Reshaping the democratic state: Swedish experiences in a comparative perspective

In the international discourse concerning recent administrative reform developments there is a dominant overall interpretation propagated by a dominant storyteller: the public management programme (PUMA) of the OECD. This article takes issue with this story, arguing that instead of a singular pattern of adaptation there have been and there are several different reform trajectories in Western-style democracies, largely predicated on historically determined patterns of state-society relations and significant variations in political cultures. A detailed comparative analysis of the case of Sweden is here used to illustrate the prevalence of a pattern of 'structured pluralism' and the fruitfulness of a historical-institutionalist approach to the comparative study of administrative reform.