.

There are variations of the idea that democratically elected leaders base their conduct uni-versally on public opinion, which basically state that we can not expect them to be “lead-ers” in the sense that we would normally expect, as they would merely be reacting to what

the polls say. There are, however, those that claim that the modern politician, with an ever greater access to polls on public opinion, attempt to shape it rather than simply reacting to it. Another part of the argument is that politicians have become better at manipulating pub-lic sentiment to their advantage and because of this, in a sense, less responsive (Lord, 2003, p.216). Carnes Lord, professor of military and naval strategy in the Strategic Research De-partment of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the U.S. Naval War College, details three different styles a leader can utilize in order to affect the political environment, in his book The modern prince. The styles are bargaining, opinion leadership and hidden-hand lead-ership.

Bargaining implies that one maintains power by means of brokering various interests and form coalitions. This is a style observable in political parties and such. Opinion leadership is sometimes referred to as “going public” (Lord, 2003, p.217). It means a closer relation-ship between the politician and public opinion rather than relying heavily on parties and elected leaders. The approach has gained momentum in later years, partly because of mass-media, but there are risks in using it. Among others, by clearly siding with public opinion the room for manoeuvres, or the “wiggle-room”, the politician has available to him, can decrease significantly. Furthermore, should a politician regularly appeal to the public, it might cause the weakening of the legitimacy of other governmental branches, as the public understands it. The hidden-hand approach is what the name implies. Here the leader at-tempts to steer events more by suggestion and subtle atat-tempts to direct other political play-ers. This would mean that while the underlying reason for something to happen might be the man on top, the credit can be redirected to someone else. This would serve a number of purposes, such as keeping the exact role of the person in question somewhat unclear, in-creasing the potential room for manoeuvres. Still it might come at the cost of the leader be-ing seen as not in charge, and might make the situation needlessly difficult , should he be faced with a more direct political challenge. (Lord, 2003).

While this supplies us with some tactics that we should be mindful of as we look closer at various cases to answer the question of this thesis later on, there are some problems with them as well. The most apparent one, being the hidden-hand approach. This is because if done well, we would expect the “mastermind” of whatever situation we are examining to remain in the shadows, hidden from us. Speculating about who is really to blame or praise for a situation does us little good, and because of this we will only keep this third approach in the back of our heads. If there has been any form of bargaining or appeal to public opin-ion, however, should be easier to detect, due to public records and since opinion leadership is a key part in the question, evidence of this will be sought in all cases.

We have yet to address a more overarching purpose or characteristic of leadership. James MacGregor Burns, emeritus professor at Williams College, Massachusetts, and recipient of the Pulitzer price and National Book Award in 1971, defined leadership as follows: Leaders are to induce followers to act for the realization or satisfaction of the goals that represent the values and motivations (including wants, needs, expectations and so on) of both leaders and followers. What defines a good leader is the ability to recognize the shared values and motivations of leaders and followers, and act upon these. A key concept here is thus, pur-pose, which is also one of the two essentials of power, as defined by Burns. The other es-sential of power is resources (Mughan & Patterson, 1992).

Burns’ definition have received some criticism because his idea of leadership excluded some characters that we would usually call leaders. Burns excluded Hitler and Staling from the category of leaders, and instead labelled each as an “absolute wielder of brute power” (Mughan & Patterson, 1993, p.35). The critics point out that even leaders such as Hitler

and Staling had a number of supporters at the time, which makes sense, since we can not expect anyone to rise to power and influence so many, single-handedly. Also, authoritarian and dictatorial styles of leadership must not be excluded from any form of leadership ap-proach to politics, according to critics. This is, however, a matter that we must only give some marginal attention, as whatever severity the criticism might hold, is negated by the is-sue at hand. We do not seek to formulate a model of leadership that is universally applica-ble. What we are primarily interested in is the form of leadership that we would expect to see in Sweden, and even if we expanded our focus beyond that, it would be to countries similar to Sweden. It would not alter the scope of the concepts, but merely the access to cases and the need to make cultural adaptations, should there be major differences.

What this means is that there are two main areas of interest to us as we consider leadership and what part it has played in the cases we study later on.

1. What was the purpose of the proposition or decision that was made by the government? This will be evaluated with Burns’ definition of leadership as a basis. That is, if we can find evidence that the purpose, or the planned end-result of the matter, is not a goal that can reasonably be argued to be shared by both the power holders and the general population, then we must draw the conclusion that criticism is more likely to be correct, and that the leaders have failed. Should we find that the purpose indeed is/was in the best interest of all, and can reasonably be argued to be a shared goal, the we must ask ourselves why things progressed the way they did. Is it a failure in communicating the purpose? Is it a result of public irrationality, leading to the pub-lics failure in recognizing the potential good in the situation, despite the best efforts in making this clear?

2. What leadership style can we see at work here? If we were to find some kind of over-whelming evidence that the politicians have employed opinion leadership, we will be inclined to assume that potential irrationality from the public has been allowed to affect political decision more than would perhaps have been necessary. This is also relevant to the efforts made in “marketing” a proposition as a positive thing. Since the priority can be assumed to have been pleasing the public and not attempt-ing to shape public opinion, or correct mistakes.

4

The questioned issues

In this chapter we aim to examine a few cases in order to find evidence that either support or refute the underlying question. These are cases in which a cursory glance at the situation can lead us to believe that the problem we are concerned with, if it is indeed a problem, has been a factor. Strictly speaking, while we will look at more than one case, finding evidence to support that irrationality might have caused the “democratic output” to be detrimental, in one way or the other, in just one case is enough. Because at that point we have found evidence to suggest that this is a matter that is very much existent, and since we by no means seek to show the extent of the problem, or long-term impact, we could, in principle, stop there. For the sake of argument, however, we will take more than one case into con-sideration.

For every case there will initially be a brief section on the situation that has sparked debate. Once the essentials of the situation has been dealt with, we will move on to review the ar-guments that has risen from both sides of the issue. The arar-guments will be described and discussed in order to determine if they are valid. The point here is to attempt to determine

which side is “correct”, in a sense. This will primarily be determined through application of the rationality model, stipulated before. There are, however, some initial considerations that we must make.

The main one, again, being about information and how much we should assume a rational agent to acquire and process. We will not go beyond expecting an agent to gather funda-mentally important data. For example, in an issue concerning economics, we would expect an agent to study the fundamental economic principle or model (if there is one specified), relevant to the issue. Going into long-term effects, making regressions, and some such that can be deemed only for professional economist (that is, people with time, resources and perhaps even a job that requires them to do so) will not be deemed necessary.

It is thus our intent to, at the end of each case, draw conclusion about whether or not irra-tionality and poor leadership has been part of the discussion and affected the outcome.

4.1 New law about communication surveillance (FRA-lagen)

Note first that this issue differs somewhat in it’s characteristics, compared to those that a case should have, as stipulated previously in this thesis. Contrary to what we stated before, this is a proposition that was, eventually, passed in parliament, despite much criticism from the public. The main premise remains, however, that we can perform a closer examination of the arguments for and against, and it also offers us an opportunity to see how leadership is not always opinion-oriented.

4.1.1 The issue

On March 8, 2007, Proposition 2006/07:36 was submitted to parliament for consideration. The proposition concerned changes in the legislation that deals with defence intelligence activities, and suggested changes in the form of four new laws, mainly relevant to old laws (Regeringens proposition 2006/07:36, 2007, p. 6):

1. Changes in the law about defence intelligence activity (2000:130).

2. Law about communication surveillance for defence intelligence activities and pur-poses.

3. Changes in the law about electronic communication (2003:389). 4. Changes in the Official Secrets Act (1980:100).

In essence, the changes was suggested to facilitate the possibility to perform surveillance of various means of electronic communication (such as e-mail and cellular telephones), in or-der to protect Sweden and it’s interests from terrorist activity. One main part of this being the change from performing intelligence activity only in the case of “foreign military threat”, to the more general, in case of “foreign threat”.

While the intent has always been proclaimed as the prevention of terrorist activity and possible threats to Swedish military forces in regions of conflict, it sparked an outcry of protest, both from “regular citizens” and various interest groups and opposing political parties. The main concern was that through this law, the Defence Radio Facility (Försvarets radioanstalt, FRA), would be given the legal authority to perform surveillance on regular people that were in no way suspected of committing any crimes. This would imply a breach of personal integrity, deemed by many to be unacceptable. In addition to this, it was

claimed that the law would be in violation of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

The wave of criticism did force the government to make a series of compromises and some changes to the original proposition. The proposition was passed in parliament on June 18, but sent back to the Defence committee, in order to make an assessment of some changes, deemed necessary by parliament. These suggested complements included further specifica-tion of when to employ such surveillance, how the informaspecifica-tion would be disposed of and the creation of a court-like organ, to make decisions about the terms concerning actual people, as well as give permission to actually do the surveillance (Riksdagen, 2008).

Consequently, on September 25th_{, the coalition in power released a message, stating what} they had agreed to “improve”, based on the suggestions made by parliament on the 18th _of June. The changes was comprised of 15 points of improvements (Stadsrådsberedningen , 2008):

1. Further specification of when communications surveillance can be employed. 2. The permission to perform surveillance shall be tried in court.

3. The Defence Radio Facility (henceforth referred to as FRA) shall apply for per-mission concerning ALL surveillance, even when performed on behalf of the needs of the government.

4. FRA will only have access to the “traffic lanes” specified by the court.

5. FRA may not perform surveillance when both sender and receiver is situated in Sweden.

6. Only surveillance ordered by the government, cabinet office or national defence forces may be performed.

7. An investigation will be made to determine the law enforcement’s need for intelli-gence.

8. Search criteria directly linked to a specific physical person may not be used with-out special permission.

9. Further details about the rules concerning the disposal of information will be an-nounced.

10. The independence of controlling authorities as well as the possibilities for a legal control of activities will be re-enforced.

11. An obligation to notify an involved individual is included.

12. If requested by an individual, the controlling authorities shall investigate if the surveillance of said individual was within the legal framework.

13. If information pertaining to a consultation with religious leaders (själavårdande samtal) is acquired by FRA, it should immediately be disposed of.

14. For no reason may raw material (being the information collected) be stored for more than a year.

15. At a control station in 2011, the controlling organs shall determine if FRA activity has been performed in an ethically acceptable way.

Despite these changes, protests still remain, the main one still being that of the intrusion on personal integrity. We will now take a closer look at the arguments, starting with the ones in favour of the law.

4.1.2 Arguments in favour.

The proposition for alterations in the law found it’s origin in the so-called September 11-investigation (officially SOU 2003:32), commissioned by the government on December 20th_{, 2001. The assignment, given to the head of the Justice department, was to investigate} the “overall emergency preparedness capacity” of various authorities and public bodies, to prevent or else generally deal with terrorist attacks and similar situations (Justitiedeparte-mentet, 2004, p. 23). Essentially, it was suggested that changes are needed in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and this is what was further elaborated in a publication from the Department of Defence (a “promemoria”), officially called Ds 2005:30. The offset is that Sweden needs an effective, functioning mechanism for defence intelligence. As the recent security policy situation, forces society to face new threats and risks, such as terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, ethical and religious conflict and the vulnerability that comes with the IT-development (Försvarsdepartementet, 2005, p. 35). With some alterations, the argument made in this publication was carried over and continued in the proposition from the government to parliament.

The argument is thus that we need better means to gather intelligence relevant to threaten-ing activity, directed against Sweden or Swedish forces, operatthreaten-ing abroad. Traditionally, such forms of surveillance has been of communications that goes through the ether, such as radio waves. Now, however, with the development of technologies like fiber optics, more and more information travels through cable. The law would allow for “tapping into” those cables.

The reformulation from being able to only “spy” on potential military threats to, basically, any foreign threat, is rooted in the previously changed nature of security policy. No one makes the prediction that Sweden will be directly involved in a war in the foreseeable fu-ture, but there is nevertheless a potential threat towards Sweden, as we are expected to take sides in charged international matters. Also, there is the risk that countries like Sweden would be used as a base for logistics and fund-raising, while actual terrorist activity take place outside the EU (Europol, 2007, p.17). An additional argument is this that it will help our possibilities to aid in the international co-operation to prevent terrorism.

Furthermore, while not really a main argument, it is not the intention to spy on Swedish citizens, as emphazised through point 5, of the changes (mentioned on previous page). As a result, the personal integrity of Swedish citizens are supposed to be guaranteed to the ex-tent possible, with the task faced in mind.

It is beyond the scope of this thesis to go through the case made in previously mentioned investigations and propositions, but the amount of preparation go far beyond the rudimen-tary work we would expect from someone seeking to live up to the bare minimum of our rationality model. To be fair, at least that is to be expected from people who do this kind of thing for a living. In any case, we can at this point draw the initial conclusion that there are no indicators of irrationality in the arguments in favour of the law. At this point we cannot, however, say much about the effect leadership has had. This will become more apparent as

we look at the arguments against the law, the reaction from the public and as we reach a conclusion, we will give leadership a closer look.

4.1.3 Arguments against.

The main protest against the law was, and is, the potential violation of personal integrity that the law seems to imply. That is, the amount of personal correspondence that will be read/scanned in the hunt for information pertaining to “threats”. The second protest wor-thy of attention is the claim that the law is in violation with the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. After the additional 15 points, however, some of the critics are somewhat satisfied and have rescinded large parts of the criticism (Ekman, 2008). Let us start looking at the criticism stemming from the Eu-ropean convention.

The critique was with respect to articles 8 and 13 of the convention, concerning the right to respect for private and family life, and right to an effective remedy, respectively. In other words, the problem was that personal integrity was violated and there were no means for a citizen to find out if he/she had been spied on and could take legal steps, to make sure it was done within the legal framework. As far as article 13, about the possibility to take the matter to court, is concerned, the original version of the law did indeed not live up to it (Council of Europe, 2003, p.8). Article 8 seems to be a less obvious case. It is hard to say with certainty if it would have been enough on its own before the additions to mean that the law is in violation with the convention. After the additions, however, the critique is es-sentially dealt with. Thus, while most of the critics in this area has settled down, any further protest on the basis of violating the convention, we would view as irrational, in accordance with the model stated earlier. This is because we would assume that a person making this statement has not made the appropriate effort to acquire relevant information. Knowing what the convention is called, and that there has been some changes to the law, available on the governments web page, it should take no more than 20-30 minutes on Google to find the articles, the list of additions and reach the conclusion that there is little, if any, ar-gument to be had here. Even before the additions, the meaning of article 8 and the implica-tions of the law should be seen as to unclear to categorically claim that there is a violation. As for personal integrity, it should now be apparent that we assume at least the list of addi-tions to the protection of personal integrity to be information that a rational agent, forming an opinion in the matter, should have acquired. With those additions the case that personal integrity is unreasonably violated is also harder to make. Nevertheless, some claim that the reason for the protest is that everyone has something to hide, terrorists will use encryption so they will not be caught anyway, and similar claims (Vidlund, 2008). Prior to the addi-tions, that reaffirmed the idea that the law was not formed to spy on Swedes, it was also repeatedly stated that Swedes are not the targets in this matter. Articles and posts on bloggs often mention that correspondence will be scanned, with respect to very specific keywords. Taking the investigation one step further, it is apparent that the keywords must indeed be very specific, in order not to waste resources. There is basically no factual evidence, that can be acquired by the rudimentary efforts we would expect a barely rational person to do, to support claims of misuse, search parameters that will intrude on the typical Swede or that every terrorist worth the attention is using impenetrable encryption. One might as well make the case that encountering a heavily encrypted line of communication will spark an interest that can lead to the aversion of major terrorist attacks. Furthermore, there is hardly any satisfactory evidence to show that the means to do “mass-scans” would be used to reg-ister opinions. There are already plenty of polls and bloggs that can be used for that. With

the additions, it should be apparent that we have the framework necessary to protect inte-grity and merely need some specifications that will come.

4.1.4 Conclusion

Based on the model for rationality stipulated before we do not really expect the average person to read the proposition in its entirety, as it is fairly large amount of text, for some-one with other more pressing matters at hand. The very basics can, however, be found in summarized formats rather easily on the Internet. It should not come as to great a chal-lenge to fairly quickly find some of the relevant facts. Even if the arguments against the law can be substantiated in some cases, it is loosely based in general. Most of the factual criti-cism was indeed raised by someone who does something relevant to the issue for a living, and thus have time and resources to process relevant data. The discussion about the Euro-pean convention can be considered, overall, to have been rational. The matter of integrity, which seems to have become a holy cow for some reason believed to be headed for slaugh-ter, is not quite as fortunate. After a quick, focused search, a rational agent should be care-ful to proclaim that this is the end of democracy, and we can conclude that this matter has been surrounded by some irrationality, as far as the issue at heart is concerned.

As for leadership, we can see that there has been bargaining going on. After the criticism, essentially all of the main arguments were addressed to, in what you might almost call a surrender. Thus, the leader in this context assumed a bargaining position in order to make sure the proposition came through. It did address to some points of criticism that was in-deed justified, but others that was more for the sake of silencing critics, and the actual ef-fect can be debated.

In conclusion, the issues that was indeed a source of justified criticism, was not brought up by the general public, but by organizations and such that operate in a relevant field and is supposed to know these things. Popular protest adhered more to moral issues and can be debated in either direction. Any irrationality that has been surrounding this issue did not have a detrimental effect to Sweden, in part since the law was passed anyway. There is, however, indications of irrationality, and any claim to breaches in personal integrity at this point should be considered irrational.

4.2 Lowered limit on health insurance

4.2.1 The issue.

The current ruling coalition of parties had a few key issues on which they got elected, one of which is what has been called “outsidership” (“utanförskap”, my translation). This would mean people that are having difficulties getting back into a professional life, after a long time of sick-leave. In the budget proposition of 2008 the new heading for social policy was indicated, and the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs (Socialdepartementet) started to look into the nature of sick-leave compensation as it was. On December 21st_{, 2007, the} department published a series of suggested changes in he law.

In the publication it was suggested that a limit be placed on how long it is permissible to be on sick-leave with government compensation, as well as that this compensation after one year be lowered from 80% to 75%. Furthermore, even with additional insurance that had been acquired privately or through collective or union deals, the level of compensation should not be above 75% (that is, after one year of sick-leave). Consequently, if an

individ-ual was in possession of insurance, the compensation by state funds would be lowered ap-propriately (Socialdepartementet, 2007).

The idea lead to massive protests, ranging from the destruction of private economy for the long-term ill, to being in violation of contract law. So, on February 11th_{, 2008, people could} read in the newspapers how the government backed down from their earlier proposition to lower the upper limit on compensation to 75%. It was motivated by a fear that it would create a new kind of insurance in collective agreements that would remove some of the job-creating effects that was the intent of the proposition. Prime Minister Reinfeldt also admitted, however, that the amounts of criticism received was not exactly irrelevant (SvD, 2008).

4.2.2 Arguments in favour

In a debate article, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and the Minister for Social Security Cristina Husmark Pehrsson, explain the reasoning briefly about what they consider to be the greatest (that is, the biggest) health insurance reform in 15 years. It is maintained that while some of the new rules may appear to be strict and will make the weakest suffer need-lessly, it is for the purpose of making more people that have ended up outside the job mar-ket, due to various conditions that prompted long-term sick-leave, able to make their way back in again. It is also mentioned that such cases where a long-term sick leave might end up being the case, should be paid close attention at an early stage (Husmark Pehrsson, 2007).

In the referral sent out by the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, it is argued that the lack of an upper time limit to how long an individual can be on government compensated sick-leave, is a matter of concern and adds to the problem of long-term sick-leave. This is because it has become common to let cases continue for longer periods of time, without neither the individual, nor anyone else, taking measures to shorten the time of the sick-leave. The longer an individual is on compensated sick-leave, without measures taken to shorten this period or rehabilitate the individual, the less likely a smooth re-entrance into the job market becomes. As a consequence, this will add to the so-called “outsidership”, that the current government wants to minimize. After a short overview of various other European countries that do have a limit on compensated sick-leave, it is suggested that one year is an appropriate period. It is claimed that knowing there is a time limit will effect the behaviour of the actors involved (Socialdepartementet, 2007, p.34)

Then there is the issue with the proportional lowering of government support, if there is a kind of private insurance involved. As mentioned earlier, it was suggested that if an indi-vidual through collective deals or private health insurance would receive this on top of government compensation, the government portion would be lowered so that the total compensation is no more than 75% of what the individual previously earned. This sugges-tion as made with reference to studies that show how sick-leave increases when the level of compensation increase (Socialdepartementet, 2007, p.41). This was also maintained by the Minister for Social Security, stating that there is less incentive to get back to work if there is a high sick-leave compensation (Nilsson Rönnqvist, 2007). This also makes intuitive sense, as most could probably understand that there is little or no reason to re-join the work force, if the compensation received while on sick-leave is close to, or perhaps the same, as the wage of the previous occupation. Simply put, if there is no more benefit to be had, ex-cept perhaps the satisfaction of doing a good job, by getting back to work, why go to work at all?

In summary, the essentials of the proposition were the addition of a time limit and the low-ering of the maximum possible compensation during long-term sick-leave. The time-limit should lead to greater efforts being made to catch and deal with cases at an early stage, be-fore becoming a long-term problem. The lowering in compensation would give more in-centive to return to work. Furthermore, it would serve as a kind of means test, and lead to a more fair system, in addition to getting people back to work (Nilsson & Rönnqvist, 2007). While not explicitly mentioned, it is obvious that an other benefit would be that the government would eventually be saving a lot of money. Money that would hopefully be put to good use.

4.2.3 Arguments against

There were a number of arguments against the proposition that ranged from the claim that it was in violation with both EG and International Labour Organization (ILO) regulations to the idea that it was just plain wrong to lower the compensation for chronically ill. It was claimed by TCO that the idea was not just in contradiction with conventions ratified by Sweden, but was counter productive, unjustifiable and would risk bringing larger adminis-trative costs for various bodies involved (TCO, 2008) A poll conducted by TCO in De-cember 2007, seemed to indicated that there was large popular dislike directed towards the proposition.

The essentials in the criticism was in the end the violation of individuals freedom to join in contracts and the violation of ILO convention 98: Right to Organize and Collective Bar-gaining Convention, 1949. Also, the additional difficulties this would mean to those that are chronically ill or have basically irreversibly lost the ability to work in the same capacity as before. The criticism in relation to ILO conventions was not only from TCO, but was supported by legal experts and as well as the Swedish Academics Central Organization (SACO). ILO, legal experts and SACO took a firm opposition to the idea of adjusting compensation to reach a maximum of 75% in sick-leave compensation, as it violates con-tract law. Union members have given up salary space in order to benefit from collective deals and secure economic safety for themselves as well as other members. The proposition would negate a large portion of these kinds of deals and it is thus argued to be in violation of ILO conventions. It is also argued in the proposition that Sweden has been in ILO’s fo-cus before on similar matters, that has been found not to be in violation of convention 98, with reference to A AL 20460/91 and A96/4933/IS (Socialdepartementet, 2007, p. 40). As SACO attempted to cross-reference this information and contacted the cabinet office’s ar-chive department, it seemed said files could not be found, but had been omitted somehow (Wetterberg & Strömgren, 2008). I failed, as well, in the search for these files. It is thus a cause of confusion for both myself and SACO that these documents could have been used to form an opinion. As a result, we are essentially forced to be opposed to the idea that ad-justment of compensation in relation to other kinds of relevant insurance, private or collec-tive, is justifiable and not in violation with ratified conventions.

This is criticism from various professionals and instances that the proposition was sent to as a referral. While we can by no means ignore the criticism, as it seems to be on just grounds, it is not the “collective voice of the people”; which is what we are primarily inter-ested in. As mentioned above, TCO did conduct a survey on the issue. The survey asked five questions; (1) Should people be able to get insurance that complements and leads to higher compensation that supplied by regular sick pay? (2) Is the government wrong in nul-lifying an insurance that has been privately or collectively established? (3) Should Sweden abide by the conventions we ratified? (4) Is it right or wrong to lower the level of

compen-sation for the long-term ill? (5) Has your confidence in the government changed due to this matter? (Rautio, 2008). The survey can, naturally, be questioned. It asks questions that are easy to give an answer that is negative to the proposal and the government. It basically boils down to more or less money, and kick on the one that is already down. The obvious answers for most would be “more” and “don’t”. Questions like “encourage return to work”, “deal with cases earlier” and “catch cheaters” or the like that is more likely to get favourable answers are not addressed. While it is of no concern to the conclusion we reached from the earlier examination of the arguments, it is relevant to the idea of shaping public opinion to fit the intended use.

4.2.4 Conclusion

What we can conclude from this is that the arguments in favour are by far inferior to the arguments against. Furthermore the proposition seemed to be ill founded and made refer-ences on key issues to documents that are not available for further scrutiny, a fact that al-most by itself forces us to judge in favour of the opposition. It is true that the motives which were supposed to drive the proposition, getting people back to work, battle long-term sick leave and lower the so-called “outsidership” were not the primary sources of cri-tique. It is also true that the idea that this would get people back to work was addressed and criticised, but not given enough support to be of interest here. Instead, fundamental macroeconomic ideas as well as simple reasoning supported the main idea. What brought the proposal down was ambiguities in how exactly to decide what the exceptions would be and the creation of a regulatory maze, as well as apparent violations of ratified conventions. Like in the previous case of the communications surveillance law, we can see that most of the criticism that seems to have had an influence on the decision eventually made, did not stem from the general public. It came from other sources, like interest-organizations in a relevant field or various departments that the referral was sent to, that later sought the sup-port of the public, and typically got it. We should consider however that there was no real conflict of interest here, as far as the real goal is concerned, but a disagreement in how to accomplish it. Few would state that it is wrong to seek to lower the amount of people that have ended up outside the job market and can not get back in, or that we should attempt to solve cases of illness before it turns into long-term. The issue became one of violating in-ternational agreements and giving those worse-off less money. The sales-pitch became hor-ribly disadvantageous to the government but the sloppy preposition of theirs is partly to blame.

We cannot make the case of irrationality on either side. Everyone seemed to be in under-standing on the fundamental issue that was on the table, and it was mostly when we got into details that difficulties arose. To support signs of irrationality from the general public there would have to be some sort of misunderstanding as to the basic issue, a lowered health insurance. This is, however, a matter that is hard to misunderstand, and the public simply valued the immediate economic safety and collective deals higher than the potential long-term effect of battling the “outsidership”. On the level of information we would ex-pect a rational actor to be on, the arguments boiled down to issues that had a heavy moral and subjective atmosphere. Even if some aspects of previously mentioned poll can be questioned, there is insufficient evidence to say that there has been any irrationality here, and even if dislike to the proposal was ill-founded, there is nothing to say that Sweden suf-fered from it.