Table Of ContentTransformations of the Swedish Welfare State
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Transformations of the
Swedish Welfare State
From Social Engineering to Governance?
Edited by
Bengt Larsson
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Martin Letell
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
and
Håkan Thörn
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Selection and editorial matter © Bengt Larsson, Martin Letell and Håkan
Thörn 2012.
Individual chapters © their respective authors 2012.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-29341-0
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2012 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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ISBN 978-1-349-33285-4 ISBN 978-0-230-36395-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230363953
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
Contents
List of Tables and Figures vii
Acknowledgements viii
Notes on Contributors ix
Part I Approaching the Swedish Model
1 Transformations of the Swedish Welfare State: Social
Engineering, Governance and Governmentality – An
Introduction 3
Bengt Larsson, Martin Letell and Håkan Thörn
2 Pathways of the Welfare State: Growth and Democracy 23
Martin Peterson
Part II Security and Control
3 The Swedish Welfare-Warfare Nexus and the
New Security Architecture 41
Hans Glimell
4 Governing Unruly Technology: Swedish
Politicians and Nuclear Power 56
Göran Sundqvist
5 Social Policy Reforms in Sweden: New Perspectives
on Rights and Obligations 71
Ulla Björnberg
6 Labour Market Policies in Transition: From Social
Engineering to Standby-Ability 86
Mattias Bengtsson and Tomas Berglund
7 Decentring Economic Regulation and Control:
Reinforcing Trust through Self-Regulation 104
Bengt Larsson and Oskar Engdahl
8 Criminal Records: Governing Symbols 120
Christel Backman
v
vi Contents
Part III Public Health
9 The Advanced Liberal Logic of Nicotine Replacement
and the Swedish Invention of Smoking as Addiction 137
Mark Elam and Andreas Gunnarsson
10 From Medicine by Wire to Governing Wireless: Changing
Geographies of Healthcare 153
Jesper Petersson
11 Governing End of Life: The Case of Sweden 168
Nora Machado des Johansson
12 Governing by Drugs: The Denial of Subsidy for Viagra
Use in Sweden 181
Ebba Sjögren and Ericka Johnson
Part IV The City
13 Governing Movements in Urban Space 199
Håkan Thörn
14 From Hidden Homophiles to Public Rainbows: A Story of
Liberation? 215
Cathrin Wasshede
15 Real Estate Ownership Concentration and Urban
Governance 230
Michael Landzelius
16 Homelessness as Politics and Market 247
Cecilia Hansen Löfstrand
17 Conclusions: Re-Engineering the Swedish Welfare State 262
Håkan Thörn and Bengt Larsson
Afterword: Social Change, Scholarly Change
and Scholarly Continuity 283
Göran Therborn
References 287
Index 320
List of Tables and Figures
Tables
8.1 Employers with legal access to the Criminal Records
Registry 124
8.2 Number of requests to the Criminal Records Registry:
Subject access and childcare workers and teachers.
Source: SOU (2009: 44) 126
15.1 Values in billion SEK of real estate held by the seven
major owners in the Inom Vallgraven district 237
15.2 Number of owners 1970–2010 of the 72 properties today
held by the seven major p roperty-holders in the Inom
Vallgraven district 238
Figures
6.1 Unemployment rate 15–64 years. Per cent.
Source: OECD (2010b) 94
6.2 Total expenditures on labour market programmes.
Share of GDP for percentage point unemployed.
Source: Own calculations based on OECD (2010a) 94
6.3 Expenditures on labour market programmes. Share of
GDP for percentage point unemployed.Source: Own
calculations based on OECD (2010a) 95
9.1 Advertisement of smokeless tobacco by the Swedish
Tobacco Company. Source: Tobaksbladet, Swedish
Tobacco Company (1973) 144
vii
Acknowledgements
This book has grown from a collective process that started in the form of
a seminar on how to understand contemporary practices of governing
and recent historical displacements of governmental rationalities. The
editors wish to thank all of those who attended and contributed to the
discussions at this seminar at the Department of Sociology, University
of Gothenburg. So while the project was initiated and directed by the
editors, the actual style of governing was a mix between democratic
deliberation, pragmatic dictatorship and individual responsibilization.
Accordingly, we would like to thank all the authors of the individual
chapters for the engagement shown throughout the process and
for the input given when we have encountered various theoretical,
empirical and practical issues. On a special note we want to express
thanks to Ericka Johnson for the valuable support at the initial stage
of this project, and to Hans Glimell, Michael Landzelius and Cecilia
Hansen Löfstrand for critical readings of both the introduction and the
conclusion. We are also grateful to Björn Halleröd and Lennart Nilsson
for kindly taking on the task of reading and commenting on the first
draft of the book manuscript. Thanks also to Philippa Grand at Palgrave
Macmillan for supporting the book project.
Apart from this, we want to show our appreciation to the Department
of Sociology at the University of Gothenburg, and especially its former
Head of Department, Anna-Karin Kollind, for moral and financial
support. Martin Letell’s work as editor was partly funded by The Swedish
Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial
Planning (FORMAS). Håkan Thörn’s work as editor, and the research on
which his chapter is based, was partly funded by The Bank of Sweden
Tercentenary Foundation (((Riksbankens Jubileumsfond) and FORMAS.
viii
Notes on Contributors
Christel Backman is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Sociology,
University of Gothenburg. Her research interest is surveillance studies,
and she is currently studying the use of criminal records in hiring, and
the regulation of employer access to criminal history data. She recently
published in Acta Sociologica 54(1): ‘Vocabularies of Motive among
Employers Conducting Criminal Background Checks’.
Mattias Bengtsson has a Ph.D. in Sociology and has a p ost- doctoral
position at the Department of Sociology, University of Gothenburg. His
main area of research is labour and employment relationships, and his
current research is on social class, the trade unions, and labour market
policies. A recent publication is Negotiating Alone or Through the Union?
Swedish Employees’ Attitudes in 1997 and 2006 (2011).
Tomas Berglundd is an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology,
University of Gothenburg. His research areas are in the field of working
life and labour market sociology. He is also active in the field of political
sociology.
Ulla Björnbergg is Professor Emerita affiliated to the Department of
Sociology, University of Gothenburg. She has been working within the
fields of family, gender, social policy, health and well-being of asylum
seeking children and families. She has recently published inSociological
Research Online and Sociologica – Italian Journal of Sociology Online.
Mark Elam is an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology,
University of Gothenburg. His research traverses the sociology of sci-
ence, technology, risk and the environment, and in separate projects he
is currently addressing two classic objects of risk – tobacco and nuclear
waste. His most recent publications have appeared in journals such as
Environmental Politics and The Journal of Risk Research.
Oskar Engdahl is an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology,
University of Gothenburg. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology with a
thesis on the development of tax havens and their connection to eco-
nomic crime. His current research focuses on the motivation, opportu-
nity and control of crime in banking and finance.
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