Decentring Economic Regulation and Control: Reinforcing Trust through Self-Regulation

Abstract

Since the 1980s Sweden has experienced a transformation of the ways in which economic markets and public services are steered, regulated and controlled. In many areas this change was initiated through deregulations. The underlying political logic was neo-liberally inspired, in the assumption that state production is less efficient and that state intervention hampers market efficiency (Svensson 2001). As is well known today, however, the concept of deregulation used in the 1980s and 90s was somewhat misleading. In most cases there was rather a process of re-regulation. In Sweden, as in many other countries, politically intervening regulations were substituted by a new set of market constituting regulations. In some cases deregulation even resulted in a more complex system of regulations.