Modern Swedish civil society must be seen against the background of the breakthrough of the market society and modern democracy in the 1800s. As the old feudal system fell apart, new organisations and associations emerged in what historian Torkel Jansson has called ”an explosive void”.

Some organisations were political, others were economic, religious or social, and together they responded to a new modern world, where individuals were released from institutions from an older time. On the one hand, it presented opportunities for political, social and economic self-organisation, when old hierarchical and feudal structures were in their grave; on the other hand, it led to rapid upheavals in the economic and social orders, so that many suddenly stood without social and economic security, and were therefore in need of new associations that gave them both a political voice and social welfare. This new associational form came to play a crucial role in the emergence of a modern public sphere, with free and often oppositional media and free association, and also new forms of social interaction, welfare production and political organisation.

At that time, a sometimes-confusing variety of organisations and associations constituted contemporary Swedish civil society. Here, there was room for companies and workers associations, nationally orientated sport and physical education, religious revivalists, marksmanship associations, sickness insurance funds, producer cooperatives, education circles, women societies, associations for people in need, reform groups and much more. Only much later did the classic popular movements – the temperance, labour, and cooperative movements – come to dominate our view of what was meant by civil society.

Another important part of contemporary civil society was comprised of organisations that tried to mitigate the consequences of poverty, unemployment and disease: liberal self-help groups, workers’ cooperatives, religious groups, the bourgeois charity and philanthropic foundations that raised money, which could then be used to help the less fortunate.

This tradition had its roots in the medieval idea of compassion, about responsibility to one’s fellow man, and the duty to give away one’s surplus – if only for the salvation of one’s soul, as historian Roger Qvarsell writes. This was true even after the Reformation: according to church doctrine in 1571, the one who neglected their duties towards the poor and the sick was worse than an infidel.

At the same time, however, the state’s responsibility began to increasingly fade as its influence grew. According to the Lutheran doctrine of society, responsibility for the needy was shared between the household, the township and the state: the master was responsible in the first place, the church in the second, and when both of these failed, the king and the state had the ultimate duty to ensure all subjects’ welfare. Then, like now, there was a conflict of interest between the different levels in the context of a general parsimony. They experimented in terms of different categories of the poor: those who were debauched and did not deserve help and those who had undeservedly fallen into destitution.

But already in the 1720s, some groups had begun to organise unions where members paid an annual fee. This led over time to the savings bank and insurance sectors, two major moral development projects, which were based on the idea of ??ownership and planning. Thrift and planning would create ”increased work capacity, health preservation, undisturbed peace of mind and extended life, and thus a capital far greater than in the savings book”, as expressed in a pamphlet distributed by the Härnösands Savings Bank at its inception in 1827.

This idea of ??self-responsibility and self-help were soon joined by the significantly different idea of ??a ”right to assistance”. As early as 1799, David Schulz von Schulzenheim – a doctor, magistrate and landowner – argued in a speech to the Academy of Sciences for such a right to assistance, and in a law of 1847 this principle came to have a legal basis: ”Every parish of the country, and every city, should give care and assistance to those members with an inability to work, and who are in want of other means and lawful ways to subsistence, and are unable to feed themselves”. It soon became evident that, like today, this type of municipal largesse was difficult to finance in difficult economic times. The large crop failure in the 1860s led to the tougher law of 1871 that instead emphasised the duty of the individual and other family members to provide for themselves and each other.

When self-help and public provision was not enough, there remained charity. Among the many groups that were enacted was ErstaDiakoni, founded in 1851, and which provided the first nursing education in Sweden. Ersta still exists today, although its activity has to some extent been gradually integrated into the public welfare system. Ersta, and other religiously coloured institutions, are interesting in that they acted within the framework of a Christian ethic of which giving, mercy, and compassion were at the centre. They acted directly in support of fellow human beings, and perceived their role as long-term partners of the emerging modern state.

In this respect, the scientifically and politically oriented philanthropy was different. These groups tended rather to reform state policy and reform society. Ambitions to safeguard their independence in relation to the state were lacking on the whole. They took initiatives, created businesses, but also saw it as their duty to get the state, counties and municipalities to take over at least the financial responsibility.

The ties between philanthropy, academia and politics were crucial. The politically oriented philanthropy also gave results: the pension reform of 1913, the Poor Law of 1918, and the advent of The National Board of Health and Welfare, and The Ministry of Health and Social Affairs were concrete examples. One consequence of the political philanthropists’ success was that, over time, they ceased to play their original role as state-critical social entrepreneurs.

Instead, many of these philanthropists and academics became state officials.

With democracy’s breakthrough, civil society from the 1920s also came to play a somewhat different role, which brought many organisations away from a more autonomous and state-critical approach, towards a closer cooperation with the new democratic state. The new, corporatist model was at hand. The emphasis

came to lie on politics and voting, and the main interest groups were tied to political parties. The self-help groups, cooperative societies and charitable institutions of earlier times, which were organised to satisfy spiritual and material needs, stood back. Instead, the focus shifted to the state: from membership to citizenship, from self-help and charity to social rights. If philanthropy and charity were perceived as virtues of those who gave – an impulse rooted in altruism and compassion – these phenomena could also be perceived as deeply offensive. Within the workers’ movement, many felt that they were based on undemocratic and unequal power relations, where the little people were subjected to humiliating handouts from the bourgeoisie. A primary purpose of the nascent welfare state was to free people from dependence on this form of bourgeois benevolence, which was structurally linked to inequality and a hierarchical social order.

In Sweden, bourgeois charity and philanthropy ended up in history’s shadow, in contrast to the U.S. and continental Europe, where philanthropy, charity and civil society-based welfare came to be developed, either as an alternative to public care and services (U.S.) or in close collaboration with the state under the principle of subsidiarity (Germany). The U.S., Germany and Sweden were similar to each other in many ways at the beginning of the 1900s, and the American and German influences were apparent among democratic, member-based popular movements; the liberal self-help groups; and in Christian and bourgeois charity and philanthropy. Today, over a century later, it seems these countries serve as an expression of three different ‘models’ for welfare funding and production.

In this development, one can say that civil society in Sweden has played a complex role, where a part of it (the popular movements linked to social democracy) has actually tried to eliminate the other part (bourgeois charity), not directly, or as an end itself, but because the political objective was to eliminate the facts constituting philanthropy’s and charity’s hotbed and raison d’être. The large and powerful interest groups, especially the labour unions and the Social Democratic Party and its support organisations, worked for the state to take direct responsibility for the unemployed, sick and disabled. Universal social rights were set out against a degrading and stigmatising charity.

The emphasis on citizens’ and individuals’ equality and independence was in conflict with the moral logic that was based on communitarian rather than individualistic values. The state’s individualistic social contract that emerged came to challenge all forms of community of hierarchical and patriarchal character that stood between the state and the individual, not just charities, but even religious groups and traditional types of family.

The archetypal social movement organisation, built on voluntarism, membership and internal democracy, had as its main aim to change society at large, not to protect its own specificity and communitarian independence from the state. On the contrary, the state was seen as an ally, and its own task was to act as a complement and accelerator with comprehensive, government-guaranteed universalism as the goal. In civil society’s civil war, the vote stood against service, rights against charity, the general against the particular, and universal individualisation against communitarian community.

From this perspective, nota bene, a large civil society is not in a simple way an end in itself. A bit provocatively, one can rather say that the historical ambition has been to destroy parts of civil society – or, more accurately, the need for them. The classic, popular movements had democracy and social rights as their primary objectives, and sought by all means to combat poverty, dependency, inequality and authoritarianism, and class-based and undemocratic government. In this context, a reduced need for charity and philanthropy stands out as a sign of success.

This story about Sweden and Swedish specificity is only an ideal type that tends to obscure the view of a more complex reality. The welfare state has never been able to eliminate the need for charity, and many of the philanthropic initiatives taken before it was constructed are still with us – and are now playing an ever more important role. This applies especially to the most vulnerable – all those who, for various reasons, cannot be bothered or are unable to live up to the ‘work ethic’s’ ideals and requirements: the homeless, the marginalised, the permanently unemployed and drug addicts.

This is nothing new. The welfare state has, from its beginning, been basically a system created by and for ‘conscientious workers’ and with an integrated and thinly veiled contempt for the undesirable and the poor, who are to blame for their own fates by immoral living. Welfare policy in general has not been based on the idea of ??a general citizen, but rather on the principle of compensation for ”loss of income” in exceptional and time-limited illness, unemployment and parental leave. Similarly, the pension is only to a small degree a general social security pension; it is predominantly tied to the contributions paid.

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One question that you can eventually ask is how the trends look today. Are Sweden, the U.S. and other countries locked into a ‘path dependence’, which suggests that different welfare regimes will evolve according to their own logic in parallel universes? Or do we see an increased pressure from global trends that, over time, will blur the differences and lead to greater equality?

According to a recent analysis of welfare provision in Denmark, the USA and Germany, Lars Skov Henriksen, Steven Rathgeb Smith and Annette Zimmer postulate that we may find ourselves in an initial phase characterised more by convergence than by continued separation. In Denmark, the United States, and Germany the trend is that freedom of choice, market mechanisms, New Public Management, demands for evidence and quality control dominate both discourse and practice. A clear consequence of this is that the state’s role is restricted to financing and control, and also that large-scale and private players win market share. As for the trend of civil society’s role and size, the trend is less clear – it is primarily the for-profit businesses that are growing in the private sector, although non-profit companies are also growing in some areas, but at a slowing pace. In light of the demographic and economic forecasts, one can also speculate that even funding and responsibility over time will be transferred from the public sector to the private sphere.

In another recent article, the Dutch researcher, Theo Schuyt, analyses the role of philanthropy in the European welfare states, and finds that philanthropy is growing, albeit from a low level. He notes, however, that the academic interest in philanthropy in Europe remains low, which means that our knowledge is relatively weak. But we know that non-profit organisations in Europe are primarily financed through funds from their own income or from the state. Schuyt suggests this perspective on philanthropy’s possible role in a situation where many see the financing of welfare in the future as problematic. Similarly, some researchers believe that both the family and traditional charity, contemporary non-profit and commercial add-on services will be needed over time.

Such a development would mean not only convergence, but also standardisation, where the chances of Sweden beginning to remind one of the U.S. are far greater than the opposite. In this perspective, the question becomes whether we envision a return to charity and philanthropy from an older time, or the emergence of a more modern and less stigmatising non-profit sector. As Schuyt notes, charity is still somewhat associated with paternalism and inequality.

In Sweden, this is a particularly sensitive political issue given our historical traditions and political culture. Therefore, it is rather more likely that commercial alternatives will find acceptance. Like the social rights based on common, tax-funded politics, the relationships in the market are relatively ‘clean’ – you get what you pay for. We can already see how companies, trade unions and individuals buy private supplementary insurance as a supplement to a basic, public service. This process is facilitated by freedom of choice and reforms that separate funding from execution. The new private operators can offer both basic services – paid for with taxation – and a range of additional services paid for through supplementary insurance, or with cash.

This allows for both a more flexible financing and a balance between collective responsibility for basic services and individual responsibility for the ‘plus service’. A further potential gain is that individuals – the new ‘civic consumers’ – will be offered more contract-like relationships with those who provide their services, leading to greater clarity, chargeable rights and more self-empowerment. We are moving from pure state-individualism towards a more market-orientated individualism, in which the state indeed plays a crucial role, but now in a post-paternalistic society where individualism has deepened further. Doubtless, such a development will meet resistance, both from the Right, where, for example, The Christian Democrats would rather see a greater role for family, relatives, communities and other civil society actors, and from the Left, where the Left Party and some Social Democrats will fight for a continued dominant role for the public sector, with ‘non-profit’ private actors playing a limited supporting role.