Corporatism and the Microeconomic Foundations of Swedish Social Democracy: The Swedish Model Revisited*

The aim of this paper is to advance the research into the workings of ‘corporatist’ societies by adding a microeconomic dimension and outlining how such a revised model is applicable to recent Swedish experience. Sweden is often regarded as a corporatist society., that is, one in which policy is the outcome of a ‘social partnership’ between encompassing groups coordinated by government. This corporatist approach, resting on the existence of a macro-economic social contract between peak organizations, is complemented here by an analysis of the micro-level incentives and mechanisms conducive to operating within the corporatist cooperative framework. These characteristics are seen as together constituting what I term the solidaristic market economy, a system of economic relations different in fundamental respects from the two with which we are familiar. While Swedish reality docs not correspond exactly to the economic model set out, the case is made that it is as reasonable to extrapolate from Swedish experience to the solidaristic market economy (and vice versa) as to learn from U.S. experience about the competitive market economy and from the Soviet Union about the command economy. Complemented by these micro-characteristics, corporatist analysis of economic relations under social-democratic regimes is thus seen as explaining the resilience of the ‘Swedish model’. Rather than in constant peril as critics suggest, the encompassing interest organizations and the patterns of relations among them are characterized by continued solidity in keeping with the operating principles of the solidaristic market economy.