Ansvarsförskjutning och liberal styrning i skapandet av krismedvetna medborgare

Abstract

Shifting Responsibilities and Liberal Governmentality in the Creation and Governance of the Prepared Citizen

Swedish security- and crisis management has since the beginning of the 1990s experienced discursive and organizational changes which has given rise to substantial shifts in responsibility – from state to individuals. This article aims to analyze and discuss the shift as well as the strategies deployed by the state to encourage crisis awareness and preparation among its citizens. The article notes that the governance of individual crisis awareness and preparation follows a liberal rationality in that it does not involve juridical or disciplinary tactics but operates on the sustained freedom and choice of individuals to comply. The shift in responsibility and the current forms of governance defies the theoretical and philosophical foundation of the liberal state and opens up important questions on defining the boundary of individual contra state responsibility for individual security and property. According to the liberal theory of a ‘social contract’ between the state and the citizen, individual liberty is exchanged for basic security provision provided by the state. This has also served as the foundation for the legitimacy of state power and its dominating power and monopoly of violence. If this contract and social bound is renegotiated in current crisis management in Sweden, it also invokes concern for the fundamental legitimacy of the state.