Sustaining state capacity in a modern state: Citizen-state relations and voluntary compliance in Sweden

Sweden is a high-capacity state.

But there are worrying signs of declining state capacity and the reach of the state varies alarmingly between different parts of Sweden. The Police’s list of “vulnerable neighborhoods” illustrates both problems. One reason for the situation is that many citizens are unwilling to comply with the state.

In our project we will map citizens’ willingness to comply with the state at the subnational level and explain the variation we find. High-capacity states’ ability to implement policy build on that citizens are willing to comply with its decrees.

Sweden has in recent years received many citizens from countries in which the state exercises its power through coercion and violence. We believe that these citizens are less willing than native born citizens to comply with the state’s decrees.

To map their and other citizens’ willingness to comply we will collect survey data among citizens and street-level bureaucrats who interact with citizens daily and analyze register data on voluntary visits to child health controls. We will also study how the state can build compliance among citizens who are unwilling to comply.

We believe that interactions with bureaucrats are crucial for fostering compliance.

We will therefore conduct survey experiments in which we match bureaucrats’ characteristics with citizens’ backgrounds to study how it affects citizens’ willingness to comply. In all, the project aims to improve relationships between citizens and the state.