PART I: THE RISE OF FOLKHEMMET

From Peasant Power to Industrial Breakthrough

Continuity and Change in Swedish History; Historical Roots

Modernisation and Industrial Breakthrough

Folkhemmet Triumphant

With the Tide – folkhemmet’s Foundation; The Decades of Hegemony.

Folkhemmet Defeated

Against the Tide – the Storm Clouds of the Sixties

The Swan Song of folkhemmet

PART II: SWEDEN AFTER THE SWEDISH MODEL

From Tutorial State to Enabling State

Introduction; Origins and Growth of the Welfare State

The Mature Tutorial State’s Problems; The Welfare State Crisis

Towards the Enabling State and a Welfare Society

Unresolved Economic Problems; The Great Dilemmas of the Future.

Few social experiments have caught the imagination of politicians and students of political economy like the ‘Swedish model’. To successive generations of the centre left searching for their own “Third Way” Sweden was something of a paradise. This exotic Nordic country was a kind of real-life Utopia, an idyllic country, full of beautiful people with a Social Democratic government which worked, a nation combining high rates of economic growth with unprecedented levels of equality.

This was a view largely shared by the Swedes themselves. For 50 years or so after the 1930’s, it really appeared that you could have it all, a high rate of growth, low levels of unemployment and an unparalleled system of social welfare. But the Swedish model was not to survive the challenges that new times and its own development were to raise. At the beginning of the 1990’s, after almost two decades of increasing problems, the Swedish Model collapsed. A difficult time of high unemployment and fiscal crisis became the everyday reality of the Swedes. This was a mortifying experience for a people that for many decades had known nothing of that kind. Confusion was widespread, but even the Swedish clouds have a silver lining. In the middle of the deepest crisis the country had experienced since the beginning of the 1930’s, rethinking and reappraisal ensued. This was the start of a quite amazing process of change that is transforming Sweden, leaving behind the old monopolistic tutorial state1 and opening the gates to a welfare society in which the state is no more the patronising state of the past but what I would like to call an enabling state, open to civic initiatives, individual choice, and cooperation with the private sector.

Part one of this book tells the saga of the rise and fall of the Swedish model or folkhemmet, which is the word commonly used in Sweden for what foreigners call the Swedish model. Folkhemmet – literally a combination of folk (people) and hem (home) – was a unique attempt to create an all-embracing Welfare State, which substituted the security of the tutorial state for the old, traditional ties of family and community. Looking back at history, I try to explain the factors which made folkhemmet and an overwhelming Social Democratic hegemony possible in Sweden, and which ultimately led to the demise of both, as well as to our current period of social and political renewal. The main argument here is that folkhemmet was more of a bridge than a break in Swedish history. It offered continuity during a time of rapid change brought on by modernisation. Its main power lay in its ability to intertwine the past with the future, in its promise to preserve Sweden’s distinctive traditions while exploiting the material prosperity of the industrial era. That is why the subsequent crisis of folkhemmet and Social Democracy represented more than simply the failure of a particular political project. It has had a profound effect on Sweden’s national identity, on our most deeply rooted traditions and dreams, and on the heritage of centuries.

This part of the present work was written in the mid-1990’s, when the economic crisis was very deep and the clouds in the Swedish sky were very dark. Part two, written only a year ago and updated for this publication, is about Sweden after the collapse of folkhemmet or the Swedish model. It summarises the transformation that the country has been experiencing during the last decade or so as a way to cope with the debacle of the old Swedish model. As the reader will see, amazing things are taking place in Sweden. Many important problems are still there, but the search for a new “Swedish model” has been intensive and in many senses very inspiring to anyone interested in learning about how to build up a fair society with high levels of diversity and individual freedom. The challenges to come are many, but today we can be more confident than we could on the day after the dismal demise of folkhemmet.

At the end of this book the reader will find a commented Statistical Appendix that gives a summary of some important aspects of the recent development of Sweden.