Elusive Accountability: Evaluation in the Time of Pandemic

Abstract

Background: When the covid 19 pandemic started spreading early 2020 Governments responded in various ways. The merits and drawbacks of national responses is not an academic concern, it was – and remains - a question of survival.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the evaluation of the Swedish national response to the pandemic and to assess whether the evaluation provided for accountability of the policy measures that were put in place.

Setting: The Swedish Government announced early on that its response was to be evaluated. A Parliamentary Committee was established and was given a comprehensive mandate to evaluate the process and the results of the response. The Committee was to start immediately in mid 2020, to deliver interim reports and a final synthesis report in February 2022.

Intervention: Not applicable.

Research design: We use a case study design based on a desk study of written documentation concerning the covid 19 evaluation. Our study starts with publications early 2020 and up to the final synthesis report of the evaluation and continues with events/debates through the general elections in September 2022 (when the Government responsible for the covid 19 response lost) and the months immediately afterwards.

Data collection and analysis: The key sources are the public mandate for the evaluation, its three evaluation reports, records of the debate in daily papers and professional journals, and the autobiographies of leading actors.

Findings: The political/administrative system initiated an evaluation that gave a timely, credible and comprehensive assessment of the virtues and mistakes of the Government’s response to the pandemic. Still, the question of accountability remains elusive. Structures that constrained the response were shaped long ago and the actors responsible cannot be held accountable today. Those that can be held to account made mistakes but also took brave, and in retrospect correct measures to reduce the impact of the pandemic. In addition, new information keeps changing the final judgement, for example the impact of business subsidies is better known today. In sum, the information needed to create accountability was – and is – largely available, but to establish accountability remains an elusive task.