The Decline of the Swedish Model

In: Governance: an international journal of policy and administration, Band 8, Heft 4, S. 579-590

Abstract

The international literature on the Swedish model has failed to realize the severity of its economic crisis. The Swedish malaise is entirely home‐made and started much earlier than international commentators realized. The sharp downturn in the performance of the public and private sectors in Sweden is a result of the overemphasis on the public sector, upsetting the earlier established balance between markets and politics. Since 1975 Sweden has been ruled by a distributional coalition that has not yet provided reforms that can take the country out of its economic difficulties.