Scientific state or state science? The knowledge-base of Swedish welfare research and welfare policy 1911-2015.
The interlacing of decision-makers, experts and researchers are often put forward as a decisive factor in the creation of modern Sweden. Some historians have even labeled the Swedish welfare state as an institutionalized "scientific state". However, research shows that this collaboration has never been without friction, e.g. in the conflict between research commissioned by politicians and the free research idealized by the researchers.
The project analyzes intersections and tensions between the knowledge-base of policy and research within welfare politics, by the example of substance abuse policy. Drawing theoretically on science-policy nexus research and history of science, the project examines the relation between policy and research historically and contextually. Making use of empirical and archival material from different arenas the project analyzes the shifting ways politicians, authorities and researchers have defined the knowledge-base of the field from the 1910s and onwards. In three separate studies knowledge production, knowledge dissemination and knowledge utilization is examined. In a fourth study the results are synthesized and compared. What efforts have been made to ensure the policymakers' need of research-based knowledge and how have researchers responded? In what ways have the status of research as a political reform instrument changed during the last century?
The project analyzes intersections and tensions between the knowledge-base of policy and research within welfare politics, by the example of substance abuse policy. Drawing theoretically on science-policy nexus research and history of science, the project examines the relation between policy and research historically and contextually. Making use of empirical and archival material from different arenas the project analyzes the shifting ways politicians, authorities and researchers have defined the knowledge-base of the field from the 1910s and onwards. In three separate studies knowledge production, knowledge dissemination and knowledge utilization is examined. In a fourth study the results are synthesized and compared. What efforts have been made to ensure the policymakers' need of research-based knowledge and how have researchers responded? In what ways have the status of research as a political reform instrument changed during the last century?
Final report
Aim and development of the project
The project's aim, to analyse the intersections and tensions between research and political forms of knowledge in the welfare policy area in general and the substance abuse policy area in particular, has throughout the project period guided the three sub-projects and the synthesizing final report that will be completed in the fall of 2022. The three sub-projects have in their empirical investigations focused on complementary themes, which in the final report are described as knowledge, strategic ignorance and counter-knowledge. Empirically, this corresponds to investigations of the research sphere, politics and the broader discursive legitimation of intoxication policy.
The point of departure for Bergman’s investigations of the research sphere is the emergence of Swedish social science substance abuse research, a task that during the project period have been broadened both empirically and chronologically to cover the period from the 1960s onwards in investigations of the measurability of alcohol damage and drunk driving, the natural experiments of the 1960s in the substance abuse field, and the management of youth intoxication.
Eriksson’s sub-project has focused on political use of knowledge in the management and debate of harm reduction measures. This sub-project has also extended the investigation period back to the 1960s and examines e.g. the legal prescription project, the knowledge-based formulation of the drug project in the 1960s, the launch of the brain disease model in the Nordic countries (together with Winter), and the 21st century’s political conflicts about harm reduction.
Edman’s and Winter’s investigations of the political use of knowledge in the field of intoxication cover a period of more than a hundred years, from the 1910s to the present day. This sub-project has also been broadened empirically, e.g. through investigations of the public health argument and the post-war press debate on the disease model. In the most recently completed surveys on the prohibition debate of the early 20th century, the alcohol liberalizations of the post-war period, and the alcohol lobbyism of the 21st century, the breadth of alcohol political knowledge legitimation is made clear, as research only plays a minor role alongside arguments that proceed from a presumed popular will to a vaguely defined public health.
Brief about the implementation
The project has been carried out both individually within the three respective sub-projects and jointly in the form of presentations and publications from a couple or all sub-projects. The project has also collaborated with another project within the program, which has resulted in workshops, a joint conference presentation and a hopefully soon published joint theme issue in Science & Technology Studies. All sub-projects – which empirically have embraced broadly and covered e.g. public print, archival material, debate literature, and press material – have been completed in 2022. Some studies are still unpublished, including and above all the synthesizing final report which will be completed in the form of a monograph in the fall of 2022.
The project’s three most important results, as well as a discussion about the project's conclusions
Based on one of the sub-projects’ focus on the role of research, the project has been able to show the consequences of the rise of social science alcohol research at the expense of the previously established medical alcohol research, something that shifted the focus of research from the alcohol’s effects on problem drinkers to society at large. These results can also be interpreted as part of a general development of welfare policy and welfare research during parts of the post-war period, from individual-oriented explanations and solutions to more structural perspectives. Other studies within the project also show how this development later was replaced by more individual-oriented problem descriptions during the 21st century (Storbjörk, Eriksson & Winter 2022), while a collectivist discourse still has validity in today’s liberalization efforts (Winter & Edman 2022).
A second important research result is based on the role of research as political legitimation, mainly illustrated by the project's investigations of the political battles over harm reduction efforts from the 1960s until today. Here, both the impressionistic use of research in the political work on the issue of intoxication is made clear, how the talk of evidence-based policy tends to land in policy-based evidence, but also how questioning a relatively consistent research position allows for a political resource that can most closely be compared to strategic ignorance.
A third central research result is based on the political use of knowledge in alcohol policy, where the project has shown a shift from an ideologically driven temperance policy during the early 20th century, where politicians and politically appointed investigators used research to enforce reforms even against identified strong party interests, to the post-war era’s more compliant listening to public opinion where research has been allowed to legitimize politically pragmatic decisions.
The project’s synthesizing conclusions are both conceptual and theoretical. Firstly, we have found that both science and knowledge are too narrow concepts to answer our questions, which is why we have also worked with the analytical categories of counter-knowledge and strategic ignorance. Theoretically, our studies of the knowledge use in intoxication policy have been able to be connected to and develop STS-influenced theorizing about knowledge production and knowledge transfer in relationships between, for example, expertise, the public, the state and citizens.
Potentially new research questions
During the years it has been conducted, the project has generated a number of new research questions that we have also been able to answer in our sub-studies, such as the questions about the role of strategic ignorance and the very broad political legitimation that, for example, references to public health allow. Some of the research questions that already appear in the project plan have also proven to be so fruitful that they deserve further studies, not least the overarching question of what kind of knowledge political action and political decision-making rest on in policy areas other than intoxication policy.
How the project group has disseminated the research and results, and if and how collaboration has taken place
The research has primarily been disseminated through research publications, conference presentations, argumentative and review articles in the popular and daily press, as well as presentations in specific contexts that RJ has been helpful in arranging. The tightest collaboration has taken place with another project funded within the programme: Packaging, Negotiating, Translating: Transforming Knowledge into Practice.
The project's aim, to analyse the intersections and tensions between research and political forms of knowledge in the welfare policy area in general and the substance abuse policy area in particular, has throughout the project period guided the three sub-projects and the synthesizing final report that will be completed in the fall of 2022. The three sub-projects have in their empirical investigations focused on complementary themes, which in the final report are described as knowledge, strategic ignorance and counter-knowledge. Empirically, this corresponds to investigations of the research sphere, politics and the broader discursive legitimation of intoxication policy.
The point of departure for Bergman’s investigations of the research sphere is the emergence of Swedish social science substance abuse research, a task that during the project period have been broadened both empirically and chronologically to cover the period from the 1960s onwards in investigations of the measurability of alcohol damage and drunk driving, the natural experiments of the 1960s in the substance abuse field, and the management of youth intoxication.
Eriksson’s sub-project has focused on political use of knowledge in the management and debate of harm reduction measures. This sub-project has also extended the investigation period back to the 1960s and examines e.g. the legal prescription project, the knowledge-based formulation of the drug project in the 1960s, the launch of the brain disease model in the Nordic countries (together with Winter), and the 21st century’s political conflicts about harm reduction.
Edman’s and Winter’s investigations of the political use of knowledge in the field of intoxication cover a period of more than a hundred years, from the 1910s to the present day. This sub-project has also been broadened empirically, e.g. through investigations of the public health argument and the post-war press debate on the disease model. In the most recently completed surveys on the prohibition debate of the early 20th century, the alcohol liberalizations of the post-war period, and the alcohol lobbyism of the 21st century, the breadth of alcohol political knowledge legitimation is made clear, as research only plays a minor role alongside arguments that proceed from a presumed popular will to a vaguely defined public health.
Brief about the implementation
The project has been carried out both individually within the three respective sub-projects and jointly in the form of presentations and publications from a couple or all sub-projects. The project has also collaborated with another project within the program, which has resulted in workshops, a joint conference presentation and a hopefully soon published joint theme issue in Science & Technology Studies. All sub-projects – which empirically have embraced broadly and covered e.g. public print, archival material, debate literature, and press material – have been completed in 2022. Some studies are still unpublished, including and above all the synthesizing final report which will be completed in the form of a monograph in the fall of 2022.
The project’s three most important results, as well as a discussion about the project's conclusions
Based on one of the sub-projects’ focus on the role of research, the project has been able to show the consequences of the rise of social science alcohol research at the expense of the previously established medical alcohol research, something that shifted the focus of research from the alcohol’s effects on problem drinkers to society at large. These results can also be interpreted as part of a general development of welfare policy and welfare research during parts of the post-war period, from individual-oriented explanations and solutions to more structural perspectives. Other studies within the project also show how this development later was replaced by more individual-oriented problem descriptions during the 21st century (Storbjörk, Eriksson & Winter 2022), while a collectivist discourse still has validity in today’s liberalization efforts (Winter & Edman 2022).
A second important research result is based on the role of research as political legitimation, mainly illustrated by the project's investigations of the political battles over harm reduction efforts from the 1960s until today. Here, both the impressionistic use of research in the political work on the issue of intoxication is made clear, how the talk of evidence-based policy tends to land in policy-based evidence, but also how questioning a relatively consistent research position allows for a political resource that can most closely be compared to strategic ignorance.
A third central research result is based on the political use of knowledge in alcohol policy, where the project has shown a shift from an ideologically driven temperance policy during the early 20th century, where politicians and politically appointed investigators used research to enforce reforms even against identified strong party interests, to the post-war era’s more compliant listening to public opinion where research has been allowed to legitimize politically pragmatic decisions.
The project’s synthesizing conclusions are both conceptual and theoretical. Firstly, we have found that both science and knowledge are too narrow concepts to answer our questions, which is why we have also worked with the analytical categories of counter-knowledge and strategic ignorance. Theoretically, our studies of the knowledge use in intoxication policy have been able to be connected to and develop STS-influenced theorizing about knowledge production and knowledge transfer in relationships between, for example, expertise, the public, the state and citizens.
Potentially new research questions
During the years it has been conducted, the project has generated a number of new research questions that we have also been able to answer in our sub-studies, such as the questions about the role of strategic ignorance and the very broad political legitimation that, for example, references to public health allow. Some of the research questions that already appear in the project plan have also proven to be so fruitful that they deserve further studies, not least the overarching question of what kind of knowledge political action and political decision-making rest on in policy areas other than intoxication policy.
How the project group has disseminated the research and results, and if and how collaboration has taken place
The research has primarily been disseminated through research publications, conference presentations, argumentative and review articles in the popular and daily press, as well as presentations in specific contexts that RJ has been helpful in arranging. The tightest collaboration has taken place with another project funded within the programme: Packaging, Negotiating, Translating: Transforming Knowledge into Practice.