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Financialized accumulation, neoliberal hegemony, and the transformation of the Swedish Welfare Model, 1980–2020
Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-0365-0124
Södertörn University, School of Social Sciences, Social Work.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-2500-8976
Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden.
University of Gävle, Sweden.
2023 (English)In: Capital and Class, ISSN 0309-8168, E-ISSN 2041-0980, Vol. 47, no 4, p. 565-591Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Drawing on a Gramscian Regulation Approach and Harvey’s accumulation by dispossession thesis, this article discusses the structural and hegemonic mechanisms of the neoliberal transformation of Sweden’s welfare sectors. Providing new longitudinal data on welfare retrenchment, corporate governance, wealth shares, and private economic power, the article further analyzes how the transformation of the Swedish post-war universal welfare model is related to class struggle and accumulation regime change in the Swedish economy. Following a decade-long countermobilization of Swedish capital and a severe economic crisis in the early 1990s, neoliberal economic common sense was cemented among social democratic policy elites that manifested itself in an institutionalized austerity polity, leading to a slow but steady dismantling of the Swedish welfare project. Roughly a fifth of employees in the three largest welfare sectors work in private welfare companies that generate tax-financed profits on politically created welfare markets. Welfare profits are in turn defended by a welfare–industrial complex and undergirded by a hegemonic bloc consisting of capital elites and sympathetic policymakers. In the virtual absence of vocal antihegemonic forces, many social democratic leaders have limited criticism against welfare profits throughout the last decades. On the contrary, austerity measures practiced by Swedish social democrats have thereto led to deteriorating social cohesion and spawned distrust among core social democratic voters. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Sage Publications, 2023. Vol. 47, no 4, p. 565-591
Keywords [en]
accumulation by dispossession, commodification, hegemony, neoliberalism, privatization, Sweden, The Regulation Approach, welfare regimes
National Category
Social Work Economics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-50113DOI: 10.1177/03098168221128101Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85139220494OAI: oai:DiVA.org:sh-50113DiVA, id: diva2:1705239
Available from: 2022-10-21 Created: 2022-10-21 Last updated: 2025-10-07Bibliographically approved

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Allelin, Majsa

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