We should have empowered and empathic human beings meeting us when we interact with the state

 Today I want to write a little it about some of Sweden's recipes for success regarding the creation of a well-functioning state: a state that is encountered as people who one can talk to as people

Hilarious sketch of one of the many encounters one can have with the state, and a slightly dysfunctioning person representing it

When travelling in the world, one is often struck by the impression that many people have of Sweden as a well-functioning country. "You guys seem to have understood something about how to build a well-functioning society", is a saying I have heard quite a few times from people I have met all around the world. I think that the main reason for this is that we have a well-functioning state, which really delivers results, and which is perceived as being "on our side". In other words, we have had people - human beings acting as human beings - that meet us when we for some reason interact with the state (regarding taxes, courts, police, healthcare, etc). 
 
The main importance of having people out in the leaves of the compex tree that makes out the state  is that human beings can see through detailed descriptions of laws and regulations, down to the essense of those regulations. See to it that the spirit of them is fulfilled and not the letter. In many cases these two things (spirit and letter) are not equivalent, and often they are even contradictory (see for instance this example of a well-functioning highly specialized programmer who might be deported from Sweden to Pakistan, because his previous employer did a technical error regarding an insurance policy). In such cases, it is only humans that have the ability to see through to what is right, if the rules should be followed or somehow circumvened - and in all such cases it is absolutely essential that human beings are allowed, empowered, and encouraged to act upon that. The people who make the day-to-day decisions must feel empowered and competent enough to act according to what they feel is right, according to the given essense of what the state (or organisation) is trying to do. 

I really believe that each time such "seeing through" successfully happens, the relationship between the state/leadership and the people/staff/citizen is strengthened, not weakened. Therefore, such behaviour must be promoted and not punished. We must have a humane society, and part of that process is to leave the power to the administration to be able to make their own sensible decisions, and to use their judgement and finger-tip feeling to see the difference between following a rule while upholding its intention, and upholding a rule while opposing its intention. 

Barry Schwartz in his excellent TED talk, on precisely this topic - how to empower people to act responsibly, and to go beyond rules and regulations

However, at the same time as it is important to have freedom of the implementers to have flexibility in their implementations, this must of course not be biased in unfair ways, such as corruption. Also here, Sweden has historically managed to find a good balance. We are one of the least corrupt countries in the world, and we have relatively little problem with racial discriminations or gender inequality. 

How, then, has this come about? It has of course been development in stages over many centuries. But in some sense, these ideals can be traced back to one of the founding fathers behind the Swedish administration: Axel Oxenstierna. He was the de facto ruler during Sweden's most expansive area: when the kings and queens of the time of the 30 year war were out in Europe to try to expand our borders all the way to southern Germany, he remained at home to try to build up a well-functioning state. It is back to him that many of the ideals stem that we still cherrish today, including a low level of corruption, an independence between the administration and the politicians, and a strong sense of responsibility of the people sitting in the lowest levels of these administrations. For those of you who want to know more about this man, there is an interesting SR debate on him here, and an upcoming novel about him here. 

Picture of Axel Oxenstierna, the father of the Swedish administrational system (from Wikipedia)

Finally, I want to emphasize that even though we have an internationally speaking good level in all of these areas, there are many things that still do not function good enough, and there are always tendencies and examples (such as the immigration example above) of how we sometimes move away from these ideals in other directions, where e.g. rules are followed at the expense of their intended idea. It is for this reason, I think that it is important to identify and remind ourselves of the principles that have made Sweden great in the past, and thus use these ideals as a guiding beacon when contemplating whether new suggested changes should be implemented tomorrow. I also think that the identification of such national successful principles is something that can help with our joint evolution of all countries across the world as a whole.