Keywords

Introduction

The 1980s have often been described as the ‘neoliberal decade’ and as an era characterised by a new societal analysis advocated by politicians such as Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US. Originating from liberal theorists such as Milton Friedman, criticism against Keynesianism and Social Democracy entered the public debate even in Sweden, a country famous for its strong labour movement.Footnote 1 The welfare state stood at the centre of this debate, as the primary neoliberal ideas—namely, the primacy of market forces and individualism—led to the conclusion that the state should withdraw and shrink.Footnote 2 Thus, the welfare state became a contested and central arena for anyone advocating or protesting neoliberalism, which was evident in the Swedish ‘neoliberal turn’ in public and political debate in the 1980s.Footnote 3

One of the main proponents of the new societal analysis in Sweden was the Employers’ Organisation (Svensk arbetsgivarförening or SAF). By establishing close contact with the conservative party, the Moderates, SAF obtained an ally that became the primary voice for neoliberal ideas in parliament.Footnote 4 These new ideas affected the Social Democrats (SAP) as well. In the 1980s, for the first time, a (small) party faction of SAP led by the Minister of Finance, Kjell-Olof Feldt, claimed that the welfare state had become inefficient and needed reforms: the welfare state should not expand further but should be made more efficient.Footnote 5

These new ideas of welfare state reform were driven by a political elite and had little support among the grassroots. Above all, unsurprisingly, the trade union movement rejected all discussions on cutbacks and privatisation. Among Swedish citizens, the welfare state enjoyed general, strong and stable support in the 1980s. However, citizens had begun to perceive the welfare state as bureaucratic. The public did not necessarily want a smaller welfare state but favoured a welfare state that adjusted its services to meet citizens’ individual needs.Footnote 6 Some actors, such as the Social Democrats’ Youth Wing (SSU), suggested reforms to increase citizens’ control of welfare state services.Footnote 7 These proposals did not include privatisation, which was an often-proposed solution at that time for problems in the welfare state. Instead, they emphasised decentralisation and increased democratic control over the welfare state.

Although the welfare state was contested in the 1980s, actual reforms involving welfare state retrenchment and cutbacks only emerged after the economic crisis in the 1990s.Footnote 8 These reforms involved cutbacks in all social insurances and restrictions on municipalities’ budgets. While welfare state scholars have thoroughly examined these reforms and noted the remarkable mobilisation of client groups, we argue that gaining a full understanding of the events in the 1990s requires a careful analysis of the contention over the welfare state that was already occurring in the 1980s.Footnote 9 Social movement research has indicated that the perceived threat of a worsening situation in the future can lead to collective action.Footnote 10 Therefore, we should expect to see mobilisation around welfare state issues before the 1990s. Although such mobilisation has been ignored by prior studies, we contend that analysing the period leading up to the reforms may shed new light upon the explanations that have been developed to understand resistance against cutbacks.

Drawing from previous research on welfare state protests in the 1990s, we expect at least three groups of actors to have mobilised in the 1980s: client groups, trade unions and proponents of welfare state reform. Whereas the two first actors (i.e. client groups and trade unions) have been emphasised as essential players in protests against cutbacks, the welfare state retrenchment literature has neglected the proponents of welfare state reforms. Although we pay particular attention to these three groups and their claims and strategies, whether dialogue or protests, we do not rule out the possibility that contention over the welfare state involved other actors.

This chapter starts with a description of actors who—according to prior research—are expected to have mobilised concerning welfare-state-related issues in Sweden. This description is then followed by a short overview of how the data used for the analysis was collected. The empirical section provides a general overview of the waves of welfare protests that took place in the 1980s and a detailed analysis of how different actors—namely, the trade union movement, proponents of neoliberal reforms and client groups—mobilised the Swedish welfare-related contention in the 1980s.

Who Values the Welfare State?

Considering the lack of welfare state reforms being adopted in the 1980s, the expectation of any significant welfare state protests might seem audacious. However, social movement research has shown that protests can be mobilised in the absence of any proposed or implemented policy changes or experience of objective grievances (e.g. increased unemployment). It has been well established that even the perceived threat of a worsening situation in the future can lead to collective action.Footnote 11 Thus, when elite actors such as economists, party leaders and business owners start to publicly discuss problems with the welfare state, it sets a new political agenda. Such a change in discourse can be perceived as a potential threat to the security created by the welfare state. A change in how elites talk about the welfare state can be perceived as a threat to the rights certain specific groups have become accustomed to. Mobilisation against a potential erosion of rights or a possible loss of power has been well-documented in other countries, and we expect it to occur in Sweden as well.Footnote 12 Considering the widespread public debate, the parties’ initiatives to include welfare state reforms in election programmes and the introduction of cuts into the budgets of several municipalities and regions providing a large share of Swedish welfare state services (e.g. elderly care and health care), it is reasonable to expect that some protest mobilisation regarding the issue had already occurred in the 1980s.Footnote 13 According to previous research on welfare state retrenchment and privatisation, at least three groups are known to mobilise around welfare state issues: trade unions, proponents of the reforms and client groups—that is, the beneficiaries of the welfare state.Footnote 14

The first group we expect to protest is the trade union movement, as studies on the growth of the welfare state emphasise the importance of working-class protests in the development of a welfare state.Footnote 15 Similarly, there is compelling evidence that trade unions actively mobilise against retrenchment, privatisation, austerity and other neoliberal reforms.Footnote 16 Economic problems such as increased unemployment, increased prices and factory closures are also well known to increase the likelihood of union and worker protests.Footnote 17 According to the resource mobilisation theory, trade unions are one of the most likely actors to mobilise in times of threat, because they have many members and a formalised organisational structure.Footnote 18 Hence, trade unions may mobilise fierce opposition if and when they perceive that the welfare state is threatened.

On the other hand, social movement theory predicts that the protest mobilisation of trade unions is less likely when their allies form the government, because the situation provides challengers with many different access points of influence, thereby dampening the need for protest.Footnote 19 The traditional political ally of the trade union movement in Sweden, the Social Democrats, formed the government in 1982 and ruled throughout the rest of the decade, making mobilisation by trade unions less likely. Prior studies on the Swedish case, however, have shown that tensions between SAP and the Trade Union Confederation grew stronger during the 1980s and culminated in 1986 with massive protests against the government’s budget, which contained cutbacks in unemployment insurance.Footnote 20 Thus, based on previous research, we already know that unions engaged in some actions, often directed towards the government and the Minister of Finance, Kjell-Olof Feldt. Still, only a systematic protest event analysis will allow us to detect the level and patterns of this mobilisation during the whole decade.

The second group we expect to engage in contention over the welfare state comprises the proponents of the reforms. The (perceived) inefficiency of the over-bureaucratised system, high taxes, non-flexibility and a lack of freedom of choice were the most repeated grievances by various actors supporting reforms. The main criticism against the welfare state came (and still comes) from the upper classes and business owners, whereas support for the welfare state has always been more substantial within the working class.Footnote 21 Even though social movement research usually focuses on weaker societal groups, such as minorities or poor segments of society, studies have examined the pro-business protests mobilised by privileged and wealthy groups.Footnote 22 The best-known example of such a movement is the Tea Party movement in the US, which Martin called the ‘rich people’s movement’.Footnote 23 Rich people’s movements often opt for ‘quiet mobilisation’—that is, daily meetings and local-level civil society engagement or lobbying, rather than large demonstrations or acts of civil disobedience.Footnote 24 However, in regard to tax policies, these groups have also used more disruptive protest repertoires such as marches and demonstrations. In particular, taxes that affect industry are likely to provoke protests.Footnote 25 While the changed elite discourse about the Swedish welfare state could be perceived as a threat by labour activists, discussions about the economic crisis and the increasing costs of the public sector, which may require an eventual tax raise or redistribution of wealth, are a potential threat to business interests. Hence, we expect to find pro-business mobilisation over the welfare state.

More specifically, these protests are likely to be mobilised by well-organised actors such as SAF, various business owners and conservative groups. Starting in the 1980s, SAF made strategic investments in developing think-tanks (Timbro), research institutes (Ratio) and research publishers (SNS förlag). SAF also launched a nationwide campaign called ‘invest in yourself’ in 1979, using a number of successful celebrities on the posters for the campaign (e.g. one of the singers from ABBA). Similar to SAF’s other actions, the campaign was meant to make Swedes aware of an alternative to the social democratic welfare state and to change Swedish public opinion about the state and welfare state services.Footnote 26

Finally, the third group likely to react to welfare state policy changes is the so-called ‘clients’. According to the famous study ‘Dismantling the Welfare State’ by Paul Pierson, the welfare state creates groups of beneficiaries of particular welfare state services.Footnote 27 These welfare state clients will defend the specific welfare state programme or service they benefit from. While Pierson used retired people (pensioners) as the best example of a client group that has been very successful in preventing cutbacks in the pension system, there are many other client groups, including pupils and parents, patients, organisations representing people with disabilities, the unemployed and other vulnerable groups. Thus, the welfare state creates new interest groups that did not exist before the welfare state, as opposed to the trade union movement, which helped to create the welfare state. The mobilisation of these new groups is mainly motivated by the members’ material interests rather than ideological viewpoints or the general common good. As client groups cut across class borders, they can mobilise large groups of followers and are allegedly more efficient at preventing cutbacks than other societal groups, since they defend a ‘narrow’ interest (e.g. only pensions or only patients’ rights), as opposed to trade unions that usually support the welfare state in general.Footnote 28 Whereas the trade union movement has ideological reasons for resisting neoliberal ideas and reforms in general, and while pro-business groups are ideologically against a comprehensive state, the mobilisation of client groups is motivated by the perceived threat of cuts in specific welfare services.Footnote 29 Research on client groups has not focused on their mobilisation during periods other than just before proposed policy changes; however, analysing their organising during the time preceding reforms is essential for a better understanding of how client groups eventually succeed in preventing welfare retrenchment.

As other actors could also be involved in the contention over the welfare state, our empirical investigation maps all the groups that mobilised protests over the welfare state in Sweden during the 1980s.

Defining and Measuring Welfare State Protests

Our analysis uses data from the Swedish Protest Database (SPD), which is based on protest events reported by Swedish newspapers and newswires.Footnote 30 We define protests as collective actions in which three or more individuals make a claim or express a grievance for a collective outcome—that is, on behalf of some organisation or social category (e.g. the poor, pupils or a neighbourhood). In a few specific cases, however, we have included protests mobilised by less than three people—for example, hunger strikes that raised claims for the common good rather than for individual benefit. The coded events, which are the unit of analysis in the dataset, refer to a specific form of action (i.e. demonstration, strike or letter) reported in a particular geographical location (i.e. city or community) and mobilised by the same group on the same day. For example, if two different organisations presented a petition in the same location on the same day, this counts as two events. However, newspapers often do not specify the location and only note that several demonstrations took place. We coded these as a single event with the location ‘whole country’. Hence, it is likely that we generally underestimated the total number of protests. The SPD includes information about events ranging from common strategies such as letter-writing to authorities and newspapers (e.g. letters to the editor) to classical contentious actions such as petitions, demonstrations, manifestations, strikes, acts of civil disobedience and violent attacks.

For the years of interest (1980–1990), the SPD sources of information were microfilm recordings of the two Swedish newspapers: Dagens Nyheter (1985–1990) and Uppsala Nya Tidning (1980–1985). The first is a newspaper with national coverage, while the second focuses on the Uppsala region and covers events in the eastern part of Sweden (i.e. municipalities such as Uppsala or Enköping). In contrast to many older protest datasets that rely on the newspapers’ Monday issues, SPD uses all issues regardless of the day. Unlike many emerging datasets that use automated coding (e.g. the Poldem), SPD is human-coded. This method gives detailed descriptions of the events, including location, organisation, central claims, targets and/or the presence of police. The coders browsed through each daily issue looking for protest events, and found reports were photographed. Another coder then coded the detected events. The team discussed all unclear cases and coded all protest events detected in the two selected newspapers. Thus, SPD includes more protest events than those focusing on the welfare state.

It is also important to note that our data has a clear regional bias; smaller events from northern, western and southern regions are not covered to the same extent as those in the capital (Stockholm) and eastern parts of the country. This regional bias is typical for protest event datasets and results from the media’s selection bias—that is, the over-representation of large and violent protests in media reporting.Footnote 31 There is also a description bias based on the problem of inaccurate records of protest size and duration in the news media. Scholars often minimise these biases by triangulating data sources, such as by combining different newspapers, but this was not possible for the data covering the current period of interest. Therefore, these biases set an explicit limitation to our results.

Our analysis not only focuses on contentious actions such as demonstrations, strikes or acts of civil disobedience but also includes symbolic actions and quiet verbal protests (i.e. letters to the editors, public statements in the newspapers and petitions).Footnote 32 The selection was motivated by our aim to cover all kinds of contention over the welfare state, as any public statement against the welfare state at that time seemed very ‘radical’. Furthermore, it is known that, in contrast to many other European countries, the early 1980s in Sweden were not a time of urban riots and squatting.Footnote 33 By using a more inclusive approach, we might be able to pick up on early indications of change in the mobilisation strategies. It is also likely that many client groups—such as civil society organisations representing the interests of older people, parents or patients—might opt for less contentious actions rather than protests involving much disruption. More disruptive forms of action are often the repertoire of trade unions and other social movements.

Our definition of protests over the welfare state takes as point of departure the redistribution of resources between different groups. What distinguishes welfare states from other forms of state building is the idea that the state should provide services to the citizens. According to Esping-Andersen, the welfare state aims to decrease the risks of losing one’s source of income and falling into poverty due to work-related issues (unemployment benefits), parenthood (parental leave, day-care services, etc.), ageing (care services and pensions) and health failure (sickness insurance). Thus, the welfare state has developed social insurance and services to manage these risks through redistribution.Footnote 34 In addition to the social insurance that addresses these specific risks, the welfare state comprises a broader set of public services such as the education of new generations of citizens, social services and tax collection for redistribution purposes. Following this, we have defined welfare state protests as those protests that make claims about the following issues: unemployment, labour law, work-environment issues, labour market policies, parental leave (föräldraförsäkringen), school, childcare, preschool (dagis/förskola), youth-related services (ungdoms/fritidsgårdar), pensions and elderly care, sickness-related insurance, healthcare, disability-related services, social services (socialbidrag/bostadsbidrag), redistribution and public sector housing. The majority of the welfare protests we look at naturally target the local, regional or national authorities, since these are the providers of welfare state services.

In some contexts, wage setting—for instance, legislation on minimum wages—could be defined as a welfare state policy. However, in Sweden, wage bargaining is done between employers and trade unions without the state’s involvement. When looking at protests that target the state, we do not define these actions as welfare state protests. That said, protests related to wage setting in the public sector are tightly connected to redistribution policies and the welfare state services produced by the state. The public sector is financed through taxation, and the wages in the public sector are directly linked to the quality of welfare state services.Footnote 35 Thus, we have excluded protests related to wage bargaining in the private sector when defining protests over the welfare state, but we included wage-related conflicts in the public sector.

Waves of Contention Over the Welfare State in the 1980s

Before discussing the actors mobilising welfare state protests in the 1980s, we briefly present an overview of the protest trends during this decade. Figure 2.1 shows the number of protest events (i.e. petitions, demonstrations, strikes and civil disobedience) registered in the SPD and the number of these events that were related to the welfare state.

Fig. 2.1
A graph depicts the percentage of welfare protests from 1980 m 7 to 1990 m 7 for welfare-related protests and all protests. The percentage of all protests is higher than the welfare-related protests.

Welfare state protest events and all protests in Sweden, 1980–1990 (monthly data)

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As shown in Fig. 2.1, protests over the welfare state constitute a reasonably large share of the protests registered in the database. The number of these protests increase, along with the total number of protests, after the mid-1980s. Thus, as shown in Fig. 2.2, the total proportion of protests over the welfare state remains relatively stable. On average, 2556 or 36% of the registered 7179 protest events were about welfare state issues, indicating that other issues also resulted in the mobilising of protests (e.g. environmental and energy issues). Compared with other countries, such as Germany or Denmark, Sweden has fewer registered protests for the 1980s; however, if we account for population size, the difference is not significant.Footnote 36 The welfare-state-related claims never formed a majority of protest claims, but these sometimes (1986, 1989) covered the largest proportion of protest claims.

Fig. 2.2
A stacked bar chart depicts the percentage of welfare protests from 1980 to 1990 for welfare state-related protests and all other protests. The rates of all other protests are higher than welfare state-related protests.

Proportion of protests related to the welfare state out of all protests in Sweden, 1980–1990 (annual data)

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One notable trend in the material is that the size of the protest events—that is, the average number of participants reported in the newspapers—increased over time. The most significant event during the 1980s was not related to welfare but to peace. Peace Week involved a million participants all across Sweden in 1983. Peace Week and the related peace demonstrations were part of an extensive campaign against nuclear weapons and for peace in general, mobilised by various religious groups and the Swedish peace movement. The fact that it lasted for a whole week made it possible for the movements organising the protest to mobilise such a large number of people. The First of May manifestations gathered more than 700 000 participants across Sweden in 1986, which may have been an effect of the murder of Olof Palme earlier that year. The largest protest over the welfare state during the 1980s involved about 600 000 participants: it was a strike for higher salaries and better working conditions for public sector workers in 1986.Footnote 37 The second-largest welfare state protest was a petition with about 500 000 signatures against the wage earners’ funds in 1983.Footnote 38 Still, the average number of participants in the welfare protests was much smaller, about two thousand. The relatively small protest size is a characteristic feature of social movement mobilisation in Sweden.

The typical protest over the welfare state was verbal, a ‘quiet mobilisation’ in the form of a public letter or announcement (see Fig. 2.3).Footnote 39 The increasing proportion of strikes and demonstrations from the mid-1980s onward suggests that mobilisation regarding welfare state issues became stronger, or ‘louder’, over time. Although several protests during the 1980s involved violence (e.g. protests related to migration and international events), the welfare protests involving violence and property damage emerged during the second half of the decade. Civil disobedience and legal actions are reported as ‘other’ in Fig. 2.3. Jämte and Sörbom come to similar conclusions in their study focusing on youth-related protests, which often involve squatting. Our dataset includes a few such events, such as the house occupations in Stockholm for more affordable housing in 1985.Footnote 40 Chapter 3 in this book gives a more detailed overview of the Swedish squatting movement in the 1980s.

Fig. 2.3
A stacked bar chart depicts the percentage of events from 1980 to 1990 for letter, petition, boycott or blockage, strike, demonstration and manifestation, and other. The bar for letter reads the highest in 1980.

Strategies of protests over the welfare state in Sweden, 1980–1990 (%, annual data)

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In 1989, there was another example of a disruptive protest. About 10 000 pupils and their parents gathered in Stockholm in reaction to the government’s proposal to significantly cut the budget for primary schools. The event also involved a confrontation between protesters and the police.Footnote 41 Thus, even though no noticeable welfare reforms were adopted during the 1980s, the actual budget cutbacks mobilised significant protests.

Policy changes and austerity plans were also referred to in protest claims. The issues most frequently mentioned during that decade were childcare and schools, labour conditions, healthcare and sickness benefits. The activists did not use the term ‘neoliberalism’ very often. Nevertheless, when the chairman of the trade union SKTF, Björn Rosengren, made a public statement against SAF in 1981, he accused SAF of promoting ‘neoliberal’ policies.Footnote 42 The proponents of welfare retrenchment reforms—particularly the youth wing of the Moderates (MUF)—described the government’s policy as ‘plan economy’.Footnote 43 Thus, concepts that can be directly linked to neoliberalism were explicitly used in some cases.

The typical childcare- and school-related protests targeted local governments that planned to make cutbacks in the budget. At the national level, it was more common for protesters to use petitions addressing the quality of education or the food provided at schools. For example, the organisations for pupils gathered 18,000 signatures for a petition calling for a better quality of school lunches.Footnote 44 Healthcare and the rights of people with various disabilities were other vital issues that mobilised protest events, particularly during the early 1980s. However, in these cases, the most commonly used repertoire involved letters to newspaper editors, petitions and statements in the media. Over time, the dominance of school-related protests and even the proportion of health-related issues faded. Other topics, such as labour and infrastructure (e.g. public housing), gained more importance (Fig. 2.4).

Fig. 2.4
A stacked bar chart depicts the percentage of events from 1980 to 1990 for other indirectly welfare-related, health and sickness benefits, labor issues, pensions for elderly citizens, schools and education, tax policies, welfare in general, infrastructure, unemployment, and privatization.

Specific topics of welfare protests in Sweden, 1980–1990 (%, annual data)

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The most extensive labour campaign of the period was the white-collar workers’ conflict (tjänstemannakonflikten) in 1986; in 1988 and 1989, most labour protests focused on working conditions and loss of jobs. Unemployment in Sweden was low during the 1980s and decreased rapidly after the mid-1980s. Nevertheless, the loss of jobs mobilised protests—a finding aligns with prior research indicating that unemployment is an issue that people rally around.Footnote 45 The most prominent and visible campaign regarding redistribution issues was the so-called Dalauppropet in 1985–1986. This protest movement was formed by local trade unions in the Dalarna region, who criticised both the social democratic government and the Trade Union Confederation (Landsorganisationen, LO).Footnote 46 In general, Dalaupproret made up only a tiny proportion of all protests over the welfare state during the 1980s.

It is also noticeable that most protests were not against inefficiency or the lack of freedom to choose a welfare service provider. Instead, the issues mentioned by the proponents of welfare reforms focused on cuts and retrenchment. Thus, if the citizens at that time were concerned with the efficiency of the welfare state, as shown by previous studies, it did not motivate them to mobilise protest events.Footnote 47

Actors Behind Protests Over the Welfare State

We suggested that three distinct groups would likely have mobilised welfare-state-related protests during the 1980s: the trade union movement, the proponents of welfare state reforms and client groups. Our data includes information on the organisations and various societal groups mobilising or participating in the protest events. We divided these groups into the three categories mentioned above and included a fourth category: ‘other’ actors that are not close to any of the trade unions, proponents of welfare state reforms or client groups (see Table 2.1). These include political parties, religious groups, organisations representing migrants and women’s movements.

Table 2.1 Organisers and main participants of welfare protests, 1980–1990
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The category of ‘trade union movement’ includes not only trade unions but also all types of employees that acted as a group, such as ‘workers’ or ‘nurses’. These groups of employees are included in this category because the media did not always report that unions were involved in the protests—even though, in Sweden, it is highly likely to be the case. Some of these groups, such as medical doctors, have professional associations that are not unions per se. Still, such associations would act for the benefit of that group, and the difference between professional organisations and trade unions can be vague. Above all, these groups represent different groups of employees.

As shown in Table 2.1, the trade union movement mobilised the most significant proportion of protests over the welfare state: about 42% of the events. Client groups of welfare services accounted for about 37% of events, and collective contention by proponents of reform was minimal, at about 4% of the protests.

Parents, pupils, students and young people formed the most significant protest groups over welfare issues in the 1980s. Their dominant issues of concern were school, childcare and education. These client groups mainly targeted local governments, which—in contrast to the national government—did propose and implement cuts in their budgets as early as in the 1980s.Footnote 48 For example, in the autumn of 1986, many protests including rallies, petitions and theatrical symbolic actions were mobilised against proposed cuts in Stockholm’s childcare sector.Footnote 49

There were also apparent ideological differences among the group we have labelled as ‘clients’. For example, client groups mobilising protests regarding educational issues had different positions regarding the grading system. Although the large pupils’ and students’ organisations such as Elevförbundet and Sveriges Folkhögskoleelevers förbund protested the grading system by boycotting exams in 1980, other client groups disagreed.Footnote 50 The main school-related issue mobilising protests was not the right to choose a school (valfrihet), which was one argument used in the public debate by advocators of neoliberal reforms. Instead, the most common concern of protests was the closure of specific schools. Although school closures and protests against such decisions became more common in Sweden after the municipalities became responsible for schools’ organisation in 1991, 20% of the protests over school and childcare and 7% of all welfare protests in our sample were about school closures (e.g. the proposed closure of the Norra Real, a secondary school, in Stockholm in 1987 mobilised a great deal of contention).Footnote 51 Like most of the studied events, school-related protests mainly used a ‘quiet’ repertoire of letters and petitions. Other client groups were less active than parents and pupils, although individuals representing the interests of patients and people with disabilities mobilised about 7% of the events. Actions by elderly citizens were even fewer; organisations representing the interests of the retired and elderly mobilised only 2% of welfare protests in the 1980s.

As expected, the trade union movement, which in Sweden has the most extensive resources and is well organised, was behind many welfare state protests in the 1980s. According to our dataset, about 20% of the protest events were organised by specified trade unions. Since the media often reported that ‘workers’ or ‘nurses’ were participating in a protest and did not specify if and which union was behind a specific protest event, it is likely that this figure was actually higher. The working-class unions affiliated with the LO organised about 200 protests (41% of all events mobilised by unions). The white-collar trade union confederation (TCO) and its affiliated unions mobilised about 140 protests (28%); 75 (15%) of the protests were mobilised by upper-middle-class unions affiliated with Saco; and a small proportion of events (20 events) were mobilised by unions unrelated to any of the three main confederations (e.g. SAC). Considering that most teachers, doctors and nurses belong to one of the public sector unions affiliated with TCO or Saco, public sector unions were expectedly more active in contention over the welfare state than the private sector unions.

In contrast to the public opinion surveys that reported on the general public’s concern over the bureaucratisation of the welfare state in the 1980s, we observed only a few such protests. Although this issue might have been an indirect trigger for mobilisation, no explicit claims regarding the matter were formulated during the protests under study. The character of welfare services or the lack of a citizen’s perspective, the right to choose a specific service or the inefficiency of the welfare state—all common arguments in the public debate—were not directly mentioned by protesters. These arguments mainly came from the political elite; above all, from business sector representatives. Those who favoured welfare state reforms such as cutbacks and retrenchments mobilised a few quiet yet noteworthy protests using letters and public statements. For example, Industriförbundet announced in 1980 that the growth of the public sector must be stopped, and the youth wing of the Moderates (MUF) complained over the queues and ineffectiveness of the welfare system in May 1981 and urged for more privatisation.Footnote 52 A small proportion of pro-business group protests were directly related to lobbying in favour of private ownershipFootnote 53 and investments, arguing for example in favour of the Bromma airport, but almost all these actions used a ‘quiet’ repertoire.Footnote 54

The most famous example of a visible protest mobilisation by proponents for neoliberal reforms in Sweden is the Fourth of October demonstrations against the wage earners’ funds.Footnote 55 Although the wage earners’ funds did not directly refer to welfare state services or social insurance, they were part of the state’s redistribution policies. Dissatisfied with the proposal to introduce wage earners’ funds in the early 1980s, the Employers’ Organisation mobilised a mass demonstration on October 4, 1983. Some newspapers called it ‘the largest demonstration in Swedish history’, as it involved about 75,000–100,000 participants.Footnote 56 The mobilisation against the funds was not surprising, since there was generally high public opposition against the wage earners’ funds, especially among the electorate of the centre-right parties.Footnote 57 However, even though the Employers’ Organisation and its supporters had the skills, resources and motivation to mobilise visible protest events in the 1980s, they had seldom done so prior to the Fourth of October demonstrations, nor have they done so since.

Finally, although our three groups of interest mobilised the great majority of the welfare protests in the 1980s, 16.6% of such protests were organised by other organisations and actors, among which political parties constituted a large share (7.4%). Of the political parties, the youth wing of the conservative party was a force promoting privatisation and neoliberal reforms and opposing the size of the public sector. The youth wings of other political parties were not as active in welfare state protests. Instead, their mobilisation focused primarily on foreign policy issues (i.e. the acknowledgement of Palestine and solidarity with Poland and Afghanistan). During the second half of the decade, the political parties and their youth wings also raised their voices concerning youth and housing policies. For instance, the Swedish Communist Youth League mobilised a demonstration in Uppsala against housing policies in April 1987.Footnote 58

In sum, the trade union movement and client groups mobilised protests related to the welfare state – mainly against reforms and cutbacks. Only rarely did anyone organise protests in favour of decreasing the public sector or privatising it. However, we did not find evidence of cooperation between client groups and trade unions. According to a growing number of studies on anti-austerity protests, trade unions and client groups are expected to seek support from one another while organising protests. Such cross-movement mobilisation and joint actions were widespread after the Great Recession in 2008.Footnote 59 Our data shows almost no collaborative efforts across movements and cooperation between different organisations in the 1980s. One explanation could be that these actors (i.e. trade unions and client groups) perceived the threat to the welfare state differently and thus did not find the mutual grounds necessary for joint action.

Conclusion

The 1980s has been described as a time in which there was a ‘neoliberal turn’ in public and political debate. Many of these new ideas focused on the size and organisation of the welfare state. The considerable discussion about the need to reform the welfare state for different reasons—to make it more efficient, to increase citizens’ voice or democratise it, and to make it less bureaucratic—resulted in few actual reforms. Still, the change in the political agenda—from a modest critique of the welfare state in the 1970s to open discussions in the 1980s mobilised significant protests over the welfare state during the 1980s. The events described in this chapter did not follow the political debate. The protests did not make any claims about the inefficiency and bureaucracy of the welfare state or the need to privatise and increase individual citizens’ power to choose between welfare state services. Instead, most protests were about retrenchment, cutbacks and change. The discrepancy between the political debate about the welfare state and the contentious actions that were taken indicates that collective actors in the field—particularly the unions and client groups—interpreted the debate as a threat to the welfare state and aimed to defend it.

Our finding that trade unions and client groups of the welfare state were particularly active in welfare protests aligns well with research on the retrenchment of the welfare state, which has shown that trade unions and client groups actively oppose cutbacks everywhere. In the Swedish case, we also know that these groups mobilised protests in the 1990s when, after the economic crisis, the government quickly adopted and implemented several welfare state reforms. Still, the mere talk of problems of the welfare state was enough to mobilise protests in the 1980s. Thus, our analysis shows that contention over the welfare state has a much longer history in Sweden than previous studies have acknowledged. Future research should examine how the experiences of the 1980s affected the tactics, claims and eventual outcomes of the mobilisation in the 1990s.

The third group that we hypothesised would mobilise in the 1980s comprised the proponents of neoliberal reforms, such as pro-business groups. This group mobilised few protest events during that decade; however, some of the protest actions that they did organise had a significant influence on Swedish politics. The Fourth of October demonstrations in 1983 were one of the biggest demonstrations organised in Sweden. This finding aligns with previous research on the rich people’s movement: these groups seldom choose visible action, but when they do, they have the resources to organise significant and spectacular events.

Among the other groups that mobilised protests—these form about 17% of the welfare-state-related protests—political parties constituted the largest group. Until recently, party protests were given comparably little attention by researchers. However, our findings indicate that one way towards gaining an understanding of welfare state protests is to further analyse whether and how parties engage in contentious collective action.