ArticleSouthern economic journal2021
Separation of power and expertise: Evidence of the tyranny of experts in Sweden's COVID-19 responses.
Article in Southern economic journal, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Decision-Making in Public Health Crises: A Qualitative Systematic Review and Meta-Ethnography.Public health challenges · 2026Review
- Non-compliance with COVID-19 Health Recommendations: Five- and Ten-Month Effects on Mental Health and Academic Self-efficacy Among University Students in Sweden.International journal of behavioral medicine · 2026Article
- Predictions, Uncertainty, and Collective Epistemic Work: How Projected Futures Informed and Misinformed Enactments of Covid-19.Social studies of science · 2026Article
- Time series anomaly detection in helpline call trends for early detection of COVID-19 spread across Sweden, 2020.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- What Lessons can Be Learned From the Management of the COVID-19 Pandemic?International journal of public health · 2025Review
- Bespoke science: the use of ad hoc scientific advisory committees in the Covid-19 pandemic.Public choice · 2025Article
- Article
- The pox of politics: Troesken's tradeoff reexamined.Public choice · 2023Article
- Foucault and Hayek on public health and the road to serfdom.Public choice · 2023Article
- The making of a Swedish strategy: How organizational culture shaped the Public Health Agency's pandemic response.SSM. Qualitative research in health · 2022Article
- Experts vs. policymakers in the COVID-19 policy response.Journal of economic behavior & organization · 2022Article
- Dataset: COVID-19 epidemic policy and events timeline (Sweden).Data in brief · 2022Article
- Aggressive measures, rising inequalities, and mass formation during the COVID-19 crisis: An overview and proposed way forward.Frontiers in public health · 2022Review
- National health governance, science and the media: drivers of COVID-19 responses in Germany, Sweden and the UK in 2020.BMJ global health · 2021Review
- The political economy of state responses to infectious disease.Southern economic journal · 2021Article
- Essential or not? Knowledge problems and COVID-19 stay-at-home orders.Southern economic journal · 2021Article
- Battling COVID-19 with dysfunctional federalism: Lessons from India.Southern economic journal · 2021Article
- The Federal Reserve's response to the COVID-19 contraction: An initial appraisal.Southern economic journal · 2021Article
- The political economy of the COVID-19 pandemic.Southern economic journal · 2021Article
- Separation of power and expertise: Evidence of the tyranny of experts in Sweden's COVID-19 responses.Southern economic journal · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
Whereas most countries in the COVID-19 pandemic imposed shutdowns and curfews to mitigate the contagion, Sweden uniquely pursued a more voluntarist approach. In this article, our interest is primarily on how and why Sweden's approach to the pandemic was so unique. There are two parts to this research question: (1) why did virtually all other nations follow a radical lockdown protocol despite limited evidence to its effectiveness and (2) why did Sweden not follow this same protocol despite strong political pressures? The answers to these questions lie within typical government technocracy versus Sweden's constitutional separation of government and technocracy. We review the history of the responses to the pandemic and show how the "tyranny of experts" was severe within the typical technocratic policy response, and attenuated in Sweden's. Thus, the recent pandemic offers empirical evidence and insights regarding the role of Hayekian knowledge problems in engendering a technocratic "tyranny of experts" and how such effects can be structurally mitigated.
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