The Origins of the Swedish Welfare State: A Class Analysis of the State and Welfare Politics

Abstract

This paper uses the Swedish welfare system as a case study to investigate the nature of policymaking in capitalist societies and the relationship between economic and political power in the policy-making process. Although previous explanations accurately point to the role of “open” state structures, agrarian politics, and the rise of the Social Democratic party in the making of the Swedish welfare system, none of these explanations grounds its analysis in the dynamics of capitalist state building in early twentieth-century Sweden. When this is done, the more useful explanation focuses on the role of a fragmented capitalist class building alliances with increasingly polarized agrarian interests in order to stave off economic and political threats from below. These class politics took shape within a state that had historically relied on concessions to "the people" to maintain its legitimacy.