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The Transformation of the Swedish Model: Economic Ideas, Distributional Conflict, and Institutional Change
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 June 2011
Abstract
This article examines the transformation of the Swedish model of economic regulation from an ideational perspective. While the majority of arguments about the decline of the Swedish model have focused on the role of structural factors, this article looks to illuminate the ideational factors that made possible both the emergence and the transformation of the Swedish model. The article details how, during the 1930s and 1940s, economic ideas provided the Swedish state and its trade union allies with the means to construct the institutions of the Swedish model. By the 1970s, however, Swedish business suffered diminishing returns to continued participation within these institutions and responded to labor's challenges by adopting a two-pronged strategy of withdrawal from and ideological contestation of labor's supporting institutions. The politics of ideas was key in this regard. During the 1980s Swedish business marshaled alternative economic ideas to contest and thus delegitimate existing institutions and the patterns of distribution they made possible. Swedish business thus began the process of overturning the Swedish model long before capital mobility or domestic inflation was ever a problem. By highlighting these factors, the article offers an explanation of the transformation of the Swedish model that stresses the centrality of ideational contestation for understanding institutional change in general.
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References
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32 Ibid.
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36 Such threats were backed up by large fines for noncompliance. In 1987, for example, SAF fined the Bakery and Confectionery Employers Association one million krona.
37 Israel (tn. 13), 351. Such subventions constituted up to 20 percent of the value of the commodities stocked.
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47 Stephens (fn. 46) qualifies this conclusion by arguing that such collective modes of representation were actually replaced by individual representatives from the same sectors. As such, nothing much actually changed (pp. 7—8).
48 Pestoff (fn. 22), 157–58.
49 Ulf Laurin, SAF-tidningen, February 16, 1990.
50 SAF sponsored many such public awareness events throughout the 1980s on topics as diverse as inflation and education policy.
51 Larsson and Holmberg (fn. 27), 26.
52 Ibid.
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The original argument was that full employment accommodates the demands of trade unions, a situation that inevitably produces inflation. The argument later shifted to hold that government itself caused inflation directly by capitulating to insatiable demands for collective goods. Compare Hans Tson Söderström, “Den nya skepticismen,” Ekonomisk Debatt 2, no. 1 (1978Google Scholar); and idem, Normer och ekonomisk politik (Stockholm:SNS Forlag, 1996Google Scholar).
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71 Quoted in Lindvall (fn. 69), 11. 72This section draws on the analysis of the Bildt administration provided by Hamilton and Rolander (fh. 4).
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74 Ibid., 78.
75 Hamilton and Rolander (fn. 4), 10.
76 Ibid.
77 Prime Minister Bildt even echoed Thatcher's “there is no alternative” rhetoric by declaring that he offered “den enda vägens politik”—the only way policy.
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