Regulating the Science-Policy Boundary:

The Myrdals and the Swedish Tradition of Governmental Commissions

The aim of the paper is to discuss the role of extra-academic social research and the question about the relationship between social science and social policy in the Swedish interwar period. More specifically the relationship between on the one hand Gunnar and Alva Myrdal as social researchers and on the other the domestic tradition of royal or governmental commissions (Statens Offentliga Utredningar, SOU) will be empirically investigated and tentatively discussed. In that sense, state investigations are possible to interpret in terms of a “trading zone”, where political and scientific cultures have met and spheres of action for expertise knowledge have been negotiated, defined and regulated, but also that these negotiations are institutionally och culturally bound to local practices. From such a perspective it is argued that the impact of the Myrdals on the governmental commission system was significant, since it conceptually problematized and re-defined the science-policy boundary on a discoursive level and that way legitimated a widened sphere of action for social researchers within the commission system.