Sweden's Temperate Revolution

...To be sure, the state's heavy hand has not always provoked such scorn...

...In addition, they are badly divided on a number of crucial issues, including the proposed terms of EC membership, the future of nuclear power and the environmental wisdom of a planned bridge across the Baltic to Denmark...

...But if he tries to lead a revolution, he may find the next thing voters want to change is him...

...Presenting his government on October 4, the Prime Minister announced to the Riksdag that he intends to cut about 4 per cent from government spending next year, reduce taxes on small businesses and eliminate the highly unpopular value-added taxes on food...

...What it actually stirred was a polite assent to lighten the government's hand and to bring Sweden the economic advantages of a united Europe...

...Cooperation," he says, "is going to be the key word of politics in the 1990s...

...At the same time, Swedes showed that they do not want major structural reform...

...We are too polite as a nation," Wachtmeister declares...

...Bildt, the 42-year-old chairman of the Moderate Party, is now Prime Minister...

...During the campaign debates, he ruffled feathers by referring to Left Party Chairman Lars Werner as the leader of the Communists, a blunt reminder that Werner's group changed its name only last year...

...the average personal income tax is 60 per cent of wages, while corporate taxes peak at 30 per cent...

...Popular sentiment swung so strongly in favor of membership that the Social Democratic government of Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson reversed its anti-EC stance in midcampaign and applied for membership...

...They turned against the long-dominant Social Democratic Party, the inventor of their unique system, and replaced it with a conservative government headed by Carl Bildt, who promised to cut taxes and lead Sweden into the European mainstream...

...They chose a conservative government, but they kept the Social Democrats the largest single party in Parliament, thereby ensuring that no part of Sweden's welfare system will be scrapped without a fight...

...Certainly the election was not quite the requiem for the Social Democrats that many had expected...

...The people are full of complaints about the incongruities of their system: a starting doctor earns the same salary as a starting trash collector...

...As the latest balloting approached, the economy was in recession, inflation was climbing and the country that had enshrined the concept of full employment had a 3.1 per cent jobless rate—the highest it had experienced since World War II...

...Bildt has aconfrontational style and fancies himself a free market crusader...

...The election was viewed here and abroad as a potential watershed...

...Wachtmeister is known as the "Crazy Count" for his distinctly un-Swedish irreverence...

...His populist message won 6.2 per cent of the vote, giving his party 24 Riksdag seats, currently the balance of power...

...Together the four "bourgeois parties" (as Swedish parlance has it) took only 47.1 per cent of the vote and 170 seats in the 349-seat Riksdag...

...Another painting depicts the death of Carl's revered ancestor, King Gustavus Adolphus, the great warrior who led Swedish armies to victory in the Thirty Years War but died of battle wounds near Leipzig...

...The sacredness of neutrality is instilled here at an early age...

...CHALLENGING 'BIG BRODER' Sweden's Temperate Revolution BY MICHAEL MORAN Stockholm For almost two centuries Sweden has been quite content to stand apart from the power struggles and ideological debates raging elsewhere in Europe...

...But last September 15, when they went to the polls, Sweden's voters seemed to suggest that they were ready to at least partially give up their isolationism, and that the best days of their market socialism were past...

...He is therefore concentrating instead on answering the electorate's clearest request—to get government off its back...

...Alluding to these differences, Center Party Chairman Olof Johansson said the election results created "about as difficult a situation as I could have fantasized...

...Since the Great Depression, the Social Democratic Party has carried out an unparalleled experiment in market socialism and transformed a backward agricultural society into a world economic leader...

...The Prime Minister calls New Democracy "an electoral phenomenon," and thinks it attracted mostly protest votes...

...In 1986, the unsolved assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme sent a shock wave through this country of 8.1 million people that is still felt today...

...New Democracy is shunned by both the Social Democratic and bourgeois blocs, but Wachtmeister has made it clear that he agrees with Bildt "on just about everything...

...In essence, the Swedish voters decided that their bold experiment needed to be modernized...

...The outcome of the September contest owes at least as much to a profound dissatisfaction among Swedes with the amount of control, regulation and taxation exerted by their government, known unaffectionately in some circles as "Big Broder...

...He heads a shaky coalition of four parties and needs the cooperation of a fifth to pass his government's program, yet few challenge his claim that the election was "a great defeat for the Swedish social democratic Left and a blow to the Swedish model...

...But about 15 years ago, economic growth slowed considerably and the Social Democrats began to find it harder to secure Parliamentary majorities...

...A great-grandson of a 19th-century Swedish prime minister, he is the closest thing to a Thatcherite one could find in politics here...

...We should not be so afraid of what others think...

...Michael Moran, a new contributor, is a free-lance writer based in Germany...

...Although initially this tendency to remain aloof earned it a reputation in the West as a permanent outsider, eventually it came to be heralded as a utopia: a country that prosperously fused compassion and productivity, democracy and socialism...

...Swedes are very tired of the government trying to regulate their behavior by putting incredible taxes on alcohol and cigarettes, notes Pieter Tham, a business reporter for Channel 4, which is attempting to become Sweden's first private TV station...

...Bildt's coalition—his Moderates, along with the Liberal, Center and Christian Democratic parties—holds a meager majority...

...Nobody tapped into this popular disaffection with greater gusto than Ian Wachtmeister, a Swedish nobleman who led his upstart New Democracy Party into Parliament...

...He also said Sweden would terminate its assistance to Cuba and curtail aid to Vietnam until it shows signs of democratic reform...

...Even Bildt, who is suspected by many of harboring a secret desire to join NATO, promised during the campaign that "Swedes will never be obligated to come to the defense of another country," an unthinkable statement from a Rightist politician in any other country...

...food prices are geared to nutritional value, rather than market demand...

...Whatever the case, the Crazy Count will play a vital role in keeping Bildt on top...

...Despite a stagnant economy and a disorganized campaign, they managed to retain 38 per cent of the vote, leaving the liberal bloc —when combined with the 4.5 per cent won by the Left (formerly Communist) Party—a total of 156 seats in Parliament...

...The fates of these heroes have long served as a warning to Swedes about foreign entanglements, and this is reinforced in young men during compulsory military service...

...Perhaps most important, a generation of Swedes born after the War saw less to spurn in Europe than did their elders...

...Its reward was victory in all except one election between 1932 and 1991...

...It would be a mistake to assume, as some have, that voters were largely reacting to the collapse of Soviet Communism and recent developments in Eastern Europe...

...He advocates taking a tough stance in upcoming talks with the EC, tightening asylum laws and launching a drive "to make life in Sweden more fun" by lowering prices on alcohol and cigarettes...

...It was the first test of Swedish socialism since the collapse of Soviet-led Communism, long a point of reckoning for the Social Democrats as they charted the country's "middle road" between the capitalist and Communist worlds...

...People want more control over their earnings and do not want to be told how many pieces of bread they should eat every day...

...The campaign slogan of Bildt's Moderate Party, "Set Sweden Free," sought to raise a chorus of discontent...

...At the same time, the party steered Sweden clear of history's two most destructive wars...

...At the National Museum in Stockholm, school children file past a painting by the Swedish master Gustaf Cederstrom, Bringing Home the Body of Carl XII, that portrays the slain King being borne by his troops back to Sweden...

...His program reflected an awareness of the mixed signals sent by voters: If it was radical by Swedish standards, it was nonetheless shrewdly temperate compared with his campaign rhetoric...

...taxes are used as a means of social engineering...

...Given the disputes within his coalition, Bildt realizes he may have to work with the opposition on an issue-by-issue basis to pass some of his proposals...

...One policy that remains unshaken by all the talk of protest and reform is Sweden's dedication to neutrality...

...Bildt appears to believe that once EC membership negotiations begin next year, Sweden will be forced to implement the type of painful economic reforms he could never squeeze through Parliament on his own...

...Moreover, it sparked a previously unthinkable debate: Should Sweden join the European Community (EC...