Date: 4 September 2024
Time: 10:00-11:45
Venue: Institutet för framtidsstudier, Holländargatan 13, 4th floor, Stockholm, or online.
Research seminar with Maja Fjaestad, IFFS researcher, expert coordinator at the Center for Health Crises at KI and associate professor of the history of technology at KTH.
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Abstract
I was state secretary for health in Sweden during the pandemic. Now a few years after the pandemic, my colleague Emma Lennartsson, former State Secretary to the Minister of Finance, and I decided to write a book, collecting lessons learned from the Swedish Covid response. The book “Mitt i krisen” (In the Midst of the Crisis) was published in Swedish (Volante Publishers) in March 2024.
In the book, we underline the importance of not being too anxious to leave the gloomy Covid years behind us and of, instead, taking time for reflection and afterthought. In the wake of the present security situation in both Europe and elsewhere, and with intensified efforts to build a robust civil defense, there are several aspects of the Covid crisis that are highly relevant to general crisis management.
The seminar on Sept 4 is intended to briefly present the main findings of the book, but also to discuss in particular aspects on science-to-policy during crises in general and healthcrises particular. There is broad and general support for the idea that politics should be based on science and evidence, and that politicians should turn to science for advice. In practice, it is often more complicated. Putting trust in experts may never be used as a way to avoid political responsibility. Following science is not the same as letting scientists decide, and there is thus no way for politicians to escape the rightful accountability they have for their decisions. The political task is to evaluate the various social consequences scientific advice may have, as well as to evaluate how desirable or acceptable these consequences are from a democratic perspective. The matter of balancing democratic responsibility with scientific experts’ visibility will most likely be an issue in every major crisis. No matter the type of crisis, knowledge will always be required, and in a crisis scientific knowledge is often uncertain: It changes and takes new paths. Policymakers must be able to listen closely to the science and understand the scientific method—without ever falling for the temptation to delegate their democratic responsibly to someone else.
It has been argued that science advice was particularly difficult during covid, depending on rapidly evolving situations, new uncertainties and heavy dependence on exclusive expert knowledge. On the other hand, the pandemic has also been described as point in history with unusually high involvement from the general public in scientific issues. One central lesson from crisis management of the pandemic is the importance of making the general public involved in understanding the causes of the crisis and the strategies for dealing with it.
As a part of VR-funded project Boundaries of Legitimation: Crisis Normalization and Preparedness I intend to write an article on how national agencies seek to legitimize their scientific advice in the midst of great uncertainty, following on the book.
My disciplinary background is in technology studies, with my dissertation (2010) focusing of how prognoses and ideas about the future influenced political decisions. Right now I am adjunct professor at Luleå University of Technology, expert coordinator at the center for health crises at Karolinska Institute as well as affiliated researcher at the Institute for Future Studies.
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