Corporate Lobbying after Government - Mapping Former Swedish Ministers and State Secretaries’ Careers in the Private Sector

High-ranking state officials moving from politics to the private sector has been the object of intense debate in Sweden in the last decades. Critics contended that politicians were ripping the benefits of their time in government cabinets by getting lucrative positions in the corporate sector, with the additional risks of increased lobbying of the government and corporate influence on government decisions. However, few empirical studies have mapped out the extent to which former government members in Sweden join nor the sectors or industries that recruit most of these officials (see Blach-Ørsten et al., 2017 study on Danish ministerial advisers' post government careers in PR and lobbying).

By using biographical data on ministers and state secretaries of Swedish government cabinets from 2002 to 2022, this paper maps out the post-government career paths of these officials in the private sector in the two years following their departure from the government as this is the period when information and contacts from government may still be a resource for them. The paper finds that approximately 35 percent of these government cabinet members join or establish their own private sector enterprise. The industry that attracts most former cabinet members is ‘public affairs’, ‘public relations and communications’ and their roles in the private sector include ‘strategic advisers’, ‘advisers’ or ‘consultants’ as well as being board members in industry/interest group organizations and private sector companies.

These findings are placed theoretically in and contribute to the literature on the decline of corporatism in Sweden, i.e. private sector and special interests being involved in political decision-making (Lindvall & Sebring 2005; Garsten et al. 2015; Selling 2019; Tyllström 2021) and the acceleration of Swedish neoliberalism that contributes to a growing corporate lobbying industry (Tyllström 2013; Svallfors & Tyllström 2017).