Abstract
Östberg’s article is discussing the development of a social democratic welfare bureaucracy in Sweden during the twentieth century, for a long time a success story. At an early stage the social democrats’ ability to assume control over the state administration depended on the possibility to find intellectuals sympathetic to the social democratic cause. For the greatly expanding welfare state of the 1960s, a broadening spectrum of well-educated men and women, all clearly sympathetic to the social democratic project of building a welfare state, was available. The party’s long, uninterrupted period of government made it easier for the social democrats to put their stamp on the state bureaucracy. As the social democrats’ reformist ambitions have dwindled, so has the need of a special welfare bureaucracy.
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Notes
- 1.
Gustav Möller, Parliamentary discussion, Second Chamber 1943: 31, 35.
- 2.
The incident described by participants in Konnander 2006: 8.
- 3.
The role of Palme is discussed in Florin 1999: 64–68.
- 4.
Interview in Daily Sydsvenska Dagbladet, May 16, 1976.
- 5.
Carl Johan Åberg “On formation of an economic-political commission” Internal PM, Social Democratic party, November 13, 1976.
- 6.
In an interview made by the author in Bergström 1987: 94.
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Östberg, K. (2020). The Swedish Social Democracy: Civil Servants, Social Engineers and Welfare Bureaucrats. In: Fulla, M., Lazar, M. (eds) European Socialists and the State in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41540-2_12
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