The Swedish Social Democracy: Civil Servants, Social Engineers and Welfare Bureaucrats

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.