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NEVER STRONGLY COMMITTED TO PUBLIC OWNERSHIP IN FIRST PLACE, THE SWEDISH SOCIAL DEMOCRATS HAVE RECENTLY UNDERTAKEN SEVERAL PRIVATISATION MEASURES. THEIR PRIVATISATION POLICY IS DISTINGUISHED BY ITS LIMITED AND PRAGMATIC CHARACTER. STILL, RECENT DEVELOPMENTS UNDERLINE THE PARADOXICAL COMBINATION OF LEFT DOMINANCE AND A SMALL STATE ENTERPRISE SECTOR CHARACTERISTIC OF THE SWEDISH CASE. THE ANALYSIS UNRAVELS THE 'SWEDISH PARADOX' IN TERMS OF THE CONSTRAINTS ON SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC POWER AND THE STRATEGIC CHOICES MADE BY THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATS IN THE FACE OF SUCH CONSTRAINS.

The state enterprise sector in Sweden, and the public sector more generally, has been restructured and partially privatised under Social Democratic auspices in the 1980s. The overall thrust of these changes conforms to the general trend in Western Europe, but Social Democratic rule has curtailed the extent of privatisation, and profoundly affected its character. (CP)

Gives a detailed account of the decade long conflict in Sweden over the 'Meidner plan' for collective 'wage-earner funds', financed by profits and originally designed to produce far reaching transformations in the ownership and control of enterprises. Explains how in the face of a ferocious campaign funded and orchestrated by capitalist interests, popular support for the plan eventually ebbed and the Social Democratic Party backed away from the radical version of the proposals. Argues that the issues of ownership and control addressed by the 'Meidner plan' will recur in the future and that as part of a wider socialist strategy they would have a pronounced anticapitalist potential. (Abstract amended)

This contribution explores common trends in inequality and redistribution across Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries from the late 1980s to 2013. Low-end inequality rises during economic downturns while rising top-end inequality is associated with economic growth. Most countries retreated from redistribution from the mid-1990s until the onset of the Great Recession, and compensatory redistribution in response to rising unemployment was weaker in 2008–2013 than in the first half of the 1990s. As unemployment and poverty risk have become increasingly concentrated among workers with low education, middle-income opinion has become more permissive of cuts in unemployment insurance generosity and income assistance to the poor. At constant generosity, the expansion of more precarious forms of employment reduces compensatory redistribution during downturns because temporary employees do not have the same access to unemployment benefits as permanent employees.