Status and Criminal Liability of Civil Servants in Modern Public Administration: A Comparative Study of Denmark, Finland, and Sweden

Accountability is a central topic in administrative law. To hold persons and institutions executing public power legally accountable in various ways is linked to ideas of good governance, democracy, legitimacy, and the rule of law. In the last decades, established structures for accountability in the public sector have been challenged through processes of privatization of public services, digitalization and a trend of flexibilization of the employment status of civil servants. All these developments are closely related to the impact of Europeanization. Among the various tools for accountability, criminal liability for public officials constitutes the most far-reaching form of measures from the perspective of the individual. The aim of this comparative study is to draw conclusions on the challenges in defining the legal status and the scope for the criminal liability of civil servants against the background of the developments just mentioned. The choice to study three Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland and Sweden) is made against the background of the Nordic countries all being highly ranked in international surveys of democracy and the rule of law. Alongside introducing Nordic solutions for the modern liability
challenges, the study points out development trends driven by europeanization, which bring new elements into Nordic thinking.