Sweden: Changing of the Guard
Logue, John
Sweden: Changing of the Guard JOHN LOGUE Gothenburg, Sweden Foreign journalists descend on Stockholm in September every third year, eager to report that the long anticipated fall of Social...
...The shift among parties was minimal...
...in the long run, it would transfer majority control of most large Swedish companies to their workers...
...It is ironic that socialization should be an issue after forty-four years of Social Democratic government...
...The union-state collaboration, both in drafting social and economic legislation and in setting contract demands, rested on the ties between the Social Democratic Party and the unions...
...The Center Party (eighty-six seats), a traditional farmers' party which has made some inroads in the cities — in part because of nostalgia for rural life — promised decentralization of power and industry, social welfare, and closing of nuclear power plants...
...Sweden: Changing of the Guard JOHN LOGUE Gothenburg, Sweden Foreign journalists descend on Stockholm in September every third year, eager to report that the long anticipated fall of Social Democratic Sweden has come to pass...
...Nor have security and welfare reduced productivity...
...Still, the non-socialist parties accused the government of intending to conduct dangerous experiments with the economy and, hence, the welfare state...
...The model enjoys such broad domestic support that the opposition parties vied with the Social Democrats in defending it...
...Despite the Swedish Social Democrats' record for governmental longevity, their era ended with a surprising lack of drama...
...The Liberals (thirty-nine seats) pledge new social reforms, and they, too, support nuclear power...
...This time, they made the front page...
...The most recent reform requires management to negotiate with employes before undertaking major changes in company policy...
...worse yet, he was enjoying the hospitality of the Swedish Employers' Federation...
...Taxes absorb half of the Swedish gross national product, and the average wage-earner pays almost 40 per cent of his income in direct taxes and 20 per cent of the remainder in indirect taxes...
...The three non-socialist parties have been united, primarily by their desire to wrestle power from the Social Democrats...
...Palme promised that the proposal would be referred to a royal commission for years of study...
...Despite their disagreements, these parties will compromise...
...The new non-socialist government may find it has more trouble running a capitalist economy than the Social Democrats did...
...steady economic growth (with some help from currency fluctuations) has pushed Swedish per capita income well above the U.S...
...The Swedes responded to the unaccustomed event with aplomb...
...Obituaries for the Swedish welfare state are premature...
...In the short term, this system would put worker representatives on the board of directors...
...the rules of the game were set, and business and labor followed them...
...The answer may well be that it cannot...
...Film director Ingmar Bergman was hauled from work to face interrogation on alleged income tax evasion...
...Past reforms have dulled the appetite for more...
...The state owns a smaller share of industry in Social Democratic Sweden than in Christian Democratic Italy or Gaullist France...
...To avoid repeating this embarrassment, the Swedes reduced the number of seats from 350 to 349...
...Each company's payment into the fund would be plowed back into that company as new capital, and the company's employes would vote the trust fund's shares...
...But this small swing was sufficient For the last three years, the government and opposition blocs have split parliament down the middle, 175 to 175, and the numerous tie votes were settled by drawing lots...
...The three non-socialist parties captured 1.5 per cent of the vote and five seats (of 349) from the Social Democrats and the small Communist Party...
...Social Democratic economic success rested, in part, on the permanence and predictability of the government...
...Either one may have determined the close contest...
...It made strikes a rarity, restrained wage increases, kept Swedish exports competitive, and helped to hold down inflation...
...But the new government will find it difficult to achieve the same economic results...
...Actress Bibi Andersson got much the same treatment...
...Both the Bergman and Ericsson cases reflected, in different ways, gross insensitivity of career officials, and the incidents helped focus the diffuse sentiment that while individual Swedes are powerless against the bureaucracy, top bureaucrats, safely ensconced in their jobs, are a law unto themselves...
...What they have sought to do, instead of socializing industry, is to increase worker influence on the job by curtailing some management prerogatives...
...Neither is popular...
...The records of non-socialist governments elsewhere in Scandinavia do not augur well for the new Swedish government...
...Now an element of uncertainty has been introduced...
...The new government will keep the old economic experts and get the same advice...
...Five nuclear power stations have been completed, five more are under construction, and an additional three are on the drawing board...
...Swedish oil production is so small that it is measured in liters rather than barrels, and the best sites for hydroelectric stations have already been exploited...
...While most of the non-socialist voters wanted to maintain those policies, a substantial minority had expected the new governments to reverse the reforms of the past decades, put a stop to moral permissiveness, slash taxes, and the like...
...The business-oriented Conservatives (fifty-five seats) favor centralization, at least by private industry, tax cuts, and atomic power...
...it could not reject the plan because of close ties to the trade unions, but it could not espouse it without risking the election...
...the two parties opposed to nuclear power — Center and the Communists — actually lost seats in parliament, ending up with 103 of the 349 seats...
...they do not inspire the same enthusiasm that the original innovations did...
...Carrying this course one step further, the trade union federation endorsed a proposal to establish a wage-earners' trust fund, financed by a tax on profits...
...After forty-four years in power, the Swedish Social Democrats were relegated to the opposition benches...
...The Swedes escaped this political chaos because the traditional non-socialist parties could be all things to all people while in opposition...
...Nuclear energy now supplies 20 per cent of Sweden's electricity, and it is projected to account for 40 per cent in the 1980s...
...Being in government gives them the dubious opportunity to disillusion their followers...
...Welfare policies enjoy too much popular support to be retracted, and one or more of the non-socialist parties — often all three — are explicitly committed to continue almost every Social Democratic policy...
...The major question for the new government is whether it can maintain the finely tuned economic and political machinery that the Social Democrats created...
...Their policies were not unlike those of the Social Democratic governments that had preceded them...
...He was broadcasting at the time, and the episode made national television...
...The Social Democratic government was appalled to have this proposal dropped into its lap just before the election...
...But it should be emphasized that the election was not a referendum on nuclear power...
...In the middle of a trade union boycott of tours to Spain (to pressure the Spanish government to restore freedom to the Spanish unions), Hans Ericsson, chairman of the Swedish Transport Workers, was discovered vacationing on a Spanish beach...
...excellent medical care provided virtually without costs...
...they accused the Social Democrats of aspiring to undertake wild experiments...
...Further, too many new Social Democratic proposals promise marginal improvements in existing programs...
...The charge stuck...
...Strang and Ericsson broke no law, but their actions were unpopular...
...The pace of change, however, will slow down, and new reforms — in such fields of women's rights, environmental protection, and energy conservation — will be those that do not require new taxes...
...More important, the close relationship between the trade unions and the government cannot be maintained...
...The Swedish Social Democrats have nurtured and milked the capitalist cow with great skill...
...The voters did not reject the Swedish model for a welfare state and a mixed economy...
...Swedes took the change in government calmly because they expect few changes in policy...
...Moreover, excellent social services and a well managed economy have been provided at the cost of high taxes and a large, technocratic bureaucracy...
...Astrid Lindgren, the author of the popular children's books about Pippi Longstocking, found herself assessed 102 per cent of her income in taxes...
...A whole generation has grown to middle age knowing only the Social Democratic program — the new prime minister, Thorbjorn Falldin of the Center Party, was six years old when the Social Democrats took power in 1932...
...If the prospect of economic experimentation bothered the old, the hazards of nuclear power frightened the young...
...The only scene approaching election-night chaos occurred at the Swedish television studio at about 2 a.m., as foreign journalists, in a mad rush to get to losing Social Democratic Prime Minister Olof Palme, overran a Swedish television correspondent...
...level...
...The tools of economic management that the Social Democrats used are formally available to their successors...
...In Denmark and Norway, non-socialist majority governments took over from the Social Democrats in the mid-1960s...
...They are in fundamental disagreement on many issues...
...forty years in the wilderness have made them hungry...
...Falldin picked up some support on the issue, especially among first-time voters...
...At the same time, there were incidents which suggested official contempt for the public...
...The litany of Social Democratic accomplishments is long: poverty abolished...
...The nuclear energy question became the key issue near the end of the campaign, when Center leader Thorbjorn Falldin promised to shut down the atomic power stations currently in operation and introduce a major conservation campaign to cut energy use...
...economic security guaranteed against illness, old age, and John Logue, an American scholar, is conducting research in the history department at the University of Gothenburg...
...unemployment...
...The new legislation does not keep managers from managing, but it does keep them from acting arbitrarily — and it makes it more difficult to move a plant to Hong Kong...
...And though the Swedish bureaucracy is benign as bureaucracies go, most Swedes can cite instances of bureaucratic hassles, often in obtaining social services, that take some of the shine off the benefits...
...Only a non-socialist government, they proclaimed in full-page advertisements, would maintain economic security and welfare...
...In a way, the Social Democrats fell victim to their success...
...Both Danes and Norwegians ended up with a number of new parties in parliament, including the highly publicized tax-resisters' parties...
...But after four decades in power, even the humble can grow arrogant, even the self-critical can become self-satisfied...
...Articles on Swedish elections usually end up next to the classifieds...
...The Swedish Social Democrats have provided unusually honest, competent government...
...Finance Minister Gunnar Strang managed to cut his income tax rate to a mere 15 per cent through judicious investments...
...A series of highly publicized incidents last winter and spring dramatized the plight of the individual versus the bureaucracy...
...The opposition capitalized successfully on this sentiment, and on two other issues: socialization and nuclear power...
...low unemployment (1.5 per cent...
Vol. 40 • December 1976 • No. 12
