Between Private Interests and the State: Corporatist Strategies in the Swedish Railway Council, 1902–67

Abstract

This study explores the strategies employed by the Swedish Railway Council to influence national railway policy from 1902 to 1967. The Council was a corporatist arrangement and functioned as a broker between industrial and regional interests and the public railways. The results show that though the Council's policy influence in many cases was marginal, there were occasions when the members could use the Council as a tool to influence railway policy, most notably the division of the network into profitable and unprofitable lines, with different forms of government subsidies. The Council's influence increased through a shift in arguments, from a position that tariffs should be high enough to deliver a return on the invested capital, to an emphasis on having tariffs that could support national and regional economic development, even if it created commercial losses. When Swedish transport policy shifted in the 1960s, the Railway Council gradually lost its importance and eventually dissolved.