Sweden – home of Abba, meatballs and social democracy. Well, not so much the social democracy anymore. In fact, as the Economist reports, 21st century Sweden is more of an inspiration to the right than to the left:
Furthermore, it's not just the size of the welfare state that’s been transformed, but its structure too:
So, why the turn around? After all, this is a country in which the main party of the left ruled “for 44 uninterrupted years from 1932 to 1976” and whose grip on national life was so complete as to include a eugenics programme that lasted forty years and which sterilised more than 60,000 people.
It was shame that did for the eugenics, but for the less sinister aspects of Swedish social democracy the main problem was one of affordability:
How has all that reform and retrenchment of the state worked out for the Swedes? Not too badly as it happens:
Furthermore, few western nations have emerged from the financial crisis so assuredly as Sweden has – thanks, in part, to a banking system that was reformed years before the global storm of 2008.
Of course, one can always point to Sweden’s special advantages – a relatively small population in a large country packed with natural resources. Two centuries of continuous peace has also helped, not to mention the good sense of the Swedish people in staying out of the Eurozone.
Nevertheless, what Sweden demonstrates is that, even in the most accommodating of circumstances, the state has its limits – and, that once those limits are breached, reform is not only possible, but necessary.