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A Swedish Norden Or a Nordic Sweden?

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A Swedish Norden Or a Nordic Sweden? 1 Chapter 12 1 2 2 3 A Swedish Norden or a Nordic Sweden? 3 4 4 5 Image Politics in the West during the 5 6 6 7 Cold War 7 8 8 9 Carl Marklund 9 10 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 Introduction 14 15 15 16 Today, the Nordic countries – known as Norden in the Scandinavian languages 16 17 and Pohjola in Finnish – are sometimes described as an ‘elite club’ among the 17 18 countries of the world.1 In international comparisons of competitiveness and 18 19 productivity, as well as global indices of quality of life and social equality, the 19 20 Nordic countries are often placed in the top percentile. While a 2007 Finnish 20 21 report on the ‘Nordic model’ warned that one should be careful when interpreting 21 22 these rankings, it concluded that the abundance of ‘similar evidence’ proves that 22 23 the Nordic model is consistent with ‘a good business climate’.2 23 24 Given that the Nordic countries are prosperous, high-performing and socially 24 25 stable, it is perhaps no wonder that they attract renewed international interest in 25 26 the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–8 and the subsequent Great Recession. 26 27 But ‘the success of the Nordic countries is a mystery’, according to a group of 27 28 Norwegian researchers based at the research institute ESOP, the centre for the 28 29 study of equality, social organization and performance in Oslo. Traditional 29 30 economic theories – often developed and tested in economic models based on 30 31 the premises of the American free-market system – cannot accurately explain 31 32 how the Nordic countries can combine high growth with social equality and 32 33 high taxes, the ESOP researchers asserted, arguing that ‘the Nordic experience 33 34 constitutes a social laboratory of general interest’.3 34 35 35 1 Proof Copy 36 Martti Ahtisaari cited in Kimmo Sasi, ‘Nordiska rådets relevans’, Hufvudstadsbladet, 36 37 11 November 2011. Available at: http://hbl.fi/i-dag/2011-11-10/nordiska-radets-relevans, 37 accessed 15 November 2011. For an early reference, see H. Tingsten, 38 Från idéer till idyll. Den 38 lyckliga demokratien, 2nd edn (Stockholm, 1967). 39 39 2 Torben M. Andersen et al., The Nordic Model: Embracing Globalization and Sharing 40 40 Risks (Helsinki, 2007). 41 3 Equality, Social Organization, and Performance (ESOP), ‘Confronting Theory41 42 with Nordic Lessons: An Application to Establish ESOP as a New Research Centre at the 42 9781409449485_Harvard.indb 263 8/1/2013 10:18:00 AM 264 Communicating the North 1 The Nordic countries’ reputation as social laboratories is not new. They have 1 2 attracted international attention as model societies since the interwar years for 2 3 a number of different reasons and in a variety of ways.4 Today, globalization, 3 4 neoliberalism and the recession may, of course, challenge the Nordic reputation 4 5 for exemplary success and its status as an elite club. Iceland’s 2008–11 financial 5 6 crisis may be a case in point. 6 7 Yet, it is precisely the Nordic countries that are often said to have adapted to 7 8 globalization quickly and to have handled the financial instability of the post- 8 9 Cold War years relatively well. They seem capable of fast recovery, as indicated 9 10 by Finland and Sweden in the mid-1990s and Iceland in the early 2010s. Also, 10 11 American political scientist Christine Ingebritsen has argued that ‘the small 11 12 European states provide an appropriate social laboratory to study these changes 12 13 [that is, globalization] precisely because of their economic openness and long- 13 14 held strategies of coping with the world around them.’ According to Ingebritsen, 14 15 the Nordic countries have not merely adapted to globalization; they have also 15 16 sought to actively shape globalization by playing the role of ‘norm entrepreneurs’,5 16 17 using the ‘diversity in the strategies of small states’ as a means to ‘influence the 17 18 agenda in world politics’.6 18 19 Three main reasons, then, seem to explain the renewed interest in the Nordic 19 20 countries in the early 2000s. First, the Nordic countries appear exemplary simply 20 21 because they are achieving a better-than-average economic performance while 21 22 simultaneously topping the ‘beauty contests’ of the emerging global ‘audit 22 23 society’.7 Second, in combining economic growth with social equality, despite 23 24 high taxes and generous public expenditure, the Nordic countries provide a 24 25 model because they may function as a social laboratory of progressive social 25 26 policies. Third, the Nordic countries have consciously marketed themselves as 26 27 27 28 28 Department of Economics, University of Oslo’, 30 August 2006 at: http://www.esop.uio.no/ 29 about/about.html, accessed 8 March, 2010. 29 30 4 See, for example, Kazimierz Musiał, Roots of the Scandinavian Model: Images of 30 31 Progress in the Era of Modernisation (Baden-Baden, 2002); Jenny Andersson and Mary 31 32 Hilson, ‘Images of Sweden and the Nordic Countries’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 34/3 32 33 (2009): 219–228; Carl Marklund and Peter Stadius, ‘Acceptance and Conformity: Merging 33 34 Modernity with Nationalism in the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930’, Culture Unbound, 34 35 2 (2010): 609–634.Proof See also Lindholm Narváez’s, CopyStadius’s, and Musiał’s and Chacinska’s 35 36 contributions to this volume (Chapters 9, 11 and 13 respectively). 36 5 37 For the concept of ‘norm entrepreneurs’, see Kathryn Sikkink and Martha Finnemore, 37 ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’, , 52/4 38 International Organization 38 (1998): 887–-917. 39 39 6 Christine Ingebritsen, ‘Learning from Lilliput: Small States and EU Expansion’, 40 40 Scandinavian Studies, 76/3 (2004): 369–382 at 369–370 and 381. 41 7 ‘Beauty contests’ is an expression used by Finnish political scientist Olli Kangas. See 41 42 also Michael Power, The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification (Oxford, 1997). 42 9781409449485_Harvard.indb 264 8/1/2013 10:18:00 AM A Swedish Norden or a Nordic Sweden? 265 1 innovators and providers of solutions to global challenges. As such, the concept 1 2 of the ‘Nordic model’ involves not only the results of Nordic economic, political 2 3 and social development, but also the methods by which this development has 3 4 been brought about.8 The Nordic success is, in other words, usually not seen as 4 5 automatic, coincidental or predetermined, but as the result of conscious business 5 6 innovation and progressive social policy experiments. 6 7 This chapter will discuss the shifting reasons for interest in the Nordic 7 8 countries abroad, how the ‘image’ of the Nordic countries has developed since 8 9 the interwar years, and how it has been promoted by the Nordics themselves, 9 10 not least by the Swedes. Due to the importance of American public opinion 10 11 in shaping Western views during the Cold War, as well as global outlooks in its 11 12 aftermath, the chapter asks how the ‘Swedish model’ gained pre-eminence over 12 13 the other Nordic countries during the Cold War years. Finally, it analyses how 13 14 the Nordic identity served as a common resource for the smaller democracies of 14 15 northern Europe, including Sweden, during the interwar and immediate post- 15 16 war years, tracking its increasing ‘Swedification’ in the 1960s and the 1970s, 16 17 and highlighting the substitution of the ‘Swedish model’ for the Nordic model 17 18 since the 1990s. But, first, it is important to track the origins of this outside 18 19 interest in these admittedly minor powers as models for others to learn from or 19 20 be warned by. 20 21 21 22 22 23 Norden in the News 23 24 24 25 Except for certain jubilees, state visits and commemorations, the Nordic 25 26 countries did not generate much more press than comparable smaller nations, 26 27 either in terms of newsworthy events or in terms of more long-term socio- 27 28 economic development, before the 1930s. The 1930s marked a sharp contrast, 28 29 as the Great Depression generated a wave of publications on Denmark and 29 30 Sweden and, to a lesser extent, Finland and Norway, throughout the world’s 30 31 industrialized societies.9 31 32 This interest reached a peak in the United States, as American public 32 33 intellectuals, journalists, and politicians began to question American capitalism, 33 34 turning to other parts of the world for comparison and contrast, as well as 34 35 inspirationProof and concrete policy alternatives. Copy While many Americans looked 35 36 to how the other leading powers, notably France and Great Britain, dealt with 36 37 the economic and social crisis, intellectuals and progressives took a greater 37 38 interest in the Nazi, fascist, and Soviet experiments, usually without turning 38 39 39 40 40 8 For a recent study of the Nordic model, see Mary Hilson, The Nordic Model (London, 41 2008). 41 42 9 Musiał, Roots of the Scandinavian Model. See also Stadius, Chapter 11 in this volume. 42 9781409449485_Harvard.indb 265 8/1/2013 10:18:01 AM 266 Communicating the North 1 totalitarian themselves.10 Here, the Nordic countries could attract a broader 1 2 American audience as they seemed to combine capitalism with democracy, 2 3 unlike Germany, Italy and Russia, and were apparently better at doing so than 3 4 either France or Great Britain, or the United States itself for that matter.11 4 5 While the broader interest in the Nordic countries had already emerged in 5 6 1932−33, Sweden moved to the fore as a result of the publication of American 6 7 journalist Marquis Childs’s book Sweden: The Middle Way in 1936, as is widely 7 8 known.12 On the one hand, the popularity of Sweden, as well as of the other 8 9 Nordic countries, hinged upon the way in which they could provide concrete 9 10 examples for limited policy reforms and specific measures that could be used 10 11 by the experimentalist New Deal.
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