Ideological and pragmatic transformations: the adoption of neoliberal ideas by Finnish and Swedish conservative parties since the 1970s

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article examines the extent to which Finnish and Swedish conservative parties adopted neoliberal ideas from the 1970s onwards. It does so by comparing their published programmes and contextualizing them politically and economically. Neoliberalism is understood as an intellectual tradition centred around the objective of increasing the role of the market mechanism in society. Concrete neoliberal programmatic ideas include critiques of the public sector and taxes, especially progressive taxation, and promoting the marketization of the public sector and liberalization of other sectors of society, such as finance and labour markets. The article shows that Swedish conservatives adopted neoliberal ideas considerably earlier than their Finnish counterparts and were more ideological in pursuing them. Both parties have traditionally called for tax cuts, but only Swedish conservatives called for a deregulation of financial markets and marketization of public services already in the late 1970s. The neoliberal ‘breakthrough’ only took place among Finnish conservatives in the 1990s, though they justified most reforms as pragmatic necessities rather than desirable from an ideological standpoint. These differences are explained especially by Finland’s different geopolitical position during the Cold War and its tradition of shifting coalition governments, which led to milder ideological contestation than in Swedish bloc politics.