Responsibility in Principle
The Coronakommission’s Review of Sweden during the Pandemic
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52610/rhs.v29i90.361Keywords:
COVID-19, public health, Sweden, pandemic, TegnellAbstract
In summer of 2020, the Swedish government appointed an independent commission to evaluate measures taken by the state, local authorities, and administrative agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Sweden’s approach differed markedly from other nations’. This essay analyzes the discursive construction and allocation of responsibility in the five volumes of the Coronakommission’s report. I demonstrate how, in the first volume, responsibility is constituted as a function of institutional structures; in the second volume, as a legal consequence; and, in the third, responsibility becomes the obligation of the commission and its readers to assume “epistemic humility,” which, I argue, diffuses judgment and displaces evaluative assertions. My essay contributes to the study of the pandemic from an international perspective; to the study of performance reviews as a communicative form of technical legitimation and authority; and to the critical study of liberal governance via discourses of expertise and the politics of embodied deference.
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