The Country of Cooperation
In the spring of 1939, some months before the Second World War, the Swedish Pavilion opened its doors at the World Exhibition in New York. Enthusiastic people – the American press hailed the Pavilion as a symbol of human civilisation – could taste the pickled herring from a rotating smorgasbord and ponder on a multi-meter high wooden horse. But they were also met by a large portrait of Per Albin Hansson, the Sweden’s Social Democrat prime minister, and a greeting from the man who had conquered the welfare from the Right and filled it with progressive content:
Visitors will find a country where different communities work together to further social progress in order to make the ideal of democracy a reality, so that Sweden, in peace and freedom, can become a real national home for all of its people.
The formulation of cooperating groups was the focus of the message. For a few years in the 1930s, Sweden appeared to constitute a promising haven in Europe’s northern fringe, as a country and a people who seemed to have overcome the contradictions between the interests, systems and ideologies that could possibly push the world towards another catastrophic eruption.
The major international breakthrough for the image of Sweden was the American journalist Marquis Childs’ acclaimed book about Sweden. The Middle Way from 1936, got U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to speak about ”a particularly interesting situation in Sweden, where a royal family, a socialist government and a capitalist system works gently side-by-side”.
Leading Swedish politicians, and particularly the Social Democrats – the party had in 1932 launched what would become a 44-year stay in government – did not mind this idea of Sweden gaining international traction. And they did what they could to cultivate it even at home. Class struggle was toned down in favour of cooperation and compromise, which was said to be deeply rooted in the soil of the past. On the Swedish Flag Day of 1937, ecclesiastical minister Arthur Engberg declared:
We have, generation after generation, built up this ancient kingdom. And in fact all the levels of our society have been included.
The image of a virtually conflict-free Sweden was obviously embellished. Universal and equal suffrage had been won only after a protracted struggle, led by Liberals and Social Democrats. Between social democracy and the bourgeoisie there were intractable and principled disagreements, especially over national economic planning and organisation of economic life. But one cannot entirely dismiss the lofty rhetoric of consensus as an expression of nationalist idealism.
During the peaceful and orderly times, Sweden had been transformed from a deprived society of privilege into a modern democracy. Politics was characterised by rational and practical considerations, not by dogma and ideological theories. The Social Democrats’ continual moderation was due to the party realising early on that the industrial working class did not constitute a sufficient basis for the realisation of social and economic reforms. At the same time, the Right understood that it was counterproductive to oppose democratisation.
Through the so-called horse-trading between the Social Democrats and the Agrarian Party in 1933, a secure parliamentary majority was secured after the chaotic parliamentary era of the 1920s, when governments fell like roof tiles during a storm. Per Albin, who usually spoke of solidarity between workers and peasants, three years later formed a coalition with the Agrarian Party and then, after the outbreak of war, entered a coalition government until 1945.
With the Salt Lake Bathing Agreement between employers and unions in 1938, the foundations of the Swedish model in the labour market were laid after a turbulent inter-war period; in a single year, 1925, 2.6 million working days were lost due to conflict. The new and more stable regime was, typically enough, based on collaboration and compromise: if the parties agreed the state would remain neutral.
After World War II – and perhaps especially during the ‘record years’ of high growth and full employment – the consensus tradition took an even greater hold. It was, one might say, part of Sweden’s political, economic and social DNA. Even at times when tensions came to a head, the Swedish consensual approach was invoked. During one of the most charged moments ever in the parliament, the ATP decision in 1959, prime minister Tage Erlander declared that Sweden ”had less bruising political battles … than in almost all democratic countries, and this has been due to the good tradition of sitting down together and reasoning with one another until a commonsense solution is found.”
That Sweden was constructive cooperation’s promised land seemed to be confirmed a few years later, when the labour unions’ chairman Arne Geijer, and employers’ organisation chief Bertil Kugelberg toured the U.S., where they faced a wide-eyed audience and presented the Swedish model.
But even in the post-war years there were harsh political battles. The resistance to the planned economy between 1946-1948, the pension battle of the 1950s, and the wage-earner funds of the 1970s are some examples that are often highlighted. This category may also include the estate tax, which emerged as a contentious issue in 1947, and the sales tax of 1959. Especially during the run-up to elections, political parties and actors become more interested in pointing out the significant differences between the options offered to voters.
The bourgeois story of Sweden has been built on the idea that the bourgeoisie resolutely fought against a social democratic authoritarianism, which found its expression in the uncontrolled expansion of the public sector. The Social Democrats’ story is about a party that, despite fierce resistance from ”right-wing forces” and ”big business”, created a fair and decent welfare state.
In actuality, Swedish society has been built through broad agreement on the basis of one compromise after another. The political battles have been the exceptions that prove the Swedish consensus rule.
In the thesis The Parties and the Large State, political scientist Emil Uddhammar identified 61 parliamentary decisions during the 1900s that all expanded government powers. On only seven occasions, i.e., in 12 percent of cases, did the bourgeois parties express reservations about a more expansive social democratic line. In seven out of ten cases, requests for public expansion were not significantly opposed by any party in parliament. The objections raised were generally marginal and were more about small details than the substance of the proposals. And it was not all that uncommon for bourgeois parties to be invited into Social Democratic governments.
One of the most dramatic changes in Swedish society – the publicly funded expansion of welfare – was therefore founded in the broad political consensus and did not encounter any consistent and principled opposition.
A selection of examples of such decisions and reforms:
• Old age pension 1913.
• Enhanced retirement and disability insurance 1935.
• Enhancement progression and higher tax rates 1938.
• Free school meals 1946.
• Universal health insurance. Policy Resolution 1946, enacted 1955.
• Child allowance 1947.
• Occupational Safety and Health Act 1949.
• Subsidies to municipal childcare 1956.
• The municipal tax equalisation grant 1965.
• Social Services Act 1980.
• Large family supplement 1981.
There was also agreement that the state would play a larger role in economic life, from the decision on state ownership of the ore fields in 1907 through the nationalisation of the private railroads in 1939, to a new Building Act in 1947, which basically transferred building rights from individuals to the state.
This list of far-reaching legislation can be supplemented with a number of recent decisions that have not sought to further expand the role government, but which have affected the relationship between state and citizens, such as the major tax reform 1990-1991 and pension agreement of 1994.
Other expressions of the commitment to the broadest possible anchor in political decision-making is the crisis agreement between Carl Bildt’s Moderate Party-led government and Ingvar Carlsson’s Social Democrats in 1992, the implementation of the Lindbeck Commission’s recommendations, and the new budgetary rules as well as the bourgeois and social democratic consensus on a Sweden’s EU membership in the 1994 referendum. Added to this is a tradition of unity in defence and security politics, and also in terms of constitutional issues.
The consensus model in Sweden has also corporatist traits, since organised special interests are involved in the political process. With the party’s long period in government, and its strong coupling to labour unions, usually this corporatist element is associated with the Social Democrats. But the background is more complicated than was shown by Bo Rothstein in the study, The Corporatist State.
Rothstein described the way in which a conservative government pushed forward a law that broke new ground for organisational Sweden. By regulating the milk industry crisis in 1932, the milk price was maintained and a large proportion of the dairies protected from ‘harmful’ competition from independent so-called ‘Bucket Riders’. Behind the initiative was Carl Gustaf Ekman’s liberal administration with the support of the Conservative and Agrarian parties. Sweden’s General Farming Company, SAL, would in practice be a state-sanctioned monopoly. But that’s not all. SAL was also entitled to collect fees from producers who stood outside the organisation – in other words, a sort of taxation.
In parliament amazed socialists saw and heard how gerliga members almost fell over each other in their eagerness to emphasise the dangers of ‘unfair’ competition and the benefits of state control. ”The limit on how much of the market the Swedish bourgeoisie could bear had apparently been reached,” noted Rothstein.
The Social Democrats were quick to exploit the situation to undermine what they saw as the bourgeois acceptance of strikebreaking, a contentious issue that had culminated in shooting in Adalen in 1931. In the milk industry the Bucket Riders effectively functioned as strike breakers in the labour market: they subdued prices and undermined organised interests. If the state did not tolerate unorganised dairy farms, there was no reason for the government to tolerate non-unionised workers.
So developed the corporative idea of a Swedish politics and Swedish industry – through a government that claimed to represent liberal values in economics. Sweden’s political history is full of such ironies. Just four years earlier, in 1928, the Social Democrats had fought tooth and nail fought against the bourgeois majority, which pushed through the law on collective agreements and employment tribunals – two future cornerstones of the labour market model that today’s social democracy regards as holy.
Populärt
De sagolika systrarna Mitford
Bland de omtalade systrarna Mitford fanns både skickliga författare, fascistsympatisörer, en hertiginna och en kommunist, skriver Moa Ekbom.
The National Encyclopaedia’s definition of the concept of consensus is perfect for Swedish conditions: ”(desire for) a consensus between the parties (with conflicting interests)” – and, in the literature of political science, Sweden is often described as a consensual democracy. A related term, common in political science, is bargaining democracy: substantive consultations with give and take.
Some constitutional factors facilitate negotiation and compromise within the framework of Sweden’s political system, including the committees’ central role in parliamentary decision-making and a proportional electoral system with several parties, which means that Sweden is, for the most part – and again after the 2010 election – governed by minority governments that must negotiate to secure a majority. But the roots of the Swedish consensus model are also cultural and historical.
The idea of Sweden as a special case, as a country where providence has created special conditions for consensus and community, we first encounter in the 1800s in the work of influential Swedish thinkers.
Erik Gustaf Geijer, much later an inspiration to Tage Erlander, developed an organic political science with the family, corporations and the state as the key parts. Even after his ‘defection’ from conservatism in 1838, he defended the parliamentary division of nobility, clergy, burghers and peasants, in contrast to England’s bicameral system:
In Sweden, the Constitution’s original democratic basis has not been nullified, only later to be built by the aristocracy. It is and was the foundation out of which grew the Constitution. The Swedish estates all originated in the old, yet amongst the Swedish peasantry there is an indelible title to the land. Even in medieval times, the aristocracy in Sweden has never quite been able to suppress the people element.
That which characterised Sweden was, according to Geijer, that the people from the beginning ”were completely represented through the attendance of peasants, though they were denied all political influence.”
Similar ideas, but with more reactionary overtones, were formulated by Christopher Jacob Bostrom, the influential philosophy professor at Uppsala, who adamantly opposed the representation reforms that finally became reality in his year of death in 1866. The conditions were optimal, said Bostrom: ”Strange, how right everything is in Sweden.” Another 18th century liberal, Johan August Gripenstedt, Finance Minister, who with the help of railways and free trade paved the way for the Swedish welfare miracle, advocated temperance and moderation: ”In almost all of human life’s practical conditions the right thing is a sensible middle ground between the extremes.”
But, opposition by anyone after this exposé, has not the legacy of consensus been weakened in recent years, when the formation of a conservative alliance, and then a red-green alternative have cemented block politics?
The term of office 2006-2010 seems to undeniably constitute a deviation from the pattern. A conservative majority government pushed through major changes – unemployment insurance, earned income tax credit, health insurance – with no serious attempts to anchor them on the other side of the political divide, and with little sensitivity to the views of the relevant interest groups. But the deviation was temporary.
In last year’s election the government lost its majority and the Sweden Democrats, a party with roots in the neo-Nazi movement, marched into Parliament. As none of the blocks would give the Sweden Democrats the opportunity to exploit their pivotal position, the Government was forced to seek agreement with the Social Democrats or the Green Party on major issues. This has already happened, for example, in the cases of Afghanistan and the grading system.
In a shaky parliamentary situation, with the growing profiling need of the small conservative parties in the Moderates’ shadow, and with the red-green cooperation in hibernation, there is much that speaks for more consensus politics and, by extension, a relaxation of the blocks’ boundaries. Striving for consensus is still the natural state of Sweden’s political life, a more than century-long tradition will not expire in just a few years.
Some people perceive that the consensus tradition is suffocating and without vision: everyone is gravitating towards the centre, and the parties are becoming, it is said, confusingly similar. This, a form of sameness, is certainly the downside of tradition. But the upside is much larger: an openness to a constructive dialogue and compromise over policy and interest lines – the ability to see strengths in others’ arguments and not just one’s own – has served the country well, and has spared Sweden many bitter and paralysing conflicts. For the idea of consensus stems from recognition of the enduring democracy’s ultimate premise: the majority’s respect for the minority.