Nordic Model Research Articles

A solidarity paradox - welfare state data in global health data economy.

Nordic welfare states have well institutionalised practises of gathering health and social wellbeing data from their citizens. The establishment of population registers coincided with the building of welfare state institutions and a social contract relying on solidarity. During the last decade, the significance of Nordic registers and health data has increased and they have become sources of economic value. Recent policies expect registers, health data and biobanks to attract international investments, making Nordic countries world-leaders in the global health data economy. In this article we question the conditions and boundaries of solidarity in the emerging data-driven health economy. We argue that the logics of welfare state and data-driven health economy create a paradox - the data economy is not possible without the welfare state data regime, but the logic of data-driven health economy contradicts the value bases of the welfare state data regime and therefore the justifications for data gathering and use become questionable. We develop the concept of solidarization to describe the process by which individuals are expected to behave in a solidaristic way to support data gathering and related policy processes. We demonstrate the solidarity paradox through a recent legislative and data infrastructure reform in Finland and discuss it in relation to academic literature on solidarity.

Gender differences in fresh vegetable intake from 1979 to 2017 in Finland

PurposePrevious research has shown that in contemporary societies, women have a healthier dietary intake than men. However, no research has examined how this gender gap develops over the long term. The present study examined how gender differences in fresh vegetable intake frequency have evolved from 1979 to 2017 in Finland and whether differences are affected by age or educational level.Design/methodology/approachThe data were derived from annually repeated, nationally representative “Health Behaviour and Health among the Finnish Adult Population” and “Regional Health and Well-being (RHW)” surveys on the health habits of the Finnish population. The dataset is a time series of repeated cross-sectional surveys. In total, the data sample comprised 161,996 Finns aged 20–64 years. Descriptive methods and logistic regression were used for the analysis.FindingsDuring 1979–2017, the prevalence of daily vegetable intake increased from 12 to 35% among men and from 18 to 56% among women. Thus, the magnitude of the gap between genders doubled across the study period. The increased vegetable intake was partly explained by the changing education and age structures of society. Potential explanations and avenues for future research are also discussed. Policy implications depend on whether the findings are interpreted as a case of health differences or health inequality.Originality/valueThis study used a long time series to analyse how gender differences in vegetable intake have evolved in a Nordic welfare state context. It showed that the gap in fresh vegetable intake between men and women has widened.

What is Conspicuous about the Nordic Countries in Poland? Past and Present Constructions of Norden in the Polish Press

From being regarded as an insignificant and relatively poor region of the continent and on the outskirts of European affairs in the beginning of the twentieth century, a hundred years later the Nordic countries have gained a reputation for being some of the most advanced, prosperous, progressive, and happy nations in the world. The real and palpable achievements of the Nordic economies and societies notwithstanding, the changing image of both the individual countries in the region, and of the Nordic community as a whole, has been constructed by the international print media in relation to their political affiliation or current political and social developments. This analysis looks at the Polish press and demonstrates that the Nordic stories, especially those concerning the present, tend to be constructed as utopian and progressive, rather than as dystopian ones that would be more characteristic of Western European discourse. Accordingly, the Nordic exceptionalism that is covered by the term the Nordic or Scandinavian model still serves more often as inspiration rather than a bogeyman in the general discourse of western-style modernization in Poland.

Immigration and social assistance: Evidence from the Norwegian welfare state

AbstractIn Norway, immigrants receive higher levels of social assistance than natives. How can we explain this difference? After controlling for differences in take‐up rates through a two‐step Heckman procedure, we attempt to answer this question by exploiting rich data from administrative registers. We operationalise social assistance in the Norwegian context by employing a composite variable that includes: (a) financial assistance, (b) housing allowance and (c) qualification benefit. We quantitatively analyze the difference in benefit levels of social assistance between the first and second generations of immigrants and the benchmark levels of the non‐immigrant population through a Kitagawa‐Oaxaca‐Blinder (KOB) decomposition exercise. The results of the analysis indicate that a significant portion of the gap in benefit reception between immigrant groups and natives is due to observable characteristics (42% for immigrants and 69% for their descendants), with unobservable cultural and behavioural factors explaining the remaining portion of the gap.

Seeking a Solution to the Problem of Prostitution: Application of Repressive Social Politics

C. Benoit et al. (2018) distinguish three models of social policy that reveal different approaches to prostitution: repressive (prohibiting prostitution), regulating and integrating (decriminalizing prostitution). In Lithuania, a repressive model of social policy is applied in prostitution – both the client and the person providing sexual services are fined. Currently, active social campaigns are underway to apply the Nordic (or Equality) model in prostitution in Lithuania: only the client who buys sexual services would be committing a crime and therefore fined. Although adapting the Nordic model would reduce women’s administrative criminality in female prostitution, the authors consider, based on a case study and the experience of other countries, whether focusing on repressive social policy legislations will address the stigma and isolation that hinder the integration and empowerment of women.

The Nordic welfare state’s value base and resilience: A status update

How are the Nordic welfare states doing? Will they be able to uphold the collective functions inscribed in their societal contracts? These are concerns that have long figured in the public discussions in all Nordic countries. While the puzzle of affording and producing good services has taken center stage as the biggest political question, social scholars have taken on the task of evaluating the systemic core values and principles that are threatened with the great challenges of our time.

How is the Nordic welfare state doing? Contemporary public constructs on challenges and achievements

How is the Nordic welfare state doing? Contemporary public constructs on challenges and achievements

Everyday Hospitality and Politics

The article explores everyday hospitality and politics through inclusive forms of integration initiatives in everyday life and urban communities in Denmark and Norway. It investigates how local initiatives and creative social strategies by local actors can empower and include refugees and immigrants in local communities. This article is based on participant observations of urban communities in Denmark and Norway working to welcome refugees and create new cross-cultural meeting places. We argue that people mobilize and take action when faced with emergency, and that the many welcome initiatives organized around theatre, food, dance and music can rework difference. The cases relate to the discussion of hospitality, the production of meaningful meeting places in a local context and the embodied encounters promoted by these activities. This article discusses everyday hospitality and politics in light of the transition in the Nordic welfare states, which has made the debate around inclusion of refugees and immigrants in local communities and the welfare state centre.

Скандинавська модель трансферу технологій: досвід та особливості

The article presents the results of a scientific research the features of the Scandinavian model of technology transfer, which has demonstrated its effectiveness in Norway, Sweden and Finland. The Scandinavian model of technology transfer has been formed for a long time and has been subject to significant experiments by the governments of these countries, research centers, universities and business structures, which sought an effective model of organizing the innovation process from the perspective of their own goals and interests. The article presents the results of the functioning of technology transfer in the innovation ecosystem of these countries, through their place in the international rankings of innovations and related rankings. It is proposed to use a six-criteria scale to assess the effectiveness of technology transfer, which contains: Human development index, Global knowlede Index, Doing business, Global Innovations Index, The Global Competitiveness Index, The International Property Right Index. The results of the innovation ecosystem of countries have their expression in micro- and macroeconomic indicators. Most of these indicators are taken into account when ranking countries in one or more indices proposed for six criteria scale. Assessing the condition of technology transfer through these six criteria scale makes it possible to determine the productivity and level of organization of technology transfer in the country. The article analyzes the peculiarities of the functioning of technology transfer mechanisms in Norway, Sweden and Finland. The analysis revealed that the three countries studied have their own preconditions and priorities for the development of the innovation ecosystem. Nevertheless, there are a number of features that are common and fundamental for effective technology transfer in each. One of the important elements of effective technology transfer in the Scandinavian countries are universities and technology transfer centers in universities. Therefore, the article also explores the functions and tasks of technology transfer centers in Scandinavian universities. The peculiarities of the Scandinavian model, which determine its efficiency, have been researched, on the other hand, this peculiarities can and should be implemented in the Ukrainian practice of technology transfer

Individualised home-schooling - at odds with the equity ambitions in the Nordic model of education?

Individualised home-schooling - at odds with the equity ambitions in the Nordic model of education?

Comparisons, Categories, and Labels: Investigating the North–South Dichotomy in Europe

ABSTRACT The paper presents genealogy-oriented analysis of how the Nordic model gained its dominant characterization as modern, advanced and superior to other European welfare models while Southern European countries came to be labelled laggards in the welfare domain. To illuminate the relational nature of these, and all, comparisons, the analysis accentuates how researchers, politicians, and civil servants alike designate Nordic and Southern European states, their societies, and their welfare models. The empirical analysis focuses on scholarly writings about welfare-state comparisons (1986–2017) and on European Union documents addressing cohesion policies (1986–2021). Analysis of the vocabulary and labelling illuminates how the Scandocentric and the South-related bias have been produced and reproduced.The analysis indicates that labels, once established, tend to get replicated without question and grow unquestionable in science and policy-making both. While reducing complexity and increasing predictability, this process simultaneously constrains alternative ways to interpret changing situations and alternative contexts.-

Reproductive justice for the haunted Nordic welfare state: Race, racism, and queer bioethics in Finland.

The Nordic welfare state aims to offer universal healthcare and achieve good health, bar none. We discuss past and present moral blind spots in welfare state bioethics through reproductive justice and queer bioethics, particularly focusing on race and racism, based on ethnographic data from Finland. Globally portrayed as aspirational and mostly uninterrogated, it is crucial to have a thorough bioethical evaluation of a Nordic model informed by Black and queer perspectives. We have come to conceptualize the Finnish welfare state as haunted. We fear that the seemingly non‐racial racial hygiene continues to haunt bioethics of the welfare state as structural racism. A key cause for this concern is the lack of racial awareness in public politics and the reluctance in discussing racism due to the national agenda of color‐blindness. This crucially compounds to our findings that medical professionals prefer to think they operate on “purely medical” reasoning as opposed to nuanced ethical contemplation, the latter associated with “social issues” that allegedly cannot be resolved and are outside medical interest. We discuss how the bioethical aftermath of eugenics remains unresolved. Racist, classist, sexist, ableist, and cis‐ and heteronormative stratification of reproduction requires a nuanced moral compass for Nordic welfare state bioethics, not “strictly medical practice.” We suggest queer bioethics as a moral theory for recalibrating this compass, joining forces with other justice movements to tackle racism in healthcare and further to interrogate racism, sexism, ableism and cis‐ and heteronormativity in bioethics.

How does parental time relate to social class in a Nordic welfare state?

Time intensive parenting has spread in Western countries. This study contributes to the literature on parental time use, aiming to deepen our understanding of the relationship between parental childcare time and social class. Based on time-diary data (2010–2011) from Norway, and a concept of social class that links parents’ amount and composition of economic and cultural capital, we examine the time spent by parents on childcare activities. The analysis shows that class and gender intersect: intensive motherhood, as measured by time spent on active childcare, including developmental childcare activities thought to stimulate children's skills, is practised by all mothers. A small group of mothers in the economic upper-middle class fraction spend even more time on childcare than the other mothers. The time fathers spend on active childcare is less than mothers’, and intra-class divisions are notable. Not only lower-middle class fathers, but also cultural/balanced upper-middle class fathers spend the most time on intensive fathering. Economic upper-middle and working-class fathers spend the least time on childcare. This new insight into class patterns in parents’ childcare time challenges the widespread notion of different cultural childcare logics in the middle class, compared to the working class.

A Widening Gap Between Official Teacher Training and Professional Life in Norway

A sociological case study of Norwegian teachers reveals how teacher education reforms have inadequate definitions of teacher competence. Legislators, officials and the media continue to uphold the image of a school system and teaching profession in crisis in several OECD countries. For the Nordic welfare states, education is a public good. Mediocre results in international comparisons cause public debate regarding the quality of the educational system. This has led to a devaluation of teachers and teacher education. The aim of this article is to analyze and discuss how teacher education is valued and converted by Norwegian teachers. Interviews and written accounts from novice teachers and persons with teacher training working outside of the school environment suggest an alternative narrative in which teachers’ competences are in high demand. The results and discussion reveal a more nuanced way to view teachers’ expertise as an asset in a multitude of careers.

Gendered Labor Market (dis)advantages in Nordic Welfare States. Introduction to the Theme of the Special Issue

Gender equality has been named as one of the normative foundations of Nordic wel- fare states. This is reflected in how, year after year, Nordic states rank among the most gender egalitarian countries in the world (see, e.g., World Economic Forum 2020). In Nordic countries, the state has been, and continues to be, a central actor in shaping women’s citizenship, labor market opportunities, and caring roles. Especially publicly funded welfare services and policies that facilitate the reconciliation of work and care have played a major part in advancing women’s labor market participation (see, e.g., Bergquist et al. 1999; Borchorst & Siim 2002; Ellingsæter & Leira 2006; Siim & Stoltz 2015). The institutional framework of Nordic welfare state policies has been central to what has been called the ‘social democratic public service route’ (Walby 2004).One of the important building blocks of gender equality has been the aim of making policies in Nordic countries ‘women-friendly’. More than 30 years ago, Helga Hernes (1987) identified the Nordic countries as ‘potentially women-friendly societies’. She characterized women-friendly societies as those that ‘would not force harder choices on women than on men’ (ibid., 15), particularly in relation to work and care. Hernes also envisaged that woman-friendliness should be achieved without increasing other forms of inequality, such as class or ethnicity-based inequalities among different groups of women.However, achieving gender equality in working life and the sort of women- friendliness that Hernes envisaged at the societal level has in many ways also proved to be challenging, as the ties between the state and gender equality goals are more complex than what they might seem at first glance. Gender disparities have proven persistent also within the Nordic context. When we issued a call for this special issue, we were interested in various forms of gendered labor market (dis)advantage in Nordic countries. Furthermore, we asked how gender segregation, welfare state policies, labor marketpolicies, and various labor market actors interact to produce, maintain, challenge, or change gender equality in the labor market in the Nordic countries and beyond. The five articles presented in this special issue address the issue of gendered labor market (dis)advantages in Nordic countries from several vantage points, focusing on both on ‘traditional’ questions, such as corporate power and sustainable employment, and ‘emerging’ questions such as intersectionality, gender culture, and aesthetic work.

Globalisation, Welfare Models and Social Expenditure in OECD Countries

What difference do welfare models make for how globalisation in its different manifestations influences the composition of social expenditure? Using data for 36 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries over the period 1990–2018 we examine whether and how different welfare state models influence the impact of the economic, social and political dimensions of globalisation on ten different social expenditure programs. The results indicate that the influence of globalisation (overall and each separate dimension) on different components of social spending varies across welfare models in intensity but in most cases presents a positive sign. We find a more intense positive reaction in the Nordic model for e.g. active labour market policies and housing expenditures, while the reactions of health and education spending are not context specific. Survivors pensions, incapacity related and unemployment benefits and other social policy areas respond to factors other than globalisation. These findings may have important consequences for cross-country convergence in standards of living between different welfare state regimes, as each dimension of globalisation proceeds at different paces. Previous literature also shows that changes in the composition of social expenditure result in different short and long run economic outcomes.

Characteristics of the Scandinavian model of legal regulation of labor relations (on the example of Iceland)

This article considers scandinavian legal regulation of labor relation on the example of Iceland. The author analysed the basic laws governing labor relations, and concluded that Icelandic labor law works in conjunction with collective agreements. The rules and conditions of collective agreement are more adapted to specific types of organisations, unlike legislation rules of which applies to all types of organisations. Collective agreements are binding for all parties to the agreement, regardless of whether they are organizations or individuals. The responsibility for the company lie with employers’ confederations, trade unions and employees, that’s why the state doesn’t interfere in regulation of wages, working conditions and social protection, because they are mainly guaranteed by collective agreements, not by legislation. Labor disputes in Iceland are divided into “disputes of law” and “disputes of interest” and have different resolution mechanisms. “Disputes of law” concern the interpretation or application of the provisions of labor law: differences in the meaning of the statutes; provisions of individual employment contracts; provisions of collective agreements; and other legally binding provisions. “Disputes of interest” concern the establishment of new laws by agreeing on the contradictory content of collective agreements, working conditions etc. There are two stages of Icelandic procedure of labor disputes : 1) negotiations; 2) trial. Icelandic Labor Court is an integral part of the corporate structure of labor market. Labor Court is responsible for setting and creation of case law and balance industrial relations system and labor law. Another important role in Icelandic labor market is played by trade unions. By signing collective agreements with employers’ organisations trade unions strength labor market and provide employees with better working conditions that are more adapted to specified categories of industries.

Strategies for greening the economy in three Nordic countries

AbstractGreen economy is a concept frequently used by governments and international institutions to promote sustainable transformations of the economy. In this study, we explore how the transition towards a green economy is being conceptualised in policy terms in the three Nordic countries Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Comparing these cases, we analyse strategic policy documents on green growth, circular economy, bioeconomy, low‐carbon transitions, and sustainable development. While comprehensive national policy strategies on the green economy are lacking, the studied documents display policy approaches that reflect different aspects of a green economic transformations, such as low‐carbon developments, promotion of environmental technology sectors, and enhanced circularity. Our findings indicate the presence of a transformative Nordic model for greening the economy, in which the state plays an active role in supporting innovation and technology development, facilitating cooperation among societal actors, and securing social welfare and human wellbeing. It is underpinned by optimism about the opportunity to reconcile economic growth with sustainable development, while more radical beyond growth approaches are strikingly absent, reflecting their marginal roles in the established policy discourse of these countries. Rather, concepts such as circular economy, sharing economy, and sustainable production and consumption are highlighted as central for greening the economy.

COVID-19 and the Nordic Paradox: a call to measure the inequality reducing benefits of welfare systems in the wake of the pandemic

The Nordic Paradox of inequality describes how the Nordic countries have puzzlingly high levels of relative health inequalities compared to other nations, despite extensive universal welfare systems and progressive tax regimes that redistribute income. However, the veracity and origins of this paradox have been contested across decades of literature, as many scholars argue it relates to measurement issues or historical coincidences. Disentangling between potential explanations is crucial to determine if widespread adoption of the Nordic model could represent a sufficient panacea for lowering health inequalities, or if new approaches must be pioneered. As newfound challenges to welfare systems continue to emerge, evidence describing the benefits of welfare systems is becoming ever more important. Preliminary evidence indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic is drastically exacerbating social inequalities in health across the world, via direct and indirect effects. We argue that the COVID-19 pandemic therefore represents a unique opportunity to measure the value of welfare systems in insulating their populations from rising social inequalities in health. However, COVID-19 has also created new measurement challenges and interrupted data collection mechanisms. Robust academic studies will therefore be needed—drawing on novel data collection methods—to measure increasing social inequalities in health in a timely fashion. In order to assure that policies implemented to reduce inequalities can be guided by accurate and updated information, policymakers, academics, and the international community must work together to ensure streamlined data collection, reporting, analysis, and evidence-based decision-making. In this way, the pandemic may offer the opportunity to finally clarify some of the mechanisms underpinning the Nordic Paradox, and potentially more firmly establish the merits of the Nordic model as a global example for reducing social inequalities in health.

Trust in Finnish Education: A Historical Perspective

This article analyzes the origins of generalized trust in Finnish society and how this relates to trust in education. The study was based on a historical analysis of the role of education in building a Finnish society and nation state. The author discusses the development of a Nordic welfare state and analyzes the relationships between generalized trust and education from the perspectives of democracy, corruption, egalitarian attitudes, wealth, and culture. A reflection was performed of the relationships between generalized trust, school autonomy, and the professional autonomy of teachers.