I have always been fascinated by the repetitiveness of Scandinavian surnames. In the quarter century between 1993 and 2018, three prime ministers followed each other in Denmark, all of them called Rasmussen without being related. This fascination was partly satisfied when I came across a 1965 essay by Carl Henrik Hermanson entitled: Monopoly and Finance: The Fifteen Families. The book chronicled in detail the history of the concentration of wealth in Sweden through its most important families, and corroborated my anecdotal impression of being confronted with a tightly-knit elite, which in a small country is inevitably destined to occupy top positions in business, government and cultural institutions.

Having dwelled on the method of a middle way governance, the next step of this inquiry will focus on the sources of governance: who should we enlist when we seek the new middle way. Known for its egalitarian streak, the Nordic model is in this respect misleading. Even in the fair and equal North, there is a “1%”, a plutocracy of individuals that accumulates power and wealth. Unlike in the rest of the Western world, the Nordic elite is not demonized by the remaining 99 per cent: the Jeff Bezoses or Mark Zuckerbergs of this world that earn money even when they are setting up charities2 are not the target of popular opprobrium.

As elsewhere, the Nordic middle class has been eroded by growing privatization and deregulation. But at least at face value, this has not led to an endemic widening of social and economic divides as experienced in other Western countries. Nor has it erased the centrality of middle management in public and private organizations, with all that that entails in terms of the mobility of individuals growing and rising through the ranks. By the time Marquis Childs grew old in the 1980s, he might have come to witness the “McKinseyfication” of America's economy and society, or what Daniel Markovitz calls the “consulting revolution”, which outsourced key public services, in the name of efficiency and shareholder primacy. This would also come to pervade the Nordic countries. As we shall see, the private sector has taken over large swathes of public management, changing the mindset with which critical functions of the state are performed. But it has not led to the hollowing out of the middle class.