The Swedish universal welfare state – promoting or violating autonomy?

The purposes animating the creation of the Swedish welfare model have been the object of considerable research. The central question, for our purposes here, is whether the Swedish welfare state should be seen as, on the one hand, an attempt to increase the autonomy of citizens by furnishing them with certain basic capabilities they have been unable on their own to procure; or, on the other hand, as a centrally directed invasion of civil society by the state, that is, as a reduction of citizens to the status of subordinate clients deemed unable to manage their own affairs, and the corresponding assumption of responsibilities – once borne by a free citizenry – by an ever-more despotic and expert-directed state. In other words, does Amartya Sen's theory of “basic capabilities” best describe the Swedish welfare model, or is Jürgen Habermas' apprehension of the state's continuous colonization of the private sphere – and the associated elimination of civil society – the more apposite description?

One of the more widely discussed contributions to this debate in recent years is that of the Swedish feminist historian Yvonne Hirdman. In a book written as part of the Swedish Investigation on Power and Democracy, a mega social-science project set up by the government and conducted 1985 to 1990, she has sought to describe and interpret the ideological ambitions behind Social Democratic social policy – from the time of its founding during the 1930s up to the 1960s – from the perspective of the state's relation to the private sphere.