Swedish cities adopted terror prevention plans to avoid looking bad, study finds
Swedish municipalities rushed to adopt counterterrorism policies not because they needed them, but because they feared reputational damage if they didn't, according to new research. The findings reveal how institutional pressure—rather than actual security threats—drives policy adoption, raising questions about whether such compliance-driven approaches actually work.
Originaltitel: “No one wants to end up as the black sheep”: The localisation of P/CVE policy in Sweden
<p>This study investigates the localisation of P/CVE policy in Sweden and explores the sociocultural mechanisms shaping this process. By moving beyond formal political explanations, it examines how nonelected public administrators across different governance levels understood and responded to the emerging expectations of P/CVE. Drawing on new institutional theory and 19 semi-structured interviews, this study shows that the localisation of P/CVE was not driven by legal mandates or local security needs but by normative and mimetic pressures. The national coordinator’s office played a central role by aggressively promoting municipal action plans and coordinators as legitimate responses. Owing to the uncertainty regarding how to act, most municipalities felt compelled to conform, often out of the fear of reputational damage. Many responded by rapidly adopting action plans, often through uncritical imitation, resulting in superficial and poorly contextualised policies. These findings contribute to the P/CVE literature by offering a detailed analysis of how the institutional context and embedded sociocultural forces shape local P/CVE policymaking.</p>