The Political Economy of Policy Ideas by Gemma Scalise

Author:Gemma Scalise
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030557508
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

4.4 The Nordic Model: Sweden

As we have seen in previous chapters, it is the Nordic model that best combines growth capacity with widespread well-being, and this is particularly due to its capability to combine a flexible and dynamic labour market with highly developed and universalistic welfare. This is certainly true for Sweden: after a period of economic and institutional crisis in the 1990s, when unemployment was high and the economy began to suffer from the impact of international competition, the country has, since the 2000s, once again become a model to look to for its vigorous capacity for social inclusion and ability to compete in global markets (Burroni 2016).

As previously said, one of the reasons why this balance works so well is the high level of participation in the labour market. The Swedish economy relies on a full-employment political economy approach. As Table 4.1 shows, the context is one of high employment rates, both overall and female, and predominantly voluntary part-time work; unemployment, overall and long-term, is low; and high flexibility is combined with a low level of precariousness. In such a system, active inclusion into the labour market is a key element of the historical configuration of the whole welfare system.

In the 1960s, when many other European countries supported a traditional socio-economic model based on the “male breadwinner” family, the expansion of the public sector in the Scandinavian countries was already favouring women’s participation in the labour market, freeing them from care activities within the family and offering them employment opportunities in the public and welfare sectors. At the same time, the fact that this model was financed by taxation on an individual, rather than a family, basis, indirectly favoured work participation for each member of the couple to a higher level than in other European countries (Alestalo et al. 2010; Kangas and Palme 2005).

As shown in Chapter 2, another important element in this model’s labour market is the large public investment in labour market policies, with particular reference to active labour market policies: these reach levels of expenditure and participation that have always been higher than the European average. Investment in activation measures has traditionally had two main aims here: to promote labour market participation on the one hand and to facilitate the matching of supply and demand on the other. This support involves massive investment in training policies, both for young people, such as initial training measures, and for adults already at work through continuing training. These policies have thus also reduced the trend of labour market dualisation, a problem that, as we have seen, has become increasingly important in other models of capitalism, such as those in Continental and Mediterranean countries.

The matching of supply and demand is also favoured by high investment in labour market services, such as public employment services (PES). Finally, as we have seen in previous chapters, Northern European capitalism is also characterised by high investment in passive policies, mainly in the field of income support: this means that the risk of poverty in these countries is low, not only for those in work, but also for the unemployed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.