# What Europe's best-governed countries do: lessons from Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland

> Europe's best-governed countries keep the careers of politicians and civil servants apart, open official documents to everyone by default and push decisions down to levels that raise their own taxes. Denmark (89) and Finland (88) top Transparency International's 2025 index; Spain scores 55. Research by Dahlström and Lapuente links separate careers to less corruption and waste. A radical-centre agenda for Spain would cap political appointments, make access to documents the default and measure regional government quality every year.

- URL: https://www.radicalcentre.eu/en/articles/what-europes-best-governed-countries-do
- Language: en
- Publisher: radical centre / centro radical
- Published: 2026-10-26
- Topic: Democracy & institutions
- Author: radical centre
- Licence: CC BY 4.0

## Key points

- In Transparency International's 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, Denmark scores 89, Finland 88 and Norway 81; Spain scores 55, ten points below 2012.
- Dahlström and Lapuente's Organizing Leviathan argues that keeping politicians' and bureaucrats' careers separate produces less corrupt, more effective government.
- Sweden has guaranteed public access to official documents since 1766, and Finland writes the same principle into its constitution.
- Switzerland shares power among the Confederation, 26 cantons and over 2,000 communes, allocated by subsidiarity, and each level raises its own taxes.
- Spain can cap political appointments, make document access the default and use the European Quality of Government Index to rank its regions.

Ask which European countries are best governed and the same names come back from almost every index. In Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2025, published in February 2026, Denmark scored 89 out of 100, Finland 88 and Norway 81, at the top of Western Europe and among the best performers in the world. Spain scored 55 and ranked 49th of 182 countries. Its score has fallen ten points since 2012, one of the biggest drops in the region, and Transparency International noted the largest protests over corruption the country had seen in years.

This week our programme has looked at the institutional problems raised at the launch of [Democracia 21](/en/articles/democracia-21-miriam-gonzalez-proposals-radical-centre): politicised watchdogs, clientelism, a judiciary caught between the blocs. It's worth asking what the countries at the top of the table actually do, because their habits are concrete and can be copied.

## They keep careers apart

The clearest finding comes from two political scientists at the University of Gothenburg, Carl Dahlström and Victor Lapuente, in *Organizing Leviathan* (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Their idea is simple. When groups with different interests have to work together, they monitor each other. Careers are the best guide to interests, so government works best when the careers of politicians and the careers of civil servants are kept apart. The decisive signal is recruitment. When officials are hired for political loyalty, their fate is tied to their political masters whatever the formal rules say. When they're hired on merit, their careers depend on professional peers.

The book's opening chapter takes Spain as its example of what goes wrong without that separation. The authors describe airports, high-speed lines and motorways built with little economic case, and they record that Spain has 43 international airports, twice as many as Germany with almost double the population. Their explanation is a politicised administration: politicians who could appoint large numbers of officials could set aside technical advice in favour of short-term goals.

A follow-up study by Nicholas Charron, Dahlström, Mihály Fazekas and Lapuente, which we discuss in our [week 2 answer](/en/articles/cleaning-up-institutions-without-vetocracy-week-2-answer), tested the idea on 212 European regions and found lower corruption risk in public contracts where careers follow professional criteria. Fukuyama's account of state-building, which we [explained here](/en/articles/fukuyama-political-order-and-political-decay-explained), points the same way: the countries that built an impersonal civil service early resisted clientelism.

## They open the files

Sweden has had a principle of public access to official documents since 1766. It sits in the Freedom of the Press Act, one of the country's fundamental laws, and its purpose is to let the public understand what authorities do and keep watch on them. Finland writes the same principle into its constitution: documents held by public authorities are public unless a law restricts them for compelling reasons. The practical effect is that the default runs towards disclosure. A journalist, a rival firm or a neighbour can check a decision without asking anyone's permission to look.

That openness is the cheapest control there is, and it adds no veto. Nobody has to sign off on a published file. The people outside the administration become the monitors, which is the same mechanism Dahlström and Lapuente describe inside it.

## They decide close to the people who pay

Switzerland adds a third habit, and it concerns how power is spread. The Swiss foreign ministry describes a Confederation that shares power with 26 cantons and over 2,000 communes, allocated on the principle of subsidiarity, with the communes given as much autonomy as possible. Each of the three levels raises its own taxes to pay for its own tasks.

That arrangement is what Elinor Ostrom called polycentric governance, which we covered in our [Governing the Commons explainer](/en/articles/elinor-ostrom-governing-the-commons-explained). Many centres of decision, each answerable to the people who fund it, catch mistakes that a single centre would miss. A commune that spends badly has to explain it to the taxpayers next door.

## What Spain could take

The left will recognise its own agenda in the Nordic tradition of open government and a strong, trusted public sector. The right and the liberal market tradition will recognise theirs in merit recruitment, decentralised decisions and governments that raise the money they spend. What fits neither camp is the mechanism underneath: good government comes from mutual monitoring, with people of different career interests working side by side, at several levels, checking one another.

For Spain we would draw a few changes from that. Cap political appointments in law and move the work to career staff, as we argued in our piece on [merit and advisers](/en/articles/merit-spain-administration-cut-advisers). Make access to official documents the default, with refusals justified case by case. And measure. The University of Gothenburg's European Quality of Government Index has surveyed citizens about corruption, impartiality and the quality of public services across EU regions in 2010, 2013, 2017, 2021 and 2024, with roughly 330,000 respondents in total. Spain's regions run health, education and much of public employment. Publishing their scores every year, next to those of Danish and Finnish regions, would give voters a yardstick and every regional government a reason to climb.

## FAQ

### Which country is the best governed in Europe?

On perceived corruption, Denmark leads with 89 points in the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, followed by Finland with 88 and Norway with 81. Rankings vary by indicator; on this one the Nordic countries lead.

### Why are Nordic countries less corrupt?

Several features recur: civil servants recruited on merit whose careers don't depend on politicians, strong traditions of open government such as Sweden's 1766 access to documents principle, and powerful local governments that answer to their own taxpayers.

### Where does Spain rank on corruption?

Spain scored 55 out of 100 and ranked 49th of 182 countries in the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index. Its score has fallen ten points since 2012.

## Sources

- [Corruption Perceptions Index 2025: Europe must step up leadership in fight against corruption](https://www.transparency.org/en/press/corruption-perceptions-index-2025-europe-must-step-up-leadership-fight-against-corruption), Transparency International (2026)
- [Spain – Corruption Perceptions Index](https://www.transparency.org/en/countries/spain), Transparency International (2026)
- [Organizing Leviathan (excerpt)](https://assets.cambridge.org/97813166/30655/excerpt/9781316630655_excerpt.pdf), Cambridge University Press (Carl Dahlström and Victor Lapuente) (2017)
- [Principle of public access to official records](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_public_access_to_official_records), Wikipedia (2026)
- [Federalism](https://www.aboutswitzerland.eda.admin.ch/en/federalism), Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (2026)
- [European Quality of Government Index](https://www.gu.se/en/quality-government/qog-data/data-downloads/european-quality-of-government-index), University of Gothenburg, Quality of Government Institute (2024)