| Abstract: | This article gives an account of the interpretative conflicts and re-regulative initiatives that followed the Swedish banking crisis in the 1990s. The analysis is based on systems theory and theories of governance conceptualizing steering and self-regulation. It shows the polycontextuality of the conflicts over the crisis, and how the re-regulation articulated central aspects of neo-liberal government, as conceptualized in terms of governance. The conclusion discusses two paradoxes. The first is that the enforced self-regulation of the re-regulative process 'frees' market actors by embedding them in new webs of governance. The second paradox is that every solution to a problematic event of this kind is at the same time seen as a new problem when observed with distinctions other than the one reduced by the solution. |
