Balancing Interests or Promoting Competition?

As one of the last countries in the OECD, Sweden enacted the Restrictions Act (2018:676) in 2018, restricting ministers and state secretaries from joining private sector entities for up to 12 months. The present study employs Bacchi & Goodwin’s (2016) policy analysis What’s the Problem Represented to be (WPR) and finds that policies on public officials joining the private sectors after public service represent the problem through the lens of neoliberal governmentality. The policies’ conflicts of interest problematization does not seek to protect the public sector and enforce clear boundaries between public and private interests. Instead, ensuing advantages for former officials and their new employers and consequentially, potential distrust in public institutions, is represented as akin to a competitive imbalance (a demerit as far as neoliberalism is concerned), which accordingly necessitates self-regulatory remedies such as self-reporting, media scrutiny and ethical provisions rather than enforceable legal sanctions.