SW 2025.06.16 Sweden – A Democracy in Decline

Corruption in Sweden may be underestimated, Jonas Roslund, 13 March 2023

Examination of Democratic Façades and Centralized Power

Abstract:

This article critically examines the paradox of Sweden’s international reputation as a liberal democracy and its domestic governance practices that increasingly deviate from democratic principles. With a focus on executive overreach, weakening institutional checks, suppression of dissent, and state control over media narratives, the analysis explores whether Sweden’s current system represents a covert form of authoritarianism cloaked in democratic legitimacy.

Ulf Kristersson – Maria Malmer Stenergard

The Democratic Façade

Sweden is internationally celebrated as a model democracy: egalitarian, transparent, and governed by the rule of law. It regularly tops global rankings for press freedom, institutional trust, and quality of life. Yet behind this pristine image lies a paradox. While Sweden formally satisfies the procedural requirements of a democratic state, a closer examination reveals systemic practices that undermine the substance of democracy itself. Elections are held, courts operate, and laws are passed—but meaningful accountability, legal remedy, and freedom of dissent are increasingly compromised.

This article examines Sweden through a critical lens: as a case of “democratic dictatorship” in disguise, where bureaucratic power, legal opacity, and ideological uniformity converge to erode the very principles the state claims to uphold. With special focus on LVU (Law on the Care of Young Persons) cases and Skatteverket (Swedish Tax Agency) practices, we argue that Sweden maintains democratic appearances while silencing opposition, insulating state actors, and suppressing systemic critique.

Sweden’s Disinformation Campaign – The State as Deceiver?

Democratic Institutions Without Democratic Culture

Sweden’s formal institutions remain intact: regular elections, multiple political parties, an independent judiciary, and a free press. Yet these structures function within an ideological environment where deviation from consensus is treated not as legitimate dissent, but as deviance.

The media landscape, though not state-owned, is heavily subsidized and governed by political norms that exclude dissenting voices. Journalists who question the dominant narrative around migration, welfare policy, or state interventions risk professional marginalization.

Academics who investigate institutional failures, particularly in social services or law enforcement, are often denied funding or labeled politically dangerous.

Moreover, the judiciary—while formally independent—rarely serves as a meaningful check on administrative power. Instead, it routinely defers to state authorities, particularly in cases involving child protection, taxation, or identity registration. In practice, this results in a state that is procedurally democratic, but substantively authoritarian.

The LVU System – A Case Study in Disguised State Control

Few institutions illustrate Sweden’s democratic dysfunction as clearly as the LVU system. The Law on the Care of Young Persons is designed to protect children from harm by allowing the state to remove them from their families without parental consent. In practice, however, it has become a tool of opaque, unchecked power.

Parents—often immigrants or low-income families—frequently find their children removed without sufficient evidence, transparent proceedings, or effective legal recourse. Hearings are held behind closed doors. Public defenders are overworked or inexperienced. Once a child is taken, reunification becomes rare, and parents are gagged from speaking publicly about their case under threat of legal sanctions.

International bodies have begun to take notice. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the European Court of Human Rights have criticized Sweden’s child welfare practices, citing concerns over due process, proportionality, and long-term family separation. Yet domestically, these criticisms are dismissed as misunderstandings of the “Swedish model.”

This model prioritizes bureaucratic expertise over family autonomy, and institutional reputation over transparency. It reflects a deeper cultural tendency: the belief that state actors are inherently more trustworthy than citizens, especially when those citizens challenge institutional authority.

The Swedish Tax Agency and the Bureaucracy of Identity

Another example of Sweden’s disguised authoritarianism is found in the Swedish Tax Agency (Skatteverket). Ostensibly tasked with registering personal data and collecting taxes, Skatteverket wields enormous discretionary power over identity recognition, civil status, and residency validation.

Numerous cases document individuals—particularly immigrants or those involved in legal disputes—being declared legally “non-existent” due to arbitrary deregistration. In these situations, individuals lose access to healthcare, education, bank accounts, and the right to work, often without explanation or appeal.

Legal redress is minimal. Administrative courts routinely uphold Skatteverket’s decisions, citing the agency’s internal assessments as sufficient. Victims of deregistration face a Kafkaesque bureaucracy where no single actor is responsible, no pathway to resolution exists, and no authority is willing to intervene.

In many cases, these actions occur without notifying the person affected, or based on unverified reports from other agencies. In a democratic state, identity should be a matter of personal and legal clarity—not administrative discretion. Yet in Sweden, the state grants itself the right to unilaterally erase or redefine personhood, with devastating consequences.

The Disappearance of Political Opposition

In healthy democracies, political opposition plays a vital role: holding the ruling power accountable, proposing alternatives, and ensuring that public institutions remain responsive and diverse. Sweden, however, exhibits a troubling erosion of genuine political contestation. While formal structures such as elections, parliamentary debate, and party pluralism remain intact, the substance of democratic opposition has withered under systemic consensus, ideological gatekeeping, and political stigmatization.

Sweden is governed by a broad elite consensus that cuts across traditional party lines. On key issues such as migration policy, supranational integration, NATO membership, EU alignment, and technocratic governance, meaningful disagreement is not only rare—it is often actively discouraged. Parliamentary parties that deviate from the accepted ideological framework are branded as “extreme” or “anti-democratic”, even when their critiques concern fundamental constitutional or legal questions.

The rise of Sverigedemokraterna (SD), once marginalized, now normalized, illustrates this paradox. While SD has entered political negotiations and supports the current government, its inclusion has not expanded ideological diversity in any meaningful way. Instead, the political mainstream has used SD’s controversial image to justify the narrowing of acceptable debate, creating a false dichotomy where opposition is either populist-nationalist or establishment-liberal—with no space for systemic, rights-based, or legal-constitutional critique.

This polarization leaves no viable political outlet for principled dissent against the erosion of civil liberties, the abuse of administrative power, or the manipulation of public narratives. Political figures, academics, or whistleblowers who raise structural concerns—particularly about the judiciary, child protection, or state media—are labeled as radical, disruptive, or even anti-democratic. The effect is a chilling one: dissent is not banned, but it is delegitimized, discredited, and ultimately silenced.

The Role of Secrecy and Administrative Law in Shielding Power

While most democracies operate with some degree of bureaucratic confidentiality, Sweden’s system of institutional secrecy and administrative legalism forms a formidable shield against transparency, scrutiny, and accountability. This structural opacity—codified in administrative law and amplified by judicial deference—allows state institutions to operate above meaningful public oversight, reinforcing an illusion of democratic accountability while preventing real legal or political challenge.

Sweden’s public sector is governed by a vast regime of confidentiality statutes, many of which override constitutional rights to information and legal redress. Under the Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act (Offentlighets- och sekretesslagen), critical information concerning social services, courts, and public authorities can be withheld from the individuals concerned, from media inquiry, and even from international bodies. This is particularly troubling in sensitive areas such as child protection (LVU), mental health care, police interventions, and administrative rulings affecting family life or civil status.

In LVU cases, for instance, parents are not permitted to speak publicly about their own case or their child’s fate, under threat of legal sanction. Documents are classified. Proceedings are closed. Even the identity of foster families is protected—sometimes more rigorously than the rights of biological parents. The result is a parallel legal universe, where state decisions can upend lives without ever being exposed to public justification or adversarial challenge.

This culture of secrecy is closely intertwined with the Swedish model of administrative law, which places extraordinary trust in public authorities. Unlike adversarial systems where courts act as independent arbiters between the state and citizen, Swedish administrative courts often act as extensions of the very authorities they are supposed to supervise. Deference to agency discretion is the norm, not the exception.

The burden of proof lies on the citizen, who must navigate complex legal terrain without guaranteed access to counsel, public hearings, or appeal to constitutional rights. There is no effective judicial review of proportionality, necessity, or factual basis. International law, such as the European Convention on Human Rights, is formally incorporated into Swedish law but rarely used as a binding check on administrative conduct. Secrecy also extends to government accountability mechanisms.

The Parliamentary Ombudsman (JO) and Chancellor of Justice (JK) are tasked with supervising legality and protecting rights, yet they seldom issue binding decisions or intervene against systematic abuses. When complaints are dismissed without investigation or with vague justifications, there is no appeal process. This absence of independent and adversarial oversight allows systemic abuses to persist unchecked and invisible.

Conclusion – Democracy Without Accountability

Sweden presents itself to the world as a beacon of progressive, stable, and inclusive democracy. Its international image is tightly curated: a state rooted in equality, transparency, and social trust. Yet behind this polished exterior lies a system that, in many critical respects, functions more like a disguised democratic dictatorship.

Elections are held, but the range of legitimate political choices is constrained by ideological conformity and media framing. Institutions exist for accountability, but they are structurally dependent, passive, or inaccessible. Rights are enshrined in law, but they are selectively enforced, procedurally buried, or overridden by bureaucratic discretion.

This contradiction between appearance and reality is not accidental. It is the product of a deeply embedded state ideology of moral authority, where bureaucratic paternalism replaces democratic deliberation, and social harmony is enforced through silence, denial, and administrative containment.

Those who raise systemic concerns—about LVU removals, about Skatteverket’s legal overreach, about the judiciary’s passivity—are marginalized not by censorship, but by delegitimization, secrecy, and institutional inertia. Sweden must be re-examined not by its ideals, but by its outcomes. And unless its institutions are brought back under the discipline of real democratic accountability, the Swedish model may come to represent not a hope for others, but a warning of how easily democracy can be co-opted—without ever declaring its end.

References:

# SWEDEN – A CONSTITUTIONAL STATE IN DECLINE A Critical Report (2017–2025, 18 pages)
Compiled by Nic. Cheropoulos May 18, 2025 EN / SW
# Swedish Authorities Have Lost Respect for Freedom of Expression,
Dagens Nyheter DN Nils Funcke 2024.07.29 SW
# The extent of corruption in Sweden may be underestimated
Jonas Roslund, Linköping University, 13 March 2023 EN
# [11] Increased risk of suicide after forced placement of young people Forskning.se 2024.06.05 SW
# [27] Successful Human Rights Implementation? Victims of Crime and the Swedish Example
Fanny Holm, Nordic Journal of Human Rights 2022.12.05 EN
# [30] V-Dem, Restrictions to freedom of expression University of Gothenburg 2025.03.13 EN
# [32] Designing Democracy: What Constitutions Do Cass R. Sunstein Online: 31 October 2023 EN
# [33] Democracy in danger when knowledge is undermined
By Kajsa Skarsgård News from the world of higher education 2025.03.25 EN

Author:
Leon (Nic. Cheropoulos)
Stockholm 2025.06.16