Abstract
The power resource approach (PRA) claims that the labour movement continues to be the most prominent defender of the welfare state. The new politics thesis (NPT), on the other hand, claims that the welfare state has created new interest groups in the form of welfare clients who have taken over as the most prominent welfare state upholders. In an attempt to empirically evaluate these claims, we present a study of the extent to which clients and the labour movement have been involved in protests against cutbacks in the Swedish sickness benefit from 2006 to 2019. The article contributes to the welfare state literature by studying a most likely case for PRA‐style interest group mobilization both in terms of country (Sweden) and policy area (sickness insurance). It also tests the claim from PRA scholars that client interests are uncommon in these contexts. Our results show that protest engagement among client groups is greater than the engagement among the labour movement when looking at protests directed specifically against cuts in the sickness benefit programme. However, when broader protests against cutbacks in several transfer programmes are taken into account, the number of protests initiated by clients and by the labour movement is comparable. Overall, our results suggest that both the PRA and the NPT are needed to explain current developments in social democratic welfare states like Sweden.
Highlights
In October 2019, people belonging to the Facebook group ‘the National Social Insurance Office Insurgency’ placed funeral candles outside of several Swedish Social Insurance Agency offices
When analysing only the protests that were organized against sickness insurance, the results clearly confirm the theoretical expectations from the new politics thesis (NPT) (Lindbom 2007) that client groups themselves diverge from the labour movement in an important sense and that their interests are ‘specific enough for their priorities to be clear’
The NPT claims that the welfare state has created new interest groups in the form of welfare clients who have taken over from the labour movement the position of the most prominent welfare state upholders
Summary
In October 2019, people belonging to the Facebook group ‘the National Social Insurance Office Insurgency’ placed funeral candles outside of several Swedish Social Insurance Agency offices. They offered passers-by a cup of soup while agitating against cutbacks in the sickness benefit programme (Ljungkvist 2009) These are not isolated events; since 2008, when the sickness benefit was reformed in Sweden, hundreds of protest actions have been initiated to stop proposed or implemented cuts –both by people in need of sickness benefits and by organizations belonging to the labour movement. These protests are interesting from a societal point of view given their size and frequency, they are interesting in relation to the welfare state literature. The interest group aspect of retrenchment politics has largely been neglected by welfare state scholars (Starke 2020)
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