SJÄLVSTYRE OCH INDIVIDANSVAR I LJUSET AV COVID-19

Abstract

Due to the coronavirus outbreak in 2020 European countries have had to develop strategies for the sake of containing and controlling the spread of the virus. Measures taken by international political institutions, such as the EU, have only been supplementary while the main authority over the management during the pandemic has been in the hands of each European country, which in turn has led to diverging paths between strategies and governing based on either coercion or voluntary action. Sweden and the United Kingdom represent these different approaches where the former in the early days of the pandemic was portrayed as unique due to its strategy being based mostly on individuals following recommendations while the latter issued a nationwide lockdown in line with other European countries. The choice of either opting for a strict or lenient strategy ought to indicate the attitude toward individual responsibility, however by comparing Sweden to other European countries such as Germany, Italy and Spain and their respective strategies previous research has shown that the discourse around individual responsibility was similar despite the countries dissimilar approaches. The aim of this study is to contribute to the academic field on governmentality and individual responsibility in light of Covid-19 by comparing the Swedish and British strategies using a Foucauldian perspective in order to review what role the individual has been given in each strategy as well as highlighting key similarities and differences.