Navigating in the global discourse: The case of Swedish COVID-19 strategy

Abstract

This article examines Sweden's COVID-19 strategy from the perspective of the global epistemic field. We propose that the policy choices of national governments are conditioned by the global epistemic field that constitutes the problem, the range of potential techniques to handle it, and relevant viewpoints used in assessing their advantages and risks. New, innovative techniques can emerge, and choices can vary, but they are debated and justified in terms of the evolving global set of discourses premised on the fundaments of the epistemic field. In this article, we examine to what extent deviant policies are part of the global set of discourses that evolved at the outset of the pandemic. To address this question, we take Sweden's COVID-19 strategy as an example and study how it was constructed and justified in the national public in 2020. The results of our empirical analysis show that the argument of epistemic field also applies to deviant policies. Even though Sweden's corona strategy deviated much from other countries, including its neighboring countries, the grounds of justification used in debating the strategy were consistent with the global epistemic field.