Lessons from the Nordic Model of Welfare and Consensual Governance
| Autor | Raimundo Simão de Melo/Cláudio Jannotti da Rocha |
| Páginas | 35-40 |
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At present, where is the enigmatic Nordic Model standing in the river of spacetime? Halfway into the second decade of the third Millennium where is the welfare state of the Far North of Europe heading at a time of major changes in the global environment and interstate system? Does Scandinavia keep up with the pace of the rest of the world, maybe even faster and in a more secure tempo than most modern societies, or is it gradually moving into oblivion? What kind of welfare system is on the contemporary agenda? Is the Model a mere ideological supplement to a memorable past? Or a platform for the springboard into the known unknown – the future? In what follows, the main characteristics of and lessons learned from constructing sustainable welfare in the four Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden – will be excavated and scrutinized.
Since the 1980s, based on results from a number of comparative studies of welfare states the concept of a ‘Nordic or Scandinavian model’ or ‘welfare regime type’ has successfully entered our vocabulary, whether that of international organizations, that of scholars and that of mass media covering the Nordic countries (Economist 2013; Pontusson 2011; also Hort & Therborn 2012). For the most part the concept has a positive connotation, but not always, this being dependent upon context and the eyes of the beholder. Recently, there have been cultural wars over its legacy, conservatives and liberals claiming a larger share than previously, and still many Nordic social democrats stick to that it is their model, but in a historical perspective that is much too simplistic. The analytical findings of a very comprehensive literature can be summarized in three master statements: stateness, universalism, and equality.
The peculiar stateness of the Scandinavian countries has long historical roots and the relationship between the state and the people can be considered as a close and positive one, of both duties and rights, less of a coercive apparatus of oppression in the hands of the ruling classes than in most countries. Rather, it has developed as a battleground of different social classes assuming an important function “as an agency through which society can be reformed” (Korpi 1978: 48). Moreover, local governments were recognized legal units and run by literate laymen guided more by the clergy than by noblemen or royal prefects. The role of the contemporary local government and central state is seen in extensive public services and public employment and in many taxation-based cash benefit schemes.
In the Nordic countries the principle of universal social rights is extended to the whole population. Services and cash benefits are not targeted towards the have-nots but also cover the middle classes. The universalistic character of the Scandinavian welfare state has been traced to the making of the early social legislation in the years before and after the turn of the twentieth century. First, social security programmes were initiated at the time of political and economic modernization and the nation-building project. Secondly, the similar life chances of poor farmers and poor workers contributed to the recognition of similar risks and social rights. Thirdly, especially after the World War II there has been s strong tendency to avoid the exclusion of people with poor means in Scandinavia. And finally, there has been a very pragmatic tendency to minimize the administrative costs by favouring universal schemes instead of extensive means-testing (Kildal & Kuhnle 2005).
As to equality, the historical inheritance of the Nordic countries is that of fairly small class, income, gender, and regional differences. The modern industrial bourgeoisies did not acquire a strong political position in the central state, though they became tremendously influential through corporatist channels. The Scandinavian route towards the modern class structure was paved with the strong position of the peasantry, the weakening position of the landlords, and with the rather
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easy access of the working class to the parliamentary system and to labour market negotiations (Alestalo & Kuhnle 1987). This inheritance is seen in small income differences and, in comparative perspective, extraordinary low levels of poverty. Moreover, Scandinavia is famous for her small gender differences (Kvist et al 2011). When common pool resource organizations came to share a greater part of the responsibilities for childcare and care of the old and disabled, and when the employment rates of women remained high or increased, gender differences played a lesser role in the Nordic countries than in other parts of the advanced world. Gender equality became a major characteristic of this Model (Lundqvist 2011; Melby et al. 2008).
Our aim is to show, how the Nordic welfare state emerged and became especially flourishing in the four decades following World War II. After that, during the 1990s and the first decades of the 2000s there have been extensive changes in the basic conditions of welfare arrangements almost throughout the advanced world. We assess how the Nordic countries have succeeded to maintain their welfare states and faced the challenges of changing class structure, socio-political forces, ideological discourses and European integration in the high waves of globalization.
A unique feature in the Scandinavian class formation was the rise of a class of independent peasants as a result of the individualization of agriculture through a rather peaceful agrarian revolution. The family farm as the basic agricultural unit was different from most of Western Europe and most of Eastern Europe, with roots in domestic Viking society, thereby originally separating the Far North from the continent before the advent of Christendom, and later sealed by the position of the peasantry as a fourth estate (in Swedish Empire). The 18th century individualization of agriculture was an intervention by the Crown and it implied the weakening position of the nobility that gradually turned into an urban and bureaucratic elite. The cleavage between a rather weak urban upper class and the farmers was important in the formation of peasant identity and the rise of social movements and agrarian parties (Alestalo & Kuhnle 1987; Olofsson 2013).
The early industrialization in Scandinavia was based on the success of export industries. The spatial distribution of these industries was considerable and the early working class movement consisted of industrial workers and a rural proletariat; no urban slums emerged. In the beginning of the period of mass parties Scandinavia became dominated by the three polar class structure: the urban upper class, the working class and the peasantry (cf. Flora 1999).
Welfare and warfare have been intimately linked since the Napoleonic wars when only to a minor extent Denmark, and Finland through Czarist Russia, was involved in 19th century European armed conflicts. While Finland with its fierce Civil War in 1918 and its more retarded, unbalanced and sudden economic and structural development somewhat differs from Denmark, Norway and Sweden the overall economic development in the Nordic countries was very fast and from the 1870s all of these four Nordic countries belonged to the fastest growing economies in Europe. During the decades following World War II Finland belonged to the fastest growing economies in Europe and it reached the high Scandinavian level in the 1980s. Since then, the four North European countries have been among the richest countries in the world.
In Denmark and in Sweden, the pattern of transformation from agriculture to industry and services resembled that of the earlier industrialized Europe, Norway...
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