Economic Governance of Northern European Countries by the European Union 2010- 2015: The Cases of Finland, Germany, Lithuania and Sweden

Four European countries have been selected from the northern part of Europe to carry out cross-case comparisons of their strategic state capabilities. They are Finland, Germany, Lithuania and Sweden. Each of the cases has some distinctive features in terms of their recent developments or their strategic reputations. Finland’s national government has been frequently identified as taking a strategic approach to governance. The government has made reports on the future to parliament and the parliament had its Committee for the Future. Germany, in contrast, has a reputation for being more strategic at local and regional government level and the national level of government is portrayed as much less strategic. It is plausible to argue that the strength of the constitution is a major influence on how public governance works in Germany, and it maybe for this reason that strategic-state capabilities appear to be emerging quite slowly. Lithuania is an interesting case because of its apparently well-institutionalized system of strategic planning that was introduced in 2000. There is now a long-term Lithuania 2030 strategy. Central capacity for strategic planning is partly established through ministry units and a governmental Strategic Planning Committee dating from 2013. Finally, Sweden’s system of public governance is interesting in part because of the 1997 reforms that created a more integrated approach, a whole of government approach, in which the ministers were appointed by the prime minister and worked collaboratively, which has been termed as ministerial decision making according to a collegiality norm. This implies quite a step change in strategicstate capabilities in the sense of moving away from ministerial silos.