The Relational Nordic Welfare State: Between Utopia and Ideology 1788974646, 9781788974646

Table of contents :
Front Matter
Copyright
Contents
Contributors
Preface
Introduction: the Nordic welfare state as a state of civilisation
PART I Autonomy
1. Neoliberal relations of poverty and the welfare state
2. The Nordic welfare state and the challenge of difference
3. The profits and pitfalls of prosociality: cultural-evolutionary perspectives on Scandinavia
PART II Participation
4. The Nordic model in ordo-liberal Europe: from welfare parity to social hierarchy?
5. The rise and fall of the Nordic utopia of an egalitarian wage work society
PART III Inclusion
6. Nordic welfare states, trust and the rights discourse: the history of the children’s day care system in Finland
7. A social constitution of Europe?
PART IV Sustainability
8. The eco-social Nordic welfare state – a distant dream or a possible future?
9. Social sustainability and the organization of social work from the perspective of Finnish adult social work practitioners
10. Civilizing business enterprises: the search for a new Nordic growth and development model
Epilogue: the Nordic welfare state beyond ideology and utopia
Index

Citation preview

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The Relational Nordic Welfare State

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The Relational Nordic Welfare State Between Utopia and Ideology

Edited by

Sakari Hänninen Kirsi-Marja Lehtelä Paula Saikkonen National Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland

Cheltenham, UK + Northampton, MA, USA

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© Sakari Hänninen, Kirsi-Marja Lehtelä and Paula Saikkonen 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2019951632 This book is available electronically in the Social and Political Science subject collection DOI 10.4337/9781788974653

ISBN 978 1 78897 464 6 (cased) ISBN 978 1 78897 465 3 (eBook)

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In memory of our colleague docent Pekka Kosonen Finnish pioneer in Nordic welfare state research

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Contents List of contributors Preface

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Introduction: the Nordic welfare state as a state of civilisation Sakari Hänninen, Kirsi-Marja Lehtelä and Paula Saikkonen

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PART I

AUTONOMY

1 Neoliberal relations of poverty and the welfare state Sanford F. Schram 2 The Nordic welfare state and the challenge of difference Sakari Hänninen 3 The profits and pitfalls of prosociality: cultural-evolutionary perspectives on Scandinavia Nina Witoszek PART II

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PARTICIPATION

4 The Nordic model in ordo-liberal Europe: from welfare parity to social hierarchy? Paolo Borioni 5 The rise and fall of the Nordic utopia of an egalitarian wage work society Pauli Kettunen PART III

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INCLUSION

6 Nordic welfare states, trust and the rights discourse: the history of the children’s day care system in Finland Toomas Kotkas 7 A social constitution of Europe? Kaarlo Tuori

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PART IV

SUSTAINABILITY

8 The eco-social Nordic welfare state – a distant dream or a possible future? Monika Berg and Paula Saikkonen 9 Social sustainability and the organization of social work from the perspective of Finnish adult social work practitioners Minna Kivipelto, Merita Jokela, Sanna Blomgren and Marek Perlinski 10 Civilizing business enterprises: the search for a new Nordic growth and development model Peer Hull Kristensen, Eli Moen and Kari Lilja

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Epilogue: the Nordic welfare state beyond ideology and utopia Sakari Hänninen, Kirsi-Marja Lehtelä and Paula Saikkonen

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Index

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Contributors Monika Berg is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and part of the Environmental Sociology Section, Örebro University, Sweden. Sanna Blomgren is Researcher in the Social Policy Research Unit at the National Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland. Paolo Borioni is Associate Professor of History of Political Theories and Institutions, Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy. Sakari Hänninen is Visiting Scholar and Research Professor Emeritus in the Social Policy Research Unit at the National Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland. Merita Jokela is Senior Researcher in the Social Policy Research Unit at the National Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland. Pauli Kettunen is Professor of Political History at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland. Minna Kivipelto is Research Manager in the Social Policy Research Unit at the National Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland. Toomas Kotkas is Professor of Jurisprudence and Social Law at the Law School of the University of Eastern Finland. Peer Hull Kristensen is Professor Emeritus, Department of Organization at the Copenhagen Business School, Copenhagen, Denmark. Kirsi-Marja Lehtelä is Researcher in the Social Policy Research Unit at the National Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland. Kari Lilja is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Management Studies, Aalto University School of Business, Finland. Eli Moen is Professor of International Management, Norwegian Business School, Norway. Marek Perlinski is Senior Lecturer in Social Work, Department of Social Work at the Umeå University, Sweden.

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Paula Saikkonen is Senior Researcher in the Social Policy Research Unit at the National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland. Sanford F. Schram is Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, City University of New York, USA. Kaarlo Tuori is Professor Emeritus of Jurisprudence at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Nina Witoszek is Research Professor at the Centre for Development and Environment, University of Oslo, Norway.

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Preface ‘Norden’ or the ‘Nordics’ consists of five countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and three autonomous areas: Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Åland Islands. The Nordic region is a politically constructed entity with deep roots in history. There has been official political cooperation between the parliaments of these countries since 1950 and between the governments since 1970. The more longstanding civic cooperation between these countries has been allencompassing. With this book we wish to elucidate the relational character of Nordic welfare states. The book provides a more versatile and dynamic perspective on these countries than the paradigm of the Nordic model enables. In this way, the normative groundwork of these societies will be exposed. The success of the Nordic welfare states in adapting to changing circumstances has been based on this relational groundwork. Our ambition has been to offer an interdisciplinary reading of the development and recent transformations of the Nordic welfare states. The particular focus of this work is on the impact of neoliberalism, which has severely challenged the Nordic ethos of welfare and social citizenship. This confrontation is studied in a setting where threats related to planetary boundaries are at stake. Besides climate change and biodiversity loss, there are a number of other megatrends such as immigration, globalization and precarization, demographic ageing, and social, economic and political fragmentation which challenge the Nordic welfare states. The relational perspective of the book serves in analysing the multiple interlinkages between these phenomena and in unfolding how answers to these challenges have to be found together, based on trust and made possible in the framework of strong Nordic democracy. For editing this book we want to express our gratitude to: –

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the project ‘Tackling Biases and Bubbles in Participation’, supported by the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland (BIBU, grant numbers 31 2710 and 31 2794); the project ‘Nordic Region 2020’ carried out by the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, the Ministry of Education and Culture xi

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and the Ministry of Employment and the Economy, with financing from the Nordic Council of Ministers. Finally, we wish to thank Christine Gowen, Harry Fabian and Finn Halligan from Edward Elgar Publishing for providing continuous support and giving editorial guidance in preparing the manuscript for publication; and Claire Greenwell for her editing assitance. Helsinki, 30 May 2019 Sakari Hänninen, Kirsi-Marja Lehtelä and Paula Saikkonen

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Introduction: the Nordic welfare state as a state of civilisation Sakari Hänninen, Kirsi-Marja Lehtelä and Paula Saikkonen The aim of this book is to contribute to a more profound understanding of the functioning of the Nordic welfare states from a relational perspective. This perspective opens up an opportunity to understand these societies as states of civilisation. Even if there is a noteworthy connection to the present ongoing discussion on the relational welfare state and relational welfare in Great Britain (Cooke and Muir, 2012), the relational character of the Nordic welfare states has a much longer and more conclusive history. The challenges of the Nordic welfare states cannot be approached only as technical or instrumental issues, but must be seen as questioning the deep social, cultural and political foundations of these societies. The answers to these challenges must be articulated in a similar fashion. The nature and functioning of the Nordic welfare states have been a popular research topic in several disciplines, which have also formulated their research agendas and questions, made their analyses and articulated their answers along disciplinary lines. In this fashion our piecemeal understanding of these regimes has greatly increased, but the ensuing picture of them has necessarily been slightly patchwork. Even though such disciplinary studies have produced an enormous amount of information on different aspects and practices of these entities, a more fundamental dynamic may still be lacking from this picture. As there are crucial issues between, across and beyond different disciplines linked to the factors and processes which mediate the working of the whole, an interdisciplinary approach is needed to make more sense of these complex dynamics. An interdisciplinary approach to wholeness is adopted in this book to better make sense of the Nordic welfare states as states of civilisation. The Nordic welfare state could be conceived as a formative field affording combinations of possibilities and potentialities 1

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so that the selection between them can take place according to past history, present perception and future-oriented innovation. The Nordic welfare state as a whole is, here, understood as a complex web of relations. These relations are bound together by practices of trust. In other words, trust is a formative process of the whole. Trust instantiates the quality of relations. We can distinguish four dimensions of trust: trust in oneself, trust in ourselves, trust in others and trust in their interaction. Trust in oneself is manifest in autonomy, trust in ourselves is manifest in participation, trust in others is manifest in inclusion and trust in their interaction is manifest in sustainability. Autonomy, participation, inclusion and sustainability comprise the four dimensions of the Nordic welfare state as a whole and endow the key perspectives of the research and also organise the structure of this book. From these perspectives it is possible to recognise and analyse how the formative force of trust amplifies collective social creativity, without which the Nordic welfare states would not have become what they are now. The crucial characteristic of the Nordic welfare states is that trust is a formative process of the whole and ultimately signifies active trust in the human person and their social interaction, leading to social creativity, rather than just passive trust in the given system. This fact also explains why the Nordic welfare states do not leave human interaction to the mercy of market forces, and argues that the proper functioning of the markets can greatly profit from the formative force of trust embedded in human interaction. Social creativity entails crossing traditional borders and presupposes the courage to face the wicked problems of the times. The existing institutions need to be constantly reorganised, as has happened in the Nordic welfare states. These states have actually followed advice similar to Machiavelli’s, who emphasised that whoever wants to succeed in governing a country has to keep track of the changing circumstances and, hence, adjust the governing techniques accordingly. He also gave advice to rulers, especially in times of great upheaval and turmoil, to go back to the original founding principles and deliberate their significance in these new circumstances. This is of vital importance in circumstances where a new utopia challenges the previous hegemonic register in dominance, so that there is a tendency – well described by Karl Mannheim (Mannheim, 1936 [1959]) – to turn it into an ideology, if it cannot renew itself in line with its original founding principles. The Nordic welfare states are now surrounded by a set of circumstances where the neoliberal utopia

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challenges the Nordic ethos of welfare and its original founding principles of equality, solidarity, public responsibility, universalism and autonomy. Globalisation is here. Both apt and dubious claims have been made in the name of globalisation. Many of them are hardly more than contestable half-truths. One such claim is that the Nordic welfare states are being overrun by globalisation. Globalisation is both a challenge and an opportunity for the Nordic welfare states. Almost all internationally available indicators of citizens’ welfare, economic sustainability, politicoadministrative performance and social cohesion exemplify the success of the Nordic countries in terms of human wellbeing, equality, low rates of poverty, life-satisfaction, stability, safety and security, trust, personal and press freedom, rule of law and reliability of elections and governance. We must, though, remember that these are average indicators and that the Nordic welfare states also have many significant differences. For a great number of foreign observers the Nordic countries have appeared (even as far back as in F.D. Roosevelt’s America) and still appear as a kind of paragon model or best practice to be learnt about or to be followed. Prominent international conferences have been regularly organised outside Scandinavia to study and discuss the past, present and future of the Nordic welfare states, often from a comparative (even critical) perspective. These discussions have been carried out all too often in terms of the ‘Nordic model’ portrayed as a paradigmatic and parametric design of its functioning. Even if such models include and convey highly relevant information about the performance and development of the Nordic welfare states, such a static, ultimately ahistorical, approach cannot capture the fundamental forces and motive powers of these societies in transformation. To find answers explaining the ‘Nordic success’ and its present challenges, we must penetrate the deep structures of these societies, and the societal relations which keep the societies together and running. The goodness of these relations – social, economic, political, cultural, juridical – should make the cumulatively causal interoperability of these societies understandable. From a relational perspective, it is possible to understand how and why universalism, public responsibility, equality, solidarity and personal autonomy are relational rationalities of action. The Nordic welfare states were never constructed according to some pre-given model, as if their contours would have been first outlined on some blueprint. These welfare regimes were not only built from the top-down, but also patiently and stepwise from the bottom-up. The notion of the Nordic welfare state has to be understood in an integral sense as comprising of multiple-stranded chains and networks of relations and

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cross-linkages between them. The piecemeal cumulative construction of the Nordic welfare states accentuates the mode and manner in which different domains, arenas and fields of practice and action are relationally mediated in these societies. The private and the public, the market and the state are relationally mediated and balanced, rather than existing as plain opposites. The role and rules of institutions is crucial in this in-between. Institutions should be understood as patterns of relations and not only as patterns of behaviour. Individual behaviour in this institutional context should be also relationally understood. The starting point of this book is that the quality of its societal relations, to a great extent, explains the success of the Nordic countries. The close relations between the individual citizen and the state are of crucial significance in these countries. But these relations cannot be seen as an outcome or as a replication of some kind of counterfactual social contract. Societal relations mediate not only citizens and state concretely but also employers and employees, men and women, the well-to-do and the vulnerable, as well as trust and expectations. These relations offer channels for conflict resolution between different interests in society. The relational perspective reveals how and why a given society, rather than another, is able to find a path of balanced development. In the light of the available indicators we can talk of strong Nordic democracy. The strength of this democracy is also relationally based. This helps to explain why it has been able to cope with severe social problems such as poverty and exclusion. The history of the Nordic democracy coincides with that of the welfare state and makes it perfectly clear that the social questions on the agenda need not have downplayed the political quest for freedom. On the contrary, it can strengthen this quest by deepening our understanding of freedom and democracy. Strong democracy needs free citizens, but their freedom must be contextually and relationally determined as personal autonomy. Personal autonomy means that the freedom of a person is not burdened by all kinds of factual dependencies, many of which can be directly connected to difficulties and hardships condensed in the formula of social question. Lars Trägårdh was perfectly right in writing that for the Swedish welfare state an overarching ambition has been to liberate the individual citizen from all forms of subordination and dependency in civil society, the poor from charity, the workers from their employers, wives from their husbands, children from their parents. In practice, the primacy of individual autonomy has been institutionalized through a plethora of laws and policies. (Berggren and Trägårdh, 2010)

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This conception of autonomy is the exact opposite to that of neoliberalism which equates personal autonomy with negative freedom. John Dewey wrote in the 1920s that what is not so generally acknowledged is that the understanding and generative conditions of concrete behavior are social as well as organic: much more social than organic as far as the manifestation of differential wants, purposes and methods of operation is concerned. To those who appreciate this fact, it is evident that the desires, aims and standards of satisfaction which the dogma of ‘natural’ economic processes and laws assume are themselves socially conditioned phenomena. They are reflections into the singular human being of customs and institutions; they are not natural […] propensities. They mirror a state of civilisation. (Dewey, 2016)

This kind of pragmatically relational thinking which Dewey represents comes very close to the thinking of those Nordic intellectuals who, since the 1920s and even earlier, have personally inspired and contributed to the construction of the Nordic welfare state as a civilisational achievement. An effort is made in this book to analyse and evaluate the Nordic welfare states as such states of civilisation characterised by the high quality of their societal relations manifested in trust. There are four relational aggregates which are decisive for the future of the Nordic welfare states. Each chapter in this book is located thematically in one of these topics. These relational topics address autonomy, participation, inclusion and sustainability. Autonomy refers to a human condition in which a person’s experienced relations are such that he or she is able to master and manage his or her own life and decisions. It reflects trust in oneself. Participation refers to a mode of action which influences people in a common endeavour to change their circumstances. It reflects trust in ourselves. Inclusion refers to a state of circumstances in which all involved are so related that they belong together in such a fashion that they can contribute according to their own capabilities. This reflects trust in others. Sustainability refers to complex processes which relate people to each other and balance their relations with the environment helping them face (with precaution) uncertainty and contingency. It reflects trust in their interaction. The actual functioning and transformation of the Nordic welfare state is thus always environmentally embedded and conditioned. Neoliberalism is a slippery notion which usually says too little about too much. If we want to disclose some of the means and modes which help manage our life, neoliberalism is, however, appropriate to use when carefully clarified. Neoliberalism is a bio-political mode of conducting our conduct. It has autonomy, participation and inclusion as objects to be

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worked on intellectually and governmentally. Neoliberalism seeks to untie those societal relations which it sees as inhibiting and stiffening the proper functioning of the market mechanism. Markets must be also constantly invigorated to function optimally as if markets should be helped to help themselves. Since this call can be only heard by people, neoliberalism aims at becoming a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Neoliberalism argues that any human situation can be best managed when conceived economically. It is argued that when people organise their conduct according to a market-oriented rationality, they will optimally contribute to the common good simultaneously increasing their own chances in life. This reasoning naturally echoes Mandeville’s fable. The major targets of neoliberalism have been influential policy makers and public servants in government and state offices, since the primary aim of neoliberalism has been to encourage and persuade states themselves to start acting as if they were private corporations, and accordingly, renew their internal and external relations. However, practices such as new public management (NPM), austerity, activation, restructuration, retrenchment and privatisation measures cannot simply be reduced to consequences of neoliberalism, even though during the past three decades neoliberalism has exerted an enormous influence, not only in the Anglo-Saxon countries, but also in the Nordic countries. A critical question of neoliberalism concerns autonomy, which has been guaranteed and institutionalised in the Nordic countries through a plethora of laws and policies expressive of strong Nordic democracy. In this Nordic solution, a strong democracy and social security empower citizens and their aptness for action, who can thus promote this strong democracy through their own actions. In this way autonomy, participation and inclusion are closely related as cumulatively caused. This represents the ideal of democratic citizenship as social citizenship. However, it must be asked how viable this social citizenship is or will be in coping with the challenge of neoliberalism and similar rationalities to come which praise the virtues of market access, market citizenship and a competitive state in the age of globalisation and transnationalism. Globalisation refers to free movement of money, capital and commodities, but also labour, people and ideas. In this way distances between people and their situations shrink, their events take place faster and faster and their interrelations become ever denser and more tightly linked. Globalisation signifies an all-pervasive transformation of the global space-time of human action. In the context of integral world capitalism the existing societal relations are being dissolved and reworked to the extent that the parable ‘all that is solid melts into air’ seems quite pertinent. What are ultimately at stake in this bio-political transformation

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are the life-worlds and life-styles of people and their localities, and even human worth as such (Foucault, 1990, pp. 138–43). Globalisation does not mean the annihilation of borders but their de-territorialisation. It does not mean the end of man but his refashioning. The bio-political transformation has profound impacts on the conceptions and convictions about what it is to be human and what our rights and responsibilities are. These issues were already pivotal at the beginning of the Nordic welfare states. There had to be some basic common understanding and common human experience concerning what it means to be human and to live together. The ideas of universalism, solidarity, equality and public responsibility were crucial for the establishment of the Nordic welfare regime. To exist and develop, the relational Nordic welfare state cannot give up its fundamental principles and premises which manifest in the Nordic ethos of welfare. However, the significance and content of these fundamental principles need to be reconsidered in these new circumstances of globalisation and trans-nationalisation where their execution is altogether more difficult nationally than before. This is not just a major social and political challenge for the Nordic welfare states, but it can also be a legal and a constitutional challenge. The important matter to remember is that constitutions are also relational, and this is a particularly significant reason why trans-nationalisation and globalisation can be such a considerable constitutional challenge to the Nordic welfare states. A notable expression of this quest is not just European integration by law, but also the role of individual and human rights in the discourse and practices of the Nordic welfare states, especially since the 1990s. A crucial factor behind the success of the Nordic welfare states has been their great capacity to balance opposing interests, forces and contradictory tendencies. Balancing is a relational practice of mediation and conflict resolution, and, thus, calls for participation. As a process, balancing naturally takes time since it is ultimately a question of balancing different ways of life. Balancing is also a crucial factor in promoting autonomy and inclusion. If autonomy can be strengthened by balancing sociality and asociality – to put it in Kantian terms – then inclusion can be strengthened by balancing equality and difference. These kinds of balancing practices, to a varying degree, have been characteristics of the Nordic welfare states. Balancing and mediating different interests can also promote sustainability in different societal dimensions. An outstanding example of such a balance has also taken place between competition and cooperation. This is the manner in which the Nordic welfare states have been able to boost a virtuous circle of development as a cumulative outcome of common

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efforts. The positive denominator of these efforts must be transversal interaction between different domains if sustainable societal development is effectively pursued. This means, above all, a balanced man-nature relationship. It means, in other words, the combining of preservation and novelty in such a fashion that can penetrate society’s domains most creatively. Such a creative key to sustainability may be also found in the profitable market action of those innovative enterprises which have successfully adopted public responsibility for sustainability as their trademark. Environmental sustainability is so closely linked with other forms of sustainability that it cannot succeed without them. They are all dependent on definite common human actions. The case in point is the social protection and empowerment of vulnerable people. In this case social sustainability can be only achieved by connecting personal autonomy, inclusion and participation and this does not succeed if these people are not given the chance to realise their own potentialities and capabilities. For this to happen the circumstances need to be such that their own action is not hampered by any strong top-down hierarchy or regulation. However, there are also more sophisticated and interlinked forms of regulation, which can also block their action in a counterproductive fashion to sustainability. Such a form of conducting the conduct of persons would force people to think and act against their interest. Balancing finds its opposite in the practice of forcing. Forcing the truth so that other alternatives are dismissed as wrong (perverted, futile, jeopardised) is a typical procedure of neoliberalism. This is often the manner in which neoliberalism challenges the Nordic welfare states. Inclusion has been challenged by forcing the precarisation workfare policies, incentives and activation based on the idea of market access. If market access justice is applied as a means of forcing, then it can easily collide with the Nordic ethos of welfare. Hence, globalisation can be made to challenge the Nordic welfare states by accelerating the race to the bottom. This could also occur by way of immigration if it is not managed along the principles of equality of difference. Socio-economic problems with populist political effects can further arise if labour market precarisation gains strength. All this naturally depends on the adopted labour market, activation and inclusion policies which are, at present, contestable and heated issues on the political agenda in the Nordic countries. But these are certainly not the only critical issues of ongoing political struggles in which forcing plays a major role. Environmental sustainability also offers an arena for forcing besides being the fatal question of our future. Climate is not only shaped by natural forces (climate forcing) but also by human forcing. Neoliberalism

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is an example of human forcing which tries to compel human life (styles) and activity into dominant trajectories of commodity and money circulation. If we add to that the fact that immigration has primarily been a consequence of war and poverty, and in the future most probably also of climate change, our challenges multiply. Even if the Nordic countries are in a better position than many other countries to cope with them, they may also find themselves to be on the brink of no return. In this situation we must make decisions and adopt conventions which totally renew our traditional ways of life. The Nordic welfare state is a complex web of interconnected relations. This is how the chapters in this book have approached the Nordic welfare states and accordingly contextualised their particular research questions and objectives. This has been done by either examining how the Nordic welfare states have managed their affairs in new changing circumstances or by examining how the new changing circumstances have challenged the Nordic welfare states. The challenges facing the Nordic welfare state, therefore, play a crucial role in both of these approaches even if the manner of posing the questions and giving answers changes direction within them. The chapters in this book emphasise how the Nordic welfare state is particularly challenged by the neoliberal offensive and how it can be also the challenger of such utopian schemes. The outlines of the contents of each chapter already illustrate the multiple means and modes of such confrontations. The first part of the book, Autonomy, begins with Sanford F. Schram’s chapter about neoliberalism and poverty. The chapter scrutinises the relationship of the poor to those who are more fortunate and in a position to affect their life chances. Among those in relation to the poor are state actors who are assigned responsibility to monitor, manage, surveil and discipline welfare recipients to become market-compliant actors. These neoliberal relations to poverty are becoming more closely examined as the welfare state comes under pressure to integrate recipients into the market economy, while simultaneously reducing the state’s burden for sustaining them. A comparative analysis between countries of these shifts in the relations between the poor and their state managers points to the variegated ways nations are enacting neoliberal welfare policy reforms. In the next chapter, Sakari Hänninen penetrates the fundamental normative order of the Nordic welfare state. The overarching metaprinciple of this order is equality. The relational nature of equality is conceptualised in terms of interests, conventions and institutions. As a relation, equality is multi-dimensional so that we can speak of equality in terms of what, why, how and whom. Politics matters in the Nordic welfare states because the promotion of equality demands that opposite

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interests are mediated and unavoidable conflicts are balanced. This has been the strength of the Nordic political democracy and social citizenship. It is an outcome of such democratic politics which is able to creatively cope with new challenges. The largest challenge at present the Nordic welfare states are facing is to find out how to promote equality of difference at a time when the neoliberal offensive has forcefully landed in the Nordic countries. Nina Witoszek ends the first part by asking whether there is a Nordic humanism. According to Witoszek, sustainable modernity is as much a creation of political and economic institutions and social movements as it is a summa summarum of cultural texts, norms, rituals and philosophical traditions. The main interest lies in the question: to what extent can the Scandinavian countries’ successes as ‘well-being societies’ be attributed to the potency of a unique Nordic humanism? How has it evolved? Who have been its main drivers and how has it been replicated? In what way has it interacted with political and economic realms? And finally, what are the challenges to Nordic humanism today? This takes a semioticevolutionary perspective of the shared Nordic founding tradition, highlighting in particular the role of ‘Ostromian’ small groups and individuals in solidifying humanism in the Nordic education system and self-image. In the second part of the book, Participation, social citizenship and participation is discussed. Paolo Borioni focuses on the relational quality of equality. This is seen as a clear outcome of collective political action. Borioni sees parity as a complex idea of the ‘primacy of politics’ bringing together various agents. The chapter focuses on the analysis of the significance of the parity between labour and capital and the parity between export-led competitiveness and wage-led domestic growth. It can be shown that these parities have helped to make it possible to construct a ‘virtuous circle’ between efficiency, solidarity, security and equality in the Nordic countries. In the present circumstances of ordoliberal influence, it is evident that equality is not a permanent quality but can be reversible. Ordo-liberalism distorts the Nordic socio-political system by regulating through hierarchy and inequality rather than parity and equality. This chapter examines more closely how far and deep such ordo-liberal regulation has penetrated Denmark and Sweden. Finally, it will be outlined what kind of pressures and challenges on the Nordic welfare states the change from parity to hierarchy, from equality to inequality, has already posed. Pauli Kettunen challenges the conventional images of the Nordic model. Applying an approach which is sensitive to historical and political aspects of language and concepts, the chapter argues that a particular notion of social citizenship has developed in the Nordic countries in

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which interests rather than rights were put into the centre. Such a notion of social citizenship was associated with two intertwined ideas which were important in the development of the Nordic pattern of social reform: the idea of symmetry between workers and employers and the idea of a virtuous circle between divergent interests. With these concepts, democracy and citizenship have been combined with paid work and conflicting interests. This combination has been questioned by the projects for competitive national (and European) communities responding to globalised and financialised capitalism. The vigorous comparisons of ‘models’ and the popularity of the concept of ‘the Nordic model’ can be seen as an aspect of this current transformation. In the third part, Inclusion, the focus is on the changes of inclusion or, to be more precise, the shift from interests to rights. Toomas Kotkas presents the idea that Nordic social security and social welfare systems were a result of a practical moral-political discourse based on the idea that everyone was to be included in society. From this perspective, society at large has been viewed as responsible for taking care of all its members. Since the 1990s, the human and individual rights discourse has gained strength throughout the Nordic countries. In some countries, such as in Finland and in Norway, new social or human rights provisions have been also amended in the constitution. Despite the increased attention to constitutional social and human rights, there is so far indecisive evidence of their practical significance concerning social security and/or social welfare policy. The chapter scrutinises how the strengthened rights discourse has appeared in the children’s day care system in Finland and it discusses the nature of trust in the Nordic countries. Kaarlo Tuori discusses the idea of a multi-dimensional European constitution, where the political and juridical constitutions are complemented by sectoral ones, such as an economic constitution, and poses the question of whether the sectoral constitutions include a social one. The answer is affirmative, but with some important qualifications. These qualifications have implications for the concept of justice, which inform the European social constitution: instead of solidaristic social justice, the European social constitution embodies access justice. The European social constitution does not replace national social constitutions (welfare states) but complements them. The main contributions of the European social constitution lie in fields that are on the fringes of the welfare state, legally speaking in what has been called regulative private law (e.g. consumer law). The European constitution also places constraints on national welfare states. These constraints, however, derive from the European economic constitution, rather than the social constitution.

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The title of the last part of the book is Sustainability. The concept brings contradictive views on the future. Monika Berg and Paula Saikkonen examine environmental sustainability in the Nordic welfare states. The future of the welfare system and citizens’ wellbeing requires that humans do not cause irreversible damage to nature, yet risk-avoidance should be adjusted to other societal concerns and functions. The chapter discusses relational rationalities and focuses on knowledge production. Knowledge and information are used in many ways in decision-making processes and also to legitimise decisions already made. The sciencepolicy interface is seen as a relation or actually a relation of multiple relations. Even though the research brings more knowledge about complex environmental degradation, political decision making seems to progress on linear trajectories. As there is always a great deal of uncertainty in decisions made concerning sustainability, it is a question of coping with uncertainty. The social and ecological systems should be seen as relationally compatible in order to achieve a sustainable welfare system. The chapter by Minna Kivipelto, Merita Jokela, Sanna Blomgren and Marek Perlinski discusses the challenges and functioning of Nordic welfare states from the perspective of social sustainability and asks how the lives and welfare of the most vulnerable people are managed by the state at different administrative levels and in cooperation with other agencies. The chapter examines professional social work in Finland by means of the domain theory. Although examples are derived from the Finnish social welfare agencies and analysed with a theory originally developed to understand Swedish social welfare services, the analysis is contextualised and the results are evaluated more generally in the Nordic setting. Despite their shared values and common traits, Sweden and Finland also display significant differences, for instance, regarding the professional status of social work, as well as differences in tasks and governance. The aim of this is to help understand social sustainability as the security and welfare of all citizens – and those living in the country – from a relational perspective. Peer Hull Kristensen, Eli Moen and Kari Lilja approach sustainability from a different angle. They begin by demonstrating how the Nordic welfare states, strong unions and various institutions providing patient capital have promoted forms of enterprises that have secured participatory forms of work-organisation and are oriented towards developing socially and environmentally responsible practices which are unknown to most countries. However, these regimes seem to have become weaker since the late 1980s. The authors ask whether this change means a digression from the most civilised form of capitalism. The chapter takes a

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relational approach. It shows how the relation between the state, labour market, distinct actors in the market and enterprises can create sustainable embeddedness of firms in the first place, and how this relational configuration can continue, even when an actor such as the state seems to withdraw from the configuration.

REFERENCES Berggren, H. and L. Trägårdh (2010), ‘Pippi Longstocking: The autonomous child and the moral logic of the Swedish welfare state’, in H. Mattson and S.-O. Wallenstein (eds), Swedish Modernism: Architecture, Consumption and the Welfare State, London, UK: Black Dog Publishing Limited, pp. 10–23. Cooke, G. and R. Muir (eds) (2012), The Relational State: How Recognising the Importance of Human Relationships Could Revolutionise the Role of the State, London: The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). Dewey, J. (2016), The Public and its Problems: An Essay in Political Inquiry, Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press. Foucault, M. (1990), The History of Sexuality. 1, An Introduction. New York: Vintage Books. Mannheim, K. (1936), Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, reprinted 1959, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

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PART I

Autonomy

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1. Neoliberal relations of poverty and the welfare state Sanford F. Schram In the United States, poverty has long been an intensely researched topic for welfare state analysts. Yet it has most often been studied in individualistic terms, focused on detailing the characteristics of those living in poverty, including most especially estimating their population size and composition. One unfortunate consequence of this individualizing is the tendency to see poverty as a result of the individual’s background, personality, psychology, behavior and so on, thereby neglecting the social structural factors that lead to people being mired in poverty. Recent attempts have sought to change that by conceiving of poverty in relational terms, including most significantly the relationship of the poor to those who are more fortunate and in a position to affect their life chances. Among these persons in relation with the poor are state actors who are assigned responsibility to monitor, manage, surveil and discipline welfare recipients to be market-compliant actors. These relations of poverty are in need of closer examination most especially as the welfare state, not just in the US, but in the developed world more generally, comes under pressure in an age of neoliberalism to integrate recipients into the market economy thereby overcoming their social exclusion while simultaneously reducing the state’s burden for sustaining them. In fact, comparative analysis across countries of these shifts in relations between the poor and their state managers points to the variegated ways nations are enacting neoliberal welfare policy reforms. Based on such comparative analysis, this chapter highlights moves toward progressive responses even as neoliberal pressures for market compliance remain ascendant.

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NEOLIBERAL RELATIONS OF POVERTY For too long, researchers, especially in the US, have almost always tended to focus on the individuals who are poor, what characteristics they have, and what is it about them as individuals that makes them poor, be it their personality, their values, their behavior, their racial or ethnic background (see Schram 1995). Class relations, the structure of power in society and other social structural and institutional constraints are far too often pushed in the background in the quest to study individuals in an empirical and ideally quantitatively measurable way. Researchers inevitably lose sight of the forest of broader contextual factors in order to focus on the trees of economically disadvantaged individuals. Yet, in recent years, a growing number of analysts have begun to counteract this pull to positivism by emphasizing in particular a ‘relational’ approach to the study of this topic (Emirbayer 1997; Desmond and Emirbayer 2009; Desmond 2016; Elwood et al. 2017; Lawson and Elwood 2018). A relational understanding of social phenomena has a longstanding place in modern social science literature reaching back at least to Chester Barnard in his The Functions of the Executive (1938) where he distinctively emphasized the cooperative and interpersonal foundations of organizations. Barnard’s influence ranged widely over the subsequent years coming to include radical scholars of social movements like Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward (1977) in their theory of the power of ‘poor people’s movements’ stemming from the disruptive ability that comes with their withholding consent and compliance in relationship to the powerful who dominate them. Social formations like poverty or impoverishment or even being poor, as in a poor individual, build off and emerge out of dependent relationships, be those relationships psychological, social, political or economic. There are a variety of sources in actuality for the relational approaches that increasingly became popular in the social sciences in recent years (Fuhse 2014). Some drew from the work of Norbert Elias (1939), who rejected the overly deterministic character of structuralism and the overly agentistic orientation of individualism. Elias influenced social theorists like Charles Tilly (2001) to look for a more dynamic modeling of how social structures and individual choice-making interacted at psychological as well as sociological levels (Diani 2004). This sort of relational thinking resonated with the thinking of influential theorists like Anthony Giddens (1986) in his theory of structuration and Pierre Bourdieu (1977) in his conceptualization of what he called ‘habitus’. The relational approach has been prominent among Scandinavian scholars of the Nordic

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welfare state (Harrikari and Rauhala 2016). It is increasingly influential in Europe more generally (Donati 2014). By a relational approach, therefore, I mean nothing more than to focus on this fundamental social fact. Social conditions in particular should not be studied strictly in terms of the individual. Instead, an individual’s poverty or economic hardship should be understood not in terms of a person’s personal characteristics, behavior and practices in and of themselves, independent of the underlying social relationships. Instead, a better understanding is achieved when we place that person in a broader socioeconomic context that enables us to understand how relationships with others in a structured institutional setting affect what the individual can and cannot get to do that ends up producing that poverty or hardship. A distinctive feature of relational approaches is how they change the way we conduct research. Matthew Desmond (2014) states: Relational ethnography gives ontological primacy, not to groups or places, but to configurations of relations. The point of fieldwork becomes to describe a system of relations, ‘to show how things hang together in a web of mutual influence or support or interdependence or what have you, to describe the connections between the specifics the ethnographer knows by virtue of being there’ (Becker 1996, p. 56). The relational ethnographer designs ‘[s]trategies of quite literally following connections, associations, and putative relationships’ (Marcus 1998, p. 81), its proper object being ‘chains of interdependence’ (Weber 2001, p. 484; see also Beaud and Weber, 2003). Relational ethnography is not propelled by the logic of comparison, as is the multi-sited ethnography of sociology. It does not seek to understand if a certain group or community is peculiar vis-à-vis their counterparts in other contexts. It often does not seek to understand if a certain group or community is anything at all. Rather, it is ‘designed around chains, paths, threads, conjunctions [that come to support] the argument of the ethnography’ (Marcus 1998, p. 90). Most basically, a relational approach incorporates fully into the ethnographic sample at least two types of actors or agencies occupying different positions within the social space and bound together in a relationship of mutual dependence or struggle. (Desmond 2014, p. 554)

A relational approach to the study of poverty has the great virtue of placing an individual’s condition, behavior and even beliefs in a broader context so as to better make sense of why people do what they do and believe what they believe. It helps us understand why it might be rational for poor people to make the ‘bad’ choices they make (Mullainathan and Shafir 2013). We can better understand how these allegedly bad choices are not really so much a product of some characteristics or propensity among poor people as individuals, but more the result of their context and the relationships that serve to create and reinforce that context. My

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specific focus is on how we have moved over the last four decades, at least since the Reagan presidency, to a neoliberal set of relations that shape and structure poverty and inequality in the US. A key feature of the general orientation of neoliberalism is responsibilization (Hacker 2006) or the idea that we need to insist and enforce personal responsibility as much as possible in an age where elites manufacture austerity, starve the beast of government, hollow out the welfare state, insist on personal responsibility and then blame and punish the poor when they fail or are unable to effectively comply (Schram 2015). The neoliberal relations of poverty are highly disciplinary. They end up blaming people as individuals for the relationships that put them in adverse circumstances and force them often to make bad decisions for their choices are so limited. It makes people seem like they do not want to do better, to plan for their future, and so on, when in fact they simply cannot afford to. With responsibilization, the neoliberal relations of poverty are masked and erased from consideration. We are encouraged to blame the poor for the poverty society imposes on them. Neoliberal relations of poverty operate by stealth. Under neoliberalism, it becomes all the more important to highlight and make these relationships explicit so that we do not allow the atrophying of consciousness to rationalize poverty today in hyper individualistic terms that only serve to reinscribe neoliberalism’s insistence on personal responsibility as a rationalization for hollowing out the welfare state. Yet, in order to better understand these dynamics of the neoliberal relations of poverty, we need to first define neoliberalism, which I turn to in the next section.

NEOLIBERALISM DEFINED In recent years, the effects of neoliberalism have cut to the bone (Stiglitz 2012). The Great Recession of 2008–09 was the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. By the time its most devastating effects began receding in late 2012, and the economy’s improvement became noticeable in 2013, many people were beginning to exhale a sigh of relief that things might return to normal after an extended period of massive hardship for individuals and families throughout the US. Yet it seemed that a new normal was emerging where economic opportunity for most people was not quite what it once was. In this transformed economy, the wealthy become ever wealthier, while the middle class shrinks and people with lower incomes – the working class and poor – are being disciplined to be market-compliant actors in an

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economy that left them with dwindling opportunities for achieving a decent standard of living. As if these negative trends were not enough, mainstream political discourse diverted attention away from growing economic inequality and precarity and instead focused on the alleged dangers of high levels of public debt. The resultant manufactured austerity did nothing but accelerate the trend whereby growing numbers of people who suffered diminished economic prospects were made all the more subject to disciplinary practices of the state that punished them for their failure to succeed in a transformed economy. These changes take place during a time of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is these days ascendant, continuing its rise since the years of the Reagan presidency. Neoliberalism is where there is increased emphasis on people practicing personal responsibility by applying economic logic to all forms of decision-making across a variety of spheres of life (Schram 2015). Neoliberalism disseminates economic rationality to be the touchstone not just for the market but for civil society and the state as well. Most dramatically it has led to wholesale revision in public policy in a number of domains to be more consistent with market logic in the name of better promoting market-compliant behavior by as much of the citizenry as possible. People are expected to practice personal responsibility by investing in their own human capital to make themselves less of a burden on society as a whole or face the consequences of the heightened disciplinary regime (Soss et al. 2011). As a result, post-Great Recession, the return of ordinary capitalism provided a new neoliberal normal of growing inequality and dwindling economic opportunities for most Americans. Under neoliberalism, the state buttresses markets rather than counters them and inequality grows virtually unabated, as not a bug but rather as a feature of this latest iteration of the return to ordinary capitalism. The shift to a new normal of a neoliberalized economy was by no means spontaneous. Joseph Stiglitz has written that these trends post-Great Recession are actually reflective of a long wave of state-induced economic transformation: For thirty years after World War II, America grew together – with growth in income in every segment, but with those at the bottom growing faster than those at the top. The country’s fight for survival brought a new sense of unity, and that led to policies, like the GI Bill, that helped bring the country even closer together. But for the past thirty years, we’ve become increasingly a nation divided; not only has the top been growing the fastest, but the bottom has actually been declining. The last time inequality approached the alarming level we see today was in the years before the Great Depression. If we are to reverse these trends in inequality, we will have to reverse some of the policies that have helped make America the most economically divided developed

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The new normal therefore was a long time in the making and public policy helped make it happen. The effects of the Great Recession have been serious indeed, but they are symptomatic of a larger economic restructuring where social welfare policies most significantly are revised to work consistently with the logic of the market rather than to counter it. This economic restructuring has not happened overnight, but instead, has come incrementally with economic downturns successively presenting opportunities to offload workers, outsource jobs and rebuild firms so that they can more efficiently and profitably, if also more heartlessly, participate in the neoliberalization of the global economy. As a result, people on the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder have increasingly been forced to try to survive on dwindling opportunities the transformed economy offers them or come under the purview of an increasingly disciplinary state. While the new normal represented a break with the past, it also reflected continuity especially for selected marginalized populations, low-income African Americans in particular. In fact, the return of ordinary capitalism post the Great Recession has intensified preexisting long-term negative trends in income, housing, health care, social welfare and criminal justice, as well as overall well-being for many African Americans. A case could be made that these persistent racial disparities were not simply the result of failed public policies but that race itself was a critical constitutive ingredient in the ongoing rollout of a neoliberal paternalistic regime of poverty governance. Race facilitated the institution of policies designed to contain low-income populations and manage their poverty problems so that they did not become a burden for the rest of society. Further, those policies (from welfare-to-work to mass incarceration) help reinscribe race as a marker of who is innocent and who is guilty, who is deserving and who is not. In other words, persistent racial disparities in quality-of-life indicators were not a failure of the neoliberal paternalistic regime of poverty management but were instead its very raison d’être, reflective of a systematic effort to exploit racial divisions as a way of justifying advanced marginality among low-income African Americans (and other people of color). Thomas Piketty (2014) has suggested that the 1945–73 period that Stiglitz references (i.e., what is often called the ‘Great Compression’), when wages rose with economic growth and there was a reduction in inequality, was actually an anomaly in the history of capitalism. While African Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities did not benefit as much as whites during this period, for the bulk of Americans this was

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a distinctive time where, to turn a phrase, a rising tide was lifting most boats, if not all. Yet on the basis of examining several hundred years of data across several countries, Piketty concludes that the normal course of affairs for ordinary capitalism is where the returns from capital exceed economic growth so as to concentrate wealth at the top and increase inequality. In other words, most often a rising tide lifts the boats of the well-off but not really anyone else. From this perspective, we have indeed, post the Great Recession, returned to the normal course of affairs for ordinary capitalism, where the economy grows, but so as to increase the concentration of wealth at the top. The aftermath of the Great Recession has included an acceleration of that trend since the mid-1970s with the economy growing to create more inequality by concentrating wealth at the uppermost top of the income distribution, to the point of producing a new Gilded Age of ‘patrimonial capitalism’ where the returns from capital help ensure that inherited wealth is the main driver of this extreme inequality. Piketty calls for a global wealth tax as the only solution to the inevitability of increasing concentration of wealth at the top. This is surely a utopian gesture, as Piketty himself recognizes, for there is not even a governmental body in existence to collect this tax. Piketty’s analysis therefore has an air of inevitability, that obdurate impersonal economic forces will be sustaining the new normal long into the future. Yet as ordinary people of all backgrounds persist in struggling to come to grips with this new normal, we must ask whether it is inevitable that economic forces will continue to generate greater levels of inequality and whether the ordinary people are in fact powerless to respond politically. In this sense neoliberalism is not just another phase of liberal capitalism, though it is that it is still more than seamlessly the product of the market economy’s evolution. It is not so economically determined and fated to be by market operations that inevitably concentrate wealth at a faster rate than overall growth as Piketty sometimes seems to suggest. Instead, the growing inequality of the neoliberal era is in large part the product of public policy. The period of the Great Compression was a time of what we call Keynesianism, named for the great economist John Maynard Keynes who promoted the idea that the state should serve as a counter to the market. Keynesianism enacted what Karl Polanyi called the ‘double movement’, where the state operated independently of the market to counter its ill effects and promote economic stability that could work for the benefit of ordinary people. The Great Compression was in no small part a result of the success of Keynesian policies. Yet, as Keynesianism began to fail in the 1980s, probably due to globalization

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that made it more difficult for the national government to counter a globalizing economy, people began to lose faith in the ability of government to implement Keynesian counter-cyclical policy effectively. This created an opening for conservatives to push for moving away from Keynesian policies that involved the heavy hand of the state. Yet, given the deep path dependencies that came with people being accustomed to the state being there to regulate the economy and offer social protection from the vagaries of the market, rolling back big government was reduced largely to Reaganesque rhetoric, popular though it was even among Democrats like Bill Clinton. So, in response, critics of Keynesianism had to move to Plan B: if you could not get rid of the welfare state, the next best thing was to neoliberalize it. Rather than go back to classical Adam Smithian laissez-faire market fundamentalism, instead marketize the state. Keynesianism made a sharp division between the market and the state; it had the state serve as an alternative to the market offering social protection, and an independent state regulated the market. Under neoliberalism, the state did not go away but instead it was marketized: erase the sharp distinction between the market and the state, blur the boundary between the market and the state to bring in market actors to run state operations along market lines consistent with market logic in order to better buttress rather than counter the market. Neoliberalism in this sense most critically is not so much about the market as it is about the state; it is about the marketization of the state in order to better support rather than counter markets. With these marching orders, state actors have over the last few decades insistently and persistently neoliberalized the state. With the neoliberalization of the state, the neoliberal relations of poverty get instigated via state policy. We see this no better when we look at social welfare policies.

NEOLIBERAL WELFARE The Keynesian welfare state that arose during the Great Compression provided social protection for those who were seen as deserving of public assistance given their inability to provide for themselves and their family due to unemployment, disability, retirement, death of a wage-earning spouse and other conditions (Schram 2015). The welfare state was an alternative to the market. The welfare state still exists but under neoliberalism it is increasingly focused on disciplining recipients to be market compliant, by minimizing their time receiving public assistance and enhancing their motivation and ability to fit into the market’s job structure. The welfare state buttresses rather than counters the market. It

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does this by reorganizing its own operations to run along market lines according to market logic (Soss et al. 2011). Social welfare programs are often run by for-profit providers, who face market competition (often simulated through performance-management accountability schemes), and who are incentivized to run their programs as cheaply as possible to make a profit by moving recipients as quickly as possible off assistance and into the job market. Under these conditions, it is not surprising that providers have an entirely different orientation, where once recipients were the clients, now employers are the clients. This revised orientation underscores how neoliberalizing welfare programs, whether they are unemployment assistance, disability or public assistance for the poor, are now more about buttressing the market rather than countering it. Neoliberalism is most often seen as being about promoting market freedom and it is undoubtedly about enhancing the power of the market and the supremacy of market logic (Brown 2015). Yet, the ongoing neoliberalization of the welfare state demonstrates that neoliberalism is critically about the state, even if it is the marketization of the state. Further, neoliberalism is most seen as emphasizing the freedom in market freedom, as in deregulation and reduced reliance on a hollowed out welfare state. Yet, in-depth examination of the neoliberalization of welfare demonstrates that neoliberalism is also about disciplining people to be market compliant. The key to understanding this seeming contradiction is emphasizing the critical role in neoliberalism played by the term ‘responsibilization’. Responsibilization implies a process rather than a condition. It is something that gets done rather than a preexisting condition. With a shift to a neoliberal orientation, people are expected to be personally responsible by achieving their well-being via the market and relying on market logic as much as possible to make the economically right choices in all areas of their lives. In this way, they should be able to eliminate their need to rely on the state. Yet, when people fail to be able to be responsible on their own, the neoliberalized welfare state is increasingly expected to step in to discipline recipients to be market compliant. The social control dimensions of welfare that have historically always been there now are accentuated (Piven and Cloward 1971). If we survey the changes occurring across welfare states in the developed world (Schram 2006), we can see that what Gøsta EspingAndersen (1990) calls the ‘Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism’ persists under neoliberalism. The Nordic Social-Democratic welfare states of the Scandinavian countries have followed the Conservative, ChristianDemocratic strong-state welfare states of countries like France and Germany and the Liberal Democratic welfare states of the Anglo countries in responding to neoliberalizing pressures in a globalizing

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economy. Yet, when they have done so they have tended to persist in maintaining their differences. The neoliberalizing pressures are real but the differences across countries and cultures condition and constrain the extent to which neoliberalization results in a hollowing out of the welfare state. The take away of this research is that neoliberalization is not fated to be as some inexorable force of economic determinism but instead is in no small part a political choice manifested in the crafting of public policy (Schram 2015).

IN AN AGE OF RIGHT-WING REACTION Today, there is a rising tide of right-wing reaction that poses a serious threat to the viability of the welfare state in liberal democracies in the developed world. Growing anxieties associated with perceived threats from the forces of globalization have led to an upsurge of right-wing populist reaction in country after country, in Europe, the US and elsewhere. Concerns about demographic diversification, multiculturalism and immigration have led to a rise in white nationalism. The welfare state is implicated in these developments. Far-right leaders like Viktor Orban in Hungary have actively moved to promote what they call ‘illiberal democracy’, where the rule of law is compromised in the name of consolidating power to impose dramatic changes that include undercutting individual rights (Bershidsky 2018). Minorities in particular are made more vulnerable and the state is freed to stand up for the white indigenous population against immigrants. As is typical of right-wing populism, Orban’s platform includes a defense of the welfare state but only on behalf of the dominant nationality. Denmark is an interesting case in point. Denmark has proven to be a resilient social democracy with a robust welfare state that has produced a highly contented population. Nonetheless, in recent years, reactionary forces challenging the growth in the number of Muslim immigrants has led to the government periodically responding to demands to limit welfare state benefits to immigrants. The Danish People’s Party has transformed itself from a critic of the welfare state to its defender but this time as a defender that promises to defend the welfare state by limiting immigrants’ access to benefits. This approach has actually led to coalition-building with the Social Democrats (Milne 2017). Other Scandinavian countries face similar threats to their commitments to liberal democracy and minority rights. In Sweden, the issue of immigration has become quite volatile where the far-right antiimmigrant Democrat Party is rising. Should they come to power, a

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referendum like the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom could result (Milne 2018). The European Union is increasingly seen as the enemy imposing external pressure on these countries to accept diversification that they have long resisted. These are startling developments for countries that have prized their commitments to liberal democracy, social solidarity and inclusiveness. These developments occur in the context of ongoing neoliberalization. Nordic welfare states have survived but have accommodated neoliberalizing trends to move the welfare policy in a more market-centered direction. Neoliberal and right-wing populist elements can combine to produce a version of a corporatist-authoritarian state (Schram and Pavlovskaya 2017). In the neoliberal corporatist-authoritarian state, business elites collude with right-wing populists to rule by imposing a draconian state regime while freeing business to engage in consolidation of the corporate sector. The neoliberal corporatist-authoritarian cabal has its variations across the western world today. A good example is the presidency of Donald J. Trump in the US, where right-wing populist rhetoric against immigrants and other minorities diverts attention from a corporate dominated cabinet. At times, there are promises that neoliberal market-oriented policies such as the emphasis on for-profit colleges and charter schools will benefit ordinary people, though the results rarely if ever live up to the hype and often turn out to be the opposite. For-profit prisons for people seeking asylum at the border is but the most draconian example. The neoliberal relations of poverty are fraught with cruelty today as the Trump approach to disciplining marginalized populations, immigrants in particular, becomes all too apparent. Understanding the structural bases for such relations is essential if we are to move past the worst versions of neoliberalism in the age of right-wing populism.

CONCLUSION The current neoliberalizing of the welfare state is a political choice that accentuates focus on the poor as deficient citizen-subjects who need to be disciplined for their failure to be market compliant. Neoliberalism’s focus on responsibilizing the poor erases what I am calling the neoliberal relations of poverty, foregrounding the isolated individual as the cause of their own poverty. Neoliberalism accentuates ‘blaming the poor’ for their own poverty (Ryan 1976). The neoliberalized world can be, as we have seen, very Trumpian. It is also Randian, that is it is reminiscent of the emphasis in Ayn Rand’s thinking that we are a society of winners and

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losers (Hacker and Pierson 2016). Trump emphasizes being a winner not a loser. He allegedly did not want his son named after him, telling his wife Ivana that it would look bad for him if Junior turned out to be a loser (Ioffe 2018). Trump, it seems, has always envisioned the world as zero-sum where winners win at the expense of losers (evidently even in thinking about his relationship to his children). Be a winner; not a loser. Losers lose because they are not good enough. They should be looked down upon and suffer the consequences for their personal failings. This neoliberal orientation represents a heightened perspective of competitive capitalism taken to a brutal, even cruel level. A Trumpian neoliberal perspective of a world of winners and losers is blind to the underlying neoliberal relations of poverty that significantly create the poverty that poor people must endure. As inequality skyrockets under neoliberalism, the welfare state increasingly is at risk of not being able to counteract the adverse effects for people on the bottom. Instead, a neoliberal process of responsibilization is put in place. Manufacture austerity, starve the beast, hollow out the welfare state, insist on market compliance via an ethic of personal responsibility, discipline recipients for failure to be market compliant, and blame the poor for their own poverty as a product of their own personal choices. In the current era, resisting the process of neoliberalization of the welfare state has proven to be difficult. Even Nordic social democracies are vulnerable to these pressures in a globalizing world economy. Yet, they show that resistance is possible. There are ways to bend pressures for neoliberalization to sustain and even enhance forms of social protection. The cruel brutality of the Trumpian neoliberal orientation need not become the social ethic of our time.

REFERENCES Barnard, C. (1938), The Functions of the Executive, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Beaud, S. and F. Weber (2003), Guide de l’enquête de terrain: produire et analyser des données ethnographiques, Paris: Éditions La Découverte. Becker, H. (1996), ‘The epistemology of qualitative research’, in R. Jessor, A. Colby, and R. Shweder (eds), Ethnography and Human Development: Context and Meaning in Social Inquiry, Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, pp. 53–71. Bershidsky, L. (2018), ‘Europe must learn to work with its autocrats’, Bloomberg Opinion, 9 April. Bourdieu, P. (1977), Outline of a Theory of Practice, New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Brown, W. (2015), Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, New York: Zone Books. Desmond, M. (2014), ‘Relational ethnography,’ Theoretical Sociology 43 (5), 547–79. Desmond, M. (2016), Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, New York: Crown. Desmond, M. and M. Emirbayer (2009), ‘What is racial domination?’, Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 6 (2), 335–55. Diani, M. (2004), ‘Networks and participation’, in D. Snow, D.S. Soule, and H. Kriesi (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 339–59. Donati, P. (2014), ‘Relational goods and their subjects: The ferment of a new civil society and civil democracy’, Recerca, Revista de Pensament i Analisi 14, 19–46. Elias, N. (1939 [2000]), The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, London: Blackwell. Elwood, S., V. Lawson, and E. Sheppard (2017), ‘Relational geographical poverty studies’, Progress in Human Geography 41 (6), 745–65. Emirbayer, M. (1997), ‘Manifesto for a relational sociology’, American Journal of Sociology 103 (2), 281–317. Esping-Andersen, G. (1990), Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Fuhse, J. (2014), ‘Theorizing social networks: Relational sociology of and around Harrison White’, International Review of Sociology 25 (1), 15–44. Giddens, A. (1986), The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration, Berkeley: University of California Press. Hacker, J. (2006), The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream, New York: Oxford University Press. Hacker, J. and P. Pierson (2016), American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led us to Forget what Made America Prosper, New York: Simon and Schuster. Harrikari, T. and P.-L. Rauhala (2016), Social Change and Social Work: The Changing Societal Conditions of Social Work in Time and Place, London: Routledge. Ioffe, J. (2018), ‘The real story of Donald Trump, Jr’, GQ, accessed 30 March 2019 at https://www.gq.com/story/real-story-of-donald-trump-jr. Lawson, V. and S. Elwood (eds) (2018), Relational Poverty Politics: Forms, Struggles and Possibilities, Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press. Marcus, G. (1998), Ethnography through Thick and Thin, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Milne, R. (2017), ‘Denmark’s centre-left seeks common ground with populists: Social Democrats fear losing out to anti-immigrant party’, Financial Times, 10 July. Milne, R. (2018), ‘Europopulism: Immigration provides opening for Sweden’s right wing’, Financial Times, 16 August. Mullainathan, S. and E. Shafir (2013), Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, New York: Time Books.

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Piketty, T. (2014), Capital in the 21st Century, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Piven, F. and R. Cloward (1971), Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare, New York: Pantheon. Piven, F. and R. Cloward (1977), Poor People’s Movements: Why they Succeed, how they Fail, New York: Vintage. Ryan, P. (1976), Blaming the Victim, Revised Edition, New York: Vintage. Schram, S. (1995), Words of Welfare: The Social Science of Poverty and the Poverty of Social Science, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Schram, S. (2006), Welfare Discipline: Discourse, Governance, and Globalization, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Schram, S. (2015), The Return of Ordinary Capitalism: Neoliberalism, Precarity, Occupy, New York: Oxford University Press. Schram, S. and M. Pavlovskaya (2017), ‘Introduction’, in S. Schram and M. Pavlovskaya (eds), Rethinking Neoliberalism: Resisting the Disciplinary Regime, New York: Routledge, pp. xiii–xxvii. Soss, J., R. Fording, and S. Schram (2011), Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberalism and the Persistent Power of Race, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stiglitz, J. (2012), The Price of Inequality, New York: Norton. Tilly, C. (2001), ‘Relational origins of inequality’, Anthropological Theory 1 (3), 355–72. Weber, F. (2001), ‘Settings, interactions and things: A plea for multi-integrative ethnography’, Ethnography 2 (4), 475–99.

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2. The Nordic welfare state and the challenge of difference Sakari Hänninen CONVENTION The Nordic welfare state has been a success story so far. It is a strong democratic state. As an integral state, it is conceivable in terms of its relations. The relational perspective makes it easier to recognise the real strengths of these states. It also clarifies how difficult it is to draw boundaries inside such relational states, even if these states need their outer boundaries to exist. Our world opens up in a much richer, more complex and dynamic way when approached in terms of its relations. It is not the points as individuals that make up the lines as relations but the intersection of lines which make up the points. We can quote Deleuze: ‘Whether we are individuals or groups we are made of lines’ (Deleuze and Parnet 2007, p. 124). We cannot start drawing or explaining the workings of our societies and social worlds purely in terms of individual action, since pre-individual individuation as information already precedes individuals and their action (Simondon 1992). In order to make sense of state action, it must be institutionally conceived, whilst individual action must be conventionally conceived. The integral state is an ensemble of multiple institutions whose situated practices can be called state action. Individuals as actors are constituted by conventions which coordinate their relations. The most crucial actual challenges of the Nordic welfare state take place at the interface between state institutions and social conventions. The real strength of the Nordic welfare states has been their capacity in connecting and balancing institutional and conventional practices. Institutional competition and cooperation take place in the context of inter-individual relations coordinated by conventions. Whilst conventions coordinate these relations, institutions regulate them. This difference between institutions and conventions makes it clear that there is a relational space between them (Diaz-Bone 2012, p. 65). This is a virtual 29

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space which opens up novel possibilities and opportunities for collectively creative constitution and coordination of these relations by conventions. Since conventions precede institutions, primacy must be given to coordination rather than regulation (Salais 2001, pp. 3, 12). Conventions not only precede institutions, but also individuals. Conventions constitute informative practices which make up individuals. The informative constitution of acting individuals refers to the actualisation of human potentialities (Simondon 1992). From a conventional perspective, we must approach individuals through individuation rather than individuation through individuals. We cannot make perfect sense of the relationally situated practices of the Nordic welfare states by analysing them directly along the state/individual axis (Kettunen 2012, pp. 23–4). The insight that both the state and individuals act in the context of social relations denotes that such dynamic actors cannot be presumed as given or fixed. From a relational perspective we must focus on practices and processes taking place in between the constantly transforming state and constantly becoming individuals. Practices such as informative individuation, conventional coordination and institutional balancing work in tandem in order to generate virtuous circles of development. All these practices – above all, conventional coordination – can be understood as responses to contextual contingencies and uncertainty in social life (Thévenot 2002). In making our choices, we are obligated to start from incomplete information and from incomplete concord. Any presumption of some sort of universal human rationality or general will has been outpaced whilst building the Nordic welfare state. The pragmatic starting point of the Nordic welfare states has been that human behaviour can be reasonable rather than rational (Salais 2001, p. 4). Without having to presume any sort of general will or social contract, human cooperative action could be credited for resolving common problems and mutual disputes. These are typically approached from the perspective of each other’s interests. This conviction is firmly connected with the fact that the Nordic welfare states have not been constructed in terms of individual rights but rather in terms of group interests – just as Pauli Kettunen and Toomas Kotkas argue in their chapters in this book. This is the case even though Nordic law guarantees numerous social rights unknown to Anglo-Saxon common-law countries. Rights could be understood as stemming from interests. Frank Ankersmit argues: ‘interests are rights in statu nascendi’. Furthermore, it is not rights but conflict of interests which gives us access to the nature of social and political reality (Ankersmit 2002, p. 205). Interests are relationally constituted just as the many contradictions, conflicts and disputes between interests feeding and mobilising political action are.

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The clashes between various interests – just like political disputesettlement – can take place in multiple dimensions laid out by conventions, institutions and their relations. In social and political life, interests are also informatively materialised by conventions. Political action starts conventionally from interests. However, not only interests but ideas are at play in politically sensitive conventions. It is good to remember what Lord Keynes wrote about this issue: I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately but after a certain interval: for, in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil. (Keynes 1936, pp. 383–4)

Keynes’s point is sagacious, but there is no need to oppose ideas with interests in conventions. Both ideas and interests represent the raw material of conventions. If the former are more prominent in the conventional order of worth (Thévenot 2002), the latter dominate in the conventional order of working. Lord Keynes himself emphasised the prime importance of conventions and customs in social life. Together with Piero Sraffa, he wrote a joint essay as an introduction to the republication of an anonymous ‘abstract’ of David Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature, originally published in 1740 (Keynes and Sraffa 1938). They approvingly emphasise Hume’s argument that it is not reason but custom that is the principal guide of human conduct. This claim is definitely made by Hume in the ‘abstract’: ‘This is not, therefore, reason, which is the guide of life, but custom. That alone determines the mind, in all instances to suppose the future conformable to the past. However easy this step may seem, reason would never, to all eternity, be able to make it’ (Hume 1740 [1938]). Some decades after Keynes and Sraffa’s dictum, the economy of conventions (Thévenot 2006) has, by now, been elaborated into a sophisticated body of theory and empirical studies. Studies such as these are needed to make sense of the fundamental forma mentis of the citizenry of the Nordic welfare states. The information of this ensemble of mental conventions does not only consist of signifyingly communicable judgements or common interpretative commitments. Non-signifying gestures, symbolic expressions, a-signifying (virtual) artefacts or quasisemiotic strategies can also be mentally constitutive. The forma mentis of a society ordering human conduct and coordinating their relations refers to what the ancients called nomos. The nomos of a society consists of

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important ordering principles of conventional conduct for wo/men living together. These ordering principles of the nomos can either refer to orders of worth (Thévenot 2002, pp. 3, 9) or to orders of working. What is meant by orders of worth and orders of working will be clarified when we specify those ordering principles which outline the nomos of the Nordic welfare state society.

EQUALITY There are a number of well-known ordering principles, such as universalism, solidarity, autonomy, (social) security and public responsibility, which characterise the functioning of the Nordic welfare state regime. All of these are positively interlocked with equality as the overarching meta-principle of ordering the living together of wo/men in the Nordic welfare states. Equality has been the prime factor of the nomos of the Nordic welfare states. However, this is not a simple argument, since equality is a very multidimensional and complicated notion. First of all, it could be asked: equality of what? This quality might refer to the distribution of outcomes and benefits. Here it is understood in terms of equality of interests. Secondly, it could be asked: equality of why? In so doing, we seek for the justification of equality as the proper ordering principle based on the nature of opportunity structures. Thirdly, we could ask about equality of how? Equality would then refer to adopting such procedures which treat people in an equal manner, as is already evident in the categorical imperative. Fourthly, it could be asked: equality of whom? This question addresses the particular situation of particular groups of people, for example in terms of discrimination (Sen 1980; Young 2001). The first two questions, those of what and why, deal with redistribution, whilst the latter two – those of how and whom – deal with recognition (Fraser 1995). Questions of redistribution refer to orders of working, whilst questions of recognition refer to orders of worth. The pursued procedures in the orders of working are directly linked to implementation and institutional regulation. In the orders of worth it is necessary to tackle the conventional coordination of social relations from the very beginning, in order to fully recognise the worth of others. The development of the Nordic welfare states in terms of equality actualises a definite pattern. This development has to be linked with equality as the principal determinant of the nomos from the very beginning. It all started from the affirmative recognition of civic equality. The political equality of all citizens was already recognised in the early

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universal suffrage of men and women. It was later developed into an exceptionally strong democracy of social citizenship (see Pauli Kettunen in this book). Universalism is the ordering principle of this kind of equality of citizens which gradually became determinant in many spheres of public action including social insurance and public services. Based on the continuous development in ordering the worth of wo/men, the political struggle against inequality was mobilised and intensified to achieve a more equal distribution of benefits and outcomes. The equality of interests could be truly accomplished only when different interests were not only equally recognised but also equally responded to in practice, that is, in the order of working. If universalism has been the determinant principle of affirmative recognition of equality (of how), then parity has been the determinant principle of affirmative redistribution as equality of what. The parity or symmetry from below between employers and workers is the principle of one of the relations of forces behind the political time/space of action (Spielzeitraum). In this book, this is well analysed by Paolo Borioni in his chapter. The relations of forces between political parties and other institutions have been of paramount importance in this development towards equality. This has been especially emphasised by the power resources theory. The equality of outcomes characteristic of the Nordic welfare state societies – as it is, for example, conceived when measuring equality statistically – cannot, however, be solely attributed to one or two political forces, even if the role of labour unions and social democracy has been of pivotal importance as far as the equality of what, that is, affirmative redistribution, is concerned. The complexity of the movement towards more equal social relations becomes ever more explicit if we consider transformative redistribution, which aims at correcting inequitable outcomes precisely by restructuring the underlying generative framework (Fraser 1995, p. 82). The natural counterargument to my non-standard view is to claim that it is exactly the labour unions, workers’ parties and affiliated movements and institutions striving for a fairer distribution of benefits and outcomes which have pursued transformative redistribution in the Nordic countries. This thesis, if understood as referring to de-commodification, must be redefined, just like Pauli Kettunen has done: ‘one can question whether the social policies and trade unions, notably in the Nordic countries, were actually oriented towards abolishing the character of labor as a commodity […] Arguably, they were, instead, oriented towards abolishing the constraints and coercions stemming from the fictitious character of this commodity’ (Kettunen 2012, p. 25). In his chapter, Paolo Borioni also makes this point carefully by talking about ‘rich commodification’.

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If the final outcome of the joint activity of employers and workers, as forces in parity from below, is ‘rich commodification’, what should be concluded from this? Should we conclude, as Anders Bergh has argued when finding and giving reasons for the Nordic success, that prosperity in Sweden has been caused by well-functioning capitalist institutions? (Bergh 2011, pp. 2, 20) Capitalist institutions such as firms and enterprises surely matter in this development. But they can matter in many ways, just like Peer Hull Kristensen et al. have made clear in their chapter in this book. However, so do many other institutions! The interplay between different institutions and conventions is what matters most in this development. This is why politics matter, especially in terms of coordination and regulation. We cannot solely credit one set of institutions for this development. For example, the strength of the joint activity of employers and workers is based on coordination between competition and cooperation – just like Nina Witoszek and Peer Hull Kristensen et al. emphasise in their chapters in this book. Conventional coordination and institutional regulation can penetrate all walks of life. Even if commodification is seen as an outcome of parity-bargaining, these forces can have promoted affirmative redistribution so that equality of outcomes may have increased. However, in order to promote deeper equality and go beyond surface reallocations towards truly transformative redistribution, it is necessary to restructure the underlying generative framework of economy. What does that mean? Socialist economics has definitely not been the solution adopted by the Nordic welfare states. The answer, rather, can be found in the equality of autonomy as a principle of ordering social relations in terms of solidarity. Equality of autonomy refers to the equal distribution of life chances (Sen 1999). This kind of equality can be a far more transforming measure than either the formal equality of citizens or equality of interests indicates. Equality of autonomy as equality of life chances demands that people have factually equal opportunities to choose their courses of life in a reasonable fashion. In other words, people should be equally afforded the opportunity structures available to meet their fundamental needs. In the Nordic welfare states, the equality of opportunity structures has been promoted by state intervention and institutional regulation, just as Henrik Berggren and Lars Trägårdh have emphasised when they write that, for the Swedish welfare state, an overarching ambition [has been] to liberate the individual citizen from all forms of subordination and dependency in civil society, the poor from charity, the workers from their employers, wives from their husbands, children from their parents. In practice the primacy of individual autonomy has been

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institutionalized through a plethora of laws and policies. (Berggren and Trägårdh 2010, p. 13)

In talking about opportunity structures as a generative framework, we are talking about power relations and power shares in society. Berggren and Trägårdh’s characterisation about individual autonomy makes this point in terms of laws and policies. However, the fundamental significance of conventions should not be overlooked, since molecular power relations are constituted, coordinated and applied conventionally. The promotion of equality of autonomy necessarily means that the biases and imbalances in social power relations must be contextually corrected in favour of the underprivileged, also at the level of everyday life. In the Nordic countries, the welfare state measures – in different ways in different countries – have penetrated the life-world of individuals so that their actual capabilities and chances in choosing their courses of life have been empowered thanks to encompassing public services of high quality, which supplement social insurance and income transfers. This kind of empowerment reinforces the autonomy of individuals in terms of positive freedom. At the same time, it can also limit their negative freedom (liberty) by applying the sorts of interventionist measures which do not necessarily meet the particular desires or even needs of all individuals – just like Minna Kivipelto et al. show in their chapter in this book.

DIFFERENCE The crucial question concerns that of difference between and inside groups of people. The equality of autonomy cannot sufficiently meet the challenge of difference. Therefore, the Nordic welfare states are now compelled to move further and deeper towards transformative recognition in terms of equality of difference, if they are determined to live up to their times and willing to keep up their utopia. The challenge of difference is the sign of our times – to put it in Kantian terms. If equality of autonomy refers to equality of why in the sense of explaining why equality can be beneficial even in terms of individual incentives to act due to increasing potentialities and capabilities via empowerment, then equality of difference addresses, in particular, the equality of whom, and seeks to combat social discrimination, exclusion and displacement of all kinds. It should be evident – as argued in Sanford F. Schram’s chapter in this book – why neoliberal responsibilisation of individuals to be fully market compliant can easily contradict the equality of autonomy, not only in

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principle but as a process, by overlooking the actual resources and potentialities of various individuals and groups. Neoliberal responsibilisation of individuals can also contradict the equality of difference, though it is marketed in the name of individual differences and merits. Neoliberal responsibilisation actually has very little to do with equality, and everything to do with inequality, which is its driving force. However, this kind of critique of neoliberalism cannot as such provide answers to the current challenges of the Nordic welfare states posed by the equality of difference. The equality of difference addresses such socio-economically, politicolegally and culturally acute issues that constitute powerful challenges to the Nordic welfare states at present. Such phenomena are connected to immigration, minorities, gender, environment, precarisation, marginalisation, European integration, globalisation, political fragmentation and populism. All these phenomena are penetrated by the moment of difference which profoundly determines the degree of uncertainty involved in them. It is easy to understand why the logic of difference plays a pivotal role in issues of immigration, gender and minorities. Nevertheless, how about precarisation, marginalisation, European integration, globalisation, political fragmentation and environmental degradation? Precarisation is an outcome of the fragmentation of wage labour which is linked to the rapidly increasing differences in potentialities and demand of labour power and in compensation for varying labour time. This kind of differentiation and fragmentation weakens employees’ sense of belongingness and makes it harder to find common interests when bargaining with employers. The erosion and fragmentation of wage labour is parallel to entrepreneurialisation. This kind of de-commodification/re-commodification also aggravates differences between employees. We are dealing here with the challenge of equality of difference. It has been summoned forth by the joint action of market forces and state measures. Both of them can accelerate the race to the bottom. The example of precarisation already makes clear that we must challenge both of these two claims: the market responds to difference equally! The state responds to difference equally! We must also question the unconditional validity of both these claims: equality of difference is promoted when the state intervenes and regulates the differences generated by the markets. Equality of difference is promoted by markets when all people have access to markets. These two claims cannot be taken at face value, because the promotion of equality of difference depends above all on the nature of societal relations between individuals and their

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groups and on the manner in which these relations are coordinated by conventions and regulated by institutions. Equality of difference is currently the most acute and serious challenge of the Nordic welfare states. This is evident in such issues as emigration, minorities, gender, marginalisation, environment, globalisation, European integration and political fragmentation. All of these processes are complex, even paradoxical. How can we integrate immigrants or minorities into mainstream society whilst recognising and emphasising their characteristic identities? How can we promote the equality of men and women whilst recognising their distinct identities as, for example, emphasised by difference feminism? How can we benefit from the manifest fact (Falk and Hermle 2018) that social equality increases differences in attitudes and inclinations between women and men? Should we seek to strengthen wage labour facing fragmentation, or abolish it as a token of commodification? How can we advance our environmental well-being by holding back our ‘economic good’? How can we strengthen competition by increasing cooperation? How can we promote national solidaristic social justice when advancing transnational economic access justice? How can we promote the politically legitimate consensus of decisions whilst responding to the increasing plurality of demands? These are only some of the paradoxes we encounter when taking the challenge of equality of difference seriously. If universalism characterises the equality of all citizens, parity characterises the equality of interests and potentiality characterises the equality of autonomy, then transversality could be said to characterise the equality of difference. Paradoxicality and uncertainty excite transversal practices. For this reason, transversal practices may answer the challenge of the equality of difference as transformative recognition. Let us briefly reconsider some actual challenges of the Nordic welfare state from this perspective. Schram argues, in his chapter, that the neoliberal governmental offensive has not really meant the retreat of the state but rather the restructuring of the state so that economic rationality becomes the touchstone of the state. Emphasis on personal responsibility is seen as a corollary of this kind of economic logic. The Nordic welfare states have also been influenced and reworked along the neoliberal mode since the 1980s, especially due to new public management initiatives (Mudge 2018). Reference to market efficiency has often displaced genuine efforts by state (institutions) to cope with acute challenges, especially those connected with the equality of difference. The neoliberal influence in the Nordic countries has, however, been quite selective and surprising. Some of the initiatives and innovations to

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combat neoliberal solutions and to ‘civilise Nordic capitalism’ have come from firms rather than the state. This is described and analysed by Peer Hull Kristensen et al. in this book. These examples show that equality of difference in terms of environmental sustainability can be glocally promoted by firms in relational platforms joining a multiplicity of different types of actors together so that new opportunities for improvements and innovations are discovered. This kind of relational integration and relational interest formation leading to innovative experimentation is based on transversal practices and coordinating conventions which bring together various actors from different domains to cooperate equally. In this way, the autonomy and potentiality of different actors is recognised, translated and transformed into joint action in innovation projects based on cooperation. The intervention of the state in the market or the reciprocal complementarity of various forms of capital is not enough to civilise Nordic capitalism. These efforts cannot sufficiently contribute to such relational integration or transversal coordination of those domains in which the most acute challenges and problems of the Nordic welfare states are located. The transformative recognition of the equality of difference is thus bypassed. An outstanding example concerns the equality of environmental difference. Environmental problems are always located in different strategic domains which have to be relationally integrated in the global environmental struggle. This is described by Monika Berg and Paula Saikkonen in their chapter in this book. Such a relational perspective opens our eyes to recognise that, even though environmental problems are global and demand international or even transnational cooperation, such struggle cannot succeed if it is only managed and organised from above and only sectorally implemented. The parallel action from below remains ineffective if truly relational integration and transversal coordination between different domains is missing. Such relational integration and transversal coordination must begin also from local conventions and local knowledge, which build up precaution as a reaction to uncertainty. Social sustainability just like environmental sustainability is strongly linked to the equality of difference as a challenge of the Nordic welfare states. Even if the Nordic welfare states excel as far as overall social security and both coverage and quality of social and healthcare services are concerned, the organisational structure of the Nordic welfare state regime can be quite hierarchical. This can be the case in spite of the fact that the equality of autonomy of all citizens, including individuals and families living in vulnerable situations, has been effectively promoted. However, the promotion of equality of difference is not only desirable but

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necessary if the needs of these marginalised groups of people, often including immigrants, are fully met, or at least sufficiently recognised. The differences between and even inside the vulnerable groups of people give birth to the challenge of the equality of difference as their difficulties and misfortunes are dealt with by the welfare state. A common experience of social workers coping with these situations is that particular sectoral measures regulated from above cannot handle the contingencies and complexities involved in these situations – as is disclosed by Minna Kivipelto et al. in this book. What is needed to manage the cumulatively intertwined causes of these complex processes is to replace and compensate for hierarchically ordered measures from above the transversal and integral practices which coordinate various domains of welfare politics, administration, professionals and providers, be they public or private. This kind of domain coordination parallels such transversal coordination of conventions and institutions which could meet the challenge of the equality of difference in earnest. The quest of balancing and coordinating local and global orders of social security and care is truly necessary, now that Finland, Sweden and Denmark have joined the European integration project and process. This project challenges the Nordic welfare states particularly in terms of the equality of difference which is already written in the Founding Treaties of the Union. The creation, extension and deepening of the common market has been the prime objective of the Union so that the criterion of competition definitely shows the way. In this fashion, economic constitutionalisation has outweighed and even subsumed social constitutionalisation, as Kaarlo Tuori demonstrates in his analysis in this book. Even if the social constitution is subordinated to the economic constitution in the European Union, the primacy of the national welfare state in the Union’s social dimension has so far guaranteed the autonomy of the Nordic welfare state. This kind of division of labour and powers cannot meet the challenge of the equality of difference at the transnational level. Individual nation states are still sovereign to decide how to institutionally organise their social welfare regimes. However, just as Kaarlo Tuori explains, the particular contribution of the European Union as social legislator has especially taken place in European regulatory private law, which follows the principles of access justice. Tuori asks if national solidaristic social justice and transnational access justice are complementary or conflicting principles? If there is a conflict, it is articulated as that between two types of rights: transnational economic rights contra national social rights. What then can this conflict tell about the chances of meeting the equality of difference in terms of rights in the Nordic welfare states?

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The Nordic welfare states have not been originally constructed in terms of individual rights but rather in terms of collective interests. Many Nordic welfare state measures can be understood as an outcome of interest-based deliberation and bargaining, especially parity-bargaining – just like Paolo Borioni analyses in his chapter in this book. On the other hand, Toomas Kotkas, in his chapter, makes the point that in this tradition constitutional and human rights have been seen as general goals and guidelines for the legislator, rather than as individual claim rights enforceable in courts. Social rights have been understood as manifesting public responsibility for the welfare and good of particular groups. The coverage of such public responsibility could range from particular groups in need up to all citizens. It could also range from normative guidelines to more binding duties, and even to subjective rights. If the Nordic welfare state seeks to protect the autonomy and integrity of every citizen, does it not then actually risk, as noted by Nina Witoszek in her chapter of this book, undermining their autonomy and privacy by intervention? The answer to this question depends on what we call and mean by state intervention. When talking about domain and transversal coordination, the state agencies could be approached as particular domains amongst many others which are integrated into an immense network of relations. Therefore, when we penetrate social conventions and constitutive institutions of Nordic countries, we really cannot draw a clear boundary between society and state (in the relational and integral sense). It is at this level of nomos where the generative frames for conducting human conduct are fabricated.

DEMOCRACY Nina Witoszek, in her chapter, uses the concept of symbotype to denote such repositories of cultural information that are replicated across generations and have a potent effect on social action, beliefs and values. From such an evolutionary perspective, the deep relational basis or conventional core of the Nordic welfare state has evolved over long periods of history before being gradually crystallised into that prosocial symbotype constitutive of equalitarian Nordic humanism. Without referring back to all too ancient times, it is clear that the particular potency behind Nordic democracy and the Nordic ethos of welfare – the Scandinavian humanist symbotype – is the insight that competition must be supplemented and balanced by cooperation. Such a relational insight and cooperative conviction is a key to sustainable modernity, and actually reminds us that the challenge of equality of difference has not escaped Scandinavian

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cultural innovators. They have especially sought and found ways and means to coordinate cooperation and competition, or, to put it in Kantian terms, sociality and asociality. It is often claimed, and also with exaggeration, that the success of the Nordic welfare states is due to the ethnic and cultural homogeneity of these small countries. Without doubt the social trust and reciprocity characterising the conventional core of these nations has had a much better chance of evolution in these countries than in circumstances of ethnic and religious divisions. When Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote in their research ask why the United States does not have a European-style welfare state, the bottom-line answer is Americans redistribute less than Europeans for three reasons: because the majority of Americans believe that redistribution favors racial minorities, because Americans believe that they live in an open and fair society and that if someone is poor, it is his or her own fault, and because the political system is geared toward preventing redistribution. (Alesina et al. 2001, p. 61)

In contrast, the Scandinavian countries have been viewed as the obvious opposite to the US, just as the communitarian social theorist Amitai Etzioni wrote in the 1960s: ‘There is no region in Europe and few exist in the world, where culture, tradition, language, ethnic origin, political structure and religion – all “background” and identitive elements – are as similar as they are in the Nordic region’ (Etzioni 1965, pp. 220–21). However, after noting this, it should not be forgotten that it is, after all, politics that matter. Even if this ethno-historical characterisation of the human landscape of Norden outlines appropriately its relief, it is just an outline. This kind of ethno-historically constructed character of Norden should not be understood as if the Nordic countries had succeeded in developing peacefully without contradictions and conflicts due to the paucity of differences. This is definitely not the case. Just as Peter Aronsson points out: history in Norden has been also marked by differences in class, gender, regional affluence and in a number of other dimensions, but these have been negotiated culturally and politically (Aronsson 2010, p. 553). The crucial point to reckon is that the contradictions and conflicting interests, stemming from multiple differences, have been balanced successfully in the Nordic countries – naturally to varying degrees in different Nordic countries. Even in the aftermath of such evil events as the bloody Finnish civil war of 1918, the cultural and political negotiations succeeded in time. This prowess and potency to balance conflicting interests has definitely helped to make the Nordic welfare state

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possible, even in Finland. This point is well made by Nina Witoszek as she clarifies how the basic evolutionary mechanisms of Nordic prosociality have been put into practice by implementing design principles which the economist Elinor Ostrom has specified as necessary for the efficacy of small prosocial groups, and more generally for actors in networks of cooperation. These design principles are connected to such institutional practices as, for example, collective decision-making, effective monitoring of group behaviour, and swift and fair conflict resolution. Looked at from the prosocial perspective, it is no wonder that the role of Nordic countries and their representatives has been groundbreaking also in international peacekeeping and conflict-resolution operations and research. The conventional coordination of differences and the institutional balancing of conflicting interests must be perceived as defining the distinct character of the Nordic integral state. Therefore, we are actually talking about the distinct prowess and potency of democracy. The strong Nordic democracy is sometimes characterised (for example Musial 1999) as consensual democracy, but such nomenclature can give a misleading impression of its working mode. Even the claim that conflict resolution and problem-solving powers truly characterise Nordic democracy (Musial 1999, pp. 60–62) is not cogent enough if it is not further specified how this takes place. The counterfactual mode of referring to consensus as unanimity (in terms of ratio and voluntas) is not the way Nordic democracy operates. In this counterfactual fashion, typically phrased in contractual terms of choice behaviour, the decisions made are legitimated as if the social differences and divisions were only apparent and transient, and that their resolution epitomises a kind of impartial wisdom above the parties in struggle. Nordic democracy, on the contrary, starts from the transformative recognition that there are deep social differences in society feeding conflicting interests and that it is the task of democratic politics to cope with and process these conflicts as an activity of deliberation, problem-solving and innovation taking place between competing and cooperating parties. The recognition of the force of democratic politics to transform society is the most fundamental feature of the Nordic forma mentis. The institutional frame of Nordic integral democracy constituted by proportional representation, multiparty systems, minority rights protection and open publicity has increased the chances for promoting the equality of difference in Norden. However, this challenge goes much deeper than that, since it really reminds us that today’s decisive problems of democracy have been and are social in character – just like Rudolf Kirchheimer emphasised decades ago (Kirchheimer 1969, pp. 38–9; Hänninen 2010, pp. 226–7). This point has been acknowledged by the

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Nordic welfare states from the very beginning. One could even use Hugo Sinzheimer’s term, ‘a democratic way of life’ (Sinzheimer and Fraenkel 1968, p. 205), to describe the conventional core of integral Nordic democracy. The notion of social citizenship expresses this kind of democratic way of life in Norden, as examined by Pauli Kettunen in his chapter in this book. Pauli Kettunen reveals how this notion of social citizenship developed in the Nordic countries manifests a particular relational understanding of agency with interests. In other words, divergent interests formed in asymmetrical social relations have been recognised as the conflictual starting point of democratic action in Norden. Pauli Kettunen points out how the simultaneous reinforcement of the normalcy of wage labour and the principle of social citizenship afforded the real backbone of the Nordic welfare states, at least until the late 1980s. However, this combination of wage labour and social citizenship has now been dissolved. Behind this dissolution, both the fragmentation of wage labour and the fragmentation of social citizenship are taking place. The outgrowth of this dissolution has been the weakening of both affirmative and reformative redistribution, which has led to increasing inequality. As is well-documented in the Nordic Economic Policy Review 2018 of the Nordic Council of Ministers, inequality (as measured by equivalised disposable incomes) has indeed increased substantially in the Nordic countries since the early 1990s, especially in Sweden and Finland (Aaberge et al. 2018). Besides, the inequality increases have been driven by other factors in the Nordic countries than in the U.S. and other Anglo-Saxon countries […] [In Norden] it is mainly associated with reductions in redistributive cash transfers […] In addition (especially in Sweden and Finland) higher, and more unevenly distributed capital incomes have been of large importance, especially for the widening of the income distribution at the top. (Aaberge et al. 2018, pp. 8–9; see also Piketty 2014)

FREEDOM TO CHOOSE THE MARKET In the Nordic countries, the real reason for increases in inequality since the 1990s can be found in the changing role of the state, which has not diminished or retreated but has been transformed towards the idea of a privatised state following the logic of private enterprise. Without necessarily exaggerating the neoliberal trajectory in this move towards the privatised state, the Nordic welfare states, in somewhat different ways in different Nordic countries, have in any event been transformed more and more into arenas where divergent and antipodean forces now oppose and

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crossbreed with each other. These welfare states have been also constantly renamed in public discourses by competing parties in struggle. There is not only a strong tendency to colonise the life-world of people by money but also a trend to colonise the state by all kinds of lobbyists, consultants, private partners, policy advisers and evaluators, public managers, case and change managers, market agencies and fiscal auditors. But what is behind these names, and a growing number of similar names used by private advisers? These agents represent particular interests, which they promote by politicking, not so much by social politics. The contrast between politics as action and politicking (Palonen 2003) is crucial to understand the extent to which the welfare state has already been transformed into an arena where private actors and interests play a crucial role at the expense of social citizen action. Even more important than the relative weakening of parliament is the consequence that this development tends to transform the state into a decomposer or displacer of politics. In other words, this development, accelerated also by the fragmentation of the party system and the rise of populism, transforms an integral welfare state into a differential welfare state which has increasing difficulties in articulating and promoting comprehensive programmes, agendas and reforms which have been the building blocks of the welfare state. Instead of comprehensive and relationally coherent agendas, the differential welfare state focusses instead on particular issues and promotes particular interests by implementing particular policies and projects. Such a differential logic of the state actually reflects what is taking place in market societies. Marx captured the historical tendency of dissolution in capitalism with the following words: ‘all that is solid melts into air’. These words describe the ultimate outcome of such global disintegration and differentiation which financial capital(ism) generates, urged forward by neoliberal policies. The medium of such social disintegration is money which now penetrates every fold of the life-world of individuals. In the circumstances of financial capitalism, the ‘lust for money’ as the ‘will to power’ invades the ‘will to life’. Money as the absolute differential relation of society, and the categorical imperative of capitalism, becomes the most effective de-territorialiser, destructor, editor, compiler of social conventions and their coordination, even in the Nordic welfare states. This is definitely the way neoliberal policies penetrate the life-world of individuals, treating them as fractal subjects. This is also the way the equality of difference is recast by the neoliberal state as a challenge to the Nordic welfare state in terms of individual and collective responsibility. The challenge is posed as fiscal sustainability, both in the micro and macro setting. The warning sign is thus attached to the sustainability gap,

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which must be avoided by all means available and sometimes even at any cost. To make my argument more concrete, I shall briefly examine an actual example of the Finnish welfare state restructuration which concerns the reform of the system of social and healthcare services (SOTE). When this reform was launched, it was meant to be so comprehensive that it would correct a number of recognised pitfalls of the system which, as such, had been repeatedly evaluated by international comparisons as quite cost-effective, efficient and of high quality. The most significant grievance in the Finnish healthcare and social care system is the great differences in the rate of morbidity and mortality between people, especially men, in various socio-economic groups. The life expectancy of the least affluent is almost a decade shorter than that of the well-off. These differences have only increased during the past two or three decades, in spite of the programmatic attention paid. Another fact is that the less affluent use fewer healthcare services than those who are better off. There are many reasons for these differences and inequalities, but the necessary – if not yet sufficient – precondition for their redress is that there should be healthcare services more equally available to individuals and their families, irrespective of their location or situation. This is not the case at present, already due to the multi-level structure of the healthcare services system. Those individuals who have no access to occupational healthcare or cannot afford private healthcare services must rely on the services of basic healthcare centres, some of which are now so under-resourced and overloaded that people are often required to wait in queues for too long. There are also significant regional differences between the timely availability of these services. Another crucial dilemma concerns the relation between basic healthcare and special healthcare. Even if special healthcare functions exceptionally well in Finland, with quite adequate resources, basic healthcare constantly faces the insufficiency of resources, partly since the special and occupational (and private) healthcare is prioritised or preferred at the expense of basic healthcare. A crucial difficulty is also that their integration is too disjointed to guarantee the smooth continuity of services. The obstacles to the integration of healthcare services with social welfare services are even deeper, and these difficulties are directly linked with inequalities in morbidity and mortality between various socio-economic groups. All these shortcomings, such as socio-economically premised inequalities in morbidity and mortality, shortages and inequalities in the availability of basic healthcare services, and defects in the integration of basic and special healthcare services and in the integration of healthcare and social welfare services have generated great challenges in terms of the

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equality of difference. These challenges are rooted in the conventional and institutional relations of power between different social groups. These difficulties and challenges can be conceived structurally when they are articulated as encompassing problems for the Nordic welfare state to reform. Societal structures can be understood as formations or assemblages of relations, conventions and institutions which steer all kinds of material and immaterial flows in society. Since the whole system of healthcare and social care services has been taken up for reform in Finland, this reform was meant to be structural. The immediate reason for this structural reform is that in Finland the responsible orderers of these services are the over 300 municipalities, whilst, for example, in Sweden the number is 21 and only 5 in Denmark. The research-based expert opinion pointed out that the orderers could be at most 12, but preferably much less, to guarantee the sufficient and effective service capacity all over the country. The concentration of service ordering and the integration of services were also understood to help in coping with the inequality in morbidity and mortality between individual socio-economic groups. When the government started in office in 2015, the reform of the system of healthcare and social care services (SOTE-reform) was adopted on the political agenda as a top priority. Even if this SOTE-reform was forcefully promoted by the government, its original objectives were soon displaced by a more market-based ethic and order. Along the neoliberally inclined trajectory, the cabinet was not able or willing to follow the original welfare state reform agenda, but proceeded at the mercy of carriers of particular political and economic interests, which played a major politicking role in a series of events feeding even political intimidation and leading to constitutional collisions. The government showed great obstinacy in pushing forward its restructured agenda, which also reflected the interests of both big private corporations of healthcare services and those of the two leading cabinet parties. By combining the tactical power interests of the Centre party and the more neoliberally oriented interests of the right-wing Coalition party, the reform in healthcare and social care services was squeezed into a model whose main goal was also declared to be the cutting of costs in the healthcare and social care services, that is, the narrowing of the sustainability gap. By concentrating the ordering of these services in 18 provinces, adequate to the regional power shares of the Centre party, and by effectively widening the freedom of choice, so dear to the Coalition party, the doors would have been opened much wider for private providers – also in terms of privatisation. It was thus claimed that the challenge of the equality of difference in healthcare would be best met by

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widening the freedom of choice and by giving more room to private providers. In this way, the Nordic welfare state ethos would have been displaced by a more market-based ethos. Even if available research evidence suggested that the expenses will only increase, due to the freedom of choice in the interest of private providers, the cabinet pursued this policy line so passionately that it practically neglected the need to find focussed remedies for inequalities in morbidity and mortality or for guaranteeing smoother continuity of services between basic and special healthcare, not to mention the better integration of healthcare and social care services. The ultimate credo of this neoliberally oriented policy was that when individuals are free to choose and are properly motivated by economic interests, they can rationally select in each case the best possible provider of services amongst a number of competing providers, and can thus, in the best possible way, take personal care of their own health and – in so doing – even contribute to the decrease of inequality in morbidity and mortality. The end result of the SOTE-reform initiative of the government was a total failure and, exceptionally, the government resigned just before the end of its term in the spring of 2019. The SOTE-reform initiative illustrates outstandingly how the erstwhile Finnish government responded to the challenge of the equality of difference, since the dilemmas in the present healthcare and social care services system are tightly connected with that challenge. The significance of it, and similar other cases, makes it clear that powerful forces already act inside the Nordic states and vigorously support and even promote privatisation. Even these efforts, however, cannot be reduced to one definite governmental category – such as neoliberalism – since they typically manifest composite convictions and hybrid paradigms. As this case illustrates, these forces are opposed and challenged by political action outside and inside the state, which is devoted to promoting the traditional prosocial ideals of the Nordic welfare state. The future transformation of the Nordic welfare states is, therefore, crucially dependent on the relation of forces between these antagonistic actors. This situation actually reminds us how the Nordic welfare state has always developed as a process of continual regeneration and rebirth.

REFERENCES Aaberge, R., C. André, A. Boschini, L. Calmfors, K. Gunnarson, M. Hermansen, A. Langørgen, P. Lindgren, C. Orsetta, J. Pareliussen, P.-O. Robling, J. Roine

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and J. Eghalt (2018), ‘Increasing Income Inequality in the Nordics’, Nordic Economic Policy Review, TemaNord 2018, 519, Nordic Council of Ministers. Alesina, A., E. Glaeser and B. Sacerdote (2001), ‘Why Doesn’t the United States Have a European-Style Welfare State?’, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 2, pp. 1–69. Ankersmit, F.R. (2002), Political Representation, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Aronsson, P. (2010), ‘Uses of the Past: Nordic Historical Cultures in a Comparative Perspective’, Culture Unbound 2 (32), 553–63. Berggren, H. and L. Trägårdh (2010), ‘Pippi Longstocking: The Autonomous Child and the Moral Logic of the Swedish Welfare State’, in H. Mattson and S.-O. Wallenstein (eds), Swedish Modernism: Architecture, Consumption and the Welfare State, London, UK: Black Dog Publishing Limited, pp. 10–23. Bergh, A. (2011), ‘The Rise, Fall and Revival of the Swedish Welfare State: What Are the Policy Lessons from Sweden?’, IFN Working Papers, No. 873, pp. 1–28. Deleuze, G. and C. Parnet (2007), Dialogues II, trans. H. Tomlinson, B. Habberiam and E. Ross Albert, New York: Columbia University Press. Diaz-Bone, R. (2012), ‘Elaborating the Conceptual Difference between Conventions and Institutions’, Historical Social Research 37 (4), 64–75. Etzioni, A. (1965), Political Unification: A Comparative Study of Leaders and Forces, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Falk, A. and J. Hermle (2018), ‘Relationship of Gender Differences in Preferences to Economic and Gender Equality’, Science 362 (6412), http://dx.doi. org/10.1126/science.aas9899. Fraser, N. (1995), ‘From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a “Post-Socialist” Age’, New Left Review I (212) 68–149. Hänninen, S. (2010), ‘Social Constitution in Historical Perspective: Hugo Sinzheimer in the Weimar Context’, in Kaarlo Tuori and Suvi Sankari (eds), The Many Constitutions of Europe, Farnham (UK), Burlington (US): Ashgate, pp. 219–40. Hume, D. (1740 [1938]), ‘An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature’, republished in Journal of Philosophy 35 (23) 639–40. Kettunen, P. (2012), ‘Reinterpreting the Historicity of the Nordic Model’, Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies 2 (4), 21–43. Keynes, J.M. (1936), The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, London, UK: Macmillan and Co. Limited. Keynes, J.M. and P. Sraffa (1938), ‘Introduction’, in An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature 1740: A Pamphlet Hitherto Unknown by David Hume, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–32. Kirchheimer, O. (1969), ‘Weimar – and What Then? An Analysis of a Constitution’, in F.S. Burin and K.L. Shell (eds), Politics, Law and Social Change: Selected Essays of Otto Kirchheimer, New York and London: Columbia University Press, pp. 33–74. Mudge, S.L. (2018), Leftism Reinvented: Western Parties from Socialism to Neoliberalism, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, UK: Harvard University Press.

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Musial, K. (1999), ‘Institutionalisation of Scandinavian Consensual Democracy’, Folia Scandinavica 5, 59–73. Palonen, K. (2003), ‘Four Times of Politics: Policy, Polity, Politicking and Politicization’, Alternatives 28 (2), 171–86. Piketty, T. (2014), Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Harvard: Harvard University Press. Salais, R. (2001), ‘A Presentation of the French “économie des conventions”: Application to Labour Issues’, Work seminar of the ESRC – Center of Business Research, at the University of Cambridge, March 2001, Cambridge, UK. Sen, A. (1980), ‘Equality of What?’, in Sterling McMurrin (ed.), Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 195–220. Sen, A. (1999), Development as Freedom, New York: Knopf. Simondon, G. (1992), ‘The Genesis of the Individual’, in J. Crary and S. Kwinter (eds), Incorporations, New York: Zone Books, pp. 297–319. Sinzheimer, H. and E. Fraenkel (1968), Die Justiz in der Weimarer Republik: Eine Chronik, Berlin: Neuwied und Luchterhand. Thévenot, L. (2002), ‘Conventions of Co-Ordination and the Framing of Uncertainty’, in E. Fullbrook (ed.), Intersubjectivity in Economics, London: Routledge, pp. 181–97. Thévenot, L. (2006), ‘Convention School’, in J. Beckert and M. Zafirovski (eds), International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology, London: Routledge, pp. 111–15. Young, I.M. (2001), ‘Equality of Whom? Social Groups and Judgments of Injustice’, The Journal of Political Philosophy 9 (1), 1–18.

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3. The profits and pitfalls of prosociality: cultural-evolutionary perspectives on Scandinavia* Nina Witoszek EVOLUTIONARY THEORY AND THE RELATIONAL BASIS OF THE NORDIC MODEL Human goodness has not fared well as an emblematic virtue of late modernity. The dominant intellectual trend of the post-utopian era has been to cast altruism as a cover-up or camouflage for hidden agendas and selfish motives ranging from narcissism and megalomania to covert quests for profit and power. It is little wonder that the Nordic countries’ success in international branding – as do-gooders, peace negotiators, gender champions and humanitarians – rouses a killer instinct in most practitioners of the hermeneutics of suspicion. To mention but a couple of examples: the Norwegian historian Terje Tvedt has coined the term a ‘regime of goodness’ (godhetsregimet), which has both codified and questioned moral and political ambitions of twenty-first century Norway (not just the richest Nordic country but one of the most affluent liberal democracies on earth) (Tvedt 1995; 2005; 2016).1 The regime of goodness is an ironic trope: the concept of a regime gives a technocratic, controlling ring to goodness – and thus it both constructs and deconstructs Norway’s foreign aid ideology in a clever turn of phrase. According to Tvedt, the regime of goodness is a ‘state within a state’ which includes countless NGOs and research institutions which are anything but independent. On the contrary, their raison d’être, wealth and influence are founded on complicity with the government’s political agendas. Tvedt goes as far as to talk about the Norwegian ‘humanitarian-political complex that has a virtual monopoly on the national conversation about big political-ideological questions such as how to fight poverty, create development, promote democracy, etc.’ In short, the regime of goodness is a powerful, semiotic and 50

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normative programme that produces citizens who are ‘cosmopolitan narcissists’ (Tvedt 2016, pp. 15–16). Similarly, there has been an increasingly vocal criticism of twentyfirst-century Sweden’s official humanitarian agenda which, some observers argue, has stifled public debate and fuelled an intense kulturkamp between the advocates of nationalist concerns on the one hand and cosmopolitan elites on the other (e.g. Knausgård 2015; Eriksson 2017; Linderborg 2018; Norman 2019). Without discounting the delinquent side of Scandinavia, it is pertinent to ask to what extent Norway, Sweden and Denmark are cases of moral communities that have succeeded in forging what we have called modern ‘well-being societies’ (Witoszek and Midttun 2018), at least according to the UN human development index.2 What model of human relations is the foundation for the apparently eudemonic predicament enjoyed by Scandinavian citizens? And to what extent is their regime of goodness – and the humanitarian aspirations that go with it (for example, social inclusion or helping the underdog) – marred by political manipulations of mendacious elites? In what follows I argue two theses. Firstly, the semiotic and normative of Nordic prosociality are an entrenched tradition which goes beyond modern political expediency. The prosocial moral vision is older than the regime-of-goodness century. Since the early nineteenth century it has been replicated in significant cultural texts and embraced by people at large as an emblem of their identity. Secondly, I contend that much of the relative success of the Nordic countries as welfare societies stems from a unique Scandinavian humanism whose roots lie in a prolonged Christian Enlightenment – a powerful, value-charged tradition shared by all three studied countries.3 My approach to Scandinavia has been inspired by a long-term research project with evolutionary biologists.4 As opposed to the often crude and simplified Darwinism, the ‘third wave’ of evolutionary biology and anthropology has gathered evidence to the effect that cooperative behaviour may carry equal, if not stronger, weight than competition in forging a high quality of life and social resilience in human evolution (Bowles and Gintis 2012; Wilson 2016). In their theory of multi-level selection, D.S. Wilson and E.O. Wilson have shown how prosociality provides behavioural underpinnings for a competitive advantage from collaboration. Their argument is that, while unselfish individuals might be vulnerable to exploiters and free-riders within their group, groups of individuals that behave prosocially will robustly outcompete groups handicapped by selfish exploitation and free-riding. This idea has been captured in the legendary dictum: ‘Selfishness beats altruism within

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groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary’ (Wilson and Wilson 2007, p. 346). The evolutionary work on the efficacy of small prosocial groups chimes with the Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom’s studies of the mechanisms of governance for sustainable resources and overcoming the tragedy of the commons (Ostrom 1990). She singled out eight design principles for such efficacious management, including clearly defined boundaries and a strong identity, collective decision-making, the effective monitoring of group behaviour, graduated sanctions, and swift and fair conflict resolution. While Wilson illuminated the basic evolutionary mechanisms of successful prosociality, Ostrom codified the governance conditions necessary to put these mechanisms into practice in human societies. In a joint article, Wilson, Ostrom and Cox (2013) go as far as to argue that the design principles can be generalised and have the potential to explain the success or failure of social groups independent of their scale. While this last tenet may be controversial, adapting the WilsonianOstromian lens provides an impetus to rethink the Scandinavian countries’ relative success as examples of a socially sustainable modernity (Witoszek and Midttun 2018). Further, it compels us to acknowledge and test the strength of the often-occluded cultural engines behind existing economic and political arrangements. As I shall argue, the largely prosocial and cooperative character of Scandinavian identity owes much to influential mythogenic actors – both of middle and lower class origin – who have advocated the ideals of partnership, altruism and fairness as the basis of social relations. These values have been amply replicated in the models of education, national literature, religious practice and pedagogy over long periods of time and hence have had an often significant, normative impact on the people at large. And, although they are sometimes politicised, they have largely been ethical and existential: to this very day they have remained a value platform – and an ethos – that respective societies cherish and cultivate as part of their identity kit.

CULTURE AS AN INCUBATOR OF THE WELFARE SOCIETY ‘Who prospers?’ ask Harrison and Huntington, and they propose: ‘The answer is cultural: Societies committed to the future, to education […] to a better life for all, to community as well as to freedom and justice’ (Harrison and Huntington 2004, p. 247). Though their cultural enthusiasm may be a bit farfetched, I argue that there is indeed a deep cultural,

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value-charged structure undergirding the progress of Scandinavian welfare societies. This structure has not emerged ex nihilo: it is a summary result of a journey of ideas, norms and patterns of action which, over time, have been accreted into a humanist habitus. The idea of humanism as deployed in this chapter assumes it not to be exclusively Western, Christian, post-Christian or modern. Instead, in line with evolutionary inspiration, I see humanism as a permanent constitutive factor in our species’ culture, a potential that has always been latent in human nature as a source of transcultural co-existence, communication and hybridisation. Such humanism can be broadly defined as a mindset which advocates hospitality to the Other, advocates the dialogic, nonviolent resolution of conflicts and, in some societies, it also includes a project of human emancipation through knowledge and social organisation. That said, humanism so conceived comes to us not in a monolithic form, but as a mosaic of culturally distinctive, symbolic elaborations. To highlight the role of symbolic thought in transmitting both altruistic and selfish behaviour, David Sloan Wilson and Yasha Hartberg have coined the concept of symbotype (a cultural equivalent of genotype), which denotes repositories of cultural information that are replicated across generations and have a potent effect on social action, beliefs and values (Hartberg and Wilson 2016).5 Symbotypes bear a superficial resemblance to Richard Dawkins’s memes (Dawkins 1976). However, in contrast to memes – which refer to any cultural trait that spreads in an ‘epidemiological’ fashion – symbotypes inform enduring traditions. And unlike a broader, sociological concept of habitus – signifying embodied social learning (Bourdieu 1977) – symbotypes enjoy a semi-sacred status in the life of national communities (Hartberg and Wilson 2016). They include those deeply entrenched narratives, images, beliefs and practices that are reproduced with relative fidelity because they are held in awe by members of the national community, even if they are opposed or contested. More often than not, symbotypes work like invisible ‘cultural mafiosi’ in that they exert a constant moral blackmail on society, reminding it of ‘what we once were’ and ‘what we aspire to be’. They create heatwaves in the citizens’ brains and hearts, they empower or disempower, they foster competition or cooperation and they generate change or cause stagnation. As powerful normative and culturally sanctioned patterns, they are not limited to culture and religion: they leak into political and economic realms. Thus, contrary to Acemoglu and Robinson’s dismissive view of culture as a spurious factor in societal success (Acemoglu and Robinson 2013), symbotypes matter. They are society’s adaptational tools: the ways to tackle new challenges, survive traumas

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and envision a better life in situations of crisis when institutions dissolve or collapse. In this chapter I thus propose a semiotic-evolutionary approach to Scandinavian symbotypes which, I argue, have played a double role in the lives of national communities. Firstly, they consolidated a strong humanist tradition whose originally Christian, and then secularised, forms have pervaded socio-economic and political arrangements and thus contributed to the emergence of the Scandinavian welfare societies. Secondly, they have had an impact on social relations: they have taught the Swedes, the Norwegians and the Danes how to relate to the Self, the Other and the outside world. In my attempt to reconstruct the Scandinavian symbotypes, I shall draw on my previous semiotic analysis of nation-building in the Scandinavian countries (Witoszek 1997; Witoszek 2011; Witoszek and Midttun 2018). I shall inquire to what extent the normative patterns they have encoded prefigure the Ostromian-Wilsonian core design principles of efficacious, deliberative communities whose signature is cooperation and social equality rather than competitivepredatory appropriation. I shall also review an array of the challenges to Nordic humanism in the twenty-first century. In particular, I shall review the potential benefits and hazards of the amplification of the humanist agenda into a transnational normative codex.

PASTORAL ENLIGHTENMENT REVISITED While there is doubt that much of the Scandinavian countries’ success as exemplary welfare states has been the result of: (i) pure chance and proverbial good luck, (ii) specific political and economic arrangements, (iii) socio-historical conditions – such as the relative absence of feudalism and the existence of a free and literate peasantry, especially in Norway and Sweden, and (iv) the strong position of community law before the consolidation of the state – their status as loci of highly cooperative and humanitarian societies has partially been the result of moral imagination and cultural innovation. As David Landes puts it, ‘getting lucky isn’t about culture, but staying lucky often is’ (cited by Fukuyama 2008). As I have argued elsewhere (Witoszek 1997; Witoszek and Midttun 2018), Nordic countries, different as they are politically and economically, share a common cultural founding tradition which points to the values of a Pastoral Enlightenment. This concept should be taken as a complex pun: it indicates an enduring rustic ingredient, a pastoral fantasy which is part and parcel of the Scandinavian self-image, but also alludes

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to Lutheran pastors and preachers, important agents and codifiers of the founding tradition. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the pastors were not just obedient servants of God; many of them were archivists, reformers, amateur scientists, socialists and the agents of folkeopplysning (peasant Enlightenment). Tremendously versatile, and for long unopposed by the metropolitan elite, they formed a powerful culture, discourse and a cosmology that shaped generations to come (Witoszek 1997, p. 75). Their worldview, at its best, advocated respect for one’s fellow brother, social cooperation, pragmatic rationality, a distrust of extravagance and a focus on the future rather than a retreat to a golden past. It fostered a theologia civilis – that is to say, a civil religion – and the Enlightenment without guillotines. And, more importantly in our context, it was powerful enough to effectively hijack the agenda of Romanticism and tone down the often inflamed, dichotomising nationalism that went with it in other parts of Europe (Witoszek and Trägårdh 2002). By foregrounding a Scandinavian Pastoral Enlightenment against a tapestry of competing movements, narratives and practices, I wish to draw attention to a potent, imaginative, discursive and ethical mode of continuity and cohesion. I also wish to codify the founding tradition, thanks to which Nordic modernity has become a socially sustainable formation, one that has honed the ideas of individual dignity and social justice and, at the same time, restrained Faustian aspirations and recognised the reality of human and environmental limits. These ideas have become prominent thanks to the work of influential cultural innovators who, drawing on the Pastoral Enlightenment, solidified and promoted finding a middle way between the collectivist demands of a self-assertive, despotic folk on the one hand, and the aspirations of the autonomous and altruistic individual on the other. Cultural innovators leave a moral footprint on social evolution. Freya Mathews has alluded to them as animateurs, the ‘awakeners of slumbering creative potentials in both ourselves and the larger community of life to which we belong’ (Mathews 2017, p. 228). Apart from helping a community to constellate and give expression to its latent aspirations, animateurs find ways of engaging others in novel creative projects which energise the native culture and push it in new directions. The animateurs are thus both the guardians of the ‘sacred traditions’ and the agents of their ongoing renewal. Scandinavian humanist animateurs are intriguing in a double sense: firstly because they descended both from the elites and the lower classes (mostly from the peasantry), and reimagined models of social relations which transcended the social hierarchy and particularist interests of a group or a class. And secondly, their cultural innovation was based on reinjecting institutional Lutheranism with the elements of

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original, Christian caritas, social welfare and a philanthropic mission. Let me illustrate my point by briefly adumbrating those animateurs who forged three enduring Scandinavian symbotypes: the Norwegian good society, the Danish happy Christianity (with or without God) and the Swedish caring people’s home (folkhem).

HANS NIELSEN HAUGE’S ‘COMMUNITY OF GOODNESS’ There is evidence that, apart from the New Testament, some of Norway’s most read religious texts are the sermons and revelations authored by the early nineteenth-century countryside preacher Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771–1824).6 The conventional view is that Hauge was a spiritus movens of the nineteenth-century religious revival, which empowered the peasantry and promoted Pietist values. The latest research, however, gives us a richer picture (e.g. Furre 1999; Ravnåsen 2002; Bugge Amundsen 2007; Stibbe 2007). Hauge’s religious vision – which came to him in an epiphany while he was working on his farm – invoked not just a deeply personal and purified Christianity which highlighted repentance; it advocated personal emancipation through education and the ethos of ‘gain what you can, save all you can, and give all you can’. His group of followers – who called themselves the Friends – conducted an audacious, religious–moral–economic experiment on the margins of the dominant Lutheran culture. The Haugian oppbyggelsesmøter (edification meetings) – featuring a community of equals – were devoted to discussing the Lord’s message and designing new economic enterprises. True, Pietist Haugianism had its morose side: it was low on carnival, alcohol and cholesterol. But what it lacked in hedonistic spirit, it more than made up for as a tool of peasant emancipation and a trigger of entrepreneurial vigour. The meteoric rise of Haugianism is something of a puzzle considering that between 1804 and 1813 Hauge was imprisoned in Christiania (modern-day Oslo) on account of breaking the so-called Konventikkelplakaten – the law that banned religious gatherings and meetings organised outside the clergy’s control.7 And yet, in addition to the social hunger for an uplifting vision at times of crisis, as well as Hauge’s personal appeal, I suggest there were two pivotal drivers of the Friends’ success. The first was their structure as a small group, which, I argue, shows clear parallels with the key Ostromian design principles: a strong identity, clear boundaries, a flat structure, inclusive decision-making, the peaceful resolution of conflicts, social monitoring and the ethos of

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cooperation (Ostrom 1990).8 In fact, cooperation permeated all Haugian projects: the paper mill at Eiker – the epitome of Haugian community enterprise – was cooperatively owned, the workers lived on the premises with their families and provisions were made to employ those with disabilities and look after those who were either too ill or too old to work (Magnus 1978, pp. 91 ff.). The second pillar of Haugianism’s success was the practice of Christian caritas: reanimating existing Lutheran stories of Christian piety with an ideal of a caring fraternity that did not retreat from this world but contributed to society’s material wealth. Hauge’s business projects – from brick and paper factories to iron and salt works – were joined with acts of philanthropy, such as administering the poor fund and even providing financial support for the first university in Christiania. The emphasis on reading, writing and oratorical skills, perfected during religious deliberations, was a tool of both individuation and democratisation (Bang 1910, p. 368). The result was that the more gifted peasant pupils quickly morphed into an extraordinarily vibrant and mobile social group, which included successful entrepreneurs, parliamentarians, the architects of the Norwegian Constitution of 1814, the founders of the oldest publishing houses (Grøndahl and Dryer) and the initiators of overseas religious missions. Interestingly, Haugianism did not break dramatically with the codex of Lutheran Christianity; rather, it energised it with ideas of social emancipation through education and a more cooperative model of social relations. It proposed a refolution:9 a mixture of reform and revolution that allowed Lutheranism to remain the imaginary centre that tied the community together. I argue that it is this balance between the old and the new, between Christianity, philanthropy and successful prosocial entrepreneurship, that enabled Haugianism to shift from being a religious revival on the margins of the Norwegian culture to becoming a source of inspiration for society at large. Haugianism ‘caught on’ because it showed that it was possible to be successful economically and a better person. In that sense it was a prefiguration of the economic and political architecture of the future welfare society. The Haugian ethos of cooperation and humanitarianism – replicated in school curricula and religious education well into the second half of the twentieth century – ‘civilised’ the national brand of capitalism and informed visions on the left, right and centre of the political spectrum.

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N.F. GRUNDTVIG: ‘FIRST MAN, THEN CHRISTIAN’ Among the various Danish animateurs there is one whose influence on Danish humanism has been indisputable: the theologian, poet and philosopher Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783–1872). Just like Hans Nielsen Hauge, Grundtvig was much more than a religious mentor of his time; his teachings have had an enduring impact on Danish and Norwegian models of education and the relationship between the individual, society and the state (see for example Skrondal 1929). As the author of poems and psalms, historical and philosophical works, and polemical tracts, Grundtvig was not just widely read and taught for generations; Grundtvigianism remained a core concept in Danish and Norwegian culture and education throughout the twentieth century. The Grundtvigian ideal of a good society was rooted in core Enlightenment values – such as equality and individual liberty – joined with a vision of national rebirth inspired by the New Testament’s love of the fellow brother. That said, Grundtvig preached a vision of a ‘happy, evangelical Christianity’ (Witoszek 1998, p. 80), based on what he called ‘the living word’. His often quoted motto, ‘First man, then Christian’,10 captures the gist of his moral and relational agenda: liberating the Church and Christians from religious dogma and freeing secular minds from what he considered ‘rationalist oppression’ (Bugge 2001). One of the pivotal Grundtvigian concepts was folkelighed – an ordinary people’s culture, which, unlike the polarising German Völkischkeit, rested on ideas of tolerance, social inclusion and individual liberty (Pedersen 2002).11 What is interesting in our context are the analogies with Haugian innovation: a mixture of tradition and new Enlightenment ideas that was found compelling by Grundtvig’s contemporaries and successors. Gradually, his creative and prosocial pedagogy was adopted not just in Denmark but also in Norway and Sweden, where a network of independent schools – or Grundtvig-inspired folkehøyskoler (folk high schools) – was established. The key objective of these schools was to imbue youth with a spirit of tolerant, Other-oriented Lutheranism and the pursuit of independent inquiry.12 Grundtvig’s pupils were not considered competing individuals, but members of a warm circle of the national community wherein all that counted was fostering a happy life and good relations with the Other. Thus there were no exams in Grundtvig’s ideal schools; the real exam, in his view, was life itself (Thorkildsen 1996, p. 51). Although the Grundtvigian happy Christianity evolved over time and lost its religious flavour, its values live on as a powerful and durable legacy in both Danish and Norwegian Bildung. As late as the twenty-first

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century, the Grundtvigian symbotype and its mutations constitute the ethical foundation of Danish and Norwegian pedagogy, advocating an ideal of social relations based on equality, reciprocity and a relatively high level of trust. However challenged by global developments, it reminds modern Scandinavians of what they were, what they have learned and what values they stand to lose if their symbotype is undone.

SWEDEN AS FOLKHEMMET In 1928, the Swedish chairman of the Social Democrats, Per Albin Hansson, invoked a mythical story which would consolidate and unify the nation at a time of social upheaval: the narrative about the Swedish state as a caring folkhemmet (people’s home) (Hansson 1928 [1982], p. 124). The metaphor of the people’s home became not just a potent political trope; to this day it is one of the most successful mobilising concepts in the history of European welfare states. The early twentieth-century vision of Sweden as a warm and inclusive home was intriguing for two reasons: firstly, it was launched in the age of selfish, aggressive and polarising nation-building elsewhere in Europe and, secondly, it countered the powerful national mythology of Swedish imperial greatness. This was not a sign of precursory ‘deconstructivism’. Already toward the end of the nineteenth century, the liberal daily Aftonbladet – the ‘bible of Swedish people’ – lampooned both muscular nationalism and the ideas of conquest marshalled by the glorious kings, such as Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII. The merciless scrutiny of Sweden’s past imperial triumphs was brought to a climax by August Strindberg in his Svenska folket i helg och söcken (1881–82), the first anti-heroic account of the Swedish Age of Greatness. Not only did it assault the wasteful – and murderous – virtues of previous rulers, it suggested that such virtues increased the misery and destruction inflicted on the Swedish people. The question is why the trope of happy domesticity and prosocial citizens established itself so strongly in the country that, unlike Norway, had an ambitious aristocracy and power-hungry kings. One of the answers is that the people’s home had been forged as a parallel, alternative vision of Sweden before the social-democratic takeover in the 1920s and 1930s. As I have argued elsewhere (Witoszek 2013), the ideal of a ‘happy farm’, tended by a free peasantry with freethinking women, was planted in national literature by progressive, eighteenth-century Enlightenment pastors (such as radical social critics Hans Bergeström

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and Bishop Anders Chydenius), and nineteenth-century bards and progressive thinkers from Gustaf Geijer to Fredrika Bremer and Ellen Key. But its most influential codifier was the Nobel Prize winner in literature, Selma Lagerlöf, who, in most of her novels, deployed the trope of a ‘happy family’ (Witoszek and Midttun 2018). More importantly, in her groundbreaking address ‘Home and State’, delivered at the ‘Right to Vote’ congress in Stockholm in 1915, Lagerlöf advocated women’s emancipation (Lagerlöf 1915), not via a predictable, adversarial tirade on women’s oppression, but through a clever reframing of the women’s cause. That is to say, she presented women’s expertise at creating a loving home as a model for state management. The women’s movement was founded on an understandable ambition of sharing their knowledge of steering a household in order to ‘build a bigger, caring home’, which was the state. Lagerlöf’s key message was: ‘The really big masterpiece, the state that has so far been created by men deserves women’s expertise and help in turbulent times’. In short, bringing women into the labour market would benefit everybody by transforming the state into a better home for all citizens. This is precisely what happened. When, in the late 1920s, the Swedish Social Democrats started talking about folkhemmet, the symbotype was only ‘new’ in the sense of being politicised by the government. It was a reformulation of the already entrenched and charismatic story. In evolutionary terms, the Swedish Social Democrats were successful because they selected a potent trope which resonated with the people at large (many of them Lagerlöf’s readers), inspired productive gender cooperation and reinforced social cohesion. In addition, folkhemmet softened the national self-image. It has been customary to associate Swedish social democracy with archetypally ‘masculine’ aspirations, such as bureaucratic prudence, pragmatism and scientific rationality. In contrast, Lagerlöf’s household mythology and ecology invoked values traditionally perceived as ‘feminine’: survival, compromise, partnership, reconciliation, pacifism. From then on, modern Swedish society selected just these values and relations as the foundation of their internal and external relations. It is thus not accidental that in his momentous speech in 1928, Albin Hansson insisted that ‘The basis of home is togetherness and a sense of belonging. A good home doesn’t make a difference between privilege [and] backwardness, between darlings and stepchildren […] In a good home equality, thoughtfulness and cooperation rule’ (Hansson 1928, p. 124). If we further consider that many of the ideas running through this passage were also articulated in powerful social projects – such as folkrörelse, folkupplysning and folkhögskola – then it is clear that

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folkhemmet succeeded for the same reasons that Haugian fraternity succeeded in Norway: it was based on an existing, foundational story, reanimated with an emancipatory project, which was to be later replicated ad infinitum both in cultural texts and in the new forms of political and institutional praxis. Again, the symbotype was potent because it was not based on creative destruction but on the amplification of the already entrenched values of Christianity and Enlightenment humanism.

A TRANSCULTURAL HUMANIST AGENDA? BJØRNSTJERNE BJØRNSON’S AND FRIDTJOF NANSEN’S PREFIGURATION OF HUMANITARIAN NORWAY There is one more intriguing feature of Nordic humanism: its missionary dimension. For many zealous, religious and political actors, the dominant model of the social relations which stabilised a good society at home was tempting as an export commodity, if only because it would surely make the world into a better place for everybody. An aspiration for transnational humanism was already present in the work of the greatest Norwegian romantic demiurge Henrik Wergeland in his gospel of transcultural altruism and care for the oppressed people everywhere (see for example Sørensen 1993). It gained national and international currency thanks to the work of two powerful Norwegian animateurs: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Fridtjof Nansen. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Bjørstjerne Bjørnson and Fridtjof Nansen were national heroes, celebrated by the world as Nobel Prize winners: Bjørnson for his literary oeuvre (1903), Nansen for his peace initiatives and humanitarian work (1922). Bjørnson aspired to tame the belligerent German Furies by forming a peace-loving Pan-Germanic League. In the very last article he wrote on the subject in 1908, he sharply distinguished what he called a ‘conquering Pan-Germanism’ from a ‘serving Pan-Germanism’ (Sørensen 1997, p. 204). He argued, almost clairvoyantly, that ‘the serving Pan-Germanism, one that seeks out Brothers on both sides of the Atlantic to make an end to all wars, and one that unites the different nations in voluntary cooperation – a Guardian Saint for all cultural purposes – is a blessing for Middle Europe’ (Sørensen 1997, p. 204). As a humanist poet, thinker and do-gooder, Bjørnson founded the first peasant bank, organised the teachers’ fund and kept sending money to his needy friends, strangers and even his enemies. He wrote long, warm, consoling letters to an imprisoned Dreyfus and

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composed passionate appeals on behalf of oppressed minorities: Slovaks, Serbians, Croatians and Romanians. ‘As long as I live,’ he insisted, ‘I shall side with the party of the weak against the strong, and with the abused against the powerful ones’ (quoted in Hagtvet 1998, p. 8). Declarations like this could be taken as outpourings of poetic pathos, had they not become prefigurations of Norway’s self-image and its foreign policy in the twenty-first century: a policy based on an open aspiration to become a humanitarian power.13 Bjørnson’s somewhat younger contemporary Fridtjof Nansen was like a Renaissance polymath: a man who was equally gifted as a scientist,14 Arctic explorer, artist, storyteller and humanitarian activist for whom what was difficult took a bit of time, and what was impossible took a little longer. As High Commissioner for Refugees at the League of Nations (1920–30), Nansen was an oddity in a world fascinated by violence, war and tribalism. His sporty Norwegian ‘ski patriotism’ (to put it in the vernacular) and his continued appeals for international politics based on altruism seemed completely out of tune with the gruelling realities of civilisational breakdown in post-WWI Europe and Soviet Russia. Defying the general spirit of despondence and cynicism, he and Bjørnson persisted in their humanitarian quest. Bjørnson imagined Norway as a Holy Ghost of Europe, radiating human rights, natural beauty and peace to the outside world. Although Nansen considered himself as a staunch atheist, he nevertheless personified the Christian ideal of caritas by preaching the love of the fellow brother as realpolitik, and rescuing millions of refugees and victims of famine. Bjørnson and Nansen made goodness into a hallmark of national identity. Four generations of Norwegians read their writings with red ears and foggy eyes. A procession of national icons, from the ski-clad heroes of the Norwegian Resistance during WWII to humanist adventurers and national mentors – such as the legendary ethnographer and the leader of the Kon-Tiki expedition, Thor Heyerdahl, and the ecophilosopher Arne Næss – tried to emulate them and thus revitalise their ethics of ‘thinking dutifully and acting beautifully’ (to use Næss’s metaphor). The Bjørnsonian and Nansenian symbotype and the accompanying litany of moral traits they encoded – reason, rights, concern for nature, equality, tolerance, science, progress – penetrated into the Norwegian mentality, creating what Alexis de Tocqueville meant by moeurs: the habits of the mind and the habits of the heart that ‘make up the moral and intellectual state of the people’ (Tocqueville 1835 [2000], p. 295). Last, but not least, both animateurs attempted to amplify Nordic humanism into a transnational project: one that would become a universal moral codex.

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An interesting question is: have they initiated an alternative path to sustainable modernity or have they undermined the good society upon which such modernity is founded?

THE AMBIGUITIES OF THE UNIVERSAL ‘CARING HOME’ The best way to assess the true function of a symbotype is by inspecting its potency and resilience in situations of crisis. By way of benchmarking, in the 1930s, the mythology which accrued around the modernising process in Germany was – very much as in Sweden – intertwined with the symbotype of home (Heimat). But unlike the Swedish folkhemmet, which was inclusive and uniting, the German Heimat flaunted an anti-individualist, ‘coral-reef mentality’, a story of Aryan superiority and looking backwards toward a splendid Teutonic past (Stern 1974; Witoszek and Trägårdh 2002). In twentieth-century Scandinavia, on the other hand, the dominant visions of ‘good society’ – replicated in school programmes, national literature and in political discourse – remained consistently affiliated with tolerant and egalitarian values and an antitotalitarian mindset (Sejersted 2011, p. 103). The crucial questions are: how do humanist ideals fare when they become translated into political ideologies? And what becomes of humanist symbotypes when they are extended from national to universal agendas? Sweden is a particularly interesting case because it is here that the modern idea of the state as the people’s home was politicised from the start. In the first half of the twentieth century, Swedish national strategists became fascinated with planning and rationality as the tools for improving the efficiency of folkhemmet. Two enthusiastic ideologues of the social engineering ideology, Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, insisted that the ongoing demographic, social and economic crisis of the 1930s could only be solved by a massive intervention of the ‘good state’, acting on behalf of society (Myrdal and Myrdal 1934). To protect the holy grail of folkhemmet, the Myrdals argued, the state should have both the right and the obligation to intervene in Swedish citizens’ private sphere, overriding family and individual concerns (Sejersted 2005, p. 266). Interestingly, they did not quite succeed. Their radical paternalism turned out to be a largely rhetorical exercise, though, understandably, it generated tensions within the Swedish public sphere.15

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The original ambiguity of the symbotype of folkhemmet was exacerbated in the second half of the twentieth century. The original folkhemmet, as envisioned by Per Albin Hansson and his successor Tage Erlander, featured an inclusive Swedish family that was to be a blueprint for a sustainable modernity. But in the 1950s, yet another charismatic vision of folkhemmet humanism emerged, one which encompassed not just Sweden but the whole world. It was advocated by the Swedish UN General Secretary (1953–61), Dag Hammarskjöld, a seemingly faceless and colourless bureaucrat who made his reputation by boldly standing up to demands from the Soviet Union on the question of human rights. Hammarskjöld insisted that the UN should become an organisation giving priority to the rights of individual citizens, even if this meant overriding national sovereignty. This project would have likely been forgotten as an example of harmless, utopian fantasy were it not for Hammarskjöld’s death in a plane crash in 1961.16 The accident transformed him into the most prominent ‘martyr’ in the history of UN peace operations – and into a new national hero of the folkhemmet. His legacy was given an additional lift through the publication of his posthumous papers, which he called – in the true spirit of the Christian Enlightenment – ‘a sort of White Paper based on my negotiations with myself – and with God’. Published in 1963 under the title Markings (Vägmärken), the diaries revealed a man who dreamt of the world as an extended people’s home cultivating human rights and recognising ‘mankind as a community of shared responsibility and shared guilt’ (Lønning 2010, pp. 19; 24; 36). But the ambition to extend the Swedish folkhemmet from a national to a universalist project has not been unproblematic. In relational terms, it has led at least to two conceptual-ethical conundrums. The first one derives from the perception of Sweden as an extended home which protects both the rights of individuals and those of ethnic minorities. To keep the family together, the protectors of the sacred narrative of home have created their own ethos, vocabulary and even a moral police that has hunted down those who have dared to reveal the cracks in the happy family façade. The second conundrum has to do with the tensions between individualism and etatism, joined together in a bizarre bond. Lars Trägårdh, in an attempt to capture this coincidentia oppositorum, has proposed the concept of statist individualism (Trägårdh 1997, pp. 253 ff.; Trägårdh 2013). In his reading, the Swedish state functions not just as the provider of social services and free, high-quality education and healthcare, but also as an agent of social emancipation and a catalyser of individual autonomy. In the modern Swedish welfare state, children and women are no longer dependent on their families or

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husbands. Instead, the caring state is the guarantor of their rights as individuals (Trägårdh 2013, p. 198). The question is: how does this moralisation of the state fare with the Swedish population at large and with disadvantaged, subaltern or immigrant groups? In the eyes of many, it has invited the state apparatus into the private sphere through the back door, thus violating the individual autonomy it is designed to safeguard. Similarly, the success of the anti-immigration party Sweden Democrats shows that the human rights agenda has lived a complicated semantic life. Intellectual elites have interpreted it as an expression of respect for all traditions. Ethnic minorities cherishing their distinctive norms and values have read it as an encroachment on their cultures. And Sweden Democrats has assaulted ‘human rights Sweden’ as a threat to the national home. Clearly, the crisis of the folkhemmet symbotype has been as much a crisis of identity as a crisis of boundaries. In Elinor Ostrom’s terms, one of the reasons for the Nordic model’s efficacy is that, until the end of the twentieth century, it evolved in relatively small, relatively homogeneous nations that observed norms and principles that sustained trust and reciprocity. Boundaries were clear and identity was well defined. According to Wilson and Hessen, Scandinavian countries have ‘projected the control mechanisms of the local village into the national village’ (Wilson and Hessen 2014). How far – and by what means – these control mechanisms could be scaled up is a question that has not been resolved. In the twenty-first century, Bjørnson’s, Nansen’s and Hammarskjöld’s visions of transnational humanism, one where human rights ideology replaces national myths and values, may be attractive to cosmopolitan elites, but it is increasingly perceived as posing a threat to both national identity and polity. While Norwegian and Danish politicians – more in touch with the patrimony of the national and local village – understood the irresolvable dilemmas of an extended folkhemmet and imposed restrictions on immigration, Swedish intellectual and political elites have been unwilling to part with their most cherished myths. When seen in this light, the 2018 Swedish election – which featured the rise of the nationalist Sweden Democrats party – has been more than the summary effect of the crisis of identity and social boundaries; it has also shown the strong potency of the transnational humanist symbotype. In the second decade of the twenty-first century this symbotype has the genuine makings of a national ‘religion’. Its most ardent apostles – cultural and political elites – are so entrenched and besieged in their faith that they refuse to talk to ‘the nationalist’ apostates. Clearly, the latter no longer belong to the moral community of

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the folkhemmet and are perceived as a worse enemy of the rightful Swedes than Islamic religious fundamentalists.

NORDIC HUMANISM ON TRIAL The question remains: does Scandinavian humanism – and humanism in general – matter? The answer is twofold. On the one hand, as I have suggested, the humanist legacy – and the social relations, such as reciprocity, trust and cooperation that are based on it – is crucial for at least three reasons. One is cultural-evolutionary: humanism seems to increase the extent of social well-being and forge resilience in times of social disruption. The second reason is political and economic: when the humanist agenda penetrates into political and economic models, it creates a relatively ‘civilised’ capitalism, a high level of trust, cooperative politics and less corrupt institutions. Third, and most importantly, the humanist agenda is a buffer against the totalitarian temptation. The contention of this chapter has been that, for all the internal strife, modernity as filtered and disseminated by the Scandinavian humanist symbotypes has yielded more cooperative societies and less rigid and centralised structures, not to mention that it has been less bedevilled by social inequality than many other Western countries. I have also argued that, although the Norwegian and Swedish humanitarian agendas have often been politicised, they are not just the domain of manipulative elites; they are part of authentic moral commons, a felt tradition which is the locus of national identity. On the other hand, as I have also argued before, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the legacy of Nordic humanism is as potent as it is problematic, especially in its more universalist guise, as the example of Sweden shows. There is no doubt that a polity based on universal human rights runs counter to the first two Ostromian design principles – a strong identity and well-defined boundaries – as the conditions of a sustainable community’s success. As I have argued, it is in large part thanks to culturally transmitted humanist symbotypes operationalised within small, ‘Ostromian’ national communities that the Nordic productive welfare societies have emerged and been solidified. For a long time this process has been undisturbed, forging a relatively homogeneous and cooperative Gemeinschaft with a strong prosocial identity. The question, then, is what are the limits to extending the boundaries of the Nordic communities, and what is the ceiling for expanding their identity and their largely cooperative ethos in a multicultural world?

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One way to address this question has been through the further cosmopolitisation of Nordic humanism – a project that has gathered most enthusiastic support among the Swedish intelligentsia. But this cosmopolitisation – inspired by Dag Hammarskjöld’s universalism – is being undermined by the increasingly selfish lower level – as exemplified by the growing popularity of Sweden Democrats. The elite-driven ideal of human rights as the foundation of an ever expanding and generous folkhemmet has exacerbated ongoing national tensions and social unrest and, paradoxically, may also have led to a cosmopolitan homelessness rather than a sense of belonging. The 2015 refugee crisis, during which the Swedish Prime Minister was compelled to recant his proud motto ‘My Europe does not build walls’, illustrated the insurmountable nature of the problem.17 But there is yet another, cultural challenge to the Nordic humanist symbotypes, which comes from the global narratives that extol the ideal of a competitive, knowledge-based society. There is an interesting tension between the rhetoric of cooperation – still pervasive in Nordic children’s books,18 school curricula and political discourse (Witoszek and Midttun 2018) – and the competitive, stardom-oriented mindset peddled by the media and demanded by the tyranny of international rankings. The Norwegian Parliamentary Report on the School of the Future (NOU 2015) is an interesting example of the resulting doublethink and doublespeak: although the report alludes to the paramount importance of international competition in the introduction (in the over 100-page-long text), the concepts of competitiveness and competition appear six times in total (on pp. 19, 20, 21, 24, 31 and 57), while the idea of cooperation and its derivatives (cooperative processes, collaboration, co-action/ samhandling, interaction and the like) are repeated over 250 times. In short, in spite of the growing authority and influence of the competitive mindset and practice, Norwegian educators remain stubbornly faithful to their original egalitarian values and aspirations, at least at the level of official rhetoric. But practice on the ground points to two clashing visions of Norway: one which reasserts the ideal of an ordinary, prosocial and happy citizen and the other which promotes stressful individual exceptionality, mastery and excellence. If, up until the second decade of the twenty-first century, the Nordic model has balanced competition with cooperation, the increasingly commodified society is producing a different character type, conditioned by a consumer culture and a competitive society (Pedersen 2002, p. 16). Not only does it deskill people in practising cooperation, it also increases social segregation and devalues decency and goodness as outmoded and futile virtues.

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Another, largely under-researched, cultural challenge to Nordic humanism has to do with the North becoming part of an increasingly disembodied, IT-fuelled global commons. As has been argued, modernity today is not just about the quest to overcome the diverse constraints of living processes but is also about the increasing intrusion of technology into human relations, making them more and more virtual and disembodied (Gare 2014, p. 331). Until the twenty-first century, social organisation through commodification, via the alliance of bureaucracies and markets, was relatively weak in Scandinavia. The basic, underlying humanism in politics and the economy rested on embodied personal relations in communities that cherished social solidarity and practised efficacious control mechanisms. How will the Facebook animateurs of the Nordic model manage to sustain an embodied, earth-bound democracy? One thing is certain: in order for the model of social relations anchored in the humanist agenda to remain a potent driver of moral communities, the Scandinavian symbotypes need to be reimagined as sources of local and national empowerment. This involves not just institutional and political innovation, but also cultural innovation. From a culturalevolutionary perspective, a positive scenario of twenty-first-century modernisation in Scandinavia would include solidifying, and further refining, the unique Nordic balance between traditionally opposing values and relations, such as communitarianism and individualism, cooperation and competition, religiosity and belief in scientific progress. That said, if I dare to be cautiously optimistic about the future of the Nordic model, it is largely for two reasons. Firstly, because, as I have argued, the life of humanist symbotypes in Scandinavian countries – embodied in their dialogic, deliberative democracies – makes the Nordic model relatively resilient under stress and able to reshuffle and revise its social relations and institutions in situations of flux or crisis. And secondly, despite what has been said about the illusions of goodness or the pitfalls of humanitarian utopias, the visions of a good society worked in Scandinavia because they have never become a chimerical dream of a perfect society, nor have they been allowed to harden into a complacent dogma. On the contrary, to this very day they have been subject to public debates and constant revisions. They are dynamic gospels whose interpretations change – or may even be challenged – but whose value matrix remains the centre that holds.

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NOTES *

This contribution builds on the chapter ‘Nordic Humanism as a Driver of the Welfare Society’, written with Øystein Sørensen and published in N. Witoszek and A. Midttun (eds) (2018), Sustainable Modernity: The Nordic Model and Beyond, London: Routledge. Tvedt’s metaphor was seemingly inspired by the claim of former Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland that ‘it is typically Norwegian to be good’. In the past two decades the Nordics have consistently come out on top as ‘the best countries to live in’, the best countries for mothers and, in the case of Norway, even the ‘happiest people’, accessed 3 April 2019 at http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI. Due to space limitations I am not able to include Finland in my analysis, though the modern Finnish welfare society shares some characteristics with the Nordic founding tradition (see Witoszek 1997). See the research project ‘REN: Renewing the Nordic Model’, accessed 3 April 2019 at https://www.uio.no/forskning/satsinger/norden/forskning/forskergrupper/nordic-model-2.0/. See also the ‘Norway Project’, the American Evolutionary Institute, accessed 3 April 2019 at https://evolution-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/20160623_ei_norway_lowres.pdf. Symbotype plays on genotype, denoting culturally significant information replicated via a multitude of symbolic forms generated by education, religion, the arts, folklore and so on. Research shows that at least 100,000 people read Hauge’s books between 1796 and 1801 (see Thorvaldsen 1996; Stibbe 2007). The Konventikkelplakaten was imposed by the Danish King Christian VI in 1741. Cooperation is implicit rather than explicit in Ostrom’s eight design principles, but it is an inseparable condition of a sustainable community. The term was coined by Timothy Garton Ash to refer to the 1989 revolution in East Central Europe (Ash 1990). ‘First Man and then Christian’ was the title of a poem by Grundtvig which was published posthumously (Bugge 2001). Needless to say, this gentle humanism – increasingly attractive both inside and outside the Danish State Church – earned Grundtvig many influential enemies. They made sure that, in spite of his prolific writings and broad social appeal, his rank in the Lutheran Church never went beyond that of a lowly parish priest. The Folk High School movement played an especially important part in the left-liberal political movement in Norway in the second half of the nineteenth century, a movement that won political power in the 1880s. See, for example, one of the speeches of the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Jonas Gahr Støre, ‘Norge som fredsnasjon- myte eller virkelighet?’ (‘Norway as a Peace Nation: Myth or Reality?’) 24 April 2006, accessed 8 December 2018 at https://www.regjeringen. no/no/dokumentarkiv/stoltenberg-ii/ud/taler-og-artikler/2006/norge-som-fredsnasjon–myteeller-virkel/id273461/. According to Huntford, ‘He passed his doctoral exam – rather controversial and ahead of its time – thanks to his examiners’ charity. It was generally believed that he was heading for disaster and was unlikely to return from his expedition to the North Pole’ (Huntford 1971, p. 76). The leading social politician Gustav Möller managed to tone down the statist-technocratic aspects of the Myrdalian vision by reimagining the state as the protector of the autonomy and dignity of every citizen. But, for a while, there were hot disputes between the followers of what we may call the radical ‘Myrdal solution’ and the more conciliatory ‘Möller solution’ – debates which have only partly resolved the ambiguity inherent in the relation between state and individual in the Swedish folkhemmet (Sejersted 2005, p. 267; English version Sejersted 2011). Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash in Ndola on 18 September 1961 while he was negotiating a peaceful solution to the ongoing crisis in Congo. The circumstances of his death remain unclear and controversial: was it an accident or was he deliberately killed by

1. 2. 3. 4.

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a bomb, and if so, by whom? One might argue that Hammarskjöld was the very person who redefined the UN by giving it an ethical dimension. In the introduction to a collection of Hammarskjöld’s speeches, Att fora världens talan: Tal och uttalanden av Dag Hammarskjöld (2004), Kaj Falkman points out that a surprisingly substantial number of high-ranking UN officers had a portrait of Hammarskjöld in their offices. 17. Both Norway and Denmark curbed the implosion of their ‘models’ by instituting much more restrictive immigration policies. 18. The canonic masterpieces of children’s literature in the Nordic countries – Pippi Långstrømpe, Røvere i Kardemommeby and Mummibøkene – all feature altruistic, socially sensitive and reformable individuals.

REFERENCES Acemoglu, D. and J.A. Robinson (2013), Why Nations Fail, London: Profile Books. Ash, T.G. (1990), The Uses of Adversity, New York: Granta. Shortened, online version, accessed 10 December 2018 at www.nybooks.com/articles/1985/06/ 27/poland-the-uses-of-adversity/. Bang, A. (1910), Hans Nielsen Hauge og hans samtid: Et tidsbillede fra omkring aar 1800, Oslo: Christiania. Bourdieu, P. (1977), Outline of a Theory of Practice, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Bowles, S. and H. Gintis (2012), A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bugge, K.E. (2001), ‘“Menneske først”: Grundtvig og hedningemissionen’ Grundtvig Studier 1/2001, accessed 10 December 2018 at https://tidsskrift.dk/ grs/article/view/16400. Bugge Amundsen, A. (2007), ‘Books, Letters and Communications: Hans Nielsen Hauge and the Haugean Movement in Norway 1760–1849’, in Bugge Amundsen (ed.), Revival and Communication: Studies in the History of Scandinavian Revivals, 1700–2000, Lund: Lunds universitets kyrkohistoriska arkiv, pp. 26–41. Dawkins, R. (1976), The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eriksson, Magnus (2017), ‘Totalitære politisk korrekthet på svenske universiteter’, accessed 10 December 2018 at https://radikalportal.no/2017/12/08/ totalitaer-politisk-korrekthet-ved-svenske-universiteter/. Falkman, K. (ed.) (2004), Att föra världens talan: Tal och uttalanden av Dag Hammarskiöld, Stockholm: Atlantis. Fukuyama, F. (2008), ‘Wealth and Culture: A Conversation with David Landes’, The American Interest 1, September/October, accessed 10 December 2018 at www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=464. Furre, B. (1999), ‘Hans Nielsen Hauge: Stats- og samfunnsfiende’, in S.A. Christoffersen (ed.), Moralsk og Moderne? Trekk av den kristne moraltradisjonen fra 1814 til i dag, Oslo: Ad Notam, pp. 80–101. Gare, A. (2014), ‘Speculative Naturalism: A Manifesto, Cosmos and History’, The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 10 (2), 300–23. Hagtvet, B. (1998), Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, de intelektuelle og Dreyfus- saken, Oslo: Aschehoug.

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Hansson, P.A. (1928 [1982]), ‘Folkhemmet, medborgarhemmet’, in P.A. Hansson and A.L. Berkling, Från Fram till folkhemmet, Stockholm: Metodica Press, pp. 227–34. Harrison, L. and S. Huntington (2001; 2004), Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, New York: Basic Books. Hartberg, Y. and D.S. Wilson (2016), ‘Sacred Text as Cultural Genome: An Inheritance Mechanism and Method for Studying Cultural Evolution’, Religion, Brain and Behavior 7 (3), 11–13. Huntford, R. (1971), New Totalitarians, London: Allen Lane. Knausgård, C.O. (2015), ‘Noe er råttent I Sverige’, Aftenposten, 22 May, accessed 10 December 2018 at https://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/ kommentar/i/drWo/Noe-er-rattent-i-Sverige. Lagerlöf, S. (1915), ‘Hem och stat’, accessed 10 December 2018 at http:// www.svenskatal.se/19110612-selma-lagerlof-hem-och-stat/. Linderborg, Å. (2018), ‘Tre teser om populismen’, Klassekampen, 8 April, accessed 10 December 2018 at https://dagens.klassekampen.no/2018-04-10/ tre-teser-om-populismen. Lønning, I. (2010), Politics, Morality and Religion: The Legacy of Dag Hammarskjöld, Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. Magnus, A.J. (1978), ‘Vekkelse og Samfunn: En undersøkelse av Haugevekkelsen og dens virkninger for det norske samfunnet i det 19. århundre’, magistergrads avhandling i sosiologi Oslo: University of Oslo. Mathews, F. (2017), ‘Come with Old Khayyam and Leave the Wise to Talk’ Worldviews 21 (3), 218–34. Myrdal, A. and G. Myrdal (1934), Kris i befolkningsfrågan, Oslo: Tiden Norsk Forlag. Norman, K. (2019), Sweden’s Dark Soul. The Unravelling of a Utopia, London: Hurst and Co. NOU, Governmental Report 2015, Fremtidens skole (The School of the Future), accessed 10 December 2018 at https://www.regjeringen.no/contentassets/ da148fec8c4a4ab88daa8b677a700292/no/pdfs/nou201520150008000dddpdfs.pdf. Ostrom, E. (1990), Governing the Commons, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pedersen, K.A. (2002), ‘Grundtvig på anklagebænken’, Grundtvig Studier 1, accessed 10 December 2018 at http://ojs.statsbiblioteket.dk/index.php/grs/ article/view/16429. Ravnåsen, S. (2002), Ånd og Hånd: Hans Nielsen Hauges etikk for ledelse og næringsliv, Oslo: Luther Forlag. Sejersted, F. (2005; 2011), The Age of Social Democracy: Twentieth Century in Sweden and Norway, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Skrondal, A. (1929), Grundtvig og Noreg: Kyrkje og skule 1812–1872, Bergen: Lunde & Co. Sørensen, Ø. (ed.) (1993), Nordic Paths to National Identity in the Nineteenth Century, Oslo: KULTs skriftserie. Sørensen, Ø. (1997), Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson og nasjonalismen, Oslo: Cappelen. Sørensen, Ø. and B. Stråth (eds) (1997), The Cultural Construction of Norden, Oslo; Oxford: Scandinavian University Press.

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Stern, F. (1974), The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology, Berkeley: University of California Press. Stibbe, A.H. (2007), ‘Hans Nielsen Hauge and the Prophetic Imagination’, PhD thesis, University of London, accessed 10 December 2018 at http://discovery. ucl.ac.uk/15430/1/15430.pdf. Thorvaldsen, S. (1996), ‘Visjonen bak plogspissen: Om Hans Nielsen Hauge ved hans 200-års jubileum’, Visjon 1–2, accessed 10 December 2018 at www.hitos.no/fou/kristendom/hauge/htm. Tocqueville, A. de (1835 [2000]), Democracy in America, trans. and ed. H.C. Mansfield and D. Winthrop, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Trägårdh, L. (1997), ‘Statist Individualism: On the Culturality of the Nordic Welfare State’, in Ø. Sørensen and B. Stråth (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden, Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, pp. 253–85. Trägårdh, L. (2013), ‘The Historical Incubators of Trust in Sweden: From the Rule of Blood to the Rule of Law’, in M. Reuter, F. Wijkström and B. Kristensson Uggla (eds), Trust and Organizations: Confidence across Borders, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 181–203. Tvedt, T. (1995), Den norske samaritan, Oslo: Gyldendal pamflett. Tvedt, T. (2005), ‘Det nasjonale godhetsregimet: om utviklingshjelp, fredspolitikk og det norske samfunn’, in I. Frønes and L. Kjølsrød (eds), Det norske samfunn, Oslo: Gyldendal, pp. 482–510. Tvedt, T. (2016), Norske tenkemåter, Oslo: Aschehoug. Wilson, D.S. (2016), Does Altruism Exist? Culture, Genes and the Welfare of Others, New Haven: Yale University Press. Wilson, D.S. and D. Hessen (2014), ‘Blueprint for the Global Village’, accessed 10 December 2018 at https://evolution-institute.org/focus-article/blueprint-forthe-global-village/. Wilson, D.S., E. Ostrom and M.E. Cox (2013), ‘Generalizing Core Design Principles for Efficacy of the Groups’, Journal of Behavioural and Economic Organization, 90 (supplement), 21–31. Wilson, E.O. and D.S. Wilson (2007), ‘Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology’, The Quarterly Review of Biology, 82 (4), 327–48. Witoszek, N. (1997), ‘Fugitives from Utopia: The Scandinavian Pastoral Enlightenment’, in Ø. Sørensen and B. Stråth (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden, Oslo, Oxford: Scandinavian University Press, pp. 72–90. Witoszek, N. (1998), Norske naturmytologier: fra Edda til økofilosofi, Oslo: Pax. Witoszek, N. (2011), The Origins of the Regime of Goodness: Remapping of the Norwegian Cultural History, Oslo: Norwegian University Press. Witoszek, N. and A. Midttun (eds) (2018), Sustainable Modernity: The Nordic Model and Beyond, London: Routledge. Witoszek, N. and L. Trägårdh (2002), Culture and Crisis: The Case of Germany and Sweden, Oxford: Berghahn Books.

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Participation

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4. The Nordic model in ordo-liberal Europe: from welfare parity to social hierarchy? Paolo Borioni This text does not deal with the possible pre-political causes of Nordic equality. Although some causes may be anthropological or demographic, which I doubt,1 evidence from recent years indicates that equality is reversible. Inequality appears in fact to be increasing at a faster rate in the Nordic Countries than in other areas, mostly because the leaders who governed the Nordic Countries in the pivotal years 2000–14 have been questioning the desirability of more equality over a period of decades. The main feature that seems to emerge is that in an adverse socioeconomic context ideological conditions, societal norms and especially policies in the social sphere change, while possible pre-political reasons such as ethnic uniformity have little impact. In my socio-historical approach I will try to define the historical reasons that have led to the ‘parity’ of labour and capital, a concept often used by Pauli Kettunen, the ‘virtuous circles’ that this has achieved in terms of wages/labour, innovation, and the hegemony of equality that took shape as a consequence of all that, at least in the years 1930–80. Of course, many things have changed since then. Later I will add to Kettunen’s concept a more detailed description of the components of the ‘parity’ of capital and ‘labour’ in the decades in question. The gradual distortion of the components in question, for example the balance between exports and domestic demand, led over time to a more unequal society. In this connection I feel that there is also significance in the ability of new regulatory systems, such as ordo-liberalism, to gradually infiltrate a typically Nordic system, become part of it and alter its foundation. In this analysis I seek to describe how this takes place from a historical and economic point of view and what this means from the point of view of regulation. 74

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PARITY AND EQUALITY IN A DEMOCRATIC CONFLICT OF DISTRIBUTION: HISTORIC REASONS The Nordic model has been distinguished from others primarily by the notion that competition among individual enterprises and in the economy in general emerges at its best when the exploitation of labour is restricted or eliminated. I feel that until recent times this has been the concrete, operational and normative foundation of the model. It was formed over time beginning with the solutions to the crisis that emerged in the period between the two world wars. Wages did not bend too much to interests and ideologies (of agriculture and other forms of exports, for example). Instead, they remained relatively strong even in the global collapse. If the option of a decline in wages had been systematically chosen, the parity with the gold standard and sterling could have remained unchanged. Instead, a whole set of conditions changed (political and social coalitions, but also the strengthening of the unemployment insurances belonging to the Ghent system), and with the help of relatively strong industrial and rural wages, moves were made, as much as possible, to domestically compensate what could no longer be guaranteed by a collapsing global demand (Lewin, 1988, pp. 123, 141, 144–5; Christensen, 2005, pp. 82–5; Grytten, 2009; Lie, 2012, pp. 69–75; Borioni and Christiansen, 2015, pp. 84–92). This, after WWII, allowed that wages as a central norm were organised in an even more systematic manner, particularly under the so-called Rehn-Meidner model. In it, the gradual elimination of low pay was to stimulate both domestic demand and innovation.2 But even apart from the Swedish Rehn-Meidner model, this trend has been confirmed also in other Nordic societies: companies and factories had to compete instead of accepting relatively high wages and strong labour unions as a precondition. Despite the undeniable decline of the economic factor in question (this decline is one of the topics of the study), it can still be comparatively seen that in the Nordic countries such a compromise has emerged between the parties of the labour markets, reflected in greater investment in research, active policies, and innovation.3 Comparatively high wages and more innovation in production have then also enabled high taxation as a way of funding the universal institutions of welfare. There have been previous efforts using taxation to make the non-universalistic institutions of welfare more inclusive in accordance with the ‘Ghent model’. This aspect is a central part of our analysis, as its institutional significance is important in trying to understand how, in the history of the Nordic societies, the participation of the masses, with roots in the popular

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movements existing already in the 19th and 20th centuries, has managed to increase the ‘strength of labour’ and later the ‘strength of wages’. It is my intention to prioritise this topic in the analysis (Edling, 2006). All of this is necessary if we are to better understand the reasons why the Nordic welfare system, in its broader sense, was defined as ‘social democratic’ (Esping-Andersen, 2000). As we know, the concept of ‘de-commodification’ has often been mentioned in this context, referring to the broad-based and long-term possibilities of citizens to utilise income transfers (usually unemployment benefits providing a relatively high percentage of the work incomes) and universal welfare services (usually public health care, which also exists in the Italian and British systems), which allow citizens to improve their status as ‘commodities’ of the labour market. Perhaps a more suitable way of describing the true state of affairs and the ultimate goals of the ‘labour force’ is the situation (and the concept) of ‘rich commodification’4 (Jørgensen, 2008) or the ability of considerable wage power to promote a higher level of skills and knowledge, and the upward adaptation of skills and knowledge to higher wages, rather than vice-versa. In a situation in which work under adverse conditions is not strictly compulsory (with respect to pay, health, geographical location, competence, and so on) ‘de-commodification’ is part, but only part, of the explanation. More importantly, the historical and social context brings about a more complex situation which gradually moulds the structures of production and the labour market, while offering better jobs (that is, richer commodification) and thereby advancing equality and good social mobility. In addition, this has advanced equality right up to recent years5 and upward mobility known as the ‘Gospel of social mobility’, a concept used by Rudolf Meidner. It is boosted by strong work and pay, or ‘the safety of the wings’, a concept used by Gösta Rehn6 (Stråth, 2000, pp. 78–80; Wadensjö et al., 1989). In all of these contexts we can speak of ‘virtuous circles’ (Kettunen, 1997), thanks to which it is increasingly the case that a significant part of income and wealth is transferred to public consumption in the form of taxation. And, pretty significantly, it is not before the 1960s that, comparatively seen, a strong increase in taxation can be seen in the Nordic countries (Magnusson, 1996, p. 395).

A NEW BALANCE BETWEEN CAPITAL AND LABOUR The balance emerges, as described, by seeking to achieve a labour market in which exploitation gradually disappears (a dynamic moving from

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down to up) and where equality is a product (of a long process starting from popular movements), not a pre-political condition. ‘In the Nordic countries, trade unions and employer organisations have not been “social partners”, but “labour market parties”’ (Kettunen, 2005, p. 35). The above mentioned ‘compromise’ does not mean accepting just any kind of deal each time. It is instead the foundation of all the particular agreements, a foundation in which labour and capital have equal status and power. The first idea was parity between the labour market parties, organised symmetrically at various levels of national society. […] The strong trade unions were supposed to extend democracy in two senses, both as a ‘popular movement’ and as one of the two ‘parties’ making parity-based agreements on the labour market. The second idea was a virtuous circle between efficiency, solidarity and equality. (Kettunen, 2006, pp. 59–60)

The concept can be seen in the words of another Nordic scholar: ‘mediation of the differing interests of labour and capital, and it also was, arguably, disciplining the market in the name of the wider social good’ (Andersson, 2010, p. 37). Necessarily, therefore, Nordic parity and the stability and efficiency associated with it also mean a ‘criterion of immanent critique’, and not ‘a communitarian idea of Labour relations’ (Kettunen, 2005, pp. 34–6). However, in recent decades a less critical and, above all, a less equitable idea of industrial relations and the labour market has been gaining foothold. The reason for this is that the fundamental norms that are the foundation of the Germanic centre of the EU have influenced the factors of the predominant parity. By considerably simplifying and neglecting other factors that might be included (for example, the parity between public and private consumption) I would propose that the Nordic balance between capital and labour comprises the following: Parity is actually a complex idea of the ‘primacy of politics’, in which labour organisations, political parties, welfare state institutions and specific norms in political economy play an important role and shape a hegemonic regime. 1.

Labour market parity between labour and capital: less exploitationbased competition as a fundamental compromise, innovation and upward mobility as an outcome of the compromise. Interconnected parity between union power and pro-labour political parties (including coalitional or parliamentarian partners).7 Relative parity between workers on the shop floor in the single work plants and the union/party at the national level (reforms or projects

2. 3.

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concerning wage earner funds, security of employment, co-decision, and so on).8 4. Parity between export-led competitiveness and wage-led domestic growth (redistribution and equality, tendency to full employment, all in turn further strengthening parity 1). The fourth type of parity (4) between competitive exports and domestic demand is crucial: at present, it is the loss of this parity that defines the deterioration of other factors (social, economic, political and normative). If the export-led trend is structurally predominant, the significance of the other factors declines, thereby negatively affecting the equal power of labour and pay and the possibilities of competing with the help of innovation rather than exploitation. Historically it is not a question of destabilising growth through internal deficit spending (unless the latter appears necessary as a result of cyclical factors or other specific reasons). It is about the even redistribution of wealth gained by increased innovation and productivity also due to domestic demand by guaranteeing its important role in maintaining the interlinked power of welfare, work incomes and organised labour. In this way it is possible to actively and efficiently maintain the norm according to which the balance of power between capital and labour is essential from the point of view of innovation and competitiveness (starting from exports, but not stopping there). If the ‘fourth parity’ between export-driven growth and growth achieved by domestic demand is modified exclusively to benefit the export-driven growth engine, a search for other incentives for competition and innovation becomes necessary: ones which are less democratic and more technocratic, ones which promote the global economy at the expense of the primacy of politics, and incentives with less parity and which are more hierarchical. The welfare state, for instance, would become a factor of social order, as an institution for sheer work flexibility rather than upward mobility. On the contrary, welfare in the (Nordic) model of parity is/should be a factor supporting individual employees when accepting a job so that it is compatible with the worker’s skills and necessities. This way of strengthening the individual wage earner will also function as a collective and institutional strengthening of the parity of labour towards capital, since it will provide labour unions with more power as collective actors. Again, to quote Pauli Kettunen: The welfare states were aimed at breaking away from the paternalist structures of personal subordination […] this resulted in a particular notion of

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social citizenship, in which the focus was on the individual as a party to social relationships rather than on the relationship between the state and the individual. (Kettunen, 2011, p. 22)

This relationship between welfare and social citizenship is embodied in a particularly crucial institution – the insurance funds managed by labour unions in the so-called ‘Ghent model’. The fact that the state has historically supported these insurances in order to secure coverage for growing masses underscores the importance of the balance between domestic demand and export-driven growth for preserving the Nordic parity between capital and labour. This leads us back to the considerable importance of the fourth parity: the primary distribution or redistribution of produced resources in the domestic market also means, to a certain degree, promoting parity as a basic principle of compromise.

NORMATIVE CHANGE IN AN EXPORT-DRIVEN SOCIETY Recent changes have increasingly exposed the Nordic systems to the current Europeanisation, which is a regional variant of globalisation. On a concrete level this takes place in such a way that factors such as external demand and external capital have a much more profound impact on various political, social, normative and economic considerations. In the Nordic countries, where a longer-standing greater balance between capital and labour and lesser exploitation of labour have reinforced resources required by global competition, the following is taking place: 1.

It is increasingly uncertain that the supply of the skills in question will link up with sufficiently stable and secure demand of the skills themselves provided by planned active labour market policies. It is increasingly uncertain that in the foreseeable future growing numbers of people will be included in the labour market if/when they lack the required skills.

2.

According to Rodrick, in these circumstances nations needed to shape up to benefit from integration. This transformed globalization into an end rather than a means. The right and the left differed on the regimen needed. The right emphasized getting the investment environment right – cutting red tape, reducing corporate taxes. The left talked about

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The relational Nordic welfare state investment in skills, education, and infrastructure. But in both cases, it was us who needed to adjust so as to compete in the global economy. (D. Rodrick, 2017)

Competition and its factors will increasingly become a part of the supply side with less politically tailored interaction with demand/investment. Consequently, it is inevitable that people will feel less involved in decision making and in the organisations taking part in it, and that inequality will rise. Equally important in such a situation by virtue of the interaction between domestic and external demand (parity 4) and the parity between capital and work (parity 1) is that incentives to innovation of production and policies connected to it will change qualitatively. These incentives9 will adapt to primary and predominant dependence on external demand. Thus their democratic character (parity between capital and labour and the characteristics it has as a popular movement also inclusive of parity 2 and parity 3) will become increasingly technocratic: a strong currency, less public spending, a lower taxation of corporate profits, and a public debt which must be cut almost regardless of its size and of the need of social or economic investment (Nordenskiöld, 2018). Domestic demand is neglected and at times criminalised.10 In the ordo-liberal change, welfare is not conceived to strengthen the relationship between labour and capital, albeit a social component to be maintained. In such a situation low inflation (affecting wages and welfare) and the ability to achieve growth through exports will be ascribed ever greater significance, while primary distribution (into wages) or redistribution (into welfare) of achieved competitiveness will be neglected (Allen, 2005; Dullien and Guérot, 2012; Schnyder and Siems, 2013). For these reasons the ordo-liberal welfare state nevertheless needs to be within reach of the market and it needs to be streamlined. In addition, the norms that regulate it need to have the doctrine of New Public Management embedded into them. This doctrine is in line with ordo-liberalism: efficiency criteria are sought out of rules technocratically defined in advance and not, for example, by defining them according to citizens’ satisfaction or based on the experiences of personnel (Hood and Dixon, 2015; Borioni, 2017a; Borioni, 2017b). The current paradox is that whereas the Nordic socio-economic systems are able to compete in this situation more easily than others (for example, thanks to considerable spending on innovation and active labour market policies: once again a positive long-term outcome of the strength of organised labour and wages striving for a balanced compromise with capital), ordo-liberalism nevertheless distorts the basic character of the Nordic socio-political system because the underlying aim is to regulate

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through hierarchy rather than through parity. However, ordo-liberalism is not so much an attack on all kinds of regulation. Instead, it mainly involves an idea of re-regulation. The liberal-conservative counter-attack was personified by Margaret Thatcher, but in Europe, the German ordo-liberal matrix has been more encompassing and systematic.11 It established itself in Germany based on the 1918–45 experience. The idea in the background was that a liberal capitalist society must also be based on the state and its fundamental principles and on regulation if it wants to avoid self-destruction/totalitarianism. This required securing employment with the help of a high capacity for exports (the opposite of the growth model for the Nazi period), which, in turn, was and is connected to another basic principle: inflation and domestic demand must be low, as the result of fairly low wages in relation to the potential of the economy (originally that of Germany, nowadays Europe). This reflects the principle we called hierarchisation as being the opposite of Nordic parity.

A NORDIC CASE OF HIERARCHISATION: COMPARING UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION Denmark’s minimum benefits (kontanthjælp) have existed since 1976. For single parents or persons experiencing housing difficulties, the minimum income can be linked with other supports in order to secure a reasonable livelihood. It is possible to add ‘supplementary income’ or ‘education income’ to the minimum income: for single persons taking care of children, the amount is 12,211 DKK, and for those living as couples who have children to take care of, the amount is 8,546 DKK (before taxes). Supplementary income (reform implemented in 2015) is paid at a lower rate to people who have not lived in Denmark for more than one year over the previous eight years. In April 2016 restrictions were enacted, such as the ‘225-hour rule’ which reduces the maximum amount of support for those who have not worked at least six weeks or 225 hours. The monthly reduction is 500–1,000 DKK for unmarried persons, while those who are married could lose their support completely if the spouse also gets minimum income. The ‘minimum support ceiling’ (introduced in 2016), for its part, limits cumulative additional benefits (for example, housing benefits) if total income transfers exceed a certain level. This also applies if the person gets supplementary income (or education income). Another distinguishing feature is that people need to live together, be married or have children under their care. The most recent changes with respect to minimum income were implemented (or reintroduced after the

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term of the Social Democratic party government) by the present centreright government (in power from 2015). The reforms have been primarily based on the following two principles or goals (Styrelsen for Arbejdsmarked og Rekruttering, 2017): – –

Rendering the benefit more temporary by encouraging people to get employment or to study. Emphasising this goal with respect to younger generations with special incentive for education.

In general terms, a slight reduction in the number of recipients has been achieved (people completely dependent on minimum income has gone down from about 154,000 to 145,000). A similar decrease has taken place with respect to the number of recipients of supplementary income for immigrants. At the same time the proportion of recipients who have accepted trainee positions offered by private companies has increased from 10.5 to 12.5 per cent during the considered period. When all categories are taken into consideration (simple minimum income, income paid for education, and supplementary income for immigrants), the number of those activated into taking ordinary jobs has increased by just a little more than 1 per cent. It is significant that the persons who have been employed normally also include those who are subject to the 225-hour rule (see above). Among those that were touched by the 225-hour rule, employment rose more during the second half of 206 than among the other recipients of kontanthjælp. Although the maximum ceiling for income transfers for those who cannot find at least 225 hours of work in a year amounts to a real incentive for a certain number of people (especially in a country like Denmark where growth is present and the labour market is positive, while at the same time it is uncertain if the same applies to different conditions), the description is not exhaustive if it does not take into consideration the large group of people who are unable to meet the activation parameters even under positive economic conditions. According to Cevea think tank (Cevea, 2017) the negative consequence is an increase in poverty (income below 60 per cent of median income) among families receiving minimum unemployment benefits who, until the most recent reforms were made, were entitled to additional benefits for housing or those linked with the number of family members. This indicates that the proportion of those receiving minimum income in poor households has grown from 34.7 per cent to 40.2 per cent since the changes took effect. The impact of the change can be seen when

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considering the under-age children of the households in question. For example, the upper limit for accumulated income transfers declined by 1,500 DKK a month with respect to housing benefits. These families have 34,400 under-age children living in them, and the Cevea study indicates that the number of children living in poverty is nearly 8,000 more than in 2015. The impact grows as the number of minors increases. The study analysed the development of the numbers of those receiving the minimum income in the period between 2005 and 2015. The study showed that the group receiving minimum income was the only one with a slight growth in the number of recipients (from nearly 125,000 individuals to more than 150,000) compared with groups receiving other forms of benefits. On the other hand, restrictive reforms carried out before 2015 in other welfare institutions (early retirement, unemployment insurance of the ‘Ghent’ kind, ‘efterløn’) had all led to a decline in the number of beneficiaries by nearly 100,000 individuals (Cevea, 2016). This meant that as the number of working-age recipients of minimum income (aged 16–66) rose by 6 per cent just before the reforms of 2015, this welfare institution had started to function as substitute income for an increasing number of individuals. Consequently, kontanthjælp largely covers the kinds of individuals who are not immediately ready for work, and who are taken into consideration as such already in other connections. Cevea shows that, also on the basis of development that took place in Germany, the amount of minimum income has a special effect on the formation of low pay (Cevea, 2015). There happens to be a clear connection between the reduction of Germany’s minimum unemployment benefit enacted as a result of reforms by the Schröder government and the lower deciles of the German pay scale. The annual amount of the minimum income declined in Germany from the equivalent of 54,296 DKK in 1994 to 46,115 DKK in 2010 (15 per cent). At the same time the two most modest pay deciles declined in Germany, from 114,920 DKK to 71,520 DKK (lowest: down by 37.8 per cent) and from 156,000 DKK to 116,965 DKK (second lowest: nearly 25 per cent). This calls into question the assumption that a simple cut in the minimum unemployment benefit could serve as an incentive to work by increasing the difference between the supported minimum income and the expected income from work. That difference is not actually growing in Germany, so it does not function as an incentive for activation. The incentive that was last mentioned has always been considered feasible in Nordic models, but quite differently: on the basis of the interaction of relatively high income transfers directed towards unemployment benefits

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(plus other forms of extensive welfare), and wages that have been kept at a good level. A concrete example of a ‘virtuous circle’: based on past experience it would not seem necessary to reform the Danish minimum income by turning the Nordic system into an ordo-liberal one (with greater inequality). The Swedish system is based on a national standard (riksnorm) of minimum income, in which the basic sum varies in accordance with the cost of living of different residential areas. For example, in Stockholm the basic sum is about 4,000 SEK to which rental costs are added, and it is higher than in the rest of the country. The system with a national standard takes various costs carefully into consideration, such as the number of members in the family, the ages of the children, the schools, meals that the children might eat at home, other people who may live in the household and daily expenses. Considering that a newborn child means a benefit of nearly 3,000 SEK, and a benefit for the care of a closely related adult person brings in as much as 5,900 SEK, the sums vary considerably (Malmö stad, 2018; Socialstyrelsen, 2018). The differences are the result of the historical development of the two Nordic systems. Much can be explained by choices made as a result of the turning point caused by the great crisis of 1992. At that time the growth of the number of unemployed and the insurance coverage linked with wages (Ghent type unemployment insurance, A-kassor) threatened to impose considerable expenses on the state. Although the nondiscretionary basic payment had been considerably higher until then, a system was adopted in which benefits were not actually cut (the cut was only partially implemented) but simply monitored more closely. Ever since then (Carl Bildt’s centre-right government was in power at the time) increases in corresponding sums were also not automatic (unlike in Denmark). Instead, they were based on political decisions. Accordingly, all cost items in the national standard system in 2018 were raised by 1.6 per cent from the 2017 level, while the sum paid for each dependent child was raised by 200 SEK for all age groups. The parties and think tanks from the centre and the right, in particular, considered the choice made in 1992 to be a successful one. For instance, Jesper Ahlgren, the head economist at the Timbro research centre, feels that larger, non-discretionary basic payments would endanger the employment incentive, the goal of the Nordic welfare systems, whose lustre the countries want to keep undimmed. For this reason, the liberal-conservative Reinfeldt and Borg government introduced an upper limit for total benefits in 2007, before Denmark did. It could be added to this that the Social Democrats, who had been in power most of the time since 1992, have hardly made any changes to this. The Social Democrats

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are also committed to the so-called ‘krona för krona’ model of thinking, according to which new expenses can be based only on savings, with respect to the public debt. Although the latter is relatively low, the reduction of it must be continuing, even though it would mean reinforcement of choices of the centre-right. This explains the thorough supervision of money flows directed at minimum income: even visits to a doctor or dentist are compensated only after the visit, and within a minimum of one month; and each additional cost item requires a proper approval if reimbursement for it is desired (Rockwoolfonden, 2015). It is unlikely that even a sudden change of direction could affect the minimum income: in the dominant ‘krona för krona’ model of thinking possible additional resources could be added into the so-called Ghent insurance. It would also seem that this last issue has largely been left without attention, if Löfven, leader of the Social Democrats, admits that in the years of his government, 2014–18, he had not acted as he would have liked to, or as he had promised. He concedes that the coverage of income and the compensation level should grow stronger, and that the work of his government has also fallen short with respect to the so-called top-slicing (‘hyvling’) model (the possibility of employers to decide at their discretion on changes to working hours and pay) (Wreder, 2018). A very similar problem also exists in Denmark: over the most recent 20 years (1995–2014) the unemployment compensation level declined by 25.4 per cent in the field of agriculture and forestry, 17.5 per cent in welfare and health, while in industry and public administration, the compensation level was 15.4 and 20.4 per cent lower (Cevea Og Danske Sundhedsorganisationers A-Kasse, 2016, p. 19). Frederik I. Pedersen (Pedersen, 2018) shows us, in my view, that a price is being paid in Denmark for the employment benefit reforms described above. While employment lately increased from 1,740,000 in 2010 to 1,960,000 in 2018, wages have not followed the same tendency as could be expected according to supply-demand laws. Presently, they increase at an even lower rate than they did in 2010. Both Ghent and basic income (kontanthjælp) benefits determine the ‘floor’ of the labour market, and in this sense they are intertwined and strongly determine the real balance between capital and labour, affecting pay.12 If we consider a relatively longer time, the same tendency seems to be present also in Sweden: the proportion of industrial wages (including social contributions for welfare) declined from about 85 per cent from 1980 to 63 per cent in 2000 (Bengtsson, 2013, pp. 84–6; Bengtsson, 2014). The trend gets support from other sources (SEB, 2017). According to these sources, wage increases will be relatively low, which will aggravate the National Bank’s possibilities to accomplish the inflation target. The SEB report

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also points out that the wage share has been decreasing for quite a long time. This, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) confirms in its World Economic Outlook, is due to the fact that the result of productivity and technology improvements have mostly been harvested by profits. Other factors to the weak wage growth are according to SEB related to better possibilities for foreign companies to establish themselves in Sweden. Linked with this is the OECD study which stipulates: ‘estimated impact on the 1990–2010 growth rate of GDP of changes in inequality occurred between 1985 and 2005’ (note that the most recent and stronger inequality trends are not taken into account): Rising inequality is estimated to have knocked more than 10 percentage points off growth in Mexico and New Zealand. In the US, UK, Sweden, Finland and Norway, the growth rate would have been more than one fifth higher had income disparities not widened.13 This would seem to confirm that, along with increased inequality, the developments regarding wages and salaried work imply that more domestic growth should be used in order to fuel higher, more reliable and more evenly distributed economic growth in general. (Cingano, 2014, p. 18)

Correspondingly, growth in the number of working poor in the Nordic countries has been considerable, even though the growth is connected with fairly low starting levels. Another point of view confirming all this is that the percentage of working poor had already grown quite fast in 2004–08 in Denmark, Sweden and Norway (more than 20 per cent) and also accelerated somewhat in Finland (Seikel and Spannagel, 2018). Besides Malta and Germany, the latter ranking number one, this is the fastest growth in those years. Before the reforms of the early 1990s it was possible, owing to the different labour law systems of Sweden and Denmark (Sweden’s high level of legal job security thanks to the so-called Las legislation, compared with Denmark’s very flexible system), that the reduction of the minimum income and Ghent insurance might lead to only a small increase in social distress and inequality. After that many things have changed, as indicated by, for example, the acceleration of differences in income when measured by the Gini index. In Sweden there has also been a return to public debate on the so-called class society on the pages of the Dagens Nyheter newspaper (Suhonen, 2018a) and authoritatively in a text by Göran Therborn (Therborn, 2018). Among other things, this return is connected with pay adjustments and the inadequacy of the Ghent insurance funds in comparison with the wealth that has been produced

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(Nilsson, 2018). But as was mentioned above, minimum unemployment benefits, not just Ghent model ones, also have a role in this complicated situation.

RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS: EQUALITY OR HIERARCHY? With the help of what was mentioned above we can define the boundary between the Nordic concept of welfare and the German concept of ordo-liberalism in order to better understand the previous distinctions between the two models and the later developments and contaminations. According to Esping-Andersen, a fundamental dualism serves as the distinctive feature of the residual liberal welfare systems: ‘Low-risk individuals are expected to prevail independently on the market, while the fate of high-risk individuals is to become dependent on welfare’14 (Esping-Andersen, 2000, pp. 131–3). In a residual system real goals for change are not set according to how the labour market produces demand and supply for skills. In the United States, the workfare system simply emphasises ‘the desire of possible beneficiaries to accept a job. “Productivism” in the Nordic Countries, on the contrary, requires welfare states to offer all citizens the resources they need for work and the appropriate motivation (and jobs to be filled)’ (Esping-Andersen, 2000, pp. 138–9). In the Nordic model the competitiveness of low-risk individuals is also based on a significant reform of capitalist production and labour markets, which is also the basis of the rejection of welfare dependence of the underachieving social classes. The two tiers of unemployment benefits (Ghent insurances and basic benefits) need to function in such a way that they get the production system of the market to correspond to a high level of pay and in such a way as to promote demand for skilled labour for all. This gradually means or should mean both creation and actual demand for real skills, not a mere ‘punitive’ activation – that is, mere obligation to accept any activation or job. To this end, in reforming and innovating labour market policies based on a mix of benefits/rights and activation/ obligations, policymaking should not be committed to the latter dimension. As shown by the aforementioned data, the minimum unemployment benefit in the German Hartz IV reform leads to welfare benefits implying the acceptance of low-wage jobs and providing subsidies for them. Nordic minimum unemployment benefits, for their part, were to a great extent developed both as the lower but organically integrated level of a whole system aimed at reforming capitalist markets, and as a necessary

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tool for supporting upskilling while the (properly reformed) market produces reasonable jobs and consequently (as Esping-Andersen submits) ‘the appropriate motivations’ to work. Reforms carried out in recent years change this institutional context by modifying the prerequisites for eligibility for unemployment benefits, especially minimum benefits, in an ordo-liberal direction. This is a result of the fact that, unlike before, the Nordic countries, like all other European countries, neglect the factors of (especially domestic) demand, meaning that they meet, to a lesser and lesser degree, the final requirement mentioned by Esping-Andersen, the coordinated creation of ‘jobs to be filled’. According to the historical synthesis proposed by J.H. Petersen, this is reflected in longer-term changes which can be condensed into three important phases according to the conceptual model of rights-obligationsopportunities (Petersen, 2014, pp. 153–6). –

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The first is the most hegemonic phase carrying out the Nordic model. In this phase the normative concept is rights linked with opportunities, since structural reforms of capitalism proceed both by gradually eliminating competition based on low pay and by creating room for domestic demand. In addition to more extensive rights, a combination of innovation and domestic demand makes it possible for active labour market policies to be better linked to real (job) opportunities. The ‘duty’ to support welfare through personal action as soon as possible is therefore rendered easier (nor is it hierarchical). Thus, discipline in labour market activation is only implicitly (and not obsessively) mentioned in public discourse. The phase is easily associated with Esping-Andersen’s ‘de-commodification’. However, we need to note that this concept is inadequate unless it includes the goal of a ‘rich re-commodification’ as an outcome of a typical ‘virtuous circle’ of parity between capital and labour. In the 1990s the combination of rights, obligations and opportunities was guided towards an increased focus on efficient activation (by steering more resources towards activation policies, in which Sweden had been a pioneer) so rights and obligations were linked closer together than before. This phase is important, as the centre-left governments successfully showed, after the general neo-liberal trends of the 1980s: welfare is not about an unbalanced relationship between active funders and passive beneficiaries (an ‘unsolvable contradiction’ Esping-Andersen rightly ascribes to the liberal welfare model). Instead, it is about the relation between reformed markets and strong rights as well as significantly important infrastructure in which it is possible to constantly upgrade the skills needed in globalisation.

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However, this change would be more difficult to visualise if we were not adding the concept of ‘rich commodification’ to EspingAndersen’s sheer ‘de-commodification’. In this phase the engine of growth was primarily seen to be in globalisation, and domestic demand fell into second place in significance. Nonetheless, Swedish governments under Persson reinforced the levels of substitution in the Ghent system (which remained as a cornerstone), and Danish governments led by P.N. Rasmussen began all reforms by giving a ‘kick start’ to growth. In addition, measures were introduced in Denmark, such as ‘sabbaticals’ for those with jobs, with the aim of (a) adapting the skills of employees to future tasks with greater demands, and (b) to create real possibilities for work for those who were being activated in the welfare and labour market policies system. Regardless of the real intentions of the governments of Persson and Nyrup Rasmussen, the fact that the EU focused on global demand instead of domestic demand amounted to a weakening of opportunities in the long term. To summarise, it can be said that the governments in question continued to seek a balance between rights and opportunities historically consistent with the traditional Nordic ‘social democratic’ models, even though a weakening of rights could be seen already then (secure and better jobs at the end of activation) in favour of obligations (binding activation in any case). In the model of four parities presented above this corresponds to the fourth, that is, to the first weakening of the motor of domestic demand while an increased (discursive and effective) reliance on external demand is taking place. In the last phase there is a qualitative leap and obligations are present as prerequisites for rights (giving before receiving). Although the differences between liberal conservatives and social democrats remain clear,15 this implies a significant novelty paving the way to ordo-liberal reforms. The (‘krona för krona’) determination in seeking to achieve a budget surplus even with a small public debt is a clear sign of this. This reality (in 2017 Sweden’s budget surplus rose to 61 billion SEK (Konjunktur-institutet, 2017)16) seems problematic in extensive fields of the welfare state and with respect to the development of pay for welfare employees.17 This creates pressures for the welfare state and affects growing inequality especially considering that taxation in recent years has gradually decreased in Sweden (from 50 per cent in 2000 to 42 and 43 per cent in 2011). Economists such as Calmfors feel, as might be expected, that it is necessary and

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sustainable to respond to the challenges currently facing the welfare state by bringing taxation back to at least 45 per cent (Nordenskiöld 2018).

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4. 5. 6.

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8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

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‘It is not accidental, that Europe’s most successful welfare states were created in ethnically homogeneous Scandinavia. People in those countries could sense that they understood their neighbours and fellow citizens and they shared a close link with them’ (Taylor, 2010). The costs of the labour market authority (AMS) rose in the state budget from 2 per cent to 5 per cent (Meidner and Rehn, 1953, pp. 144–8, 148–9, 149–55; Magnusson, 1996, pp. 452–4; Kettunen, 2006, pp. 59–60). On the choice made in connection with the changes in the 1990s to adapt skills and knowledge to high wages and not vice versa, see Torfing and Dreyer Hansen (2004). According to Ojala et al. (2006, p. 269), since 1981 Sweden has increased its spending in R&D from 2.4 per cent to 4 per cent of GDP; Finland’s increase was from 1 per cent in 1981 to nearly 4 per cent in 2004. Thanks to Henning Jørgensen and Pauli Kettunen, I have developed a wider formula: ‘Rich Commodification and Parity Complex’ (Borioni, 2010). Reaching a historical world record on the Gini index 0.20 (Cingano, 2014). Meidner’s expression was used at the congress of Swedish Metalworkers’ Union in 1961 (Wadensjö et al., 1989). ‘The LO economist Gösta Rehn coined the concept “the safety of the wings” in order to describe the collective sharing of risks in social problems such as unemployment and sickness’ (LO Sverige, 2014, p. 12). More than a century ago, Legien, leader of the German trade unions, expressed this particular parity as follows: ‘The neutrality of German unions must not be intended as a refusal of identifying a specific political party as politically representative of the unions’ interest […] it just means that unionised workers are never to knuckle under the needs of any political organisation […]’. Unlike other (for example, Leninist) unionist cultures, unionists belonging to the democratic socialist tendency believe that union-party ties are important (unlike syndicalists) but in parity (unlike communists) (von Beyme, 1979, p. 13). Among many examples, for a comparative European overview, Fulton (2007). The distinguished economist Sylos Labini argued that also in Italy rising wages could spur productivity and help Italy permanently shake off its position as a latecomer. He called it the ‘Ricardo effect’ (Sylos Labini, 1975). One possible, albeit very initial, example in Asmussen (2010, pp. 454–5): the German government, which had left its expansive policies behind affecting Denmark’s (social democratic) policies in the mid-1970s. Werner Bonfeld’s conference is concise and impressive: https://m.youtube.com/watch? v=ZW-8QpbaSjU (last accessed 22 April 2019). Frederik I. Pedersen, the head economist of the Danish 3F labour union, notes that other prerequisites for relatively high pay increases do exist (Pedersen, 2018). This is confirmed in Asmussen (2018b). To reopen the debate about equality being (or not) a Nordic pre-political feature, see Bengtsson (2017) and Bengtsson (2018). According to Bengtsson, there is no such pre-political feature. Esping-Andersen also describes this in the Italian version of Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies, I fondamenti sociali delle economie postindustriali at pages 143–4 emphasising the significance of active labour market policies in the Nordic model compared with the conservative and residual model. The way Asmussen (2018a) describes how Danish centre-right governments (2001–11) applied the rule called ‘skattestop’ (the total share of taxes in GDP may never grow

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although single taxes may) reminds of an ordo-liberal approach setting basic rules regardless of any outcome resulting from the impact of democratic debate. This is a source of differences and disagreement between the labour Union confederation and the Social Democratic party (Suhonen, 2018b). The budget cuts within the public sector are related to low-wage increases, and that setbacks within the public sector can threaten the social contract unless strong new measures are implemented (SEB, 2017).

16. 17.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Allen, Christopher S. (2005), ‘“Ordo-Liberalism” Trumps Keynesianism: Economic Policy in the Federal Republic of Germany and the EU’, in Bernard H. Moss (ed.), Monetary Union in Crisis: The European Union as a Neo-Liberal Construction, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 199–221. Andersson, J. (2010), The Library and the Workshop: Social Democracy and Capitalism in the Knowledge Age, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Asmussen, B. (2010), ‘Nyt syn på Anker Jørgensens økonomiske politik’, Historisk Tidskrift, 2 (110), 432–93. Asmussen, Balder (2018a), ‘Sådan fik nyliberalismen fodfæste i vores økonomiske modeller’, accessed 30 December 2018 at https://magtogpenge.blogspot. com/2018/05/sadan-fik-nyliberalismen-indflydelse-pa.html. Asmussen, Balder (2018b), ‘Uligheden stiger med enestående hast i Danmark’, accessed 2 January 2019 at https://piopio.dk/uligheden-stiger-med-enestaaendehast-i-danmark/. Bengtsson, Erik (2013), ‘Löneandelen i Sverige sedan 1850’, in Erik Bengtsson (ed.), Den sänkta löneadelen: orsaker, konsekvenser och handlingsalternativ, Stockholm: Premiss förlag, pp. 79–98. Bengtsson, E. (2014), ‘Labour’s Share in Twentieth Century Sweden: A Reinterpretation’, Scandinavian Economic History Review, 62 (3), 290–314. Bengtsson, E. (2017), ‘När och varför blev Sverige ett jämlikt land?’, Politologerna, accessed 6 January 2019 at https://politologerna.wordpress.com/2017/ 09/12/nar-och-varfor-blev-sverige-ett-jamlikt-land/. Bengtsson, E. (2018), ‘Jämlikhet: en skandinavisk specialitet?’, Dagens Arena, accessed 6 January 2019 at http://www.dagensarena.se/essa/jamlikhet-enskandinavisk-specialitet/. Beyme, K. von (1979), ‘Germania: L’integrazione subordinata’, Sindacati e partiti in Europa: Rapporti e problemi, 73, 5–23. Bonefeld, W. (2013), ‘From Adam Smith to Ordo-Liberalism: On the Political Form of Market Liberty’, Conference of York University on Neoliberalism, accessed 6 January 2019 at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW-8QpbaSjU. Borioni, P. (2010), ‘I modelli nordici: genesi, concetti, sfide’, Economia & Lavoro, 3 (XLIV), 49–86. Borioni, P. (2017a), ‘New public management, istituzioni politiche, economia e welfare’, Economia & Lavoro, 2 (LI), 63–4. Borioni, P. (2017b), ‘Istituzioni di welfare e comunicazione politica: Un dibattito danese’, Democrazia e Diritto, 3 (141), 185–215.

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Borioni, P. (2017c), ‘Nordic Welfare in Post-War Italy’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 22 (2), 212–31. Borioni, P. and N.F. Christiansen (2015), Danimarca, Milano: Unicopli. Cevea (2015), Kontanthjælpen påvirker lønniveauet, accessed 21 January 2019 at https://cevea.dk/filer/dokumenter/analyser/kontanthjaelpen_saetter_loenniveauet_ faerdig.pdf. Cevea (2016), Efter reformerne: Flere får kontanthjælp, færre får efterløn, førtidspension og dagpenge, accessed 21 January 2019 at https://cevea.dk/filer/ dokumenter/analyser/Efter_reformerne_Flere_faar_kontanthjlp_1.pdf. Cevea (2017), Kontanthjælpsreformerne skaber flere fattige børn, accessed 21 January 2019 at https://cevea.dk/filer/dokumenter/analyser/Efter_reformerne_ Flere_faar_kontanthjlp_1.pdf. Cevea and Danske Sundhedsorganisationers A-Kasse (2016), 20 procent ringere på 20 år, accessed 21 January 2019 at https://cevea.dk/filer/dokumenter/ analyser/Rapport-om-dagpenge-DSA-august-2016.pdf. Christensen, Jacob (2005), ‘Socialreformen af 1933’, in Jørn Henrik Petersen and Klaus Petersen (eds), 13 Reformer af den danske velfærdstat, Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, pp. 81–96. Cingano, F. (2014), ‘Trends in Income Inequality and its Impact on Economic Growth’, OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. 163, OECD Publishing. Dullien, S. and U. Guérot (2012), ‘The Long Shadow of Ordo-Liberalism: Germany’s Approach to the Euro Crisis’, ECFR/49, 22 February 2012. Edling, Niels (2006), ‘Limited Universalism’, in Niels Finn Christiansen, Klaus Petersen, Niels Edling and Per Haave (eds), The Nordic Model of Welfare: A Historical Reappraisal, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, pp. 99–143. Erixon, L. (2011), ‘A Social Innovation or the Product of its Time? The Rehn-Meidner Model’s Relation to Contemporary Economics and the Stockholm School’, European Journal of History of the Economic Thought, 18 (1), 85–123. Esping-Andersen, Gøsta (2000), I fondamenti sociali delle economie postindustriali, Bologna: il Mulino. Fulton, Lionel (2007), The Forgotten Resource: Corporate Governance and Employee Board-Level Representation – The Situation in France, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK, Düsseldorf, Hans-Böckler-Stiftung. Grytten, O.H. (2009), ‘Why Was the Great Depression Not So Great in the Nordic Countries’, The Journal of European Economic History, 2 (3), 369–403. Hood, Christopher and Ruth Dixon (2015), A Government that Works Better and Costs Less? Evaluating Three Decades of Reform and Change in UK Central Government, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jørgensen, Henning (2008), ‘The Development of the Nordic Welfare State Systems’, in Lars Magnusson, Henning Jørgensen and Jon Erik Dølvik (eds), The Nordic Approach to Growth and Welfare, Brussels: ETUI-REHS, pp. 23–48.

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Kettunen, Pauli (1997), ‘The Society of Virtuous Circles’, in Pauli Kettunen and Hanna Eskola (eds), Models, Modernity and the Myrdals, Helsinki: Renvall Institute, pp. 153–73. Kettunen, Pauli (2005), ‘Corporate Citizenship and Social Partnership’, in Lars Folke Landgren and Pirkko Hautamäki (eds), People, Citizen, Nation, Helsinki: Renvall Institute, pp. 28–47. Kettunen, Pauli (2006), ‘The Power of International Comparison’, in Niels Finn Christiansen, Klaus Petersen, Nils Edling and Peer Haave, The Nordic Model of Welfare: A Historical Reappraisal, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, pp. 31–65. Kettunen, Pauli (2011), ‘The Sellers of Labour as Social Citizens: A Utopian Wage Work Society in the Nordic Visions of Welfare’, in Helena Blomberg and Nanna Kildal (eds), Workfare and Welfare State Legitimacy, Helsinki: NordWel, pp. 16–45. Konjunktur-institutet (2017), Kommentar till budgetpropositionen för 2018, accessed 6 January 2019 at https://www.konj.se/om-ki/aktuellt/nyhetsarkiv/ 2017-09-20-kommentar-till-budgetpropositionen-for-2018.html. Lewin, Leif (1988), Ideology and Strategy: A Century of Swedish Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lie, Einar (2012), Norsk økonomisk politikk etter 1905, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. LO Sverige (2014), ‘Vingarnas trygghet i en modern och hållbar arbetslinje: Den svenska modellen på 2010-talet’, Stockholm: LO Sverige. Magnusson, Lars (1996), Sveriges Ekonomiska Historia, Stockholm: Prisma. Malmö stad (2018), Riksnorm och belopp för boendekostnad, accessed 6 January 2019 at https://malmo.se/Social—familjefragor/Nar-pengarna-inte-racker/ Forsorjningsstod/Riksnorm-och-belopp-for-boendekostnad.html. Meidner, Rudolf and Gösta Rehn (1953), Fackföreningsrörelsen och den fulla sysselsättningen, Stockholm: LO i Sverige. Nilsson, M.M. (2018), ‘Inga skäl att sänka a-kassan’, Arbetet, accessed 6 January 2019 at https://arbetet.se/2018/05/15/inga-skal-att-sanka-a-kassan/. Nordenskiöld, T. (2018), ‘Tunga ekonomer sågar skattesänkarlinjen’, Dagens industri, accessed 25 November 2018 at https://www.di.se/nyheter/tungaekonomer-sagar-skattesankarlinjen/. Ojala, Jari, Jari Eloranta and Jukka Jalava (eds) (2006), The Road to Prosperity, Helsinki: SKS. Pedersen, F.I. (2018), ‘Der er både plads og råd til højere lønstigninger’, UgebrevetA4, accessed 15 December 2018 at https://www.ugebreveta4.dk/derer-baade-plads-og-raad-til-hoejere-loenstigninger_21339.aspx. Petersen, Jørn Henrik (2014), Pligt & Ret, Ret & Pligt: Refleksioner over den socialdemokratiske idéarv, Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag. Rockwoolfondens forskningsenhed (2015), ‘Kontanthjælpens værdi udhulet gennem 25 år’, accessed 7 October 2019 at https://www.rockwoolfonden.dk/ app/uploads/2016/01/_september2015_DK_Kontanthjlp_WEB.pdf? Rodrick, Dani (2017), ‘The Trouble with Globalization’, The Milken Institute Review, Fourth Quarter, accessed 15 March 2019 at https://www.milkenreview. org/articles/the-trouble-with-globalization. Schnyder, Gerhard and Mathias Siems (2013), ‘The Ordoliberal Variety of Neoliberalism’, in Suzanne Konzelmann and Marc Fovargue-Davies (eds),

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Banking Systems in the Crisis: The Faces of Liberal Capitalism, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 250–68. SEB (2017), Lönebildning och penningpolitik i otakt, accessed 6 January 2019 at https://sebgroup.com/sv/press/nyheter/lonebildning-och-penningpolitik-i-otakt. Seikel, D. (2018), ‘Activation into In-Work Poverty?’, accessed 6 January 2019 at https://www.socialeurope.eu/activation-work-poverty. Seikel, Daniel and Dorothee Spannagel (2018), ‘Activation and In-Work Poverty’, in Henning Lohmann and Ive Marx (eds), Edward Elgar Handbook of Research on In-Work Poverty, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 245–60. Socialstyrelsen (2018), Riksnormen för försörjningsstöd, accessed 16 March 2019 at http://www.socialstyrelsen.se/SiteCollectionDocuments/Riksnormenforsorjningsstod-2018.pdf. Stråth, Bo (2000), Mellan medbestämmande och medarbetare: Metall och samhällsutvecklingen, 1957–1976, Stockholm: Metall. Styrelsen for Arbejdsmarked og Rekruttering (2017), Kontanthjælpsreformen og Jobreform fase 1 Status september 2017, bilag 1, accessed 15 April 2019 at https://star.dk/media/3165/status_kontanthjaelp-jobreformen_sep2018.pdf. Suhonen, D. (2018a), ‘Ryktet om klassamhällets död betydligt överdrivet’, accessed 6 January 2019 at https://www.dn.se/debatt/ryktet-om-klassam hallets-dod-betydligt-overdrivet/. Suhonen, D. (2018b), ‘Magdalena Andersson bör lära av Anders Borg’, accessed 6 January at https://www.aftonbladet.se/ledare/a/XweXm7/magdalena-anderssonbor-lara-av-anders-borg. Sylos Labini, Paolo (1975), Sindacati, inflazione e produttività, Bari and Roma: Laterza. Taylor, Charles (2010), ‘Solidarity in a Pluralist Age, Social Europe’, accessed 4 January 2019 at https://www.socialeurope.eu/solidarity-in-a-pluralist-age. Therborn, Göran (2018), Kapitalet, överheten och alla vi andra: klassamhället i Sverige – det rådande och det kommande, Stockholm: Arkiv förlag. Torfing, Jacob and Allan Dreyer Hansen (2004), Det stille sporskifte i velfærdsstaten – en diskursteoretisk beslutningsprocesanalyse, Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag. Wadensjö, Eskil, Åke Dahlberg and Bertil Holmlund (eds) (1989), Vingarnas trygghet: arbetsmarknad, ekonomi och politik, Lund: Dialogos. Wreder, Johanna (2018), ‘Stefan Löfven: Varför skulle lag och ordning vara höger?’, Arbetet, accessed 6 January 2019 at https://arbetet.se/2018/04/26/ stefan-lofven-varfor-skulle-lag-och-ordning-vara-hoger/.

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5. The rise and fall of the Nordic utopia of an egalitarian wage work society Pauli Kettunen INTRODUCTION The concepts of ‘social partners’ and ‘social dialogue’ were in the late 1980s adopted in policy manifestations of the European Communities, and they are also included in the constitutional Lisbon Treaty of the European Union. However, the official translations of the Lisbon Treaty into Danish, Finnish and Swedish, the languages of the three Nordic EU members, do not talk about social partners, but ‘labour market parties’.1 Both expressions share a notion of symmetry, yet they differ significantly. In the Nordic concept, ‘labour market’ appears instead of ‘social’, and ‘parties’ instead of ‘partners’. One can interpret that the Nordic vocabulary is focused on markets and conflicting interests, whereas the EU language indicates a notion of community and different functions harmoniously complementing each other. It may not be just a paradoxical coincidence that the symmetric communitarian language of social partnership gained popularity in Europe at a time of increasing asymmetries between labour and capital in globalised capitalism. While this language reflects an old legacy of Social Catholicism (Hyman 2001, 38–65), it is also associated with policies for reshaping nation-states and the European Union as competitive communities. This implies that the vocabulary of harmony not only stems from traditions of social thought, which are divergent from Nordic thinking, but also indicates a current challenge for the so-called Nordic model. In order to understand this challenge, we should go beyond the conventional images of the Nordic model in which the strong state is opposed to markets and cooperation is opposed to conflict. Building on my earlier work,2 I argue that a particular relational understanding of agency played a crucial role in the Nordic model of 95

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social reform. A core element was recognition of divergent interests formed in asymmetrical social relations. This notion of agency came to be effective, firstly, in the politics making the system of social regulation, secondly, in the policies through which the system functioned, and thirdly, in the encounters between the policies and people’s life-worlds. I will approach the nexus of these three levels from the point of view of the latter, focusing on the notion of social citizenship. In the process of the making of the welfare state, a particular combination of wage work and social citizenship seems to have developed in the Nordic countries, in which interests rather than rights were put to the fore. I begin by critically discussing two influential accounts that point out state-guaranteed individual social rights as a characteristic of the Nordic model: the theses of ‘de-commodification’ by the Danish sociologist Gøsta Esping-Andersen and ‘statist individualism’ by the Swedish historian Lars Trägårdh. I then examine the emergence of modes of thought and action through which an interest-oriented notion of social citizenship became a part of the Nordic pattern of social change and reform. Two closely related ideas – the idea of parity between workers and employers and the idea of a virtuous circle between divergent interests – combined democracy and citizenship with paid work and conflicting interests. This combination provided a politically effective criterion for the critique of asymmetric social relationships. In the last part of the chapter, I argue that this combination has been questioned by policies for competitive national (and European) communities, responding to what are defined as imperatives of globalised and financialised capitalism. The chapter is not an analysis of new empirical findings, but a historical reinterpretation of facts that are mostly well known to those interested in past and present Nordic welfare states and industrial relations. The methodological guideline for my reinterpretation demands sensitivity to the historicity of concepts and the ability to take conceptualisations as an inherent part of politics and policies.

INTEREST-ORIENTED SOCIAL CITIZENSHIP The British sociologist T.H. Marshall (1950) famously distinguished between three stages and aspects of citizenship, each of them associated with the rights the state guaranteed to individuals: civil rights, political rights and social rights. In his Marshall-inspired analysis, EspingAndersen (1985; 1990) concludes that ‘politics against markets’ in the Nordic countries resulted in a high degree of ‘de-commodification’ and thus reinforced social citizenship. The concept of de-commodification is

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indebted to Karl Polanyi’s (1944 [2001]) historical analysis on the commodification of labour in the making of a capitalist market economy. ‘De-commodification’ refers to policies that liberate people from uncertainties of living associated with the character of labour as a commodity. Social security is provided in case people cannot participate in labour markets. Responding to feminist critique, Esping-Andersen completed his analysis by concluding that a high degree of ‘de-familialisation’ is a major characteristic of the ‘social democratic welfare regime’, as well. Both ‘de-commodification’ and ‘de-familialisation’ implicate the empowerment of the individual by the state, be it against uncertainties in markets or dependencies in family. In a still more programmatic way, the idea of a strong state promoting individual autonomy appears in Trägårdh’s thesis on ‘statist individualism’ (Trägårdh 1997; Berggren and Trägårdh 2006). While Esping-Andersen focuses on the relationships between state and market, Trägårdh’s point of departure is in discussions on the relationships between the state and civil society. In the 1980s and 1990s, Swedish right-wing critics of what they saw as a patronising social democratic welfare state wished to create or revitalise an autonomous civil society. It was non-existent in Sweden, they claimed. Trägårdh agreed that the idea of a civil society confronting the state had not developed in the Nordic countries, yet he did not agree with the critique of the patronising state. On the contrary, the strong state, when developing into the welfare state, had oriented to securing individual autonomy and individual resources. Social solidarity was realised through high taxes, public systems of social security and vast public services for health, care and education. All this helped liberate people from the personal relations of subordination, especially those in the family, and, as a part of efforts for full employment, made women doubly dependent on the welfare state, both on public sector jobs and the services that facilitated combining motherhood and employment outside the home. Social security became based on ‘the individual-state social contract’. Neither Esping-Andersen nor Trägårdh can be criticised for reducing social policies to any inherent non-political agency of the state. In their works, the state is strong by virtue of its being a target, an arena and a tool of politics. Both of them talk about the ‘social democratic’ welfare state, but they see it – and also the ‘social democratic road to power’ (Esping-Andersen 1985) – as an outcome of compromises between different class interests. In accordance with the long tradition of Nordic historical research and historically oriented social science, the class of freeholder peasants and farmers appears as an important political force in their interpretations of the origins of the Nordic welfare state. It is fully

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compatible with the theses of de-commodification and statist individualism to recognise a powerful role of interest organisations, including trade unions and employer organisations, in the politics shaping the institutions of the welfare state and the policies implementing the norms of regulation, redistribution and welfare provision. Concerning the policy outputs in people’s life-world, it is no doubt possible to analyse the Nordic developments of social security and equality as an extension of the Marshallian kind of social citizenship, focusing on the evolution of state-guaranteed individual social rights. However, both ‘de-commodification’ and ‘statist individualism’ seem to marginalise something important. The policies these concepts refer to have not just protected individuals from the imperatives and arbitrariness of markets, nor just liberated them from subordinating social relationships in family and working life. Getting rid of the paternalist ties of social subordination did not mean that just the individuals and the state would have remained as parties to the ‘social contract’, as the thesis on statist individualism seems to argue. In the Nordic countries, the connection between social equality and citizenship – the notion of social citizenship – developed through policies and collective actions, in which people were defined, and defined themselves, as parties of asymmetrical social relationships to be levelled. Through these policies and collective actions, the weaker parties were not just protected but also empowered to articulate their interests within their social relationships and towards the state, in the framework of a national society. Such an interest-oriented social citizenship was different from the social citizenship defined by individual social rights. In his critique of John Rawls and Richard Rorty, the Dutch historian and history theorist Frank Ankersmit argues that the search for an overlapping consensus supports the juridical de-politicisation of politics on the basis of the concept of rights. Instead, Ankersmit prefers to focus on interests rather than rights: Interests are, so to speak, rights in statu nascendi. Hence, much, if not all, that is from a political point of view new, unexpected, unforeseen, and unforeseeable in the development of a society will initially present itself in terms of interests and emphatically not in terms of rights and of the law case. […] The conflict of interests gives us access to the nature of social and political reality and without it we are blind, politically speaking. The vocabulary of rights does not give us this access to social reality: it only exemplifies or expresses a certain conception of social reality without testing it in the way that typically happens when interests conflict. (Ankersmit 2002, 205)

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I will argue that recognising and establishing interests has been crucial in Nordic ideas of social equalisation and democratisation through public and collective regulation. Here, as in general, ‘regulation’ should be conceived as an integral factor in the conceptual and practical construction of its own targets (Jessop 1995). It is worth noting that interests are not, any more than rights, completely pre-given phenomena simply waiting for regulation. In the Nordic countries, notably in issues of work and the labour market, the regulations establishing rights and duties have been very much aimed at levelling social relations, so that these relations (especially those between workers and employers) could appear as parity-based encounters of particular divergent interests. These relationships would be, at the same time, processes of producing and reproducing the parties to these relationships. Thus, not only have interests been rights in statu nascendi, but also, conversely, rights have been interests in statu nascendi. In his Great Transformation, Polanyi concluded that the making of labour into a commodity was a necessary precondition of modern capitalism, yet it was a ‘fictitious commodity’ since labour, and the production, selling and consumption of labour, were inseparable from the life of the wage workers themselves (Polanyi 1944 [2001], 71–80). Polanyi preceded Esping-Andersen in arguing that social policies and trade unions are forces for the removal of human labour ‘from the orbit of the market’ (ibid. 186). They were, for him, forces of the historical counter-movement against markets for rescuing society. However, one can question whether social policies and trade unions, notably in the Nordic countries, were actually oriented towards abolishing the character of labour as a commodity. Stubbornly sticking to the concept of ‘labour market parties’ seems to be at odds with the first principle of the Philadelphia Declaration of 1944, an annex to the constitution of the International Labour Organization (ILO): ‘labour is not a commodity’.3 The labour market language in the Nordic countries is, however, certainly not a language of unregulated market or a language of market-based harmony, but a language of collective and public regulation and of recognised conflicts between divergent interests – ‘parties’ instead of ‘partners’. Instead of abolishing the character of labour as a commodity, the Nordic modes of social regulation became oriented towards abolishing the constraints and coercions stemming from what Polanyi described as the fictitious character of this commodity, that is, its character of being inseparable from its owner and seller. Social and labour market policies, while creating supportive non-market institutions for preserving labour power when it is not traded on the labour market (cf. Offe 1984, 263),

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were liberating people’s life courses from the necessities of selling labour power under any conditions and, thus, making labour more like a real commodity. This was a core element in what can be seen as the Nordic utopia of an egalitarian wage work society. This utopia was politically effective, as it provided a criterion for the critique of existing social circumstances. Its power was increased as it could be, in political struggles, referred to as a normative standard of society itself and, thus, as a criterion of a mode of criticism, that can be called immanent critique (Lohmann 1986). In what follows, I will motivate an argument that the utopia of egalitarian wage work society, including the idea of interest-oriented social citizenship, achieved this kind of meaning through class-based conflicts and compromises, in which industrial wage work was adjusted with respect to three different ideological ingredients: the spirit of capitalism, the utopia of socialism, and the idealised tradition of the free independent peasant. These three ingredients intertwined in the making of a modern nation-state society in the Nordic countries. The adjustment of industrial wage work to the spirit of capitalism was common to all Western societies. Adjusting it to the utopia of socialism was common to those Western European societies in which a social democratic labour movement was strong. The third characteristic, the ideological adjustment of industrial wage work to the tradition of independent freeholder peasants, was distinctively indigenous to the Nordic countries.

THE RIGHT TO FULFIL EVERYONE’S DUTY TO WORK There is a Nordic Sonderweg, and it is based on ‘the Lutheran peasant Enlightenment’. This is what the authors of the anthology The Cultural Construction of Norden (1997) claim, revitalising the old political legacy of the free Nordic peasant. The Nordic Enlightenment ‘ironically and paradoxically enough had the peasant as its foremost symbol’ (Sørensen and Stråth 1997, 3). The Nordic peasant was a figure of pragmatic rationality, something that stamped its particular label on the Nordic Enlightenment and Nordic Romanticism, as well as on Nordic democracy and the Nordic welfare state. The book, edited by the Norwegian historian Øystein Sørensen and the Swedish historian Bo Stråth, argues that the combination of equality and freedom, based on the ‘peasant myth’, is a characteristic of the Nordic path towards modernisation, culminating in the Nordic welfare states, and an ideal reflexively adopted

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as the Nordic element of Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish national identities. The thesis of Lutheran peasant Enlightenment also suggests that the Nordic welfare states are products of ‘secularised Lutheranism’. Two things are especially pointed out: the legitimacy of the state and the ethos of work. The Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had set in motion the making of the centralised state, inseparably intertwined with the Lutheran Church and its message of conformity, while Lutheran Christianity at the same time stressed an immediate individual relationship to God. Currently, researchers are cautious enough to point out that Max Weber did not talk about Lutheranism but about Calvinism when he developed his arguments for a link between Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism. Nevertheless, a continuity of the ethos of work is a crucial part of the interpretation of the Nordic welfare states as secularised Lutheranism. From the Lutheran idea of daily work as a calling, or vocation, a line has been drawn to the emphasis of full employment as a central policy objective in the Nordic countries after the Second World War (Østergård 1997; Thorkildsen 1997; Markkola 2011). Insofar as the narrative implies a straight road from ‘the Lutheran peasant Enlightenment’ to ‘the social democratic welfare state’, one should question it. The story assumes an excess of egalitarian individualism in rural communities of the past and locates too much social democracy in the welfare state (Kettunen 1999). However, one could elaborate the narrative by arguing that the impact of ‘the Lutheran peasant Enlightenment’ on the specificities of Nordic welfare state developments did not only stem from its power of continuity, but also from the way it indicated targets for political criticism. It seems reasonable to claim that differences between what are called ‘welfare regimes’ to a considerable extent stem from differences between those dominant modes of thought and action, the critique of which came to direct efforts for social reform in different societies. The social policy reforms that created the Nordic welfare state were aimed at breaking away from the paternalist structures of personal subordination and control that had been characteristic of rural households and communities and their Lutheran justification, including the humiliating practices of poor relief.4 I suggest that through this critique, preconditioned and directed by its targets, a notion of social citizenship developed in which the focus was on the individual as a party to social relationships rather than on the relationship between the state and the individual. The way in which work was defined as a duty and as a right played an important role in this process.

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The thesis of the Lutheran peasant Enlightenment as the origin of the Nordic welfare state tends to marginalise people beneath the strata of independent land-owning peasants, and the various forms of control, conflict and resistance, in the picture of the Nordic rural community (Stenius 1997, 168; Kettunen 1999, 263–4). True, the egalitarianism of this myth, as it was associated with and shaped by popular movements, provided arguments and criteria for the political critique of the structures of social subordination. Yet this myth also contributed to the justification of power. This was the case most obviously in Finland. After the Civil War of 1918, the free independent peasant became the symbol of the White army as the antithesis of the harmful Red alliance between urban workers and the landless rural population. In the dominant ideology of the victorious White side, the spirit of work personified by the independent farmer constituted the ideological centre around which ‘social peace’ had to be ‘rebuilt’ and defended against the threats associated with the collectivity of industrial workers. The expansion of a rural class of small, independent farmers continued to be a major project of social and political integration in Finland up to the early 1950s (Kettunen 2001, 239–40). In the Nordic histories of industrial conflicts there are – notably until the 1930s – a lot of examples of how the individual ‘will to work’ of freeholder peasants was ideologically, or in the form of strike breaking in practice, put against the collective action of wage workers (Flink 1978; Seyler 1983; Kettunen 1990). However, the mentality associated with the work of the independent farmer arguably also influenced the collective action of wage workers in a way that facilitated the articulation of demands for workers’ autonomy at work and the application of universal criteria of citizenship to working life (cf. Lash and Urry 1987, 39–41). Full employment emerged as a major political objective in all Nordic countries after the Second World War. To be sure, it was not an exclusively Nordic goal. For example, in plans for the post-war world such as the Beveridge Plan in the UK and the Philadelphia Declaration of the ILO, full employment was more or less explicitly presented as a goal deriving from the requirements of equal citizenship. Nevertheless, a particular ideological ingredient, reflecting secular Lutheranism, can be found in the Nordic understanding of full employment. One may characterise this ingredient as an effort to make it everybody’s right to fulfil everybody’s duty to work. In parallel with the norms of work as a duty and as a right, we can distinguish between modes of conceiving of work as a necessity and as a source of freedom and independence. Here, the institutional arrangements referred to as the Nordic gender contract are crucial. These arrangements

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also provide the major reasons for the thesis on statist individualism developed by Trägårdh. In his view, statist individualism, as expressed in Swedish family policies since the 1960s, bears the long individualist tradition or even ‘national character’ of men of the North. The Nordic peasant community was a community of free men, and the welfare states emancipated women by universalising the image of the male worker (Trägårdh 1997). Trägårdh’s interpretation bears resemblances to how Nancy Fraser (1997) has developed a feminist critique of ‘the universal breadwinner model’. However, a questionable aspect of this interpretation is that the working woman only appears in the picture with the arrival of the welfare state. Gender-sensitive social historians have paid attention to the hard labour of Nordic women in rural households in which a gender division of labour notably and harshly differed from the ideals of middle-class educators (Markkola 1990, 17–29; Åmark 2006, 299–333). Neither were Nordic women (not even those who were married, and especially not in Finland, see Suoranta (2009)) as marginal in industrial labour markets before the introduction of these new family policies as Trägårdh and many social policy researchers have suggested. The gender division of labour did change in the 1960s (Lundqvist 2017), yet much of the change concerned the social and individual meanings attached to a phenomenon that already existed. From a policy perspective, women’s paid work came to be conceived as part of the goal of full employment and as the source of individual independence and autonomy. From the perspective of individual experiences, the relationship between the two aspects of wage work – a necessity and a source of autonomy – probably changed. Yet both these aspects still existed as they had previously. In varying ways, work as a necessity had been at the same time a source of dignity and autonomy and, correspondingly, work as a source of independence did not abolish it being a necessity. For example, the dual breadwinner practice was established not only as a matter of equality but also as an economic necessity. In any case, the goal of full employment, with its different normative notions of work, came to be one of the ways in which the normalcy of wage work and the principle of social citizenship emerged in parallel and intertwined. The simultaneous reinforcement of these two principles also became characteristic of social policies in the post-war decades until the 1980s. In the field of social security, the adjustment of the normalcy of wage work and social citizenship was associated with the ways in which social insurance policies contributed to the development and functioning of labour markets. Especially in pension policies, transportable social benefits, by diminishing workers’ dependence on single employers,

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strengthened their positions as sellers of their labour power. This was also promoted by the work-performance and income-related definitions of these benefits. True, work-performance and income-related benefits did not in any self-evident way fit with the universalistic idea of social citizenship (Edling 2006, 99–143; Petersen and Åmark 2006, 145–88). However, through the power of strong trade unions, a secured continuity of income actually became interpreted as a right associated with citizenship, or as an aspect of social citizenship. The normalcy of wage work and the notion of social citizenship were also reinforced by the construction of extensive public services. These services, defining and meeting the needs of health, care and education, bore the character of universal social rights at the same time as they created preconditions for the generalising of wage work as the norm. A transformation of the gender division of labour was crucial here, associated with redefined relationships between family and society. A particular nexus of welfare state, labour market regime and gender system was formed, one crucial aspect being the strong gender segregation of Nordic labour markets (Borchorst and Siim 2008, 207–24; Lundqvist 2017). However, the rights associated with employment and work – including the right to fulfil one’s duty to work – were not the end of politics and policies, but rather a means of empowering workers so as to be able to define and defend their interests as parties to social relationships. On this horizon of expectation, a utopian vision of equality within wage work relationships, that is, a particular notion of social citizenship emerged.

THE SYMMETRY OF LABOUR MARKET PARTIES ‘The ideology of parity’ (Bruun 1979) was adopted as a crucial point of departure for the development of European labour law in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The social liberals as well as the Marxists of the late nineteenth century shared the idea that the labour market is a particular kind of market and labour was a particular commodity. Social liberals concluded that the worker was the weaker party in the individual worker-employer relationship and consequently needed protection. At the collective level, however, parity would be realised through organisation and collective agreements. In the twentieth century, reformist trade unions widely adopted this mode of thought. In the Nordic countries the mode of thought was modified by influential trade unions associated with reformist socialist movements. As early as in the 1930s, Denmark, Sweden and Norway were, in this order, at the top in the international statistics of unionisation. In Finland, the

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degree of unionisation was much lower. This reflected the heritage of the class-based Civil War of 1918 and the still predominantly rural and agrarian structure of Finnish society. Finnish employers, especially in manufacturing industries, were until the Second World War able to adhere to the policy of refusing collective agreements with trade unions. In Denmark, Sweden and Norway, the principle of collective agreements had achieved a recognised status and practical significance long before the 1930s. The September Agreement of 1899 between the Danish peak organisations of workers and employers provided a model. The concept of Denmark as the forerunner and Finland as the latecomer is also evidenced in that Denmark has in the long term been the most consequent and Finland the least consequent nation in terms of the ‘Nordic’ principle that collective agreements are the primary and legislation only the secondary means of social regulation of labour (Bruun 1990). In the 1930s, trade unions and employer organisations, urged on by experiences of widespread and harsh industrial conflicts, were ready to further specify the rules of the game and to consolidate the system of negotiations and agreements. This was manifested in the Norwegian hovedavtal (basic agreement) in 1935 and the Swedish Saltsjöbaden Agreement in 1938, between the peak organisations of trade unions and employer associations. In Finland, the corresponding national-level basic agreements between the organised workers and employers were achieved in 1944 and 1946. The logic of these national agreements included that labour market parties reciprocally recognised the particular – and not the universal – and therefore legitimate nature of their interests. Through their mutual compromises, they committed themselves to taking into account the universal interest that was assigned to ‘society’ and included objectives such as the prevention of damaging conflicts, the promotion of industrial efficiency, and the increase of purchasing power.5 Three principles came to be combined in the Nordic working life institutions: the regulation of labour market conflicts through paritybased collective agreements; the direction rights of employers, associated with different arrangements for employee participation; and the joint acceptance of rationalisation in production and work processes (Kettunen 1998). This combination might be seen as an institutional reproduction and regulation of the tensions between three different rationalities which mediate between workers’ life-worlds and the systemic conditions of their living. Two rationalities are inherent in living by wage work: that of the seller of labour power and that of the subject of the labour process (Kern and Schumann 1984). The third significant rationality here is that of citizenship.

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Obviously, it has been difficult to adjust the rationality of equal citizenship into the context of wage work relations and hierarchical work organisations. The system of collective bargaining, as it follows the logic of the selling and buying of labour power, including trade union strategies for limiting the competition between individual workers, tends to reduce qualitative issues of working life into issues concerning the price of labour power and the quantity of labour exploited. However, one can argue that in the Nordic countries the symmetry of party relations came to include something more than just an idea of regulating labour market conflicts or an ideological disguise of the basic asymmetry of capital and labour (cf. Offe and Wiesenthal 1980). The widening of the agenda of parity-based negotiations and agreements became crucial for the Nordic model of working life reform. It was a vision in which the compromises of conflicting labour market interests would include the promotion of both democracy and the cooperation between the groups fulfilling different functions in a company or in national economy. In the 1930s, collective agreements were included in the concept of democracy, especially, by the Nordic Social Democratic parties and trade union movements. The strong trade unions were supposed to extend democracy in two senses, both as a popular movement and as one of the two ‘labour market parties’ making parity-based agreements. Trade unions became oriented to extend the field of parity-based relations, that is, the range of issues to be included in collective agreements. This not only strengthened the role of trade unions in industrial relations. A still more fundamental aspect was that business companies and somewhat later even the state and municipalities, in their roles as employers, were defined and organised as a ‘labour market party’ representing (no more than) particular interests, and they had to recognise this not only in the setting of wages but also in many other aspects of working life and management. The collective and public regulation of labour relations would empower the weaker party (workers) to take care of their interests and constrain the stronger party (employers) from presenting their interests as universal. This idea appeared at the macro level of the national economy and society, but also at the micro level of the business economy and enterprise. In discussions defining working life problems and their solutions, one can find a more or less explicit distinction between ‘enterprise’ and ‘employer’ in which the general interest of the enterprise was not just identified with the action of management but rather conceived as an outcome of the parity-based agreements and negotiations between the employer and the workers, both of whom were simply representing their respective particular interests (Flodgren 1990, 124; Kettunen and Turunen 1994, 73–4).

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In this way, ‘industrial democracy’ in the Nordic countries was strongly associated with the widening and deepening of the system of collective agreements and the associated workplace-level system of shop stewards, rather than referring to separate parallel institutions of personnel participation such as the German works councils, or Betriebsräte (Knudsen 1995; Kettunen 1998). With their considerable power to set the agenda on working life issues, trade unions began to draw management issues into the sphere of collective agreements. In the Nordic discourse on working life reform, especially in the Norwegian and Swedish debates in the 1960s and 1970s, we can recognise a politically effective utopian idea according to which the collective-level parity between the labour market parties has to be extended and woven into individual employerworker relationships (Claussen 2000; Winner 1995).

DIVERGENT INTERESTS AND VIRTUOUS CIRCLES The interest-oriented notion of social citizenship, based on the empowerment of the seller of labour power by means of social rights, was developed in the framework of a particular view on national society. International dependencies provided the preconditions for strong notions of national economy and national society. Europe’s northern peripheries integrated into the expanding capitalism in nationally varying ways, yet, in general, the Nordic countries developed into small, relatively open economies that were, each country in its specific way, highly dependent on exports and exposed to the cycles and crises of world economy (Katzenstein 1985; Senghaas 1985). In connection with the Great Depression of the 1930s, class compromises brought about new ingredients in the ways of conceiving society and economy. Reflecting class structures and conclusions from the economic crisis and the rise of fascism in Europe, the Nordic class compromises of the 1930s included political coalitions of ‘workers and farmers’, or social democrats and agrarian parties, and the consolidation of national systems of collective labour market negotiations and agreements (only the former applied to Finland before the Second World War). The concept of ‘Nordic democracy’ emerged in this political context, especially through the established Nordic cooperation of social democratic labour movements (Kurunmäki and Strang 2010). In the historical references of this concept, various sub-state principles were actually put into the centre. The oldest reference to Nordic democracy was to be found in the idealised figure of the free Nordic peasant and heritage of local rural self-government. This ideological element of the ‘Nordic’ was

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developed in the nineteenth century, partly by the rising popular movements; and later in the twentieth century, those popular movements themselves were referred to as another aspect of a particular Nordic democracy. Still a further sub-state element is worth noting. The regulation of employment relations through parity-based negotiations and agreements of the voluntary organisations of workers and employers was, since the 1930s, included in the concept of Nordic democracy, especially in the rhetoric of social democratic trade union leaders. One may argue that the heritage of local self-government of independent peasants, the tradition of strong popular movements, and the institution of collective labour market agreements have contributed to the development of and have been integrated in the strong state (Knudsen and Rothstein 1994; Trägårdh 1997). Nevertheless, these integrative processes can also be conceived as a societalisation of the state (that indeed is often called ‘society’ in Nordic political languages, see Kettunen (2019)). This included a wide acceptance of the idea that social solidarity is fulfilled through public power (the state and municipalities) and high taxes, and the recognised and institutionalised role of interest representation in political processes, often called corporatism. In conclusions drawn from the Great Depression of the 1930s, the notion of national economy began to be based on new ideas of selfreinforcing processes. A major task of politics was to recognise vicious circles and, by means of a combination of knowledge-based planning and interest compromises, turn them into virtuous ones. Virtuous circles would connect the interests of worker-consumers and farmer-producers as well as those of workers and employers. Confidence in positive sum games was institutionalised in class compromises, which initiated the period of social democracy in the Scandinavian countries, especially in Sweden. The practical significance of the new employment and economic policies before the Second World War has been debated (Unga 1976; Gustafsson 1993). On the level of political discourse, however, the emerging ideas of a virtuous circle indicated important changes in the 1930s. The virtuous circle included something more than just positive sum compromises between conflicting economic interests. It was also a virtuous circle between equality, efficiency and solidarity, which, in a sense, can be seen as being based on three different ideological strains of Nordic modernisation processes: the idealised heritage of the free peasant, the spirit of capitalism and the utopia of socialism. In terms of political objectives and of future expectations, the virtuous circle came to connect social equalisation, economic growth and widening democracy. Divergent ways of interpreting these objectives and expectations appeared, yet in the period

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following the Second World War, they came to play a hegemonic role in the sense that political conflicts tended to be struggles in terms of the right way to represent and promote these objectives and expectations and to conceive the interconnectedness between them. This mode of thought and action should not be reduced to the vulgarised Keynesian description of the virtuous circle between growing consumption and growing production. As early as in the 1930s there was considerable productivistic supply-side interest in the political orientation of the Scandinavian social democrats (Kulawik 2002; Andersson 2006). The promotion of social equality was held to be the means of releasing human productive capacities and thus the means of promoting economic effectiveness, which, in turn, was seen as a fundamental precondition for achieving social equality. Somewhat paradoxically, the needs and interests of capital, or employers, were provided with a new moral and political legitimacy, and the needs and interests of the working class achieved a new national economic legitimacy. The labour movement adopted the view that economic competitiveness, and thus the rationalisation of production, was necessary in order to create resources for social welfare and equality. At the same time, bourgeois groups and employers admitted that the collective organisation of labour and the widening of workers’ social rights could bring economically positive outcomes, not least with respect to industrial peace. The trust in a virtuous circle between economic growth, widening democracy and increased equality was not, as such, a Nordic specificity in the post-war decades. During the Second World War, it had become a more or less explicit part of post-war planning in Western countries. At the international level, it was manifested, for example, in the Philadelphia Declaration of the ILO in 1944 that came to form part of the organisation’s constitution. Among the main principles of the Declaration were the participation of workers’ and employers’ representatives in social policies, collective bargaining, full employment and the link between social equality, the elimination of poverty and economic growth (Kettunen 2009). The post-war development in Scandinavia, especially in Sweden, was perceived not only by some Nordic citizens but also by many others outside the Nordic region as uniquely consistent steps along a universally applicable road to progress. No doubt, in the Cold War world, more than one candidate for the universally applicable road existed. The notion of ‘the middle way’, as was associated with Sweden and sometimes with the whole Norden, included a particular claim of universality, which was expressed, for example, by maintaining that

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‘freedom and welfare’ were principles of Nordic social political cooperation (Nelson 1953; Salvesen 1956). Theoretical motivations for the politics of virtuous circles were provided by the theory of ‘circular cumulative causation’, developed by the Swedish social democratic economist and social scientist Gunnar Myrdal. Rational planning was needed to turn vicious circles into virtuous ones. In the 1950s he developed this idea in his works on ‘underdevelopment’, and also in his response to the critique of the welfare state, claiming that its essence was detailed bureaucratic control. The solution, presented in Beyond the Welfare State (1960), was a perfection of planning by collective representational self-regulation of ‘enlightened citizenry’. Myrdal divided the history of the planning of the welfare state into three phases. Prehistory included uncoordinated public interventions as attempts to solve the problems that had been caused by ‘the quasi-liberal state of mass poverty, much social rigidity, and gross inequality of opportunity’. Then attempts at the coordination of these interventions through planning were initiated and increasingly expanded. This meant increasing state intervention, which made many people ‘confuse planning with direct and detailed state regulations’. However, in the third phase, when planning would proceed to ‘created harmony’, direct state intervention was likely to decrease: The third phase could thus mean an actual decrease of state intervention. The assumption is a continued strengthening of provincial and municipal selfgovernment, and a balanced growth of the infrastructure of effective interest organizations. This would, in its turn, presume an intensified citizens’ participation and control, exerted in both these fields. (Myrdal 1960, 67–8)

It was clear to Myrdal that there was no natural harmony or equilibrium of private interests. Neither was it through collective compromises per se that common good was achieved. But the ‘created harmony’ was also not an outcome of a Great Plan. The inseparable connection between planning and education was essential for Myrdal; ‘enlightened citizenry’ was at the centre of this vision. Planning presumed and promoted the overcoming of short-term interests, lower-level valuations connected with them, and lower-level knowledge that often served as disguised rationalisations of those interests and valuations. Planning also presumed that all relevant interests were institutionally articulated and nobody, especially not the powerful, had any right to claim that their interests were universal. In the ‘created harmony’, everybody was able to reflect her or his interests in a more general reference of society.

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One can interpret that, in Myrdal’s view, the images of ‘created harmony’ and ‘enlightened citizenry’ were means of present planning, not only as an anticipated future, but also as criteria of the immanent critique of the (Swedish and Nordic) welfare state. The idea of a societalised state – the state as a society – appeared as a normative standard of society to be used for opposing tendencies towards expanding state bureaucracy. Essential in rational planning was to level and balance people’s possibilities to articulate and get recognition for their different interests, shaped in their mutual social relationships that in their pre-planned state were structurally asymmetric. However, after the 1980s, this kind of relational vision of the welfare state lost a lot of its future-oriented power.

THE DISSOLVED COMBINATION OF WAGE WORK AND SOCIAL CITIZENSHIP The combination of the normalcy of wage work and the principle of social citizenship was reinforced in the post-war Nordic countries through the policies of full employment, the construction of social security systems and public services that came to manifest citizenshipbased universalism at the same time as they followed and supported labour market rationalities, and through the regulation of industrial relations by agreements between highly organised labour and capital, oriented towards a symmetry between the parties of employment relationships. These policies and processes were shaped within the framework of a widely shared confidence in virtuous circles that could be achieved through interest compromises in a national society. Organised interests played an important role in the politics establishing social rights, but interests were also a crucial aspect of the social citizenship that was reinforced by these politics. The objective of levelling asymmetrical social relationships implied the empowerment of the weaker party, by means of established social rights, to conceive and promote her or his interests. Established as a normative standard of society, the collective-level institutional parity between workers and employers could be used as a criterion for an immanent critique, which recognised and criticised asymmetries and extended this critique to the relationships between individual workers and their employers. Arguably, the combination of the normalcy of wage work and the principle of social citizenship has been dissolved. This has happened as both of these principles have been eroded. In the 1980s, crucial aspects of the framework of this combination were severely challenged by the international neo-liberal offensive that was further supported by the

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decline of the ‘Fordist’ paradigm of capitalist development and the collapse of Soviet-type socialism. Globalisation, as a temporal and spatial restructuring of social practices, meant increasing social asymmetries concerning the role of spatial ties of different actors and thus weakening prerequisites for national social solidarity. The project for broadening symmetrical party relations lost its political momentum. The premise for the ‘Nordic’ image of symmetry between ‘labour market parties’ has been weakened by a variety of developments: the multi- and transnational character of companies in the global economy, including their dependencies on calculations in global finance markets; the constant restructuring of production processes in accordance with the network principle, including varying forms of outsourcing and subcontracting; the corresponding transformations in the public sector in the spirit of New Public Management, including the blurring of boundaries between public and private, obligatory and voluntary, and official and unofficial; the increase in so-called ‘atypical’ employment relationships; and the growing practical and ideological fluidity of the boundary between wage work and entrepreneurship. For their part, the management lessons and practices aiming to promote both flexibility and commitment in work organisations blur the difference between wage work and entrepreneurship. This implies, among other things, that the idea of the worker as the weaker part of the wage work relationship tends to be pushed to the margin through the ethos of entrepreneurship at the same time that, on the other hand, the asymmetry between capital and labour has increased due to the dramatic growth of the mobility of financial capital. In any case, it has become ever more difficult to identify, organise, bring together and centralise the different ‘parties’ within a national society. A crucial part of the Nordic model used to be the widening of the scope of issues in which business companies as well as public sector organisations had to recognise the particular instead of the universal character of their employer interests. In this respect, the direction changed in the 1980s. The idea of representing the universal interest of the economy in relation to the particular and biased interests of workers and national governments has gained new power in how business interests are articulated and recognised. The change has taken place within a notable institutional continuity. The old institutions of the welfare state and industrial relations have been converted to serve the new functions of the globally competitive community (cf. Mahoney and Thelen 2010). The ways in which the national ‘we’ is sustained and reproduced in the political responses to globalisation bear continuities from the older ideology of the virtuous circle. In

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the 1990s, the concepts of ‘social capital’ and ‘social investment’ gained international popularity, and in the Nordic countries this obviously opened up new opportunities to revitalise the ideas of the virtuous circle between social cohesion and economic success. The neo-Schumpeterian emphasis on innovation and its institutional preconditions could easily be adopted in this context. Such tones have particularly appeared in the discussion on education and training. Much of the ideological power of knowledge, education and innovation in the Nordic countries stems from the promise that competitiveness and its preconditions in the global economy can – or even must – be seen from a wider perspective than that of neo-liberalist deregulation (cf. Jessop 1994). However, at the same time as egalitarian institutions and participatory practices can be defended as preconditions for knowledge-based competitiveness, true membership in a competitive community is a matter of individual competitiveness. This, in turn, consists of communicative and innovative skills and talents and reflexive capabilities of monitoring oneself from the point of view of competitiveness. Besides winners and losers, there are people who cannot even participate in this competition. One may conclude that an insoluble tension appears between what are recognised as the institutional preconditions of competitiveness and how the contents of competitiveness itself are conceived. While fulfilling the imperatives of ‘our’ competitiveness, the nation state as a competition state seems to point to the notion of a warm community instead of a cool society that has arguably been associated with Nordic-type welfare states. In the Nordic countries as well as elsewhere in Europe, the ‘social’ seems to have new Janus faces, both sides of which indicate a new emphasis on community. On one side, social policies are supposed to provide a social infrastructure that helps ‘us’ to create competitiveness based on commitment, knowledge and innovativeness, that is, on ‘social capital’ and ‘human capital’. On the other side, the ‘social’ exists in the efforts to prevent and deal with social exclusion. These efforts mainly take the form of ‘activation policies’, with their diverging national variants. Indeed, in the adoption of these transnational ideas that are shared in all EU and OECD countries (Lødemel and Trickey 2001; Keskitalo 2008; Alanko and Outinen 2016), old national historical legacies have been actualised, notably legacies concerning the role of work. Not least in connection with immigration policies, the old notion of work as the condition and locus of individual self-discipline and social order within a national framework has strongly re-emerged.

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The idea of a national egalitarian wage work society, including social citizenship through the levelling of asymmetric social relationships, no longer works as a ‘concrete utopia’ (cf. Bloch 1959). The Nordic countries are still at the top of international statistics on unionisation, and the practices of collective bargaining and corporatist representation are discussed by means of the symmetric interest-based language of ‘labour market parties’. However, extending the field of issues to be included in collective agreements between the ‘parties’ or deepening the parity from the collective level to the individual relationships between workers and employers no longer plays any effective role in political imaginary or in the understandings of democracy. In a competitive community, social problems tend to be defined as issues of individual behaviour, and policies are designed to create incentives for improvement. This does not exclude the protection of the weak. However, weakness is associated with individual properties rather than structural asymmetries of social relations to be levelled. In the formation of the Nordic welfare states and associated gender systems, one regulative principle was that everybody should have the right to fulfil his or her duty to work. The step from ‘active labour market policies’ to ‘activation policies’, in their Nordic variants, might be described as a shift from this regulative principle towards the reverse principle that everybody has the duty to fulfil his or her right to work. This might be an incremental yet profound change, as it implicates that it is the individual and not society that has to be blamed and changed. However, it is far from self-evident that people willingly accept any individualised or – in references to the imperatives of a globalised economy – naturalised explanation for their grievances. In right-wing populist movements, we may find some evidence of political implications appearing in the constructions of demarcating collective threat images and in the subsequent forms and contents of political protests.

NOTES 1.

Danish: arbejdmarkedsparter; Swedish: arbetsmarknadsparterna; Finnish: työmarkkinaosapuolet. 2. This chapter is based on my previous articles and book chapters: Kettunen 2011; 2012; 2014. 3. Declaration concerning the aims and purposes of the International Labour Organization (Declaration of Philadelphia), accessed 15 December 2018 at https://www.ilo.org/dyn/ normlex/en/f?p=1000:62:0::NO:62:P62_LIST_ENTRIE_ID:2453907:NO#declaration. 4. Thus, as Kees van Kersbergen (2011) concludes, the making of Christian democratic welfare states included breaking away from many aspects of Catholic social doctrine.

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An example of this mode of thought was formulated in a Swedish governmental committee report that paved the way for the Saltsjöbaden Agreement of 1938, by proposing that the labour market parties should ‘depoliticise’ their mutual relationships in order to be able to realise, through their compromises, the interests of ‘society’ (SOU 1935: 65, 129).

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modellen: Fackföreningarna och arbetsrätten i Norden – nu och framtiden, Lund: Liber, pp. 61–141. Fraser, N. (1997), Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’ Condition, New York: Routledge. Gustafsson, B. (1993), ‘Unemployment and Fiscal Policy in Sweden during the 1930s: Myths and Reality’, in W.R. Garside (ed.), Capitalism in Crisis: International Responses to the Great Depression, London: Printer Publishers and New York: St. Martin Press, pp. 56–69. Hyman, R. (2001), Understanding European Trade Unionism: Between Market, Class and Society, London: Sage. Jessop, B. (1994), ‘Post-Fordism and the State’, in A. Amin (ed.), Post-Fordism: A Reader, Oxford, UK and Cambridge, USA: Blackwell, pp. 165–84. Jessop, B. (1995), ‘The regulation approach, governance, and post-Fordism: alternative perspectives on economic and political change?’, Economy and Society 24 (3), 307–33. Katzenstein, P.J. (1985), Small States in World Markets: Industrial Policy in Europe, Ithaca and New York: Cornell University Press. Kern, H. and M. Schumann (1984), ‘Work and social character: old and new contours’, Economic and Industrial Democracy 5 (1), 57–71. Keskitalo, E. (2008), Balancing Social Citizenship and New Paternalism: Finnish Activation Policy and Street-level Practice in a Comparative Perspective, Helsinki: National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health Stakes. Kettunen, P. (1990), ‘Hur legitimerades arbetsgivarnas politik i “första republikens” Finland?’, in Daniel Fleming (ed.), Industriell demokrati i Norden, Lund: Arkiv förlag, pp. 129–90. Kettunen, P. (1998), ‘Globalisation and the Criteria of “Us”: A Historical Perspective on the Discussion of the Nordic Model and New Challenges’, in D. Fleming, P. Kettunen, H. Soborg and C. Thörnqvist (eds), Global Redefining of Working Life: A New Nordic Agenda for Competence and Participation?, Nord 1998:12, Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, pp. 33–80. Kettunen, P. (1999), ‘A Return to the Figure of the Free Nordic Peasant’, Acta Sociologica 42 (3), 259–69. Kettunen, P. (2001), ‘The Nordic Welfare State in Finland’, Scandinavian Journal of History 26 (3), 225–47. Kettunen, P. (2009), ‘The Nordic Model and the International Labour Organization’, in N. Götz and H. Haggrén (eds), Regional Cooperation and International Organisations: The Nordic Model in Transnational Alignment, London: Routledge, pp. 67–87. Kettunen, P. (2011), ‘The Sellers of Labour Power as Social Citizens: A Utopian Wage Work Society in the Nordic Visions of Welfare’, in H. Blomberg and N. Kildal (eds), Workfare and Welfare State Legitimacy, NordWel Studies in Historical Welfare State Research 1, Helsinki: University of Helsinki, pp. 16–45. Kettunen, P. (2012), ‘Reinterpreting the historicity of the Nordic model’, Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies 2 (4), 21–43. Kettunen, P. (2014), ‘Conflicts and Compromises in the Nordic Pattern of Social Regulation’, in P. Kettunen, S. Kuhnle and Y. Ren (eds), Reshaping Welfare

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Rise and fall of the Nordic utopia of an egalitarian wage work society 117 Institutions in China and the Nordic Countries, NordWel Studies in Historical Welfare State Research 7, Helsinki: University of Helsinki, pp. 96–121. Kettunen, P. (2019), ‘The Concept of Society in the Making of the Nordic Welfare State’, in S. Kuhnle, P. Selle and S.E.O. Hort (eds), Globalizing Welfare: An Evolving Dialogue, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 143–61. Kettunen, P. and I. Turunen (1994), ‘The middle class, knowledge and the idea of the third factor’, Scandinavian Journal of History 19 (1), 63–86. Knudsen, H. (1995), Employee Participation in Europe, London: Sage Publications. Knudsen, T. and B. Rothstein (1994), ‘State building in Scandinavia’, Comparative Politics 26 (2), 203–20. Kulawik, T. (2002), ‘The Nordic model of the welfare state and the trouble with a critical perspective’, Nyhetsbrev för nordisk välfärdshistoria 21, 2–8. Kurunmäki, J. and J. Strang (eds) (2010), Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy, Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. Lash, S. and J. Urry (1987), The End of Organized Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press. Lødemel, I. and H. Trickey (eds) (2001), An Offer You Can’t Refuse: Workfare in International Perspective, Bristol: Policy Press. Lohmann, G. (1986), ‘Marx’s Capital and the question of normative standards’, Praxis International 6 (3), 353–72. Lundqvist, Å. (2017), Transforming Gender and Family Relations: How Active Labour Market Policies Shaped the Dual Earner Model, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Mahoney, J. and K. Thelen (2010), ‘A Theory of Gradual Institutional Change’, in J. Mahoney and K. Thelen (eds), Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–37. Markkola, P. (1990), ‘Women in Rural Society in the 19th and 20th Centuries’, in M. Manninen and P. Setälä (eds), The Lady with the Bow: The Story of Finnish Women, Helsinki: Otava, pp. 17–29. Markkola, P. (2011), ‘The Lutheran Nordic Welfare States’, in P. Kettunen and K. Petersen (eds), Beyond Welfare State Models: Transnational Historical Perspectives to Social Policy, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 102–18. Marshall, T.H. (1950), Citizenship and Social Class, and Other Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Myrdal, G. (1960), Beyond the Welfare State: Economic Planning in the Welfare State and Its International Implications, London: Duckworth. Nelson, G.R. (ed.) (1953), Freedom and Welfare: Social Patterns in the Northern Countries of Europe, Copenhagen: The Ministries of Social Affairs of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden. Offe, C. (1984), Contradictions of the Welfare State, ed. John Keane, London: Hutchinson. Offe, C. and H. Wiesenthal (1980), ‘Two Logics of Collective Action: Theoretical Notes on Social Class and Organisational Form’, in M. Zeitlin (ed.), Political Power and Social Theory, vol. 1, Greenwich, CT: JAI, pp. 67–115.

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Østergård, U. (1997), ‘The Geopolitics of Nordic Identity: From Composite States to Nation-states’, in Ø. Sørensen and B. Stråth (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden, Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, pp. 25–71. Petersen, K. and K. Åmark (2006), ‘Old Age Pensions in the Nordic Countries, 1880–2000’, in N.F. Christiansen, K. Petersen, N. Edling and P. Haave (eds), The Nordic Model of Welfare: A Historical Reappraisal, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, pp. 145–89. Polanyi, K. (1944 [2001]), The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Foreword by J.E. Stiglitz, Boston: Beacon Press. Salvesen, K. (1956), ‘Co-operation in social affairs between the northern countries of Europe’, International Labour Review 73 (4), 334–57. Senghaas, D. (1985), The European Experience: A Historical Critique of Development Theory, Leamington Spa and Dover, New Hampshire: Berg Publishers. Seyler, H. (1983), Hur bonden blev lönarbetare: Industrisamhället och den svenska bondeklassens omvandling, Arkiv avhandlingsserie 17, Lund: Arkiv förlag. Sørensen, Ø. and B. Stråth (1997), ‘Introduction: The Cultural Construction of Norden’, in Ø. Sørensen and B. Stråth (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden, Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, pp. 1–24. SOU 1935:65 (1935) Betänkande för folkförsörjning och arbetsfred, Del I, Förslag: Statens Offentliga Utredningar 1935:36, Stockholm: Socialdepartementet. Stenius, H. (1997), ‘The Good Life Is a Life of Conformity: The Impact of Lutheran Tradition on Nordic Political Culture’, in Ø. Sørensen and B. Stråth (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden, Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, pp. 161–71. Suoranta, A. (2009), Halvennettu työ: pätkätyö ja sukupuoli sopimusyhteiskuntaa edeltävissä työmarkkinakäytännöissä, Tampere: Vastapaino. Thorkildsen, D. (1997), ‘Religious Identity and Nordic Identity’, in Ø. Sørensen and B. Stråth (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden, Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, pp. 138–60. Trägårdh, L. (1997), ‘Statist Individualism: On the Culturality of the Nordic Welfare State’, in Ø. Sørensen and B. Stråth (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden, Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, pp. 253–85. Unga, N. (1976), Socialdemokratin och arbetslöshetsfrågan 1912–1934: Framväxten av den ‘nya’ arbetslöshetspolitiken, Arkiv avhandlingsserie 4, Stockholm: Arkiv förlaget. van Kersbergen, K. (2011), ‘From Charity to Social Justice: Religion and the European Welfare State Traditions’, in P. Kettunen and K. Petersen (eds), Beyond Welfare State Models: Transnational Historical Perspectives to Social Policy, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 82–101. Winner, L. (1995), ‘Citizen Virtues in a Technological Order’, in A. Feenberg and A. Hannay (eds), Technology and the Politics of Knowledge, Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp. 65–84.

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PART III

Inclusion

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6. Nordic welfare states, trust and the rights discourse: the history of the children’s day care system in Finland Toomas Kotkas INTRODUCTION The overarching theme of this book is that Nordic welfare states are all about a complex web of social relations built on trust: trust in oneself (autonomy), trust in ourselves (participation), trust in others (inclusion) and trust in their interaction (sustainability). One can argue, of course, that any society requires these four dimensions of trust in order to exist and to function, at least on a satisfactory level. But the tentative claim made in the book is that the dimensions of trust in the Nordic welfare states somehow differ – or at least that the dimensions of trust are emphasised differently – from other post-war Western welfare societies. For instance, it can intuitively be argued that trust in oneself carries more weight in liberal welfare states than in the Nordic social democratic welfare states – to use Esping-Andersen’s vocabulary. However, trust in all its dimensions is not inherent or automatic in modern societies. Instead, all dimensions of trust are constructed and reconstructed through a variety of policies and practices. In Western welfare states the most important mechanisms and embodiments of trust are, of course, complex social security and social welfare systems. It can be argued that almost all welfare benefits manifest several dimensions of trust simultaneously. For instance, the function of old-age pensions is not only to support the subsistence, that is, autonomy, of the pensioner and to keep him or her included in society after retirement. Old-age pensions are also a good example of intergenerational trust, that is, of social sustainability, at least in the case of pay-as-you-go pension systems where the working generation pays for the old-age pensions of the retired (TaylorGooby 2009, p. 11). 120

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If one wants to study the (alleged) uniqueness of the dimensions of trust in the Nordic welfare states, an obvious way of doing it is to start from the common distinctive features of these states. When one goes through academic literature on the Nordic welfare states, a certain set of distinctive features seems to be listed repeatedly. Nordic welfare states were – and to a large extent still are – built on high public social expenditure, universality of welfare benefits, a comprehensive social welfare services provision and commitment to full employment, all of which have resulted in low income inequality and low gender inequality, among other things (see for example Esping-Andersen 1990, pp. 27–9; Kautto et al. 1999, pp. 11–14; Kautto et al. 2001, pp. 4–5; Kosonen 2001, pp. 154–6).1 There is one particular welfare benefit – or rather, a service – that entails many of these distinctive features of the Nordic welfare states: children’s day care. It is a universal social care service, one of the main objectives of which has been to improve the societal status of women by enabling them to enter the labour market. It has been argued that the Nordic welfare states form a distinctive group in terms of social care services in general. It has been characteristic to the Nordic countries to have publicly funded and widely available social care services which have, in turn, led to women’s active participation in the labour market (Anttonen and Sipilä 1996). The Nordic children’s day care model, in particular, seems to have persisted despite some contingent convergence of different children’s day care models (Mahon et al. 2012). Furthermore, focusing on children’s day care is also justified because it manifestly embodies at least three dimensions of trust – even in a twofold way. Day care not only promotes women’s autonomy and inclusion, but it also advances children’s autonomy and inclusion, especially if one emphasises its function as a vehicle of early childhood education. The question of social sustainability is a trickier one due to the ambiguity of the concept itself. There is agreement that sustainability as a term implies that we are dealing with an element of temporality, or to be more precise, a concern for future generations. But as soon as one adds the adjective ‘social’, things get more complicated. There are at least two principal ways of understanding the ‘social’ in social sustainability. First, it can refer to needs. According to this approach, it is the duty of present-day social policies to make sure that the material needs (subsistence, food, housing, good health, and so on) of future generations are met. Second, the ‘social’ may also be understood to refer more abstractly to human freedoms. In this approach, the focus is on the capabilities of future generations to make their own decisions and choices.2 This second approach to social sustainability is, in a way, a derivative of the three other dimensions of trust, that is, autonomy, participation and inclusion.

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It can be argued that children’s day care reflects social sustainability at least in its second meaning. Children’s day care as early childhood education is aimed at ensuring that children, as future adults, are equipped with necessary capabilities in order for them to become fully fledged citizens of society. In this chapter I will analyse how these dimensions of trust have manifested themselves in the travaux préparatoires3 on children’s day care legislation in Finland from the 1970s until recently. However, instead of addressing all four dimensions of trust, I will only focus on three of them: autonomy, inclusion and social sustainability. The reason for this is that the fourth dimension, participation (trust in ourselves), has a more political connotation to it. As already explained in the introduction to this book, participation refers to a mode of action which relates persons in a common endeavour to change their circumstances. In other words, participation has more to do with political institutions/ practices and adults rather than social welfare services and children. As already mentioned, dimensions of trust do not come about randomly. They are instead a result of more or less conscious social policy choices that are being put into practice through administrative practices that, in turn, are regulated by legislation and law in general.4 Have the three dimensions of trust existed ever since the beginning of modern children’s day care? Has their importance in relation to each other perhaps shifted over the almost 50-year history of modern day care? What will be of special interest here is if and how the rights discourse has influenced the construction of dimensions of trust manifested in the children’s day care system. It has been argued elsewhere that the rights discourse only appeared in the Nordic welfare states in the 1990s and has so far had very little impact on judicial practice, despite its visibility on a discursive level of politics (see Kotkas 2017; Langford 2017).

THE CREATION OF THE CHILDREN’S DAY CARE SYSTEM IN THE 1970s: TRUST WITHOUT RIGHTS DISCOURSE The first modern Day Care Act (36/1973) came into force in Finland on 1 April 1973. It meant a breakaway from the old poor law tradition where children’s day care was still based on need, that is, day care was only targeted at families that lived in the direst circumstances. Along with the new Act, day care was now seen as a ‘general social service to which each citizen in need of this service could resort’.5 The Act reflected the

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ideas of the First Report of the Committee on the Principles of Social Welfare from 1971, that is, service-orientedness, a goal of normality, freedom of choice, and so on.6 According to Section 11 of the Act, it was each municipality’s responsibility to ensure that day care was available to the extent that matched the need for it within the municipality. Despite the universalistic ideal, however, it took a couple of decades to turn it into reality. At the end of 1972, the capacity of children’s day care covered 47,000 children. Six years later, in 1978, the capacity had increased to 78,000, which satisfied approximately 50 per cent of the total need.7 By 1996, when children’s day care was transformed into a subjective right, almost 220,000 children were in day care. This was around 60 per cent of all children under the age of six.8 The other 40 per cent stayed at home because their parents did not choose to take their children to day care. The work for the reform of the children’s day care system in Finland began in the late 1960s and it culminated in the Report of the Children’s Day Care Committee in 1971.9 This particular document offers an excellent window into the ideology behind the 1973 Day Care Act. It also provides key information about the dimensions of trust that the modern children’s day care system manifested and put into practice. Dimensions of Trust Although children’s day care has usually been described as one of the most important causes of women’s strong participation in the labour market in the Nordic welfare states, the 1971 Report of the Children’s Day Care Committee refers surprisingly little to this – at least in terms of women’s emancipation. Rather than claiming that the children’s day care system was needed in order to enable women to enter the labour market, the report stated that there was a need for a comprehensive day care system because women had (already) entered the labour market. Day care was not depicted as a tool for promoting women’s autonomy and inclusion, but more a result of it. The report listed several causes for the increase in women’s paid work outside the home: the transformation of the economic structure (industrialisation and the expansion of the service industry), the improvement in women’s education, the shortening of working hours, the reduction in average family size, the rationalisation of household work, and poor social security of housewives. The report even stated that a ‘child’s primary and natural place for care is his or her own home’, but that this had become impossible due to urbanisation and industrialisation (Report of the Children’s Day Care Committee 1971, pp. 15–16; 103).

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The tone of the Children’s Day Care Committee’s report clearly differed from the tone of another report that had been published a year earlier. It was stated in the 1970 Report of the Committee Investigating Women’s Status10 that: The Committee understands that the promotion of women’s status means promoting equality between women and men, i.e. that there is a strive towards societal circumstances in which societal tasks, rights and duties apply equally to men and women, in which case each individual has equal possibilities to self-fulfilment according to one’s own wishes without being set boundaries based on her or his sex. […] The most important aim of social policy is that men and women become equal in terms of providing their own subsistence. (p. 8)

The report continued, in a separate chapter on children’s day care, that ‘women’s status in society and especially in the labour market depends crucially on how children’s day care has been organised’ (ibid., p. 111). So, even though the Report of the Children’s Day Care Committee was silent on the emancipatory function of children’s day care to women, the Committee Investigating Women’s Status was fully aware of and emphasised the day care system’s role in the promotion of women’s autonomy and inclusion in society. As already mentioned, the modern children’s day care system has historically not only been about enabling women to enter the labour market but also about providing educational stimuli for children. This second function appears clearly in the Report of the Children’s Day Care Committee (pp. 6–8). It states that kindergartens have traditionally had, and still had at the time, three functions. First, they were conceived to offer possibilities for formative activities, especially to ‘children from stimulipoor circumstances’. In this regard, kindergartens have been seen as preventive tools of child protection. Second, kindergartens have also been seen to provide readiness for school and to equalise the developmental differences caused by differences in children’s growing environments. Third, developmental psychology suggests that different developmental stages in a child’s life should be taken into consideration when organising the care of children in society. Particular skills should be learnt at the right developmental stage; otherwise their learning later in life will be harder. ‘It would thus be important to provide each child with an opportunity to utilise their potential in all stages of life.’ It has so far become quite clear that children’s day care was seen as an important mechanism of trust through which women’s and children’s autonomy and inclusion in society were promoted. All this, of course, can also be seen as important from the point of view of social

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sustainability, that is, making society more equal and cohesive. But this aspect of social sustainability was not really explicitly discussed in the 1970s. Instead, social sustainability appeared in contemporary documents in a more tangible sense. In terms of population policy, children’s day care was seen to play an important role in ensuring adequate population growth. It was seen as an integral part of family policy whose overall function was to secure a balanced and a steady growth of population. The Report of the Children’s Day Care Committee (1971, p. 90) stated that: The [recent] decline in birth rates has occurred in a period during which national income has simultaneously increased rather steadily. However, during this period, adequate investments in the future population have not been made.

Children’s day care was seen as a social care service with the help of which birth rates would start to rise again. If the children’s day care system was adequately supported by society economically, it would serve as an incentive for young couples to have more children. It is interesting that the Report of the Committee Investigating Women’s Status (p. 104), which had been published a year earlier, took a more neutral stance towards the issue of population growth. It did acknowledge that population growth was on the contemporary political agenda, but it stated that if population growth was desirable at the national level, it should be achieved through mechanisms of family policy such as increasing children’s day care capacity instead of tampering with mechanisms of birth control such as contraception and abortion. Society’s Responsibility for Children’s Day Care It has been argued elsewhere that the Nordic welfare states were not built on social rights discourse. Instead, at least until the 1990s, welfare policy and law drafting were ‘dominated by a goal-rational and welfare-oriented argumentation’ (Vahlne Westerhäll 2005, p. 373). The Nordic welfare states were not about implementing and enforcing individuals’ social rights but rather society’s responsibility to take care of all its members. Rights discourse simply was not visible prior to the 1990s (Kotkas 2017). This claim is reaffirmed when one reads through the travaux préparatoires of children’s day care legislation in the 1970s and 1980s. There is very little mention of social rights. For instance, rights in an abstract meaning were mentioned in the Report of the Children’s Day Care Committee 1971 on just one occasion. It was stated in the report (p. 87) that:

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In a society of which industrialisation and urbanisation are characteristic and whose aim is to strive for intellectual and material well-being as well as for as equal civic and human rights as possible, children’s education and schooling are tasks of central importance.

This passage is quite telling because it reveals that children’s day care was not perceived as a right that could be claimed but instead it was thought that a properly functioning day care system was a tool for realising equal rights of citizens. It has been typical of Nordic welfare states to see constitutional and human rights as general goals and guidelines for the legislator rather than individual claim rights that would be justiciable in courts (Kotkas 2017, pp. 25–6; Lind 2009, pp. 58–74). Children’s day care was not a right but a service, the provision of which was based on the responsibility of society. The social policy of recent decades manifests a conception that the responsibility for the subsistence of those groups of the population without their own income or care, belongs to society. It is also consistent to apply this principle to children’s day care. This would mean that the responsibility for organising children’s day care and subsistence rests with society. (Lasten päivähoitokomitean mietintö 1971, p. 96)

This view remained largely the same throughout the 1970s. Several reports on the educational function of children’s day care were produced over the course of the decade and they focused on the principles and practices of education within day care. The Report of the Day Care’s Educational Aim Committee in 198011 summarised the ideas of previous reports but it did not offer anything new in terms of rights discourse. The report (1980, pp. 9; 12; 17; 100) only briefly mentioned that ‘every child has a right to education’. It also referred to earlier reports in which the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration on the Rights of the Child were mentioned as ‘starting points for substantial development of day care’. The report did, however, lead to the educational goals of children’s day care being written into the 1973 Day Care Act.

CHILDREN’S DAY CARE AS A SUBJECTIVE RIGHT IN THE 1990s: COMPLETION OF THE PROJECT By 1990, the right to day care for children under three years of age was made a subjective right, that is, municipalities were obliged to organise a day care place for all children under this age limit whose parents wished

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to place their child into day care. In addition, the parents were simultaneously also given an alternative right to home care subsidy, which meant that they could choose between public day care and home care. From the beginning of 1996, the subjective right to day care was extended to cover all children below school age, that is, seven years. Simultaneously, a new private care subsidy was introduced. It was payable to parents who took care of their own children at home or placed them into private day care. In 1997, a total of 229,090 children aged between one and six were in day care – either public or private – which represented roughly 60 per cent of all children in that age group.12 Despite the transformation of children’s day care into a social care service guaranteed as a subjective right in the 1990s, it can be argued that this change only completed the project of establishing a modern children’s day care system in Finland. The 1971 Report of the Children’s Day Care Committee (p. 67) had already suggested that parents should be given a real right to choose between day care and home care by creating a ‘child allowance’ (lapsiavustus) that would be paid to parents who wanted to take care of their child at home instead of sending them to day care. But the economic realities postponed the realisation of this plan to the 1990s. The reforms of the 1990s did not entail any changes to the background ideology of the children’s day care system either. The government bill that led to the reform of 1990 stated that: A children’s care system that would consider different needs of families with children and that would ensure diverse and real alternatives [for parents] to choose from has been set as the objective of developing the children’s care system. (Government Bill No. 202/1984)13

The bill did not really discuss the two principal functions of the day care system, that is, enabling women to participate in the labour market and providing children below school age with educational stimuli. It is important to stress that the subjective right to day care was still defined in the Day Care Act explicitly as a parents’ right and not a right of the child (Report of the Children’s Day Care Committee 1971, p. 10; see also Government Bill No. 319/1990, pp. 2–3). This was soon to change, however.

DAY CARE SYSTEM IN THE 2000s: TRANSFORMATION INTO A CHILD’S RIGHT TO EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION The turn of the millennium entailed a more or less clear paradigmatic change in the children’s day care system. Instead of being perceived as a

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social care service that enabled parents’ (women’s) participation in the labour market, day care was now primarily seen as a child’s right to participate in early childhood education. The Memorandum of the Early Childhood Education Working Group14 (1999, p. 1) stated that: Until recently, the development of children’s day care has been based on aspects of labour policy and the working of parents with small children. Children’s day care as a service has been developed to meet the needs of those parents who are working. Less attention has been paid to the development of the contents and quality of day care. Today, however, day care is seen ever more strongly as part of lifelong learning.

The Working Group proposed a total reform of the 1973 Day Care Act. It was suggested that a new act on day care and early childhood education should be passed and a ‘child’s right to early childhood education should be taken as the act’s starting point’ (ibid, pp. 81–2). The 1973 Act has been amended several times since the 1999 proposal of the Working Group. Since the beginning of 2013, the drafting, administration and steering of the children’s day care system and legislation was transferred from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health to the Ministry of Education and Culture. In consequence, children’s day care ceased to be a social care service and became an educational one. The aim of the change in day care’s administrative branch was to improve the quality of day care by paying more attention, among other things, to the level of education of the personnel and staff-children ratios in kindergartens.15 In August 2015, the name of the 1973 Day Care Act was changed to the Early Childhood Education Act. For the first time in the history of the 1973 Day Care Act, it was explicitly prescribed in the Act (Section 1) that it regulates the child’s right to early childhood education. On the same occasion, a new provision on the maximum number of children in one day care group was introduced.16 Perhaps the most controversial amendment of the 1973 Day Care Act was carried out in August 2016 when the subjective right to day care was curtailed.17 Since then, only those children whose parents are both working or studying full-time have the right to full-time day care. If, instead, one or both parents are at home either taking care of another child or due to unemployment, a child is only entitled to half-day day care (20 hours per week). There are, however, exceptions to this rule. Day care must also be granted as full-time day care if it is necessary for a child’s development, if there is a need for support, due to family circumstances, or if it is otherwise in the interest of the child. For instance, problems with the physical or mental health of parents as well as parents’ drug abuse are mentioned as grounds for full-time day care. The 2016 amendment thus

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introduced an element of needs-based testing to the day care system. It can be argued that this meant a step backwards to the old poor law tradition. The reform was not unconditional because municipalities are still allowed to organise full-time day care for all children if they so decide. A study shows that shortly after the coming into force of the reform, some two-thirds of municipalities had restricted the right to day care (Puroila and Kinnunen 2017, pp. 69–72). The new Early Childhood Education Act came into force in Finland on 1 September 2018. The new Act does not entail any fundamental change to the contents of the existing law on early childhood education. It merely brings together provisions on early childhood education in different Acts under a single Act. Perhaps the biggest change concerns the proficiency requirements of kindergarten personnel – it introduced tighter qualifications, requiring two-thirds of the staff of each kindergarten to now have a university degree.18 Dimensions of Trust The shift in the emphasis from labour policy to educational policy has also affected the dimensions of trust that can be recognised in children’s day care as a social care service. It is clear that promoting women’s autonomy and inclusion in society are no longer the primary functions of the day care system – although neither have they of course been totally abandoned. Instead, day care is primarily about children’s autonomy and inclusion. The 1999 Memorandum of the Early Childhood Education Working Group (pp. 18; 20) stated that: A human being’s learning starts in the womb and continues throughout one’s entire life. A person’s early years are the most vital. Upbringing at home and early childhood education create an important foundation for lifelong learning. Preschool education and elementary education in schools form a unified and flexible continuum. The central agent in early childhood education is the day care system.

The government bill (No. 40/2018, p. 49) for the new Early Childhood Education Act19 states further that: Early childhood education is seen as the first stage of lifelong learning and the aim is to create a clear path from early childhood education to preschool and school education that will advance a child’s well-being and learning. Early childhood education is a service in which early childhood pedagogics meets a welfare service for families. The basic function of the Finnish early childhood education system has been characterised as a so-called educare model (education and care) in which education, upbringing and care form a

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functional unity. Early childhood education is an important service for families with children that has considerable impact on the well-being of children and families. High-quality early childhood education has positive effects on children’s well-being and learning as well as on the abatement of poverty and social inequality. Early childhood education levels off the differences caused by children’s different circumstances and thus offers all children equal opportunities to develop according to their own potential. Early childhood education services enable parents’ participation in working life and studies and promote the realisation of gender equality.

The notion of day care, or rather early childhood education, as a ‘social investment’ is also explicitly stated in the documents for the first time. The 1999 Memorandum of the Early Childhood Education Working Group (p. 13) stated, in a subchapter titled ‘Day Care as a Social Investment’, that: In comparison to ‘home care society’, in ‘day care society’ a lot of workforce is released and the increase in the supply of work caused by the day care system means a clear gain in terms of public finances and especially the state economy.

This notion of social investment is an older one and has been attached to the day care system right from the beginning. However, a reference to social investment is also used in a second, more modern and abstract meaning. This is done in connection with the concept of ‘sustainable development’. The memorandum states that: The aim of sustainable development is to ensure good living opportunities for present and future generations. The dimension of sustainable development that relates to the environment means preserving the diversity of nature and adjusting consumption to meet the tolerance of nature. The societal dimension [of sustainable development] guarantees humans equal opportunities for creating their well-being. Sustainable development also regenerates humans mentally and gives them the possibility to grow ethically and to advance cultural diversity. (Memorandum of the Early Childhood Education Working Group 1999, pp. 18–19)

Rights Discourse As has already become evident, by the 2000s debate on the development of the children’s day care system became heavily influenced by a rights discourse. Children’s day care, or rather early childhood education, was now seen first and foremost as a child’s right. It is therefore no surprise that references to human and constitutional rights started to appear in

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the travaux préparatoires. For instance, it was stated in the Memorandum of the Early Childhood Education Working Group (1999, pp. 16– 17) that: The basic values of early childhood education are explicitly expressed in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, new constitutional rights provisions and other national legislation. […] The basic principle of early childhood education is that the rights of children are realised in the lives of the child population as a whole as well as in the life of each individual child.

The memorandum listed several individual rights that the early childhood education system should reflect and promote: the right to bodily integrity, the right to express one’s views and opinions, the right to lifelong learning, the right to equality without discrimination, the right to one’s own culture and religion, and so on (ibid., pp. 16–19; 38; 48). In a similar fashion, the most recent government bill for a new Early Childhood Education Act begins by describing the legal basis for the early childhood education system. It, too, refers to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and lists its key rights. The bill also goes through all the constitutional rights of the Constitution of Finland that are vital in regard to the early childhood education system.20 It is interesting how today the functions and value basis of early childhood education are described and explained by way of referring to human and constitutional rights. This can be considered as a sign of the juridification of political discourse. Any policy or practice that (also) realises human and constitutional rights is, in a way, automatically a legitimate one. Constitutional and human rights argumentation has become part and parcel of Finnish political and legislative discourse. Of course, human and constitutional rights may also set limits to political and legislative choices but there is so far little evidence of this restrictive dimension of human and constitutional rights on policymaking in Finland – at least in regard to constitutional social rights. The significance of civil rights has, instead, been considerably greater (see Kotkas 2017, pp. 27–8).

CONCLUSIONS Above, an outline of the history of the modern day care system in Finland has been portrayed. If one needed to capture the development with a single phrase, it would simply run something like: ‘from day care to early childhood education’. It has also been illustrated how the

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discourse on rights in the legislative documents emerged in the 1990s. What has not yet been discussed or answered, though, is the question that was posed at the beginning of this chapter: what has been the influence of the emerging rights discourse on the dimensions of trust embodied in the children’s day care system? I claim that at least two more or less identifiable consequences can be determined. I do not mean to say that there is a causal link between the emergence of rights discourse and these consequences. I only claim, instead, that they are interrelated. The first consequence, or rather a related phenomenon, is a shift towards trust in oneself. When children’s day care, which has been perceived as a social service and the organisation of which has been the responsibility of society transforms into an early childhood education service to which each child has a right and whose function is to provide children with social capital for the future, we are dealing with a trend towards individualisation. As said, early childhood education is perceived as an investment in a child’s future. It is meant to harness the individual potential that each child possesses. It is up to the child to capitalise on that potential later in life. We place our trust and invest in you now so that you can rely on yourself in the future. A social service has transformed into a social investment service. The rights discourse strengthens the trend towards individualisation because rights are by nature individuals’ rights, especially if they are perceived as claims rather than general policy goals. In comparison to the individualising rights discourse of today, the social political discourse during the formative years of the Nordic welfare states, that is, the 1960s and 1970s, was defined by ‘collective values’ such as solidarity and social justice. The goal was to improve the socio-economic status of whole segments of the population, be they industrial workers, farmers, women or children. Social justice was a question of social solidarity between different groups and not a question of an individual’s right to social security and social welfare (Kotkas 2017, pp. 17–20). As François Ewald argued in his classic study on the welfare state, L’État providence, law in the modern welfare state concerned individuals not so much as isolated actors but rather as members of a group, class or profession. The law of the welfare state was social by nature, that is, droit social. The collective nature of social security law was explained by Ewald by the fact that social security in post-war welfare states was provided and produced through a specific technology, that is, social insurance (Ewald 1986, p. 451). However, the ideals of the classical welfare state were questioned already from the 1980s onwards. Indeed, Samuel Moyn has recently suggested in his book on the history of the relationship between human

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rights and (in)equality that the simultaneous emergence of neoliberalism and human rights discourse in the 1980s resulted in the withdrawal of socialism, which had been one of the key factors in the creation of welfare states. Neoliberalism and human rights both share a trust in moral individualism and a suspicion of collective projects like socialism and nationalism. This coupling of human rights and neoliberalism has resulted in the setting aside of all concerns and questions about social and material inequalities, that is, concerns about distributive justice. Instead, the human rights movements and human rights discourse have focused almost exclusively on concerns about material sufficiency and social minimum (Moyn 2018, pp. 173–211). With regard to the political discourse on the functions of the day care system in Finland, the individualising effect of the rights discourse has meant, among other things, that such collective goals as population growth have disappeared from the agenda. The official documents of the 2000s lack any reference to the relationship between the day care system and population growth. Gone are the times when it was acceptable to harness the day care system for the service of population growth. For instance, a public outcry broke out in August 2017 when the head of the Finnish Social Democratic Party encouraged Finns to reproduce because the birth rate had been decreasing dramatically. This kind of political rhetoric was still acceptable in the 1970s when the national welfare state was in the making. However, it sits poorly with the political discourse of the 2000s that places emphasis on the rights of individuals. A second consequence of the emergence of the rights discourse is that the children’s day care system has become an arena for potential conflicts. In the 1990s, the right to children’s day care was turned into a subjective right. This meant that, from then on, municipalities have been obliged to organise day care for all children whose parents want it. In the beginning, the right to day care was primarily conceived as a parental right. Day care as subjective right soon aroused critique. It was seen as unjust and a misuse of public funds when parents who were at home due to unemployment, in particular, could still place their children in kindergarten. As already noted, in 2016 the subjective right to day care, or rather early childhood education, was limited to receiving only 20 hours per week if one or both parents were at home. One of the arguments for not abolishing the right altogether in such cases was that early childhood education is every child’s right. I am not claiming that the emergence of the rights discourse automatically entailed conflicts between different actors. The children’s day care system can, of course, easily just as well be an object of political controversy without the rights discourse. I am

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merely arguing that the rights discourse more easily facilitates juxtapositions, such as a child’s right against her parents’ right. Should the child have a right to early childhood education even though her parents want to use their right to choose between home care and day care and take care of the child at home? This kind of a question or legal dispute has not been dealt with in courts in Finland – at least not as of yet. However, in regard to children’s right to education in schools, such a case has already been tried in the European Court of Human Rights.21 It has been argued elsewhere that the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child introduced a new conception of the child and childhood. According to this conception, a child is primarily a rights bearer, whose rights are independent of her parents’. Emphasis is placed on individuality, respect, equality and competence (Moqvist 2003, pp. 117–23). This juridification of the conception of a child has also had ramifications on how parenthood is conceived. It is thought that in order for the rights of the child to be realised, parents also need help, guidance and education to perform the demanding job of raising their children. At the EU level, a programme on the education of parents has been established, in which the support that parents need in the raising of children has been conceived as a right (Moqvist 2003, pp. 124–7). In other words, the realisation of the rights of the child requires that the parents should also have a right to receive support: a right thus entails derivative rights. These derivative rights of parents are not, of course, in conflict with the child’s right, but they do attest to the more general tendency towards the juridification – or rather, ‘rightification’ – of politics. Of course, the emergence of the rights discourse is not the only cause of potential conflict and mistrust between different actors. The character of particular rights is also important for trust building. It has been argued that welfare benefits and services that are based on universalism are more likely to help build social trust. Universal benefits do not exclude anyone or portray beneficiaries as ‘other’. Furthermore, in comparison to meanstested benefits, universal benefits are less likely to create suspicion that people are cheating or abusing the welfare system (Putnam 1993, p. 153 (paraphrased in Rothstein 2002, p. 323)). In this regard, it can be argued that the introduction of the needs-based element into the Finnish day care system in 2016 is also more likely to undermine social trust and solidarity between service users – and in society in general – than to strengthen it. Those children and their families who are receiving full-time day care for social reasons are in danger of being stigmatised on two accounts. The first reason is the very fact that they receive the service for social reasons (parents’ mental problems, alcohol and/or drug

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abuse, and so on). Second, these families can be considered free-riders because typically they cannot pay the day care charges due to their low income. In conclusion, compared to today, the discourse on the children’s day care system in the 1970s and 1980s was strikingly uniform. The creation of a children’s day care system was perceived as a national project that benefited all parties alike. It benefited women, children, families and the whole society. There were no juxtapositions. The project was all about solidarity and social justice, like the creation of all social security and social welfare schemes attest. Today, the day care system – or rather, the early childhood education system – with its emphasis on children’s rights is primarily about children. Regardless of its indisputable achievements, the history of the Finnish children’s day care system shows that the rights discourse also has intrinsic potential to individualise and divide people and to set their rights against each other. The danger is that trust in oneself achieves privileged status over other dimensions of trust.

NOTES 1.

The uniqueness of the ‘Nordic welfare model’ has, of course, been questioned – or at least relativised – by claiming, for instance, that the Nordic welfare states have always been transnational by assuming ideas from other welfare state regimes and by adopting external international or even global challenges. See Kettunen and Petersen (2011). The purpose of this chapter is not, however, to engage in the debate on the very existence of the Nordic model. In regard to this dichotomic categorisation, I have resorted to a general sustainability debate. See e.g. Sen (2013). By travaux préparatoires I mainly refer to committee reports and governmental bills. Children’s day care, as well as other social care services, is of course also regulated by other regulatory regimes such as professional ethics, information-based regulation, and so on. Government Bill No. 138/1972 (for a Day Care Act), p. 5. Sosiaalihuollon periaatekomitean mietintö I: Yleiset periaattet [First Report of the Committee on the Principles of Social Welfare] 1971: A 25. Päivähoidon kasvatustavoitekomitean mietintö [Report of the Day Care’s Educational Aim Committee] 1980:31, p. 46. Opetus- ja Kulttuuriministeriön työryhmämuistioita ja selvityksiä [Memoranda and Reports of the Ministry of Education and Culture] 2014:12, pp. 66–7. Lasten päivähoitokomitean mietintö [Report of the Children’s Day Care Committee] 1971: A 20. Naisten asemaa tutkivan komitean mietintö [Report of the Committee Investigating Women’s Status]: 1970: A 8. Päivähoidon kasvatuskomitean mietintö [Report of the Day Care’s Educational Aim Committee] 1980:31. Varhaiskasvatuksen historia, nykytila ja kehittämisen suuntalinjat 2014 [The History, Present State and Guidelines for Development of Early Childhood Education], p. 67. Government Bill No. 202/1984 for Legislation Concerning the Development of Small Children’s Care, p. 3.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

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136 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

The relational Nordic welfare state Varhaiskasvatustyöryhmän muistio [Memorandum of the Early Childhood Education Working Group] 1999: 4. Government Bill No. 159/2012 (for an amendment of the 1973 Day Care Act), pp. 22–6. Government Bill No. 341/2014 (for an amendment of the 1973 Day Care Act). Government Bill No. 80/2015 (for an amendment of the Act on Early Childhood Education). Government Bill No. 40/2018 (for a new Act on Early Childhood Education), pp. 54–7. Government Bill No. 40/2018 (for a new Act on Early Childhood Education). Government Bill No. 40/2018 (for a new Act on Early Childhood Education), pp. 5–8. See e.g. the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the Wunderlich v. Germany case (10 January 2019, 18925/15) in which the Court held that ‘[t]he enforcement of compulsory school attendance, to prevent social isolation of the applicants’ children and ensure their integration into society, was thus a relevant reason for justifying the partial withdrawal of the applicants’ parental authority’. Thus, the Court found no violation of the applicants’ right to respect for their family life enshrined in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

REFERENCES Anttonen, A. and J. Sipilä (1996), ‘European Social Care Services: Is It Possible to Identify Models?’, Journal of European Social Policy 6 (2), 87–100. Esping-Andersen, G. (1990), The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press. Ewald, F. (1986), L’Etat providence, Paris: Bernard Grasset. Kautto, M., J. Fritzell, B. Hvinden, J. Kvist and H. Uusitalo (2001), ‘Introduction: How Distinct Are the Nordic Welfare States?’, in J. Fritzell, B. Hvinden, M. Kautto, J. Kvist and H. Uusitalo (eds), Nordic Welfare States in the European Context, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 1–13. Kautto, M., M. Heikkilä, B. Hvinden, S. Marklund and N. Ploug (1999), ‘Introduction: The Nordic Welfare States in the 1990s’, in M. Kautto, M. Heikkilä, B. Hvinden, S. Marklund and N. Ploug (eds), Nordic Social Policy: Changing Welfare States, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 1–18. Kettunen, P. and K. Petersen (eds) (2011), Beyond Welfare State Models: Transnational Historical Perspectives on Social Policy, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Kosonen, P. (2001), ‘Globalization and the Nordic Welfare States’, in R. Sykes, B. Palier and P.M. Prior (eds), Globalization and European Welfare States: Challenges and Change, Hampshire, UK and New York, USA: Palgrave, pp. 153–72. Kotkas, T. (2017), ‘The Short and Insignificant History of Social Rights Discourse in the Nordic Welfare States’, in T. Kotkas and K. Veitch (eds), Social Rights in the Welfare State: Origins and Transformations, Oxon, UK and New York, USA: Routledge, pp. 15–34. Langford, M. (2017), ‘The Norwegian Welfare State and Social Rights’, in T. Kotkas and K. Veitch (eds), Social Rights in the Welfare State: Origins and Transformations, Oxon, UK and New York, USA: Routledge, pp. 35–57. Lind, A.-S. (2009), Sociala rättigheter i förändring: En konstitutionellrättslig studie, Uppsala: Uppsala universitetet.

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Mahon, R., A. Anttonen, C. Bergqvist, D. Brenna and B. Hobson (2012), ‘Convergent Care Regimes? Childcare Arrangements in Australia, Canada, Finland and Sweden’, Journal of European Social Policy 22 (4), 419–31. Moqvist, I. (2003), ‘Constructing a Parent’, in M.N. Bloch, K. Holmlund, I. Moqvist and T.S. Popkewitz (eds), Governing Children, Families and Education: Restructuring the Welfare State, New York, USA and Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 117–32. Moyn, S. (2018), Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Puroila, A.-M. and S. Kinnunen (2017), Report on the Impacts of Amendments to Early Childhood Education and Care Legislation, Prime Minister’s Office: Publications of the Government’s analysis, assessment and research activities 78/2017. Putnam, R.D. (1993), Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, Princeton, USA and Chichester, UK: Princeton University Press. Rothstein, B. (2002), ‘Sweden: Social Capital in the Democratic State’, in R.D. Putnam (ed.), Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society, New York, USA: Oxford University Press, pp. 289– 331. Sen, A. (2013), ‘The Ends and Means of Sustainability’, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 14 (1), 6–20. Taylor-Gooby, P. (2009), Reframing Social Citizenship, Oxford, UK and New York, US: Oxford University Press. Westerhäll, L.V. (2005), ‘Om sociala rättigheters funktion och konstruktion’, in G. Regner, M. Eliason and H.-H. Vogel (eds), Festskrift till Hans Ragnemalm, Lund: Juristförlaget i Lund, pp. 365–86.

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7. A social constitution of Europe?* Kaarlo Tuori THE MULTI-DIMENSIONAL EU CONSTITUTION As the ‘constitutional charter’ of the European Union (EU), the Founding Treaties are bewildering reading for someone approaching them through the state template. Indeed, the general embarrassment among the citizenry when confronted with the substance of the abortive Constitutional Treaty in the mid-2000s has been identified as one of the reasons for its rejection in the French and Dutch referenda. The Treaties contain an abundance of provisions which do not pertain to the typical materia constitutionis of state constitutions, most conspicuously provisions on diverse policy fields. The European constitution is not only about European law and polity; it is also about European economy, European social welfare and European security. State constitutions usually limit themselves to regulating the political and legal sub-systems of society. The political and juridical dimensions exist in the European constitution as well. In the political dimension, constitutional law regulates the EU as a polity, and in the juridical dimension, the EU legal system. But EU constitutional law also constitutionalizes sectoral fields which, at state level, are usually the province of ordinary policy- and lawmaking. In state constitutions, the basic premise is the universality of the political and legal claim to authority within state territory, the principle of comprehensive powers, as we can also put it. State constitutions follow a territorial principle of authority, and consequently, no sector-specific constitutional authorizations are needed. By contrast, the EU does not adhere to a territorial principle of authority but to a functional or substantive principle of authority. In accordance with the basic policy orientation of the EU, its juridical and political claim to authority is substantially (functionally) limited. Neither is the assumption of comprehensive powers valid for the European transnational polity and legal system; the principle of conferral substitutes for that of comprehensive powers. Not only must the European constitution provide the general juridical and political framework for 138

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sectoral policies, it must also set sectoral objectives and create sectoral competences. Consequently, the framing political and juridical constitutions are complemented by sectoral constitutions, such as economic, social and security constitutions. Furthermore, economic constitutionalization has produced a differentiation between two subfields: a microeconomic constitution, based on the Treaty of Rome but in important respects elaborated by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), and a macroeconomic one, based on the Maastricht provisions on the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The microeconomic constitution is centred on free movement and competition law, and focuses on the economic activity of individual economic actors. In turn, the macroeconomic constitution addresses macroeconomic objectives and policies. European integration has primarily been an economic project, and in spite of the expansion of EU activities into new policy domains, economic integration still retains a dominant position. This has left its imprint on inter-dimensional relations within the European constitution. The economic constitution has benefited from a functional primacy with regard not only to the framing juridical and political constitutions but to other sectoral constitutions as well. Thus, the social policy provisions of the Treaty of Rome already had an economic rationale: they served the free movement of workers or secured a level playing field for the industries of different Member States. Still, the functional primacy of the European economic constitution should not be understood in absolute terms. Although owing their initial momentum to the economic constitution, in their further development, non-economic constitutional dimensions may have obtained at least partial independence from economic considerations. Signs of independence – or at least striving for independence – are detectable in the social constitution too. A model example of growing autonomy is offered by the way the Treaty of Rome provision on equal pay was progressively detached from its economic rationale and turned into a nucleus of EU antidiscrimination law. The gradual development of constitutional social rights also reflects an aspiration for independence, although cross-border social rights in particular owe much of their initial dynamics to the implications of the economic constitution. The free movement of workers has provided the impetus for the right to cross-border social security and the free movement of services has provided the impetus for the right to cross-border healthcare. The at least partial independence of the social constitution points to yet another type of relations between constitutional dimensions: the relations of conflict. Increasing autonomy may lead to normative results which contradict the requirements of the economic constitution. Before the ECJ, such constitutional conflicts often assumed the guise of a contestation

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between different types of rights. Economic rights derived from free movement law may clash with social rights, or civil or political fundamental rights. In a standard constellation before the ECJ, the issue was whether the protection of other types of rights justified derogating from economic rights; reference can be made to such celebrated rulings of the ECJ as Omega and Schmidberger or Viking and Laval.1 The functional primacy of the economic constitution is obvious in the very posing of the issue; in conflicts of rights, what needs justification is restricting not a fundamental right but an economic right?

IS THERE A EUROPEAN SOCIAL CONSTITUTION? EU Treaty law contains provisions on social values and objectives, social policy competences and even social rights. Ever since the Treaty of Rome, social values and objectives have occupied a prominent place in ‘surface-level’ constitutional law, alongside economic objectives. The value basis of the EU, as defined in Art. 2 Treaty on European Union (TEU), comprises values relevant for social policy, such as justice, solidarity and equality between men and women. Furthermore, Art. 3 TEU includes social objectives and, in defining economic objectives, refers to their social implications as well; it even introduces the term social market economy, familiar from German post-World War II debates. Ever since Rome, the Treaty has also included a Social policy Title, which was gradually amended into the shape it received in Lisbon wherein legislative competences, too, have been established. Social rights are a later addition; here the decisive breakthrough was only made with the Lisbon Treaty, which concurred with a constitutional status on the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFREU), including its Solidarity chapter. Still, doubts have been raised about whether these provisions justify the talk of a social dimension in the European constitution. The doubts rest on two main grounds. For many observers, socially oriented Treaty provisions, as well as secondary legislation, are of a patchwork character and not animated by a coherent social policy view which would lend individual provisions the necessary degree of coherence. Secondly, the economic constitution has enjoyed, and to a large extent still enjoys, primacy over a putative social dimension. Unlike Treaty provisions on free movement and competition law – the core of the (micro)economic constitution – provisions on social policy have not enjoyed a direct effect in Member State courts. Macroeconomic constitutionalization – so the argument continues – has only added to the constitutional disparity

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between economic and social policy. I concede the pertinence of both arguments (the lack of a shared normative vision of social Europe and the subjugation of social policy considerations to the needs of economic integration). Yet, these facts tell not so much of the absence of a social constitution as they tell of two of its main characteristic features: the primacy of the national welfare state and the subordination of the social constitution to the economic constitution. The European economic constitution has always relied on the presupposition of the existence of national redistributive mechanisms. National welfare policies have been a silent partner in European constitutionalism and must necessarily be included in a discussion of the European social constitution. The underlying assumption in Rome was that the Treaty would achieve its social goals through the increased economic prosperity which the common market would produce and which would then be redistributed through national welfare mechanisms. The macroeconomic constitution, the foundations of which were laid in Maastricht, also presupposes national welfare policies. The Europeanization of monetary policy has increased the importance of fiscal policy as a key national instrument for adjusting to asymmetric internal and external shocks. Of particular importance are so-called automatic stabilizers, that is, countercyclically altering revenues and expenditures, such as taxes and welfare spending. In European debates, social and fiscal policies are often seen as inseparable. If one remains with the Member States, the other one should remain as well. And, correspondingly: if one were to be transferred to the European level, the other should follow. But in figuring out which policy field should take the lead, positions have diverged. In debates on the EMU, the economists – those who emphasized that monetary union was impossible without economic union – pointed to the need for Europeanized fiscal policy and argued that this would imply the Europeanization of social policy as well. In turn, those who wanted to retain national welfare regimes under national sovereignty were well aware that this required fiscal policy sovereignty too. The Lisbon ruling of the German Constitutional Court2 is a token of the jealousy with which Member States have guarded their sovereignty in social policy, especially as regards core welfare services with a redistributive effect, such as social security and healthcare. In line with fiscal policy, Treaty revisions have retained social policy under Member State sovereignty. The primacy of the national welfare state in the core welfare services has been explicitly enshrined in Treaty law, as has the principle of European neutrality with regard to national welfare models. Accordingly, ever since the Treaty of

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Rome, provisions on social policy have emphasized soft measures of coordination, instead of legislative competences. Overall, a social dimension can be discerned in European constitutionalism, but only if we include the national level in the discussion. In addition, those claiming that the EU lacks a unifying normative social policy vision have mainly focused on the core fields of national welfare policy, namely social security and healthcare. Yet, arguably, the particular contribution of the EU social legislator has concentrated on areas which, in the national setting, lie on the fringes of the welfare state, on what Hans-W. Micklitz has called European regulatory private law. And, as Micklitz contends, European regulatory private law might be imbued with a definite normative vision of its own, a particular notion of justice which Micklitz (2011a) terms access justice. Two basic tensions permeate the social dimension of European constitutionalism. On the one hand, the primacy of the national welfare state is, with difficulty, reconcilable with the prevalence of the economic constitution. On the other hand, European access justice confronts the solidaristic social justice underpinning national welfare regimes, a confrontation that may have conflictual consequences.

WHY THE PRIMACY OF THE NATIONAL WELFARE STATE? Social policy, especially in the key areas of social security and healthcare, is about redistribution based on value choices, and such redistribution entails an enhanced need for democratic legitimacy. As long as the EU is afflicted by a democratic deficit, this need can only be met at the national level. A shift of emphasis in social policy from the national to European level would only aggravate the existing legitimacy deficit. Moreover, it could jeopardize the overall legitimacy of national political regimes which, in post-war Western Europe, has largely derived from the fair (re)distribution of increasing prosperity through welfare state mechanisms. As the democratic input legitimacy of the Union is mainly guaranteed by national democratic procedures, Member State legitimacy problems would have repercussions at the European level as well. Redistributive welfare policy reflects a solidaristic notion of social justice. Solidarity as a moral or ethical principle is intimately linked to solidarity as a sociological fact. Redistributive social policy draws on and presupposes solidarity among the members of the polity. Solidarity, in the sociological sense of the term, builds on common history, values and identity. In spite of increasing and intensifying cross-boundary ties

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among European citizens, up to now the necessary cultural basis for such solidarity has only existed at the national level. This has inevitably made the post-World War II welfare state a national project. In turn, cultural divergences and particular national historical trajectories and traditions account for differences in welfare state ideologies and normative commitments, and for different specifications of social justice and its implications. Member State welfare regimes manifest varying perceptions of the respective tasks of the state, the market and the third sector – as well as of the respective weight of financial transfers and public services in kind – as instruments of social policy. The relative homogeneity among the six original Bismarckian welfare states has long since been broken, and it is futile to search for a uniform European Social Model that is shared by the Member States. Scholars have proposed diverse groupings, starting from Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s (1990) now classic division into Anglo-Saxon liberal, Central and Southern European corporatist, and Nordic social democratic welfare states. Cultural diversity, resulting in bounded solidarities and divergent conceptions of social policy, goes a long way to explaining the tenacity with which Member States try to shield their welfare regimes, both within the Union legislature and before the ECJ as the Union’s constitutional court. Redistribution through welfare state measures would not be possible without sufficient fiscal resources. A central principle of the European macroeconomic constitution is Member State fiscal sovereignty, including the right of taxation. The Eurozone crisis has opened inroads into Member State sovereignty, but the decisive step in the direction of Europeanizing fiscal policy and building up Union fiscal capacity has not been taken. Hence, the EU simply does not possess the indispensable fiscal means to act as a transnational welfare state, nor is a fiscal union a likely prospect for the foreseeable future. For the German Constitutional Court, for instance, the inextricably intertwined fiscal and social policy competences belong to the core area of national sovereignty which democracy, as an inviolable principle of the national constitution, prohibits from being transferred to the transnational level.3 Even where the EU possesses legislative social policy competences, their use outside the coordination of cross-border social security and healthcare has been scarce. Reaching necessary consensus on legislative measures, in particular outside such fields of ‘encapsulated federalism’ as labour law and antidiscrimination law,4 is extremely difficult due to Member State sovereignty concerns; the cultural, ideological, institutional and financial variance of national social policy regimes; and economic divergences – all greatly accentuated by the eastern enlargement. This is also the backdrop to the structural asymmetry in the EU

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which favours judicial lawmaking over political lawmaking and negative integration over positive integration (Scharpf 1999; 2010). It also explains why European social policy, especially in fields central for national welfare states, is a favoured province of the open method of coordination, conferring on it a voluntaristic label (Streeck 1995; on the open method of coordination in the social dimension, see Armstrong 2010).

RESTRICTIONS ON FREE MOVEMENT The microeconomic constitution may impose limitations on national welfare regimes in two ways: first, by treating national social policy measures as restrictions on free movement or competition and, secondly, by subjecting national welfare services themselves to internal market law. The jurisprudence of the ECJ has been crucial in staking out the boundaries of Member State sovereignty in social policy. Through the prism of negative integration, the Court has examined Member State socially oriented legislation as a potential restriction of fundamental economic freedoms or undistorted competition. The Dassonville formula of the ECJ adopted a wide definition of the national measures which could have an effect equivalent to that of quantitative restrictions on the free movement of goods. The definition encompassed the following: ‘all trading rules enacted by Member States which are capable of hindering, directly or indirectly, actually or potentially, intra-community trade are to be considered as measures having an effect equivalent to quantitative restrictions’.5 Through the Dassonville doctrine, the ECJ extended its constitutional jurisdiction to socially motivated national legislation in the fields of, say, consumer or worker protection or public health, where the Community at the moment, did not enjoy legislative competence. Judicial legislation pursuing negative integration did not acknowledge the boundaries of legislative competence for positive integration.6 On the other hand, the mandatory requirements which, under Cassis de Dijon, define acceptable Member State justifications for restricting the free movement of goods, include ‘in particular […] the effectiveness of fiscal supervision, the protection of public health, the fairness of commercial transactions and the defence of the consumer’ (Para. 8).7 Even if social rights or other social viewpoints were not expressly invoked in Cassis de Dijon, the ECJ may still recognize them as mandatory requirements. Indeed, especially after Maastricht, the ECJ has conceded the relevance of social policy justifications. However, in line with other mandatory requirements, social viewpoints have yet to prove their force

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in the proportionality test – a ‘cost-benefit’ assessment – which constitutes the final phase in the Court’s argument.8 In the field of services, too, the ECJ has established itself as a constitutional court, competent to assess the impact that socially oriented legislation or comparable measures may have on free movement. However, to counterbalance a rather extensive definition of restrictions on free movement, the Court again went beyond the wording of the Treaty in defining acceptable Member State justifications under the heading of imperative reasons.

THE EXTENSION OF INTERNAL MARKET LAW TO WELFARE SERVICES Censuring national social legislation for restricting free movement and infringing on trade union freedom of action may justly be seen as limiting Member State social policy sovereignty and the right to decide on the regime through which that sovereignty is exercised. Still, a potentially much more serious threat to Member State autonomy in choosing the national welfare model arises from subjecting healthcare and social security themselves to free movement and competition law. The ECJ’s attention to services since the late 1980s has not excepted social security or healthcare. In its rulings, the ECJ habitually refers to Treaty provisions confirming Member State sovereignty in these crucial areas of national welfare regimes. However, the Court has not considered the provisions to be an obstacle to the application of free movement or competition law. This has cleared the ground for the primacy of the economic constitution over the social constitution and for a corresponding internal hierarchy in Treaty law.9 In applying free movement or competition law to welfare services, the first issue concerns the qualification of the service involved: is it an economic service for the purposes of free movement and competition law? An important string of healthcare cases has dealt with cross-border healthcare, more specifically the right of a patient to reimbursement from the social security scheme of her or his country of affiliation for treatment received in another Member State. In a number of cases, the Court has held that both ambulatory healthcare and treatment received in hospital are services subject to free movement legislation. After affirming the applicability of free movement law, the Court has proceeded to discuss the refusal of reimbursement as a potential restriction on the freedom to provide – and receive – services. The fact that the country of affiliation has adopted a national health service (NHS) system, based on

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publicly owned hospitals providing a health service either free of charge or for symbolic compensation, does not affect the relevance of the freedom of movement law for cross-border healthcare. What is essential is the character of the service received in the other Member State. Services in the NHS system are not of an economic character, nor are public hospitals providing them undertakings for the purposes of competition law.10 As we shall see below, this does not, however, relieve the NHS country from its obligation to reimburse the costs of healthcare services of an economic nature received in another Member State. The need to locate social security schemes with regard to the boundary separating non-economic services from economic services has arisen in cases where a person or a company covered by a compulsory scheme has refused to pay a contribution, claiming that its compulsoriness violates constitutional competition law. Starting from Poucet and Pistre,11 the ECJ has developed a set of yardsticks for judging whether or not a social security fund is an undertaking and subject to competition law. The Court has argued that as social purposes can be realized through economic, market-oriented and non-economic action, a social purpose as such does not exempt a fund from the application of competition law. What appears to be the decisive criterion for exemption is the solidarity principle adhered to in financing the scheme and determining the benefits. Solidarity may take diverse forms. It may be internal and confined to the clients of the fund, that is, its beneficiaries and contributors. It may also extend beyond clients and be manifest in external subsidies from the state – from taxes or other funds. Crucial for both internal and external solidarity is that financing is not based on capitalization12 and that the benefits which clients receive are not directly linked to their contributions. The provisions in Art. 106 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU; previously Art. 90 Treaty on the European Community (TEC)) lay down a general prohibition for Member States from enacting or maintaining in force any measure concerning public undertakings and undertakings with special or exclusive rights which would be contrary to Treaty rules, in particular competition law and the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of nationality. If the Court has found a social security fund to be an undertaking, it has moved to examining whether the compulsoriness of the scheme amounts to an exclusive right within the meaning of Art. 106(1) TFEU and, if it does, whether it constitutes an unjustified restriction on competition. Article 106(2) TFEU allows restricting competition in favour of ‘undertakings entrusted with the operation of services of general economic interest’ if restrictions are necessitated by the particular tasks assigned to the undertakings. In Albany, the Court held it to be decisive whether the exclusive right of a

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social security fund and the ensuing restriction on competition are ‘necessary for the performance of a particular social task of general interest with which that fund has been charged’.13 A social function or financial solidarity fund have not sufficed to exclude a social security scheme from the concept of undertaking. By contrast, the Court has deemed these features relevant when assessing the justifiability of a restriction of competition deriving from the compulsoriness of a social security scheme. In Albany, the Court first invoked the essential social function that the supplementary pension scheme under scrutiny fulfilled within the pension system of the country concerned. Secondly, in the Court’s assessment, the fund displayed a high level of (financial) solidarity which rendered its services less competitive than comparable services provided by insurance companies and went towards justifying its exclusive right. The Court inferred that ‘the removal of the exclusive right conferred on the Fund might make it impossible for it to perform the tasks of general economic interest entrusted to it under economically acceptable conditions and threaten its financial equilibrium’. Bringing social security schemes under the concept of services of general economic interest, employed by the Treaty provision now in Art. 106(2) TFEU, may seem somewhat surprising. The standard reading of the concept mainly invokes infrastructure services which are vital for the economy in general, such as telecommunications and other network industries or postal and transport services. It is hard to avoid the impression that, in order to promote the application of the microeconomic constitution to services, the Court has preferred to employ a wide definition of both economic activity and undertaking but, as a counterbalance, has also wanted to acknowledge the relevance of solidarity-related justifications for compulsory social security schemes. This has required a liberal interpretation of ‘services of general economic interest’ and exemption from the constraints of competition law facilitated by the Treaty. In many Member States, services-related ECJ jurisprudence raised concerns about their sovereignty over the organization and financing of core welfare services. The amendments which the constitutional legislator introduced through the Treaty of Amsterdam reflect these concerns. Yet, they did not diffuse the conceptual haziness surrounding welfare services, rather the contrary. The Treaty included services of general economic interest among the shared values of the Union and pointed to their role in strengthening social and territorial cohesion. It also obliged the Union and the Member States to secure that ‘such services operate on the basis of principles and conditions, particularly economic and financial

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conditions, which enable them to fulfil their missions’ (Art. 16 TECAmsterdam). The Lisbon Treaty amended this provision by entrusting the ordinary legislator with the task to ‘establish these principles and set these conditions without prejudice to the competence of Member States, in compliance with the Treaties, to provide, to commission and to fund such services’ (Art. 14 TFEU). In its effort to ensure the implementation of free market and competition law in the service sector, the Court has enjoyed the support of the Commission, expressed in Commission communications and legislative initiatives, largely aiming at codifying the jurisprudence of the Court. The most debated legislative initiatives have been the proposals for the 2006 Services Directive and the 2011 Patients’ Rights Directive. Several Member States pushed to exclude welfare services from the Services Directive. In the end, healthcare was explicitly left out but social security schemes were not: if they meet the criteria of economic services, the Directive is relevant. As regards healthcare, the Preamble to the Services Directive states that cross-border healthcare would be addressed in another legal instrument (Recital 21). That instrument turned out to be the Patients’ Rights Directive.14 Both directives were issued under Art. 114 TFEU allowing harmonization for the purpose of the establishment or functioning of the internal market. This manifests the fact that a central backdrop to both the Services Directive and the Patients’ Rights Directive is furthering economic integration and implementing the microeconomic constitution, rather than distinct social policy considerations.

WELFARE SERVICES FOR MOBILE WORKERS AND CITIZENS In the negotiations paving the way for the Treaty of Rome, the harmonization of social security was expressly rejected and the Community was only granted legislative competence (even for coordinating national social security) to the extent deemed necessary for establishing the common market (Barnard 2011, pp. 642–5). Coordination did not aim at distinct social aims but was seen in instrumental terms, as a means serving economic integration. The only specific social legislative competence in the Treaty was located in the Free movement Title, not in the Social policy Title, that is, it was located among the provisions of economic constitutional law rather than social constitutional law. The instrumental tone is conspicuous in the wording of Art. 51 TEC (now Art. 48 TFEU), which obliged the Community legislator to adopt ‘such measures in the

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field of social security as are necessary to provide freedom of movement for workers’. The wording implies that the provision does not possess direct effect but presupposes secondary legislation. However, the expansion of direct effect has encompassed provisions on the free movement of workers as well. The Court has adopted an extensive interpretation of both the personal and substantive scope of the central legislative instrument issued under Art. 51 of the Treaty of Rome: Social Security Regulation 1408/71.15 The Court gradually expanded the personal reach of the Regulation from migrant workers and their dependants to all economically active persons, as well as future and former workers, such as students and pensioners. In the Court’s interpretation, the substantive scope, in turn, comprises not only traditional ‘Bismarckian’ labourrelated benefits, mostly of a contributory character, but reaches out to non-contributory benefits as well. Originally, the Leitbild of social security coordination was the mobile worker.16 The inclusion of students in the early 1990s already diverged from that initial Leitbild, but the decisive turning point came with the introduction of European citizenship in Maastricht. The mobile European citizen emerged as the new dominant Leitbild, guiding the cross-border right to social security. In spite of the loosening of dependence on the economic constitution, this development did not signal a triumph of ‘genuine’ social policy objectives. Even after the citizenship turn, social policy was devised on premises other than social policy premises, and again, the coordination of social security schemes was conceived of in instrumental terms. Now the general aim was to promote mobility, not merely of economically active persons for the sake of economic integration but of European citizens in general for the sake of broader societal integration. Acting as a constitutional court, the Court, in its case law on cross-border social security rights, set aside Regulation 1408/71 and invoked the right of EU citizens ‘to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States’, explicitly enshrined in the Treaty (now Art. 21(2) TFEU). As the ECJ ruled in Baumbast,17 this Treaty provision possesses a direct effect; hence, the realization of the citizenship’s right of free movement does not depend on secondary legislation. When an EU citizen exercises the Treaty-based right of movement, this brings her or him within the scope of the Treaty provision prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of nationality (now Art. 18 TFEU) as well. This line of argument opened access for mobile European citizens to social security benefits in their Member State of residence. However, the Court has also shown understanding towards the Member States’ wish to ward off ‘welfare tourism’ and the consequent strain on their welfare systems. The

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Court has made the eligibility of foreign nationals for social benefits dependent on additional criteria, reflecting the firmness of the bond with the state of residence. Still, all restrictions on the social rights of mobile citizens are subject to a proportionality test, which ultimately decides their justifiability. The substantive reach of the right to social benefits derived from European citizenship is larger than the cross-border rights granted under Art. 51 of the Treaty of Rome and the Social Security Regulation. It covers, in principle, all social benefits, including social assistance, which was expressly excluded from the scope of Regulation 1408/71. The constitutional basis is different too. Diverging from workers’ rights to social benefits, the Treaty does not explicitly presuppose secondary legislation on citizenship rights. Still, complementary secondary legislation has been issued on citizens’ freedom of movement and adjacent rights to social benefits too. Secondary legislation, though, does ‘little more than codify the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice’ (Damjanovic´ and de Witte 2009). The Court has formulated its doctrines as a constitutional court and based them directly on the Treaty so that the doctrines narrow the leeway of the political legislator. Furthermore, because of the direct effect of the Treaty provisions on citizenship, the freedom of movement and non-discrimination, the list of rights expressly guaranteed to citizens by secondary legislation is not necessarily exhaustive. Healthcare belongs to the core welfare areas to which Member States have been especially attentive to their sovereignty and to which the clear emphasis in Union policy lies in soft law and the open method of coordination. The coordination of cross-border healthcare is an exception to this rule and constitutes a parallel case to the coordination of social security. Again, social policy decisions have been taken outside the Treaty framework for social policy, primarily on premises other than social policy premises. And again, the institutional driving force has been the ECJ while the contribution of the political legislator has mainly been reduced to codifying case law. The Treaty basis for the Court’s activism has, though, been different. Instead of the provisions for worker or citizen mobility, the primary Treaty support has been the provision of the freedom to provide services (now Art. 56 TFEU). As long ago as 1984, in Luisi and Carbone, the ECJ established that the Treaty-guaranteed freedom to provide services implies the freedom to receive them.18 Still, in cross-border healthcare the main legal issue has not been freedom to receive healthcare services in another Member State as such, but the obligation of the home country to reimburse those services from its public insurance system. In 1998 in Kohll and Decker,19

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the Court ruled that healthcare funded by a public insurance system is covered by free movement law. EU citizens are entitled as service recipients to cross-border healthcare financed by their home country’s insurance system, provided that the service in question is in general covered by that system. Acting once more as a constitutional court, the ECJ set aside the restrictions that Regulation 1408/71 imposed on the export of healthcare benefits and based its rulings directly on Treaty law on free movement. Subsequently, the Court has specified the main principles defining cross-border access to healthcare services, thereby progressively adjusting and widening the conditions originally laid down by the legislator in Regulation 1408/71. The Court has formulated all the crucial parameters of the scope, conditions and funding of cross-border healthcare. Again, what has remained for the Union legislator is codification of case law; this was accomplished through the Patients’ Rights Directive.

THE DENATIONALIZATION AND DETERRITORIALIZATION OF WELFARE SERVICES As many observers have remarked, the expansion of rights to crossboundary welfare services has led to a tendency to denationalize and deterritorialize national welfare regimes. Depending on the chosen welfare model, this tendency can have grave consequences for national social policy (see in particular Martinsen (2005a; 2005b); and Menéndez (2009)). The familiar groupings of European welfare states, starting from Esping-Andersen’s typology, are of limited help in analysing potential consequences. Instead, what is decisive is the method of financing and organizing social and healthcare services. In healthcare, the main dividing line goes between the NHS and insurance-based systems. In the former, healthcare services are publicly funded and delivered, while patients merely pay nominal or symbolic remuneration. In the latter, public insurance schemes reimburse the costs of publicly or privately delivered and financed services to patients. In social security, a related distinction separates residence-based systems from insurance-based systems. In a residence-based model, a person is entitled to social benefits on the basis of citizenship or habitual residence. Most benefits are not dependent on individual contributions but are universally granted and financed through taxation. In a social insurance model, employees are insured against basic risks in accordance with lex loci laboris. Social benefits are primarily financed by and depend on individual contributions (Martinsen 2005a, pp. 1038–9). In practice, distinctions between the

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NHS and insurance-based healthcare or residence-based and insurancebased social security are not necessarily clear cut, so that one and the same system may combine features from both sides of the dividing line. In its rulings on cross-border social security and healthcare the ECJ routinely pays lip service to Member State sovereignty in choosing welfare models. Still, denationalization and deterritorialization evidently affect different models in different ways. Denationalization manifests itself in the opening of national welfare services for non-nationals: first, for mobile workers and their family members, then for other economically active nationals of other Member States moving across borders and, finally, for all European citizens exercising their Treaty-based right of movement. This has had repercussions, particularly for residence-based social security, a traditional hallmark of Nordic welfare states which have been forced to modify their rules on eligibility for social security benefits, above all, in order to drop the nationality requirement in order to fall within the scope of the Social Security Regulation. Furthermore, Member States have been obliged to extend the coverage of both the NHS and insurance-based systems of public healthcare beyond their own nationals and long-time residents. Denationalization is supplemented by deterritorialization. If denationalization has opened national social security and healthcare systems for non-nationals, deterritorialization has allowed the participants of national systems to receive social security benefits or healthcare services in other Member States. Regulation 1408/71 adopted the principle of exportation within its field of application and facilitated cross-border healthcare, but only after authorization by the Member State of affiliation. The case law of the ECJ, starting with Kohll and Decker and codified in the Patients’ Rights Directive, gradually expanded the possibility of exit; in other words, it facilitated searching for healthcare in another Member State than the country of affiliation. If residence-based models have been under particular pressure in social security, in healthcare, compared to the NHS system, insurance-based systems are more easily adaptable to the combined effects of the expanded possibilities of the entry of patients from other Member States and the exit of patients covered by the national system. Denationalization and deterritorialization have been accompanied by EU-induced amendments to national legislation and modifications in national social security or healthcare models. Still, indirect impacts may be more important than legal obligations in introducing changes to national welfare regimes. EU law does not oblige Member States to revise their fundamental choices between residence- and insurance-based social security or between NHS and insurance-based healthcare. But,

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arguably, insurance-based social security and healthcare can be more flexibly geared up for the liberalization driven by the Court and the Commission. Liberalization backed up by ECJ constitutional jurisprudence has given a boost to those trends in organizing and financing welfare services, which the Commission, in its 2006 Communication, labels modernization,20 and which Gareth Davies has characterized as a shift from provision to regulation (Davies 2006, p. 53). Denationalization and deterritorialization may influence the substantive reach and level of welfare services too. The prospect of non-nationals entering publicly financed welfare regimes with the ensuing additional financial burdens or the enlarged territorial exit of nationals at the expense of the Member State of affiliation may function as an efficient brake to introducing new benefits, or enlarging the scope or raising the level of existing ones. Instead of upgrading, the general tendency in Member States seems rather to be towards downgrading. At the most fundamental level, denationalization and deterritorialization may strike at the solidarity foundations of national welfare regimes. Solidarity is a polysemic term that also has diverse conceptual meanings. In healthcare, NHS and insurance-based systems are both premised on solidarity in the sense of both financial redistribution and an underlying socio-ethical bond. In social security, financial solidarity is evident in both residence- and insurance-based systems. By contrast, solidarity in the socio-ethical sense is more manifest in a residence-based system than in an insurance-based system. This is due to the bounded nature of the solidarity, which has underlain national welfare state projects: a solidarity uniting the nationals living in the territory of a nation state. The future of the social dimension in Europe is overshadowed by the danger that denationalization and deterritorialization will undermine the ethical and sociological foundations of national welfare states without initiating compensating developments at the European level (see also Menéndez 2009). Denationalization and deterritorialization expand financial solidarity beyond national citizenry and territory. This may corrode the socioethical solidarity which made financial solidarity – and the welfare state in general – possible in the first place. Of course, no a priori obstacles exist to extending the boundaries of the solidarity community too. But this cannot be done overnight, by fiat, and requires arduous social and cultural developments. Here, European integration still has a long way to go.

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THE CONSEQUENCES OF MACROECONOMIC CONSTITUTIONALIZATION European macroeconomic constitutionalization, launched in Maastricht, has further curtailed Member State leeway in social policy. Due to the close intertwinement of redistributive social policy with fiscal policy, the fiscal constraints introduced by the Maastricht EMU provisions, and significantly reinforced as a reaction to the Eurozone crisis, have reduced the latitude for national social policy too. A common currency in a non-optimal currency area calls for high labour market flexibility. Because of limited labour mobility and intraeuro-area fiscal transfers, increasing labour market and wage flexibility has been deemed necessary in order to manage the adverse countryspecific developments which common monetary policy cannot address. Indeed, during the Eurozone crisis measures aimed at enhancing labour market and wage flexibility were a staple in the Memoranda of Understanding, implementing the strict conditionality of financial assistance. The crisis provided new impetus to the market liberal tenets of marketization and flexibilization as central premises of European macroeconomic governance. The effects of official market liberalism are not confined to the crisis states but extend to the Eurozone as a whole. These developments are an important aspect of the shift in emphasis between liberal and social market economies towards the former (Scharpf 2010), a shift which questions the constitutional principle of EU neutrality with regard to ‘varieties of capitalism’. In addition to the requirements of labour market and wage-setting liberalization and flexibilization, austerity programmes have curbed the social policy sovereignty of crisis states through detailed and focused obligations to cut social expenditure and public sector wages (Busch et al. 2013).21 Indeed, social spending has been a major target in measures aiming to reduce the budget deficit and public debt. The massive impact of European measures on the labour and welfare regime of, in particular, the crisis states raises the question of the protective role of social rights. The ECJ has been wary of basing its rulings on either the European Social Charter of the Council of Europe or the solidarity provisions in the CFREU. So, the position of social rights in EU law remains rather weak. In such famous cases as Laval 22 and Viking,23 where social rights have clashed with rights emanating from fundamental freedoms, the social dimension has rested on Member State law. Despite the rather weak position of social rights in EU law, it would be erroneous to label them as merely constitutional soft law.

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The renewed European Charter of Social Rights belongs to the common constitutional heritage which, in accordance with Art. 6(3) TEU, determines the contents of fundamental rights as general principles of EU law. What is even more important is that the provisions on solidarity rights of the EU Charter, similarly to other Charter provisions, are legally effective and ‘addressed to the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union’ so that these bodies are to ‘respect the rights, observe the principles and promote the application thereof in accordance with their respective powers’ (Art. 51(1) CFREU). According to the prevalent view of social rights – manifest in, for instance, the so-called Limburg principles – in times of austerity, social rights function as criteria for prioritization in the allocation of spending cuts.24 Yet almost no reference to either the Solidarity chapter of the CFREU or to the renewed European Social Charter can be found in the abundant legal documents which the Eurozone crisis produced. In the face of the failure of fundamental rights monitoring within the EU, other transnational or international supervisory bodies have had to step in. These, however, possess less influence and have no jurisdiction over Union action or intergovernmental stability mechanisms. All they can do is criticize national authorities which have had little latitude in implementing the strict conditionality imposed on them (Tuori and Tuori 2014, pp. 239–40). Within the crisis states, austerity measures and labour market reforms have led to litigation before national courts. In general, the results have been meagre. The courts have exercised judicial restraint and displayed far-going understanding of government defences invoking economic emergency and the strict conditionality of financial assistance. In sum, social rights have proven rather toothless in resisting or redirecting spending cuts or structural labour market reforms, weakening the position of social partners and collective bargaining. This general conclusion covers all levels of social rights protection, whether European, international or national. With regard to the conditionality of European financial stability assistance, the primary deficiency is a lack of a Union-level monitoring mechanism and the apparently non-existent commitment of key Union institutions.

TWO NOTIONS OF JUSTICE – ARE THEY COMPLEMENTARY OR CONFLICTING? In many respects, Union social policy measures reverse the order of binaries typical of national welfare states. In the context of national welfare states, we are used to thinking of social policy in terms of market

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correction and de-commodification. By contrast, the EU social policy, too, seems to be subjected to the purposes of market construction, promoting commodification rather than de-commodification. In this section I discuss another reversal: that of the centre and periphery. The credo of the national welfare state is to guarantee basic welfare services, such as social security and healthcare, to the citizenry as a whole. If in general one is entitled to talk about an independent EU contribution to social policy, its focus lies elsewhere than on redistributive services in the kernel of national welfare regimes; rather, its focus lies on regulatory measures in their outer ring. Instead of an emphasis on redistribution, it is on regulation: on regulatory private law. Diverging from the standard situation at state level, in the EU this branch of law, too, is constitutionally anchored. Four particular fields of regulatory private law have gradually stood out: labour law, consumer law, antidiscrimination law and law on universal services. In these fields, European law has advanced to positive integration through harmonization of Member State legislation. The political legislator has played a central role, although in antidiscrimination law in particular the ECJ has also been able to assert itself. Compared to market-constructing negative integration through judicial legislation or the equally market-constructing coordination of cross-border social security and healthcare, positive integration through regulatory private law has gained greater independence from the logic of economic constitutionalization. European regulatory private law may seem a heterogeneous legal branch but this would be a false impression: European regulatory private law is united by a social orientation and by a particular conception of justice which sets it apart from typical national welfare state legislation (what Hans-W. Micklitz (2011a; 2011b) has termed access justice). In the social dimension, the tasks assigned respectively to the markets, the Member States and the Union may be informed by three alternative, ideal typical notions of justice. The first of these is market justice or allocative justice: whatever is the outcome of market mechanisms is just. Here the role of the state or the transnational polity is reduced to securing the general framework conditions for market mechanisms, such as the rights to property and freedom of contract. This is the realm of F.A. Hayek’s (1982) rules of just conduct or Robert Nozick’s (1975) libertarianism. The second alternative is access justice (as Micklitz has defined it). As a rule, functioning markets do not emerge spontaneously but presuppose particular market-constructing measures by a polity. Furthermore, left to themselves, market mechanisms may lead to selfdetrimental results by eliminating some economic agents from the marketplace and barring the (re-)entry of others. Public policy that

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promotes access justice furthers market construction, combats exclusion and seeks to facilitate the (re-)entry of economic agents to the marketplace as entrepreneurs, workers or consumers. The third alternative is social justice, which implies the correction of the distributive outcomes of the markets and, obviously, presupposes solidarity in both a financial and a socio-ethical sense. Libertarian market justice entails a minimum state with practically no social responsibilities; a social constitution based on market justice would be a contradiction in terms. The value basis of national welfare states, with their emphasis on social security and healthcare, consists of solidaristic social justice. By contrast, EU social law is largely tailored to pursue not redistributive social justice but access justice, facilitating (re-)entry to the marketplace. This objective is conspicuous in regulatory private law, especially in labour law, consumer law and law on universal services but also in those parts of antidiscrimination law which address market participation. It is evident in the coordination of cross-border social security and healthcare as well. The citizenship turn, though, has modified the determinants of access justice: now at issue is access to wider societal integration, redemption of the promise of European citizenship and the realization of free movement of citizens. In turn, judicial and political legislation on cross-border healthcare purports to guarantee access to services for migrant patients, that is, their entry to the transnational marketplace of healthcare services. The prevalence of access justice in EU social policy can be deemed yet another example of the primacy of the economic constitution over the social constitution. Market-constructing or market-maintaining social policy, manifesting access justice, supports the market-constructing and market-maintaining function of economic constitutional law. If we try to identify the conception of justice underlying the microeconomic constitution, centred on free movement and competition law, this would fall under access justice. Free movement law is supposed to create Europewide markets and to eradicate obstacles which national policy measures might pose to that objective. In turn, competition law aims to prevent the accumulation of private power which would distort the functioning of market mechanisms and shut out competitors on illegitimate grounds or prevent the entry of new market participants. Are national, solidaristic social justice and transnational access justice complementary or conflicting principles? European regulatory private law does not affect the workings of core welfare services, which are left to the care of Member States. The fundamental social compact underlying European economic integration also intimates a complementary relation between the two conceptions of justice: transnational markets

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were supposed to produce increased prosperity, while national redistributive mechanisms were supposed to ensure just allotment of that prosperity. But things have not turned out to be so simple. Often enough, conflicts between economic constitutional law and national social legislation can be recategorized as conflicts between two types of rights: transnational economic rights established by free movement law and national social rights; and two notions of justice: transnational access justice and national, solidaristic social justice. This is one way of depicting the essential issue in, say, Viking and Laval. The access justice of the freedom of the establishment and free movement of services collided with, and finally prevailed over, the Nordic welfare model (that is, the Nordic regime for promoting solidaristic social justice). We have perceived an analogous tension permeating the case law on cross-border healthcare; guaranteeing access to cross-border services for mobile patients through the obligation of reimbursement by the country of affiliation may jeopardize the solidaristic foundations of national healthcare. Similar consequences may ensue from cross-border social security, the coverage of which has expanded from mobile workers and their dependants to mobile citizens and the subjection of social security funds to competition law. The denationalization and deterritorialization of social security and healthcare in the name of access justice may jeopardize the solidaristic basis of national welfare regimes. Whether or not Union social rights will attain a role in the defence of national welfare regimes remains to be seen. The fact that they have been almost totally ignored by both EU institutions and Member States as a potential counterweight to the implications of the macroeconomic constitution during the recent Eurozone crisis does not give reason for much optimism among the defenders of social rights.

NOTES * 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

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A more detailed version of my argument may be found in K. Tuori (2015) pp. 227–68. Case C-36/02 Omega Spielhallen [2004] ECR I-9609; Case C-112/00 Schmidberger [2003] ECR I-5659; Case C-438/05 International Transport Workers’ Federation and Finnish Seamen’s Union [2007] ECR I-10779; Case C-341/05 Laval un Partneri [2007] ECR I-11767. BVerfG, 2 BvE 2/08, 30 June 2009, Para. 252. BVerfG, 2 BvE 2/08, 30 June 2009, Absatz-Nr. (1–421). The term ‘encapsulated federalism’ is used by W. Streeck (1995). Case 8/74 Dassonville [1974] ECR 837, Para. 5. Of course, the Court has not always ruled against national legislation, as, for instance, Sunday Trading case law proves (see H.-W. Micklitz 2005). Case 120/78 Rewe v. Bundesmonopolverwaltung fūr Branntwein [1979] ECR 649 (Cassis de Dijon), Para 8. Cassis de Dijon is memorable for introducing not only the

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doctrine of mandatory requirements but also mutual recognition. The latter doctrine opened the way for regulatory competition among Member States with its potential ‘horizontal’ impact on national welfare regimes. See the formula in Case C-55/94 Gebhard v. Consiglio dell’Ordine degli Avvocati e Procuratori di Milano [1995] ECR I-4165, Para. 37. See, e.g. Case C-372/04 Watts v. Bedford Primary Care Trust and Secretary of State for Health [2006] ECR I-04325, Paras 146–7, and Case C-157/99 Geraets-Smits v. Stichting Ziekenfonds and Peerbooms v. Stichting CZ Groep Zorgverzekeringen [2001] ECR I-0473, Paras 44–5. Case T-319/99 FENIN [2003] ECR II-357, Paras 39–40. Joined Cases C-159/91 and C-160/91 Poucet v. Assurances Générales de France and Caisse Mutuelle Régionale du Languedoc-Roussillon, and Pistre v. Caisse Autonome Nationale de Compensation de l’Assurance Vieillesse des Artisans [1993] ECR I-637. In the Court’s case law capitalization refers to the dependence of entitlements on contributions paid and the financial results of the scheme. Case C-67/96 Albany International BV v. Stichting Bedrijfspensioenfonds Textielindustrie, with joined Cases C-115/97, C-116/97 and C-117/97 [1999] ECR I-5751, Para. 98. Directive No. 2006/123 of 12 December 2006 on services in the internal market, [2006] OJ L376/36; Directive No. 2011/24 of 9 March 2011 on the application of patients’ rights in cross-border healthcare, [2011] OJ L88/45. Council Regulation No. 1408/71 of 14 June 1971 on the application of social security schemes to employed persons and their families moving within the Community, [1971] OJ L149/2. I have borrowed the term Leitbild from H.-W. Micklitz (2011a). Case C-413/99 Baumbast and R v. Secretary of State for the Home Department [2002] ECR I-7091. Joined Cases 286/82 and 26/83 Luisi and Carbone v. Ministero del Tesoro [1984] ECR 377. Case C-120/95 Decker v. Caisse de maladie des employés privés [1998] ECR I-1831; Case C-158/96 Kohll v. Union des caisses de maladie [1998] ECR I-1931. Communication from the Commission: Implementing the Community Lisbon programme – Social services of general interest in the European Union {SEC(2006) 516} COM(2006) 177 final. For an analysis of Greek measures see A. Koukiadaki and L. Kretsos (2012). C-341/05 Laval un Partneri [2007] ECR I-11767. C-438/05 International Transport Workers’ Federation and Finnish Seamen’s Union [2007] ECR I-10779. Limburg Principles on the Implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, UN Doc. E/CN.4/1987/17, available in Human Rights Quarterly (1987).

8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

REFERENCES Armstrong, Kenneth A. (2010), Governing Social Inclusion: Europeanization through Policy Coordination, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barnard, Catherine (2011), ‘EU “Social” Policy: From Employment Law to Labour Market Reform’ in Paul Graig and Gráinne de Búrca (eds), The Evolution of EU Law, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 641–86. Busch, K., C. Hermann, K. Hinrichs and T. Schulten (2013), ‘Euro Crisis, Austerity Policy and the European Social Model: How Crisis Policies in Southern Europe Threaten the EU’s Social Dimension’, policy analysis, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, February.

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Communication from the Commission: Implementing the Community Lisbon programme – Social Services of General Interest in the European Union {SEC(2006) 516} COM(2006) 177 final. Damjanovic´, D. and B. de Witte (2009), ‘Welfare Integration through EU Law: The Overall Picture in the Light of the Lisbon Treaty’ in U.B. Neergaard, R. Nielsen and L.M. Roseberry (eds), Integrating Welfare Functions into EU Law: From Rome to Lisbon, Copenhagen: DJØF Publishing, pp. 52–97. Davies, G. (2006), ‘The Process and Side-effects of Harmonisation of European Welfare States’, NYU School of Law, Jean Monnet Working Paper 02/06. Esping-Andersen, G. (1990), The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hayek, F.A. (1982), Law, Legislation, and Liberty, vol 1, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Koukiadaki, A. and L. Kretsos (2012), ‘Opening Pandora’s Box: The Sovereign Debt Crisis and Labour Market Regulation in Greece’, Industrial Law Journal 41 (3), 276–304. Martinsen, D.S. (2005a), ‘The Europeanization of Welfare: The Domestic Impact of Intra-European Social Security’, Journal of Common Market Studies 43 (5), 1027–54. Martinsen, D.S. (2005b), ‘Towards an International Health Market with the European Court’, West European Politics 28 (5), 1035–56. Menéndez, A.J. (2009), ‘European Citizenship after Martínez Sala and Baumbast: Has European Law Become More Human but Less Social?’, Oslo: ARENA Working Paper No. 11. Micklitz, H.-W. (2005), The Politics of Judicial Co-operation in the EU: Sunday Trading – Equal Treatment and Good Faith, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Micklitz, H.-W. (2011a), ‘Introduction: Social Justice and Access Justice in Private Law’ in H.-W. Micklitz (ed.), The Many Concepts of Social Justice in European Private Law, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 3–6. Micklitz, H.-W. (2011b), ‘Universal Services: Nucleus for a Social European Private Law?’ in M. Cremona (ed.), Market Integration and Public Services in the European Union: Collected Courses of the European Academy of Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 63–102. Nozick, R. (1975), Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Oxford: Blackwell. Scharpf, F.W. (1999), Governing in Europe: Effective and Democratic?, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scharpf, F.W. (2010), ‘The Asymmetry of European Integration, or Why the EU Cannot Be a Social Market Economy’, Socio-Economic Review 8 (2), 211–50. Streeck, W. (1995), ‘Neo-Voluntarism: A New European Social Policy Regime’, European Law Journal 1 (1), 31–59. Tuori, K. (2015), European Constitutionalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tuori, K. and K. Tuori (2014), Eurozone Crisis: A Constitutional Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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PART IV

Sustainability

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8. The eco-social Nordic welfare state – a distant dream or a possible future? Monika Berg and Paula Saikkonen INTRODUCTION Environmental problems, such as climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental contamination, have had an established position on the global agenda for decades. More recently their consequences have started to be experienced by people around the globe in terms of drought, flooding, storms and bush fires. The welfare states are thereby faced with one of their greatest challenges, namely to transform into sustainable welfare states, ones which will provide social welfare and wellbeing to their population while maintaining economic stability of some sort without overusing environmental resources or externalising environmental risks. However, the challenges do not end there. The privileged position of the Nordic countries urges them to instigate a global sustainable transformation. The establishment of the social contract of the Nordic welfare states involved balancing the social and the economic spheres of society, a relation that has served to mutually reinforce equality and growth. The environmental sphere, however, was long neglected and has later been handled as a separate policy issue. The economic progress that enabled the welfare state relied on a relationship between nature and humans where nature was seen as a resource and service for humans, thus constituting the material means for the evolvement of human societies. Over time, however, nature has increasingly been known to be fragile and to have limited buffering capacity (Steffen et al. 2015). As a consequence, the argument that there is a need to establish sustainable eco-social relationships has become louder. For example, in September 2018, on the occasion of a post-growth conference held at the EU Parliament, 238 scientists sent a letter to the EU institutions and member 162

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states, urging them to plan for a post-growth future in which human and ecological wellbeing is prioritised over GDP. The letter was published by The Guardian and several EU newspapers. However, the influence of the letter on policy and society is still to be seen. Even though the fragility of the natural environment is increasingly recognised, the Nordic states (as well as other welfare states) are far from within the ecological limits. The strong tie between the economy and social policy now constitutes strong path dependence (Pierson 2000). Making more radical changes would challenge the foundational logics of the welfare states, which have served to decrease uncertainty and risk for workers, as well as for capital owners, for decades, thereby creating more stable societies. There is currently a strong reliance on scientific and technological solutions solving environmental problems and achieving sustainability (Dryzek 2013). This hope for scientific solutions is strengthened since a scientific or technical solution would radically ease this intrinsic challenge of the welfare states. This chapter will therefore engage with science’s dependence on environmental policy at the global level, as well as the local level, and the effects of the current science– policy relationship. We will argue that the strong natural scientific framing of most environmental problems not only neglects the role of relational rationalities but also, consequently, prevents political discussions about value priorities and thereby obscures more transformative solutions. Falsely, it gives an idea that environmental problems could be solved by means of better scientific knowledge as well as technology. However, as we will argue in this chapter, the path towards strong sustainability also necessitates a reconfiguration of the basic values that guide our institutional structure, social practices, conventions and identities. The Nordic countries have done this before through the establishment of the welfare states, and they may have the qualifications to do it again, but it necessitates altered eco-social relationality. The chapter is structured as follows. In the next section we will discuss eco-social relations and their influence on policies that aim towards sustainable development. We will also give a brief introduction to Nordic environmental policy and to what extent the relational rationalities of the Nordic welfare states can be observed within this field. In the third section we particularly focus on the consequences of the strong scientific influence on environmental governance. We illustrate how the scientific influence plays out at the global level as well as at the local level. Then we discuss the needed system change required in order to achieve sustainability within the Nordic welfare states. We argue that there is a need to reconfigure the dynamic of eco-social relationships. In order to move in such a direction, the constraining mechanism of the current

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science–policy relation should be recognised. We argue that there is a need to engage with deep-seated social and institutional practices. The institutional practices need to be such that they may operate under uncertainty with the purpose of reducing it. We also need to find systematic ways to engage with multiple perspectives in order to account for the full complexity of the environmental challenge and the value priorities that it incorporates.

ECO-SOCIAL RELATIONS AND THE WELFARE STATES Previously in this book, it has been argued that the founding principles of the Nordic ethos of welfare, such as equality, solidarity and public responsibility, are not just values but relational rationalities of action. These relational rationalities have come to shape the Nordic welfare states through their manifestation in the interaction between citizens as well as between citizens and the state (see Chapters 2 and 5 in this book). In the same way, the interaction between individuals or communities and nature is guided by and represents particular rationalities or values. At the heart of the debates regarding what constitutes sustainable development is therefore a debate regarding the relationship between the social and the environment, though it is not always explicit. The concept of sustainable development had its breakthrough when the report of the Brundtland Commission (1987), Our Common Future, came out. According to the report: ‘Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (p. 16). The report highlighted three dimensions of sustainability (social, environmental and economic dimensions) and developed a vision of simultaneous and mutual reinforcement of economic growth, environmental improvement, population stabilisation, peace and global equity. These issues had, up until then, been treated separately or been viewed as competing issues (see e.g. Dempsey et al. 2011). The Brundtland Commission’s understanding of sustainability was adopted by the UN, and the concept has now been in use within policy and administration for three decades, though it has been controversial in academic debates. Nowadays, UN programmes like Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and Habitat III are the promoters of sustainable development. While sustainability has been promoted for a long time now, it is fair to say that despite some achievements, humankind is still on an unsustainable track. The global north uses resources beyond planetary limits

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and the global south still struggles with the five evils (squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease) mentioned in Beveridge’s report Social Insurance and Allied Services (1942). Critics hold that the changes made are within the capitalist framework, whereby economical values are given priority. Contemporary climate governance often operates within unsustainable institutions that strengthen – rather than challenge – unsustainable trajectories (Stevenson 2012; Swyngedouw 2014). Economic growth is considered necessary to construct welfare systems in the global south. At the same time, what is actually a positive development in the global north should be scrutinised. Furthermore, the critics of the dominating approach to sustainable development argue that it is not sustainable to rely on constant economic growth based on natural resources and to assume that new or green technology, eco-efficiency or new innovations will be enough to save the planet for future generations (Davies 2013). Out of these debates comes a distinction between what has been referred to as weak and strong sustainability. According to the proponents of weak sustainability, economic growth supports equality by increasing possibilities for income distribution and offering opportunities to invest in environmental protection. The idea is compatible with the vision of the Brundtland Report in the sense that the spheres will serve to mutually reinforce each other. However, the concept of weak sustainability has been criticised due to its ignorance about the scarcity of natural resources and its human-centric view (Ekins et al. 2003). The relationship between humans and the environment is one where the former seeks to control the latter and where nature is considered to be a resource for humans. Economic calculation seems to be the dominant rationality. Nature and social factors are translated into economic values (for example ecosystem services or social investments) in order for their value to be recognised within this rationale (Yearley 2018). The counterargument is that this lends superiority to economic valuations. While the extinction of species or contamination of water is a loss beyond economic value, the now dominant economic valuation of nature could logically come to the conclusion that it is not worth intervening (Yearley 2018). Furthermore, precise pricing requires functioning markets and almost perfect information, which need to be socially constructed (Çalis¸kan and Callon 2010). We have already witnessed problems in emissions trading (see for example Yearley 2018). While there are some promising market-based solutions for environmental conservation, it is hard to see that a solution for the current environmental problems can be found without a more profound understanding of ecological systems and human/nature interaction (see for example Meadowcroft 2011; Rands et al. 2010).

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Strong sustainability puts the attention on the balance between the biophysical environment and the social environment. It upholds that the economy is a part of a finite global ecosystem. The social sphere is considered an inherent part of the environmental sphere, while the economic sphere constitutes a part of the social sphere. This does of course imply that there is a significant difference in how the relationships between the spheres are understood, in particular the balance between the environment and the economy. From this angle, sustainability is not achievable as long as constant economic growth is the ruling value of the system as there is yet no evidence that growth could be decoupled from natural resources (Bithas and Kalimeris 2017; Jackson 2017; Lidskog and Elander 2012). Kate Raworth’s model of the doughnut economy (2017) represents a more general idea of strong sustainability, though the name gives privilege to the economic sphere. The idea of the doughnut economy is very simple. The outer edge of a ‘doughnut’ (viewed from above) signifies the ecological ceiling and the inner edge serves as the basic social foundation. The ecological boundaries constitute the nine planetary boundaries (Rockström et al. 2009) and the social foundation is based on the 12 dimensions of internationally agreed minimum social standards that also appear in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (UN 2015). The space between them represents the action space for a regenerative and distributive economy. In other words, a sustainable society will be formed when the social foundation is achieved without crossing any planetary boundaries. The doughnut illustrates the action space for sustainable development. While this model is illustrative, it does not account for the means of achieving strong sustainability. However, it makes clear that we need to alter the social conventions that guide actions and structure the current eco-social relation while safeguarding conventions such as human rights and the principles of democracy. The fundamental role of material flows in the current economy (and the social practices that it shapes) will be essential to address. There is no nation that currently lives up to the doughnut model: if the social foundation is on a solid base, the ecological ceiling is broken and vice versa (Raworth 2017). In the Nordic countries, the social foundation is relatively strong, but they cross several ecological boundaries. When their externalised environmental effects are counted in, we even see a clear negative development (see for example Lidskog and Elander 2012). The precise ecological limits of the planet remain unknown and the ways to measure them are disputed (Steffen et al. 2015). Yet, there is a high consensus that exceeding some of those limits will cause consequences which might shake the foundations of societies. In a highly

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complex system like that of the earth, it is impossible to understand all the relations and their functions. Therefore, the notion of strong sustainability upholds uncertainty as an essential character of the system that needs to be accounted for (cf. the risks and uncertainties of workers early on in industrialisation). Nature constitutes the foundation for the social sphere, and it has to be cared for on account of its own intrinsic value, as well as to ensure the stability of societies and the wellbeing of the population. To take an example, we have already seen how disasters and other consequences of climate change or environmental degradation may cause conflicts. Climate change may trigger immigration and increasing migration streams pose a challenge to welfare systems. Refugees arriving in Europe have been fuel to the populist parties. In that sense, climate change will affect political systems and human wellbeing across the world, though the consequences will vary (Gough 2015). The dominance of the economic rationalities has also faced critique in relation to the social sphere. It has been shown that the economic growth of nations increases citizens’ wellbeing up to a certain break-even point. After that, wellbeing increases more slowly and the distribution of wealth becomes more significant than further growth (Raworth 2017). A relatively even distribution of income has many positive effects on societies; among other things, it strengthens societal trust (see for example Wilkinson and Pickett 2009). Meanwhile, there is a growing field of research that underscores the positive effects that nature has on human wellbeing (mental wellbeing as well as physical wellbeing) (Helne and Hirvilammi 2017). It seems like something foundational has been lost in the current eco-social relation as it has become mediated by economic valuation (Yearley 2018). As noted, the welfare states have mostly been developed without acknowledging planetary boundaries (cf. Koch et al. 2016). Rather, nature was treated as an entity providing resources for the economic development. Economic development was essential for the establishment of the welfare states and the implementation of redistributive policies. Economic growth is still at the core of policy debates, not least since the public services, social benefits and their public support are dependent on growth numbers. This means that moving in the direction of a more holistic eco-social relation, essential as it may be, shakes the foundational rationality of the welfare state. A discourse where nature is considered as the fundament of human existence and wellbeing, and which questions the ownership or economic valuation of essential natural resources and even lives, would demand truly path-breaking steps. We will return to this essential point towards the end of the chapter; first we will turn to the Nordic welfare states and the rationalities of their environmental governance.

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RATIONALITIES IN NORDIC ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE Even though the welfare states are often scrutinised as a national project or from a comparative angle, the inter-Nordic perspective is well recognised. The countries developed social security systems individually but had institutionalised cooperation between countries for exchanging ideas during their evolvement in the 20th century. Politicians, civil servants, experts and representatives from labour market organisations and welfare institutions took part in such institutionalised cooperation. This enabled communication about social security schemes across the countries and laid the foundation for a shared knowledge base (Petersen 2011). The sharing of ideas and good practices has been institutionalised in the Nordic Council of Ministers and Nordic Council, which operate as co-operative forums. The idea of the rational planning of societies (Lasswell 1950) was strong after the Second World War (Kettunen 2001). However, the idea was not new. Already in the 1930s, ways to steer society as a functional whole were widely considered. Rational planning expresses a confidence in the ability of science to solve problems, which has also come to shape environmental policy (Hedrén 1994). In its formative years, in the 1960s and 1970s, environmental policymaking adopted a similar structure and organisational culture to those of existing policy fields (Munk Christiansen 1996). Thus, the sectorial view on policymaking shaped the formation of the environmental policy field in the Nordic countries, such as when national administrative bodies were implemented in the 1970s. Sweden was the first country in the world to form an administration for environmental protection and its environmental protection laws, established in 1969, were considered innovative and world leading at the time; Finland implemented an environmental administrative body much later (in 1983). Also, other features of Nordic policymaking, such as the integration of affected interests into the policy process and consensual policymaking, have been prominent within the environmental field. The integration of environmental policy into the regular policy structure was relatively smooth and uncontroversial in the Nordic countries. It was facilitated by the fact that environmental issues were adopted by the existing parties (they gained prominence without particular strong green parties). It should also be mentioned that the Nordic countries have had good possibilities to become greener due to the ability to expand water and wind power and their forestry resources (Lidskog and Elander 2012). They are low population density countries, making them rich in natural

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resources per capita. However, for Norway the situation is more multifaceted due to their oil production and export, which creates economic resources for the country (which could enable environmental transition nationally but has negative consequences globally; see for example Langhelle and Ruud 2012). Another facilitating factor in the Nordic countries is that the popular concern for the environment has been high (Munk Christiansen 1996), which may be related to the relatively high educational background of the population. However, the environmental concern of the population may also have other sources. A long-standing policy in the Nordic countries which engages eco-social relational rationalities of action is the Nordic traditional right of public access (allemansrätten). This convention (also referred to as everyman’s right) gives everyone the right to access nature, even on private land, since nature and the access to it are seen as common goods. However, the right also comes with obligations. Allemansrätten not only relies on equal access to nature and its benefits, it also fosters public responsibility and carefulness with nature, which is taught in school and through civil society and is preached by authorities. The convention expresses and is an expression of the rationalities and social practices that shape eco-social relations. Thus, the Nordic countries have an ideational heritage and policies to build on in order to strengthen the values of public responsibility, solidarity and equity, also in relation to the environment. Indeed, the principle of the right to public access to nature provides resistance to the hegemony of the economic valuation of nature. The age-old right to public access to nature has not been disputed even though the wood industry has been an important part of the economy in most Nordic countries. The forest is a big and important natural resource and the wood industry (together with mining) has brought economic activities and welfare services to rural areas. Furthermore, there are a large number of small, private forest owners that may partly explain the early establishment of everyman’s right. However, the tension between industrial use and recreational use of forests has grown (Lindhjem 2007). The attitudes towards environmental protection are often more favourable in urban areas compared to rural areas. It should further be noted that the right to public access to nature has also become commercialised in terms of eco-tourism, which is questionable, particularly if it involves air travel, and may even threaten this traditional convention. In recent decades the idea of the environment as a policy sector has been challenged and environmental concern is increasingly integrated in different agencies and tasks, and at different levels (Munk Christiansen 1996). This change could represent a shift towards an understanding of

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nature as foundational to all human activities. However, it could also be seen in the light of shifting organisational trends that move in this direction. Another shift in the environmental governance of the Nordic countries is that they have historically been mainly governed by regulatory instruments and informative measures while, since the 1990s, other policy instruments have emerged (Munk Christiansen 1996), and the political support for regulative approaches has weakened (Berg 2011). Since the 1990s market-based instruments have had an increasing influence, most notably green taxes and other economic incentives but also voluntary agreements between governments and business, and labelling such as Fair Trade. These instruments rely on the market mechanism, though they also underline the idea of shared responsibility and the participation of stakeholders (Sairinen 2003). These newer policy instruments have shifted responsibilities from the government to the nongovernmental actors like enterprises and NGOs, as well as consumers. The outsourcing of responsibilities may strengthen civil society; however, it may also lead to weak environmental protection (Berg 2011). Both regulations and effective market instruments are necessary for achieving strong sustainability. Yet for politics it is harder to gain support for regulatory actions (Meadowcroft 2011). If we take a closer look at Sweden, which is often held up as a forerunner in environmental policy, we see that the policy goals that Sweden has set are ambitious. Swedish policy even states that environmental problems should be solved without compromising the environment and health in other countries. At the same time, in the Swedish policy discourse, environmental policy is viewed as reconcilable with market economy and economic growth, something which is considered essential for safeguarding comprehensive welfare policies (Lidskog and Elander 2012, p. 416). Thus, economic growth is not questioned. The Swedish policy discourse relies upon environmental problems being solvable without loss in material prosperity or welfare. A quote from a public political statement by Lidskog and Elander (2012) illustrates well the strong reliance on future technical solutions that this policy rationale builds upon. The statement concerns the construction of a new highway around Stockholm: ‘This is the climate and environmental alternative for Stockholm. […] We are building for a time when cars are driven by environmentally friendly fuel’ (p. 424). Thus, technical innovations and scientific progress are so entangled in the policy discourse that its logic completely depends on their success. In going deeper into the challenge of altering eco-social relations we will therefore now turn to the scientific influence over environmental policymaking.

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THE SCIENTIFIC INFLUENCE ON ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE Environmental governance is knowledge intensive and dependent on environmental expertise (Berg and Lidskog 2018a). Some environmental problems are not at all perceivable without scientific instruments, such as was the case with the ozone hole or global warming. The science dependence of the policy field, together with the inducing reliance on technical solutions, implies that the scientific framing of issues also influences policy. We will take a look at the relation between knowledge production and decision-making from a global perspective as well as a local perspective. We will illustrate how the scientific influence constrains change and the solutions that are identified (Jasanoff 2004) while also pointing to its transformative potential. The global level is important as it conditions national policymaking in many ways. The local case serves to illustrate how the entwinement of science and policymaking plays out in the municipal politics where national polices are implemented. Thus, we seek to illustrate that the transformation into sustainable welfare states is restricted by (but may also be facilitated by) the organisation of knowledge processes at a global level, as well as by local policy processes. Climate Change, Global Influences and the Challenge to Rationality Due to the global scope of environmental problems, global knowledge assessments have become institutionalised and gained a decisive role in environmental governance. The most well known and influential of such organisations is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which will be used as an illustrative case. The IPCC aims to provide the governments of the world with a clear scientific view of what is happening to the world’s climate. The reports serve to support the negotiation processes and other work under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The IPCC produced its First Assessment Report (AR1) in 1990 and its fifth (AR5) was released over 2013 and 2014. The reports synthesise published and peer-reviewed work and include assessments of the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation. The IPCC consists of a network of scientists, employed by regular research organisations, such as universities or other research institutions, who volunteer their time and expertise when contributing to the assessments. The reports undergo multiple rounds of drafting and review, and

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in each assessment’s conclusion the degree of certainty is defined (i.e. it defines whether it is well-established knowledge, if the results build on uncertain estimates or if there are diverging results). The broad organisation and input into the assessments lend them epistemic authority within the field. The IPCC has been successful in putting climate change on the global political agenda and has thereby had an important role in global governance, as well as national environmental governance (Lidskog and Sundqvist 2015). The strong influence of the IPCC over the conceptualisation of the problem and relevant solutions has, however, also been problematised. The negative effects that have been highlighted are that the strong scientific influence over policy has led to a politicisation of science and that the emphasis on scientific consensus, together with a natural scientific dominance, has produced a narrow framing of the policy problem of climate change. Both these aspects have their root in the linear view of the relationship between science and policy that the IPCC represents wherein the role of science is to arrive at scientific consensus regarding the state of an issue, as well as possible solutions, and to then speak the truth to power, while the role of policy is to make binding decisions and implement them (Beck 2011; Berg and Lidskog 2018b; Van der Sluijs 2012). According to this view it is essential for science to have a strong consensus in order to push political compliance and action (Haas and Stevens 2011). However, as science has obtained a key position in environmental governance it has itself become politicised (Pielke 2007). The consequence of this science dependence is that one way to influence climate policy is to seek to influence scientific outcomes or to delegitimise them by casting doubt. Therefore, the dimensions of the uncertainties that are inevitable in scientific modelling have served to cast doubt on even the most rigorous findings. Thus, Pielke (2007) argues that the scientisation of environmental policy has led to the politicisation of climate science, which has challenged the legitimacy and epistemic authority of the IPCC. Furthermore, the linear knowledge view represents uncertainties as a lack in current knowledge, and thereby as knowledge to come. This view implies that certainty will arrive, which induces the logic of waiting for that. If uncertainties, assumptions and eventualities were rather acknowledged as inherent in any interpretation (including those of climate modelling) this matter of fact would not necessarily delegitimise science (Berg and Lidskog 2018b). Rather, it would tell us that full certainty is not to be waited for – we need to find ways to act on the rigorous knowledge that we already have.

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The consensus model has also come to favour a single and natural scientific framing of the issue. The work of the IPCC is dominated by the framing of climate change around global average temperature as a risk indicator, which has directed the assessments of climate change, as well as political discussions of it (Beck et al. 2014, p. 81). It is likely that this framing has also affected what research on climate change is funded and conducted, thus shaping the future knowledge base. A narrow framing which restricts deliberative space is generally viewed as necessary in order for global agreement to be reachable. However, whether or not it is the best way of promoting actions towards sustainable development is debated (Berg and Lidskog 2018b). A narrow and scientific framing of the problem limits the solutions that can be identified and restricts (or even eliminates) policy options as well as debate (Van der Sluijs 2012). The scientific framing of climate change, and the technical and economistic framing of the solutions are distant from the experiences of people (Jasanoff 2010), it may thereby prevent collectives around the globe from taking responsibility for climate change (Wynne 2010, p. 291) in terms of taking an ethical stance and altering social practices. Furthermore, the current scientific framing has put the ethical and relational aspects of climate change in the margins. The report is predominantly natural scientific and it does not engage in the social drivers of climate change. To reconnect to the previous discussion, it does not account for the eco-social relations of modern societies and their consequences in terms of unsustainable practices and processes. While the human influence on climate change is concluded, the root causes within human societies are not considered. The policy field is dominated by an instrumental rationality, while value rationality is a neglected dimension (Flyvbjerg 2002). Indeed, as we have suggested above, the enticement to keep an eye on scientific and technological solutions makes sense given that the root causes, such as continued growth, are essential operating logics of welfare states. This suggests that if we assume that eco-social relations need to be reconfigured, then the current science– policy relation provides limited support. Rather, it tends to strengthen economic rationalities and reliance/dependence on technological progress. Technical solutions in terms of negative emission technologies, such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, are already built into models and scenarios (Beck and Mahony 2018), which strengthens their expectancy and leads towards a path which presumes such technologies and thereby makes them necessary. The economistic solutions in terms of emission trading enable rich countries – such as Norway, with great potential to transform – to reach their goals by buying emission rights (Langhelle and Ruud 2012).

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The benefits and strengths of broadening the frame to include alternative representations and options are several (Berg and Lidskog 2018b). First, since transnational environmental issues are nested and complex, the uncertainties make it impossible to identify one single best policy option. Instead, alternative perspectives and options may serve to facilitate constructive policy deliberation (Edenhofer and Kowarsch 2015, p. 60). Second, a scientific practice directed at presenting and evaluating multiple perspectives avoids a politicisation of science and a misguided use of expertise in politics (Pielke 2007; Edenhofer and Kowarsch 2015). The expectation of science settling the issue and delivering a tight frame for policy deliberation would cease. The role of science – together with other knowledge systems – would rather be to provide well-founded perspectives and options. Third, a more pluralistic representation of the problem and a knowledge base which would include the social dimensions of climate change and the social process behind it would stimulate the greater openness of the value dimension. This could contribute to making value judgements more explicit in public debate as well. More contextual knowledge, as well as knowledge about the embedding of unsustainable practices, could also serve to stimulate change from below through a diversity of solutions (Berg and Lidskog 2018b). Thus, systematic engagement with the value dimension and the combination of global and local knowledge may pave the way towards more sustainable policies. The Hybridisation of Science and Policy at the Local Level In spite of the global efforts, the actors in the national- and local-level governance are still the most familiar to the citizens. Obviously, global and local environmental problems reduce wellbeing locally. Concerning a local environmental problem, it might be possible to remove the cause of the problem, but even then, problems have a tendency to weaken wellbeing in one way or other. For instance, there might be fear about the health effects relating to pollution or the risk of economic losses due to the environmental protection. With the global problems, local adaptation is almost the only option. The common nominator for a local and global problem is that the local decisions have an impact on both the wellbeing of the citizens and on the welfare system too. Furthermore, in the Nordic countries the local government has a strong foothold. Sometimes large municipalities have impact on the national decision-making. Next we will discuss this local–national relation in more detail by using a case example. At first, in 1999, the case of Myllypuro seemed to be a surprise and it was national news when polluted soil made around

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500 people move from their homes. Some inhabitants of the area had demanded soil investigations years earlier. The investigations proved the area to be partly poisoned. The city of Helsinki acted with precaution and decided to demolish most of the buildings and decontaminate the soil even though there was no certain knowledge about the possible consequences of the pollution. Understandably the decision gave rise to concern and caused anger among the inhabitants. For them, it was contradictory that they got just a few months to move out of their homes while it was claimed that there was no knowledge about any health risks that might be caused by the polluted soil. The polluted soil eroded trust in the city’s authorities as the inhabitants thought that the authorities were not being honest with them. However, for the authorities the issue was extremely difficult. They were expected to give accurate information, but at the same time, they had to admit that there were uncertainties. The case should not have been a surprise. In Finland, the waste management law that regulated the pollution of soil came into force in 1979, 20 years before the Myllypuro case. We can see that polluting soil had been recognised as a problem then. However, polluted soil was not on the agenda of the municipal decision makers until the 1990s. This can be called an institutional delay (see Laakkonen and Laurila 2007). Indeed, there was information about the polluted soil in the administration but it did not appear on the agenda of the city board or council until a few years later, after the national reports about the polluted soil were published (Saikkonen 2013). So, the restrictions on soil pollutants were not enough to raise questions about polluted soil. Thus, soil was protected several years earlier than polluted soil was named an environmental problem. Here we can see linear thinking again: the accumulating knowledge had an impact on the planning of new residential areas; however, the past decisions regarding previously built residential areas, not even residential areas built on the dump, were not reflected upon from a new angle. The Myllypuro case can be placed on a continuum of societal progress as industrialisation led to the economic growth that resulted in the welfare of the whole society. The dumping area was legal and followed the legislation of the time. In most Western countries, pollution as a by-product of industrialisation had led to environmental regulations after the world wars. Industrial waste and radioactive pollution clarified that humans have the potential to destroy their environment and even the whole planet (Haila 2001). Indeed, there has been local environmental protection before national legislation. Water and air pollution were widely discussed in cities when the effects were substantial in everyday life and possible to observe by using one’s senses (Laakkonen and

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Laurila 2007; Saikkonen 2013). Actions of environmental protection were observable in cities all over Europe, including those in the Nordic countries. In the cities, the quality of air improved and the water systems got cleaner. In Finland, subsequently, several sectoral laws were combined into one environmental law; however, the contradictions between different policy fields persisted and the juxtaposition between environmental protection and economic advantages has remained so far (Laakkonen and Laurila 2007; Meadowcroft 2011). A similar science–policy interface can be seen in local environmental problems such as in the case of climate change, though the scale is totally different. The change in the urban environment is not automatically converted into an environmental problem, partly because the environment is in constant change but more importantly because the problem has to be recognised and acknowledged. Acknowledging the problem means that it has to have been discovered and named, the claim has to have been legitimated and, finally, a solution (often a technical one) for the problem must be found before the environmental problem is placed on the agenda of the local decision makers (Hannigan 1995, pp. 70–78; Laakkonen and Laurila 2007). In the Myllypuro case, discovering and naming the problem of polluted soil took some time. Compared to air or water pollution, soil does not give obvious signs that can be easily observed by the senses (though, in the case of Myllypuro, the inhabitants wondered about the movements of slabs in the yard and demanded soil investigations). Yet the soil was investigated in several laboratory tests before the problem was revealed. Over decades, the dumping areas were located outside the city and when the city grew, buildings took over the old dumping areas. It was an ordinary proceeding: the dumping areas used before industrialisation had not caused any problems as the waste was biodegradable. Industrialisation brought industrial waste, and at first, it was carried to regular waste dumps. As a result, dumps that functioned in the 1950s and the 1960s may include hazardous waste. Furthermore, old storage areas, harbours and petrol stations were places where chemicals were buried in the ground as the soil was not the object of protection, unlike the air and water systems. The case shows that remedial action is hardly good enough protection from environmental problems. Before the case appeared in the media, there were doubts about whether the costly decontamination of soil was necessary in the new residential areas. For the politicians, the case clarified the necessity for decontamination in the brownfields. At this point, the problem was legitimated and several technical options were developed. Recognising or acknowledging problems may be difficult in cases of local environmental

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problems, but it is much harder on the global level. Regulations are formulated and reformulated over time. Locally, it may seem to be enough to follow existing national legislation and regulations, but when they change, no one asks why the change is made and how that should be taken into account or if any retrospective examination is needed. However, cities may take the initiative concerning environmental issues as they often confront new situations due to their versatile economic structure and position as forerunners in societal development. The case of polluted soil illustrates that, even in the local decisionmaking, it is impossible to be sure of everything in the decision-making processes. Firstly, facts are dependent on research and research questions. If there is no soil investigation, there will be no observations about polluted soil. Secondly, even when there appears to be knowledge about possible problems, knowledge does not automatically convert into action. A solution, or at least a partial solution, to a problem increases the chances of an issue reaching the agenda of decision makers. That is due to decision-making practices as decision-making mostly means steering public resources. The time of industrialisation and urbanisation brought about new issues that had not been seen beforehand. Though forecast methods have developed and information technology gives better opportunities to analyse data, the systems are also more complicated. For instance, the local consequences of climate change are very difficult to predict. The challenge for the current decision-making system is obvious: if local policy is expected to diminish environmental hazards and make climatefriendly decisions, it should be proactive regarding environmental issues instead of being reactive to the problems.

CONCLUSION: THE PROSPECT OF SUSTAINABLE WELFARE STATES In this chapter we have pointed to the intrinsic connection between the social-economical configuration of the welfare states and the environmental challenge that the world is facing at the moment. When the welfare states were established, progressive social policies were enabled due to economic expansion (based on the exploitation of raw materials). A mutually reinforcing spiral was initiated wherein social stability created good conditions for the economy and the economy enabled social progress. Ecological limits or planetary boundaries (Steffen et al. 2015) were not accounted for in the social-economical configuration that became consolidated. Lately, however, the diversity of the environmental

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challenge that we are globally facing has become increasingly clear (more to some than others). The need to reshape institutions and practices at all levels has become urgent. The current environmental policies of the Nordic countries (as elsewhere) do not question the idea of continued growth as the essential driver of development (Lidskog and Elander 2012). Thus, the environmental challenge has not generated a questioning of the current order. We rather see a strengthening of the economic rationale in environmental policy (see for example Yearley 2018). Thus, the policy development that we see today can be conceptualised as what we have referred to as weak sustainability. For the proponents of weak sustainability, technical innovations are an essential piece of the puzzle. We have illustrated that policy discourses, as well as the scientific modelling presented in the global knowledge assessments of the IPCC (that guide global policymaking), are relying on technological innovations. The future implementation of technical solutions that are yet to be fully developed has a decisive role in calculations and policy motivations. When the rationale of policy discourses and action rely upon (potential) future innovations, we enter a path where we will be dependent on such solutions in the relatively near future. As we have not yet experienced the implementation of techniques such as negative emission technologies or large-scale production and use of planes and cars driven by environmentally friendly fuel, we do not yet know the potential risks and side effects that they might bring with them. Thus, we currently rely on known unknowns in an aspirational, rather than precautionary, manner. Strong sustainability would demand getting to grips with the societal structures, processes and practices that we now know cause serious damage on earth, both locally and globally. In doing so, we need to engage with deeply rooted and firmly institutionalised value assumptions and hierarchies. We have argued that the science–policy relation that has dominated the environmental field (and many others) until now is not apt for this challenge. Such a challenge demands more attention being paid to social processes and the development of knowledge about social processes (Boström et al. 2018). Knowledge that stimulates transformative changes needs to not only be able to unlock the assumptions that dominate today but to also stimulate the imagination of other eco-social and social-economical configurations. Behind the social-economic configuration of the Swedish welfare state lay just such a debate around deep-seated economic beliefs, which resulted in an ideational shift (Lewin 1967). Thus, the Nordic countries have previously managed to reshape the understanding of bearing the principles of society and thereby also reconstructing the rationalities that guide the interactions

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within society. We have argued that a broader inclusion of perspectives in knowledge assessments is important in order to enable such a development. An increase in perspectives will not only stimulate a more complex understanding of the challenges that we face, it will also help to illuminate the value judgements that are made and the value disputes that are to be fought (Berg and Lidskog 2018a, 2018b). While the climate challenge has global reach, changes to policies and practices need to be made at all levels. Through the case of the political decision-making that was made regarding the polluted soil in Myllypuro, Finland, we have illustrated that policymaking at local level, as well as national level, has to be more attentive to known unknowns. The enactment of the precautionary principle may provide a structured and constructive way to cope with uncertainties so that they are not neglected nor used as an excuse not to act (with precaution). The precautionary principle may also serve to clarify gaps in knowledge as it forces consideration of the adequacy of (scientific) knowledge, as well as considering what we may not know. The Myllypuro case shows that the acknowledgement of local observations and engagement is essential in order to initiate and push policymaking. As argued in this book, the Nordic countries have built strong relations between the state and the citizens. However, the relational rationalities are now weakening rather than becoming strengthened. The environmental challenge urges the Nordic countries to reconsider the foundational principles of the welfare state. This involves a discussion about universal basic assets – the assets that people need in order to live a good life (cf. Gough 2015). This is one of the many essential debates to have in order to challenge economic rationalities and strengthen relational ones. Potentially, the Nordic relational rationalities could guide solutions to the challenges of the 21st century.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Paula Saikkonen’s work in this chapter was supported by the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland (grant numbers 312710 and 312794).

REFERENCES Beck, S. (2011), ‘Moving beyond the linear model of expertise? IPCC and the test of adaptation’, Regional Environmental Change, 11 (2), 297–306.

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Beck, S., M. Borie, J. Chilvers, A. Esguerra, K. Heubach, M. Hulme, R. Lidskog, E. Lövbrand, E. Marquard, C. Miller, T. Nadim, C. Neßhöver, J. Settele, E. Turnhout and E. Vasileiadou (2014), ‘Towards a reflexive turn in the governance of global environmental expertise: The cases of the IPCC and the IPBES’, GAIA-Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, 23 (2), 80–87. Beck, S. and M. Mahony (2018), ‘The IPCC and the new map of science and politics’, WIREs Clim Change, 1–16, doi.org/10.1002/wcc.547. Berg, A. (2011), ‘Not roadmaps but toolboxes: Analysing pioneering national programmes for sustainable consumption and production’, Journal of Consumer Policy, 34 (1), 9–23. Berg, M. and R. Lidskog (2018a), ‘Deliberative democracy meets democratised science: A deliberative systems approach to global environmental governance’, Environmental Politics, 27 (1), 1–20. Berg, M. and R. Lidskog (2018b), ‘Pathways to deliberative capacity: The role of the IPCC?’, Climatic Change, 148 (1–2), 11–24. Beveridge, W. (1942), ‘Social insurance and allied services: Report’, New York: Macmillan. Bithas, K. and P. Kalimeras (2017), ‘Unmasking decoupling: Redefining the resource intensity of the economy’, Science of the Total Environment, 619–20, 338–51, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.11.061. Boström, M., E. Andersson, M. Berg, K. Gustafsson, E. Gustavsson, E. Hysing, R. Lidskog, E. Löfmarck, M. Ojala, J. Olsson, B.E. Singleton, S. Svenberg, Y. Uggla and J. Öhman (2018), ‘Conditions for transformative learning for sustainable development: A theoretical review and approach’, Sustainability, 10 (12), https://doi.org/10.3390/su10124479. Brundtland, G.H. (1987), Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: ‘Our Common Future’, New York: United Nations. Çalis¸kan, K and M. Callon (2010), ‘Economization, part 2: A research programme for the study of markets’, Economy and Society, 39 (1), 1–32. Davies, G.R. (2013), ‘Appraising weak and strong sustainability: Searching for a middle ground’, The Journal of Sustainable Development, 10 (1), 111–24. Dempsey, N., G. Bramley, S. Power and C. Brown (2011), ‘The social dimension of sustainable development: Defining urban social sustainability’, Sustainable Development, 19 (5), 289–300. Dryzek, John S. (2013), The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses, 3rd ed., Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Edenhofer, O. and M. Kowarsch (2015), ‘Cartography of pathways: A new model for environmental policy assessments’, Environmental Science & Policy, 51, 56–64. Ekins P., S. Simon, L. Deutsch, C. Folke and R. De Groot (2003), ‘A framework for the practical application of the concept of critical natural capital and strong sustainability’, Ecological Economics, 44 (2–3), 165–85. Flyvbjerg, Bent (2002), Making Social Science Matter, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gough, I. (2015), ‘Climate change and sustainable welfare: The centrality of human needs’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 39 (5), 1191–214.

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Haas, P.M. and C. Stevens (2011), ‘Organized science, usable knowledge and multilateral environmental governance’, in Rolf Lidskog and Göran Sundqvist (eds), Governing the Air, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 125–61. Haila, Y. (2001), ‘Ympäristöherätys’, in Y. Haila and P. Jokinen (eds), Ympäristöpolitiikka, mikä ympäristö, kenen politiikka?, Tampere, Finland: Vastapaino, pp. 2–46. Hannigan, J. (1995), Environmental Sociology: A Social Constructionist Perspective, London: Routledge. Hedrén, Johan (1994), ‘Miljöpolitikens natur’, Diss. Linköping: Univ. Helne, T. and T. Hirvilammi (2017), ‘The relational conception of wellbeing as a catalyst for the ecosocial transition’, in A.-L. Matthies and K. Närhi (eds), The Ecosocial Transition of Societies: The Contribution of Social Work and Social Policy, London, UK: Routledge, pp. 36–53. Jackson, Tim (2017), Prosperity without Growth: Foundation for the Economy of Tomorrow, 2nd ed., Oxon and New York: Routledge. Jasanoff, Sheila (2004), ‘The idiom of co-production’, in Sheila Jasanoff (ed.), States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and Social Order, London, UK: Routledge, pp. 1–12. Jasanoff, S. (2010), ‘A new climate for society’, Theory, Culture & Society, 27 (2–3), 233–53. Kettunen, P. (2001), ‘Welfare state in Finland’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 26 (3), 225–47. Koch, M., A.T. Gullberg, M.A. Shoyen and B. Hvinden (2016), ‘Sustainable welfare in EU: Promoting synergies between climate and social policies’, Critical Social Policy, 36 (4), 704–15. Laakkonen, S. and S. Laurila (2007), ‘Changing environments of shifting paradigm? Strategic decision making toward water protection in Helsinki 1850–2000’, Ambio, 6 (2–3), 212–19. Langhelle, O. and A. Ruud (2012), ‘Measuring what? National interpretations of sustainable development – the case of Norway’, in J. Meadowcroft, O. Langhelle and A. Ruud (eds), Governance, Democracy and Sustainable Development: Moving Beyond the Impasse, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 172–99. Lasswell, H.D. (1950), Politics: Who Gets What, When, How, New York: Peter Smith. Lewin, L. (1967), Planhushållningsdebatten, Diss. Uppsala: Univ. Stockholm. Lidskog, R. and I. Elander (2012), ‘Ecological modernization in practice? The case of sustainable development in Sweden’, Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 14 (4), 411–27. Lidskog, R. and G. Sundqvist (2015), ‘When does science matter? International relations meets science and technology studies’, Global Environmental Politics, 15 (1), 1–20. Lindhjem, H. (2007), ‘20 years of stated preference valuation of non-timber benefits from Fennoscandian forests: A meta-analysis’, The Journal of Forest Economics, 12 (4), 251–77. Meadowcroft, J. (2011), ‘Engaging with politics of sustainability transitions’, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transition, 1 (1), 70–75.

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Munk Christiansen, P. (ed.) (1996), Governing the Environment: Politics, Policy, and Organization in the Nordic Countries, Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, Nordiska ministerrådet. Petersen, K. (2011), ‘National, Nordic and trans-Nordic: Transnational perspectives on the history of the Nordic welfare states’, in P. Kettunen and K. Petersen (eds), Beyond Welfare State Models: Transnational Historical Perspectives on Social Policy, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 41–64. Pielke, Roger A. (2007), The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Pierson, P. (2000), ‘Increasing returns, path dependence, and the study of politics’, American Political Science Review, 92 (2), 251–67. Rands M.R., V.M. Adams, L. Bennun, S.H. Butchart, A. Clements, D. Coomes, A. Entwistle, I. Hodge, V. Kapos, J.P. Scharlemann, W.J. Sutherland and B. Vira (2010), ‘Biodiversity conservation: Challenges beyond 2010’, Science, 329 (5997), 1298–303, DOI: 10.1126/science.1189138. Raworth, K. (2017), Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21stCentury Economist, USA: Chelsea Green Publishing. Rockström, J., W. Steffen, K. Noone, Å. Persson, F.S. Chapin, E.F. Lambin, T.M. Lenton, M. Scheffer, C. Folke, H.J. Schellnhuber, B. Nykvist, C.A. de Wit, T. Hughes, S. van der Leeuw, H. Rodhe, S. Sörlin, P.K. Snyder, R. Costanza, U. Svedin, M. Falkenmark, L. Karlberg, R.W. Corell, V.J. Fabry, J. Hansen, B. Walker, D. Liverman, K. Richardson, P. Crutzen and J.A. Fole (2009), ‘A safe operating space for humanity’, Nature, 461 (24), 472–5. Saikkonen, P. (2013), ‘From unknown problem to an acknowledged local environmental problem: A case of polluted soil in the city of Helsinki’, Local Environment, 18 (8), 888–903. Sairinen, R. (2003), ‘The politics of regulatory reform: “New” environmental policy instruments in Finland’, in A. Jordan, R.K.W. Wurzel and A.R. Zito (eds), ‘New’ Instruments of Environmental Governance? National Experiences and Prospects, London: Frank Cass, pp. 73–92. Steffen, W., K. Richardson, J. Rockström, S.E. Cornell, I. Fetzer, E.M. Bennett, R. Biggs, S.R. Carpenter, W. de Vries, C.A. de Wit, C. Folke, D. Gerten, J. Heinke, G.M. Mace, L.M. Persson, V. Ramanathan, B. Reyers and S. Sörlin (2015), ‘Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on changing planet’, Science, 347 (6223), 736–7. Stevenson, H. (2012), Institutionalizing Unsustainability: The Paradox of Global Climate Governance, Berkeley: University of California. Swyngedouw, E. (2014), ‘Anthropocenic politicization: From the politics of the environment to politicizing environments’, in K. Bradley and J. Hedrén (eds), Green Utopianism: Perspectives, Politics and Micro-Practices, NY: Routledge, pp. 23–37. UN (2015), Sustainable Development Goals: Time for Global Action for People and Planet, accessed 28 August 2018 at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/ ?menu=1300. Van der Sluijs, J.P. (2012), ‘Uncertainty and dissent in climate risk assessment: A post-normal perspective’, Nature and Culture, 7 (2), 174–95.

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Wilkinson, R. and K. Pickett (2009), Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, London: Allen Lane. Wynne, B. (2010), ‘Strange weather, again climate science as political art’, Theory, Culture & Society, 27 (2–3), 289–305. Yearley, S. (2018), ‘Economic Valuation of the Environment’, in M. Boström and D. Davidson (eds), Environment and Society: Concepts and Challenges, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 143–65.

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9. Social sustainability and the organization of social work from the perspective of Finnish adult social work practitioners Minna Kivipelto, Merita Jokela, Sanna Blomgren and Marek Perlinski INTRODUCTION The lives and welfare of the most vulnerable (social groups of) people are managed by the state at different administrative levels and in cooperation with other agencies. Social work practitioners are those who work with the most vulnerable people and thus have an effect on their living conditions. In this chapter, we approach the organization of social work among adults in the ongoing restructuring of the Nordic welfare state by using the domain theory (Morén et al. 2015; see also Kouzes and Mico 1979). The domain theory argues that social workers’ professional practice is conditioned and shaped by four different domains in society: politics, administration, professional practice and institutional conditions (Blom and Morén 2015, pp. 123–41). We examine the interplay between the different domains of social work in Finland and in particular how the relationships between the domains are expressed by social work practitioners in ‘post Nordic welfare model times’. The chapter also deals with the challenges and functioning of a Nordic welfare state from the perspective of social sustainability. Several global and local developments have affected the social sustainability of social work and the Nordic welfare state more generally. Economic crises, globalization and climate change cause more and more pressure to re-evaluate the foundations of the Nordic model (see Kettunen in this book). The institutional solutions have tended to focus on tightening the terms and conditions of social security. According to Patrick Diamond 184

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(2017, p. 35), welfare states have become too focused on distributing government money and imposing professional interventions on individuals. In the last two decades across OECD countries, social policy has been strongly guided by activation and individual’s own responsibility (Kuivalainen and Nelson 2012, p. 72; Pedersen and Kuhnle 2017, p. 11). In Finland, for instance, in adult social work the trend has been to support social assistance recipients’ own initiative to manage their own lives and livelihood and to decrease dependency on social assistance. This can be seen reflecting the Nordic understanding of full employment where work is a right and a duty (see Kettunen in this book). Hence more emphasis has been put on supporting and rehabilitating individual clients and activating them into the labour market (Kuivalainen 2013; Liukko 2006). On the local level, the adoption of neoliberal principles has had a significant impact on the work of social workers. In the past decades, public organizations such as social welfare agencies, public medical services, schools and employment agencies have been transformed into ‘administrations’ and portrayed in organizational charts with varying sets of formal roles, positions and functions that are increasingly based on efficiency and productivity. In such organizations, social workers as professionals often find their role obscure, feeling themselves as mere ‘case administrators’ rather than independent professional practitioners. In recent years, social work as an academic profession has in many countries undergone contradictory pressures and uncertainty about the future: is social work narrowing even more or finding its own extensive expertise in the field of health and welfare? Against this background, the current vision of social work with adult clients seems more technical than being based on social equity and justice, which are core elements of social sustainability. We agree that both the social and physical environment should support human rights and inclusive opportunities for all. However, human wellbeing or equal opportunities are not sustainable without healthy ecosystems (Dempsey et al. 2011; Helne and Hirvilammi 2015, p. 173). In order to find out how sustainable our society is, we have to look at different relationships and connections between human beings, communities, society and the environment. This approach for social sustainability is congruent with ideas of relational approach for welfare (Cottam 2011; 2012; Atkinson 2013, p. 142; White 2016). It is suggested that social work may strengthen or weaken relationships related to human wellbeing (see also Kivipelto and Saikkonen 2018). Therefore, social work and its connections to its outer

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relations, such as political decision-making, administration and prevalent ideas about wellbeing, equality and justice, are an important subject of research. The chapter is structured as follows. We first present the institutional background of the Finnish welfare state and the organization of social work in Finland, followed by an overview of domain theory. After this, we present our research design and the empirical analysis and, lastly, we finish with some concluding remarks.

THE NORDIC WELFARE STATES: TOWARDS NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE In order to analyse the interplay between the different domains in social work in Finland, we first need to understand some of the mechanisms related to the Nordic welfare states and their governance. Most European countries may to some extent be described as generous welfare states with a public sector that carries out social services. What is distinctive about the Nordic countries is the dominant role of national governments in the formation of social policy and the greater extent of the public sector (Alestalo and Kuhnle 1987; Kangas and Palme 2005; Turtiainen et al. 2017). Kettunen (in this book) argues that the dominant modes of thought and action in a society which have led to political criticism followed by social reforms explain the differences between welfare regimes in Western countries. Nordic countries display significant similarities regarding principles of governance. For example, in Sweden and Finland the state agencies and authorities are constitutionally guaranteed independence from the government, and in Sweden also from the parliament. Such independence is unique in modern welfare states. The ministers are not allowed to intervene in or influence the exercise of authority in specific cases, nor are they allowed to influence issues concerning individual citizens or public servants. However, political steering may be exercised through prescripts and regulations targeted to state agencies and authorities as institutions. Another way for the members of the government to exercise political power over the state agencies and authorities is by means of taking parliamentary initiatives to alter the legislation regulating a specific agency/authority and by appointing the highest executives (directorgenerals) of the agencies/authorities. Such constitutional arrangements mediate, alter and weaken political influence over the domain of state administration and management (Frennered 2010; Larsson 1996).

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At the same time, there are elements of autonomy regarding local authorities. Again looking at Sweden, there is a culture of independency that is guaranteed primarily by civil servants’ far-reaching freedom of speech and the principle of open access. This culture of independency is significant even for many social workers. This dualism in the Swedish state – the division of state government and independent authorities – has a long history dating back to the beginning of the eighteenth century (Andersson 2004; 2006). In Finland, the dualism is also present, but the connection between the local and the national is even more complex than in Sweden, as municipalities perform functions that they choose for themselves and arrange functions provided for them separately by law (Local Government Act 410/2015). However, the influence of the domain of politics on regional and local authorities is not only a matter of formal hierarchy; it is also carried out by means of different forms of institutional (and mainly intangible) remote control. The development of social work has been part of the enlargement of the Nordic welfare state in Finland. Different values, ideologies and structures have affected the construction of social work as a working method, discipline and profession in different eras. The ideas of American casework are an example of a professional domain that landed in Finland during 1950s. This ideological turn partly explains why social work is even today very individually targeted (Toikko 2001). Since then, a number of legislative reforms have shaped the organization of social work and redistributed responsibilities between the local and national administrations, including the Social Welfare Act (1301/20141), which emphasizes the individual’s wellbeing, justice and equality and aims at strengthening the most vulnerable groups in the society. In Western societies, a clear trend in the public sector since the beginning of the 1980s has been the increased use of neoliberal governance (Ruch 2018, pp. 29–32). In Finland, this means that local social work administration and management to a great extent govern themselves; but at the same time, they are obliged to report their achievements to municipal authorities (Mäntysaari 2016). In Finland, municipalities’ responsibilities but also liberties have increased in this decade in many respects. This can be seen as a reaction to earlier forms of government in which the state used laws and central directives – sometimes mediated by central and regional organizations – to directly control activities at the local level. In neoliberal terms, this represents a new form of leadership and authority in order to intervene in the state, institutions and organizations and thus adjust the masses to the emerging society (Hanlon 2018, p. 300). In practice, the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ principles of governance exist side by side, with neoliberal governance taking an increasingly dominant role.

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The Nordic full-employment ideal that ‘it is everybody’s right to fulfil everybody’s duty to work’ (see Kettunen in this book) affects more and more the practice of social work. The unemployment reform in particular has pushed municipalities to provide services for the unemployed more actively since 20062 in order to avoid increasing costs in the local economy. Other reforms that are relevant here include the rehabilitative work experience reform (Act on Rehabilitative Work Experience 189/ 20013), which was implemented with new tools for supporting young and long-term unemployed people in their job search and getting back to work, and the Act on Multisectoral Joint Services Promoting Employment (1369/2014).4 The latter refers to a common service model where the Employment and Economic Development Office (TE office), the municipality and the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (aka Kela) jointly assess service needs for long-term unemployed people, for instance the need for multiprofessional services. In adult social work, the need for multiprofessional coordination has become evident, especially in regard to the inclusion of persons who are hard to employ. There is a growing need to coordinate activation and disability policies and measures at the local level and to integrate benefits and services. As the results of Saikku’s (2018) study show, the recent measures targeted towards clients in social services seem contradictory from the perspective of local authorities. On the one hand, the Social Welfare Act emphasizes individual needs and individualized services, while on the other hand it is directly connected to the national active participation policies. Thus, structures may promote coordination between different policies, administrations and services, but they can also hinder it. Market-based governance and self-governance are reflected in the current public administrative agenda (Saikku 2018).

THE FOUR DOMAINS IN SOCIAL WORK Our analytical framework is based on the domain theory, which was first developed in human service organizations by James Kouzes and Paul Mico (1979) and later revised and adapted to the Nordic social work context by Morén et al. (2013). According to Morén et al. (2013), public arenas for social work at the local level consist of three domains with different functions and features, yet interconnected and interdependent: (1) the domain of politics, (2) the domain of administration and management, and (3) the domain of professional practice (Figure 9.1).

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Domain of politics

Domain of social work administration and management

Domain of social work professional practice

Domain of institutional conditions

Figure 9.1 The three domains (white) in local organizing of social work in the public sector and the overarching domain of institutional conditions The task of politics is to be responsible for the overall government of the activities of public social work organizations, while the administration’s task is to maintain structure and to provide management that ensures the implementation of political decisions. The task of the professions, typically based on science and proven experience, is to carry out interventions in practice that improve people’s life situations or maintain necessary life functions. These domains interact and influence each other in diverse ways. For example, politics controls professional practice via the administration, but at the same time professions (usually through the administration, but sometimes directly) may influence the political domain. The three domains on the local level are, in turn, conditioned by the overall political and structural conditions in society – (4) the domain

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of institutional conditions. This domain is concerned with the predominant ideas of management, norms, and views of knowledge and technologies that prevail in society, which are legitimized and disseminated by central institutions, and in different ways condition and control the way individual local organizations work. Public social work organizations are typically politically controlled by a locally elected assembly, for example a social welfare board or a school board. The political level, in turn, appoints a level of officials – an administration – with the task of implementing interventions in order to assist people in vulnerable situations. In practice, the administration exists beyond the influence of a given political election – but it is still mandated by politicians. Such an administration is usually composed of a top manager who controls sub-heads and workers at different levels and departments and with different social administrative support functions (Montin 2007). However, the implementation of the administration’s mission is dependent on the different professions that operate within the organization, including social workers, psychologists, nurses and social care staff. Ideally, professionals hold great autonomy and are guided in their work by scientific and professional standards (Abbot 1988; Brante 2014; Molander and Terum 2008). In older professions, such as medical doctors and nurses, there is traditionally a high degree of autonomy in working with patients. This might partly be due to the scientific basis being highly developed in these professions. Administration and management in healthcare systems is formally separated from the professional structure. The chief administrative director has very little, at least on a formal basis, direct influence on the carrying out of medical practice.5 Within municipal social welfare agencies, however, the situation is quite the opposite, and the two structures – or hierarchies – of administration and professional practice tend to intertwine. There is usually no explicit distinction made between administration and professional practice in Nordic countries. This means that as the head of the administration, the welfare agency director has both the opportunity and legitimacy to exercise direct influence on professional practice. For example, he or she might give directives to social workers to apply a particular work mode or a specific method in client work. In primary schools – another area where social work is carried out – the social worker is usually formally subordinate to the school’s pedagogical management and headmaster. This means that the school’s headmaster, even though he or she represents a different profession, is in a position to exert direct influence on the social worker’s professional work.

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The relationship between politics, administration and professional practice is thus central not only with regard to welfare agencies, but also with regard to social work in healthcare and educational settings. Superficially, these organizations are very diverse, and they sometimes use different job titles. In all cases, however, it is basically a question of a professional practice that in various ways is subject to and defined in relation to administration and politics. The local conditions concerning the organization of social work are in turn conditioned by the overall institutional governance in society. Institutions may differ in kind between countries, but there are generally four types of institutions: (1) governmental (or state) agencies, (2) national and regional boards and authorities, (3) associations of local (for example municipalities, districts, counties) public sector providers of social services and in some cases private providers working on behalf of the local public sector, and (4) associations of professionals. In some cases/countries, such associations are very powerful, as in the case of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), the world’s largest association for social workers. Institutions of type 3 and to some extent type 4 are what Göran Ahrne and Nils Brunsson (2008) refer to as meta-organizations, that is, they comprise other organizations. Consequently, their agenda only partly mirrors the interests of their members. Meta-organizations that are too similar to their members tend to cease to exist. The same is true if such organizations are too different from their member organizations. All four types of institutions are relatively independent agents or actors in relation to the three domains previously described. What happens is that this ‘institutional domain’, which in a somewhat ambiguous way is located at the national (and even international) level, will affect the relationship between the other domains (politics, administration and profession) at the local level. Institutional conditions do not include all possible contextual factors, but mainly the governance of organizations for social work in the public sector emanating from the central institutions in society, including the diffusion and legitimization of dominant ideas and ideals – often global in character – about how these organizations should be organized and managed. The difference between an institutional domain and an organization is crucial. In the social work field, we talk about things like welfare agencies as local municipal organizations6 that each have their own internal organizational forms and practices. However, we can also consider ‘social welfare’ as an institutional domain, in the meaning of overall national control in the form of legislation, norms and guidelines as well as more intangible elements such as culture, opinions and societal

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norms regarding how such social services should be conducted. The national level is in this respect also embedded in and influenced by current ideas on the international level. This means that the domain of institutional conditions is sometimes materialized into a single organization, such as a state agency or board or an association of public providers. But it is also about structures in society that can be difficult to observe but nevertheless have an impact on individual local organizations. For example, it might be difficult to ‘see’ the factors that lead the vast majority of local social service organizations in Sweden to be more or less specialized (Lundgren et al. 2009). There are no central directives or guidelines demanding this development – yet it occurs. The domain of institutional conditions includes immaterial structures as well as those structures that are materialized in the central organizations in a particular field. The Interplay between the Domains of Social Work in Finland Using the domain theory approach (Morén et al. 2015), we next examine the role of the four domains of municipal social work: the domain of politics, the domain of administration and management, the domain of professional practice, and the domain of institutional conditions. The analysis is divided into two parts. First we examine how the three local domains (politics, administration, and social work professions) are expressed by authorities in municipal social work, and secondly we analyse the construction of the institutional domain and how it intertwines with other domains of social work in the Finnish context. For the empirical part of the study, we use data that were collected in a research project carried out by the National Institute for Health and Welfare in 2015. The aim of the project was to study the state of affairs in social work and associated services and benefits in local authorities before the administration of basic social assistance was transferred from municipalities to the Social Insurance Institution in 2017 (see Blomgren et al. 2016). Data collection was conducted in 12 Finnish municipalities and in one joint authority consisting of 4 municipalities. Altogether 75 social workers, social counsellors and representatives of social work management were interviewed. This study analyses only the experiences of social workers, social counsellors and social work managers. Actors in local governance, usually relevant to the domain of politics, are not covered in the data. We first take a look at the interplay between the domains that Morén et al. (2015) refer to as the local domains: politics, administration, and social work professions. In the interviews, the relationship between the

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domain of politics and the two other domains – administration and social professions – emerges as a rather linear top-down hierarchy where street-level social work maintains the role of implementation and is led by local governance. The local council and municipal board that are responsible for social welfare are typically described as distant actors that make decisions on the budget but are not familiar with what really happens in social services and what the real needs are. Many social workers and social counsellors expressed dissatisfaction towards the management of social work due to the low resources that are directed towards the poor and marginal. Several informants said that there is often a controversy between the ethics of their profession and the actions that the administration instructs them to take with clients. For example, emphasis is put on supporting clients in job searches and labour market integration and sanctioning clients who do not agree with activation measures. Yet, as many informants expressed, not all clients fit into the prevailing activation agenda of quick labour market integration. Groups that particularly create concern among social workers include migrants, the long-term unemployed, drug and alcohol users and people with mental health problems. Clients are all messed up when applications are sent to housing services and at the same time to social rehabilitation. The client is all messed up. I say ‘Don’t worry; now we send applications. I cannot promise you anything. Someone else decides your issues. We try our best.’ This doesn’t make any sense. (Social worker)

While some of the social workers recognized the pressures of the administration, they felt that the ethics of the profession get lost in the administration and the politics that the current activation measures represent: That they start to realize that the costs are rising when we work here in the field and then they try to restrict them somehow […] these big managers who should make broad alignments here and plan this change [of legislation], then they manage how we should do client service […] That tells about how they think of us workers, are we able to do anything. I don’t know why they think like that, do they have so much pressure that comes from the top, that costs must be cut […] The ethics and all that what is important in our work that gets lost there. (Social counsellor)

Moreover, some of the difficulties in the relationship between workers and the management of social work were related to insufficient communication. Some workers felt that important issues, such as implementation of the Social Welfare Act, were not discussed broadly enough with

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the staff, which sometimes hindered the practical work with the clients because crucial information was missing. According to the (then) recent Act on unemployment protection reform7 (1370/2014), the state shifted more financial responsibility to municipalities over individuals who had been on labour market subsidy for more than 300 days. This policy reform influenced social work practices in the municipality in a very concrete way, as social workers were told by the administration to ‘clean up’ the so-called Kela lists (a list provided by the National Insurance Institution Kela on long-term labour market subsidy recipients) and redirect individuals on these lists to activation measures that were financed by the state (such as rehabilitation work) in order to save municipalities’ resources. Several informants, especially in smaller municipalities, viewed that going through the Kela lists took a considerable proportion of their worktime, and as a consequence they ended up doing full days of paperwork instead of meeting with clients. The interviews with management of social work reflected a shared concern with the workers of the limitations that the prevailing politics and ideologies behind them place on the implementation of social work. For instance, managers felt that it is difficult to fulfil the criteria of the recent Social Welfare Act, such as the requirement of preparing a needs assessment for each client in social services. In addition, several informants highlighted the difficult position of social work as a subordinate to healthcare that may be seen as a critique towards the prevailing politics, both on the local and national level: Social welfare and social work somehow cannot reclaim their place; we do not speak the same language when approaching effectiveness, efficiency and money. In social work, we see individuals whose need for services we cannot tell in advance […] I never thought that social welfare would be subordinate to health care, but now I feel that they want to fade out social welfare and social work – despite the Social Welfare Act. The act is brilliant, great and idealistic, but it is as far away from this reality as it can be. (Social work manager)

In addition to general challenges in the organization of social work, a frequent matter brought up by both social workers and management of social work was related to contextual factors in the municipality that created challenges for following the local social policy principles that emphasized activation and employment measures. These contextual factors consisted of characteristics of the given municipality – such as the high unemployment rate, high prevalence of migrants or ethnic minorities or drug use among the youth – that not only shaped the work done in

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social services but also influenced the ways that resources could be distributed in the municipality. In some municipalities, the recent increase in the number of long-term unemployed (which usually had to do with the decrease in available jobs in the area) tied up more resources in supporting these individuals while some other municipality had to invest more resources in youth work due to a sudden rise in drug use among young men. Social workers particularly felt constrained, as these particular characteristics created issues that often could not be solved through social work but instead were structural challenges. Thus social work was seen only as first aid for clients whose problems would have needed more thorough and long-lasting support. Institutional Domain: Political Reforms, Process Experts and Policy Professionals Setting Guidelines for Social Work As Morén et al. (2015) suggest, the three domains on the local level that are discussed above are conditioned by the overall political and structural conditions in society, which the authors refer to as the domain of institutional conditions. The power manifested by politics and administration on the local level often has its origin in a wider societal context and the ongoing influence of the surrounding world. Currently, one of the most important institutional factors regarding social work in Finland is the so-called social welfare and healthcare reform (SOTE reform), which will be carried out in the near future. During the interviews in 2015, social workers and management of social work were not yet aware of how the reform would affect their work (Blomgren et al. 2016). What they had noticed was the absence of social services in the discourse on the SOTE reform: Surely it is interesting to follow this SOTE reform. They are talking only about health services, how they should be organized. However, there is very little discussion about social services and its funding. We have a reorganization process now in our city. What happens if the national SOTE reform is realized? It can change all again, totally. We are living in very interesting times. (Social worker)

It is obvious that the domain of institutional conditions is made up of different types of institutions on several levels in society. However, here we do not want to identify concrete, tangible and formal organizations but rather to extend the discussion to detecting different creators, carriers and mediators of an immaterial structure. These are built upon prevailing ideas in society that set guidelines for the ways that social services should be governed and organized. In order to track this non-visible

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domain, we have to look at the decision-making and policies where decisions are made. As Stefan Svallfors (2016) argues, real power is possible to find from both inside and outside parliament and party politics. For instance, in social work these agencies are different experts who have access to decision-making. They may have broad networks and high status in the eyes of policymakers. For example, they may be professors of social work or managing directors of foundations, private social welfare and healthcare companies and associations. Mostly they are ‘process experts’ who understand the ‘where, how and why’ of the political and policy-making processes. Moreover, project funding plays an increasingly important role on the municipal level, particularly among the smallest municipalities that are facing severe financial difficulties; and thus for them, access to funding is crucial. This means that phenomena such as privatization and outsourcing services are increasingly prevalent ways of organizing social services. In the interviews, social workers frequently discussed their experiences on municipalities outsourcing rehabilitative work and the ways that outsourcing defines and directs their work. For example, the so-called Kela lists help municipalities to follow how much they are paying labour market subsidy fees. Clients are redirected to government-funded rehabilitative work based on the activation plans. Social workers and managers are talking critically about these so-called activation measures, but the social workers see no other options for doing things differently. This may be due to the fact that institutional conditions in social work are supported not only by formal structures and central institutions but also by politics, immaterial structures, and a continuous flow of ideas regarding how welfare in society should be organized. As seen, the domain of institutional conditions has a different character than the ‘local’ domains described earlier. Formal structure and the flow of ideas are also interdependent. There is a flow of ideas and predominant beliefs in society regarding the way social welfare should be carried out, and this flow is mediated to the local level through central institutions. In this respect, Svallfors (2014; see also Garsten et al. 2015) talks about ‘the policy professionals’ as a growing but invisible group of powerful people within the area of politics who have an indirect influence on the way local welfare interventions are carried out. Such actors within the political sphere are not elected representatives, but they are employed to carry out political endeavours. Such positions include political experts, political secretaries, public relations consultants and various investigators. We suggest that ‘social welfare’ may also be understood as an institutional level in society that refers to overall national control in the

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form of legislation, norms and guidelines, and more intangible elements such as culture, opinions and societal norms regarding the ways that such social services should be conducted. The national level is in this respect also embedded in and influenced by current ideas on the international level. This means that the domain of institutional conditions is sometimes materialized into a single organization – such as a state agency or board or an association of public providers – but it is also about structures in society that may be difficult to observe but nevertheless have an impact on individual local organizations. Similarly, in Sweden it might be difficult to ‘see’ the factors that lead the vast majority of local social service organizations to be more or less specialized (Lundgren et al. 2009). There are no central directives or guidelines demanding this development – yet it occurs.

AUTONOMOUS SOCIAL WORK ENABLES (DEVELOPMENT OF) SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES In this chapter, we have examined the organization of municipal social work through the lens of the domain theory. The domain theory of social work highlights the ways that social work is conditioned and shaped by politics and management of social work at the local level, but also how this local process is conditioned and controlled by overall institutional relationships in society. These relationships and connections are also conflicting with social work’s professional ethics and values. Neoliberal values – such as marketing, effectiveness and privatization – are usually opposite in relation to the needs of most vulnerable people. Social work is struggling between these requirements and risking its autonomy and professional independence to the current ideological power. At the same time, social work is risking its ability to promote socially sustainable communities and an equitable society (see Dempsey et al. 2011). Similarly to previous studies, our study finds that the organization of social work in Finland is very hierarchical: the political domain, including the legislation regarding social work, steers the administrative work in the municipalities and sets the framework for the organization. At the same time, the administration works as an intermediary between the political and professional domains, while the professional domain takes responsibility for the implementation of practical social work. The results of our analysis show that management of social work, which here represents the domain of social work administration, is often pressured by constraints set in the political domain. These include legislation

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regarding social work and also the limited financial resources and priorities that the local governance provides. Furthermore, we found that there is a strong belief among the professional domain that social work is subordinate to the rule of the administration. Social workers and counsellors expressed their concern that they had no say over decisions, but at the same time they had to seek ways to help the clients within the legislative frames. The power relations between the different domains were evident in concrete measures, such as the so-called Kela lists that influenced social work practices in many municipalities and guided social workers’ and social counsellors’ work. It should be noted that the interviews were carried out shortly before the social assistance reform, which explains part of the strong criticism towards the workload, the lack of communication and the problems in the division of labour between Kela and the municipalities. While the interplay between the three local domains of social work was frequently brought up in the interviews with the social work practitioners, the institutional domain was absent when discussing the different actors influencing social work practices. Social workers, social counsellors and the managers of social work did talk generally about decision-making and the upcoming social and healthcare reform (SOTE reform), but they rarely mentioned political processes or actors beyond the political domain. In fact it was somewhat surprising how little social work practitioners were interested in the wider structures that guide municipal social work. Thus many aspects of the institutional domain often remain invisible both in municipal social work and in public discourse in general. This also complicates seeing larger goals of social work in order to support sustainable communities. To conclude, social work among adults and people of working age needs reorientation to support sustainable communities. The new relational reorientation of social work includes drawing on the wider networks of community and resources they can offer. Awareness of the strict top-down hierarchy that sustains the relationships between the different domains in social work is needed. More attention should be paid to the less visible actors that guide decision-making and political processes regarding social work. The truth is that strong political and powerful drivers are also needed in order to develop social work that is relational and based on sustainable values.

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NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Social Welfare Act [Sosiaalihuoltolaki] (2014/1301), Helsinki, FI: Parliament. Government Proposal (164/2005) for Parliament to amend the Act on Public Employment Services and some related laws [Hallituksen esitys Eduskunnalle laiksi julkisesta työvoimapalvelusta annetun lain muuttamisesta ja eräiksi siihen liittyviksi laeiksi] (164/2005). Act on Rehabilitative Work Experience [Laki kuntouttavasta työtominnasta] (189/2001), Helsinki, FI: Parliament. Act on Multisectoral Joint Services Promoting Employment [Laki työllistymistä edistävästä monialaisesta yhteispalvelusta] (1369/2014), Helsinki, FI: Parliament. This state of things is probably changing. According to Hasselbladh et al. (2008), the autonomy of the medical professions – as a consequence of institutional transformations and new forms of management – is increasingly circumscribed by politics and administration. In Norway there are 428 local municipalities, in Finland 320, in Sweden 290, in Denmark 98 and in Iceland 75. Act Amending the Unemployment Security Act [Laki työttömyysturvalain muuttamisesta] (1370/2014), Helsinki, FI: Parliament.

REFERENCES Abbott, A. (1988), The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labour, Chicago, IL, USA: University of Chicago Press. Ahrne, G. and N. Brunsson (2008), Meta-Organizations, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Alestalo, M. and S. Kuhnle (1987), ‘The Scandinavian route: Economic, social, and political developments in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden’, in R. Erikson, E.J. Hansen, S. Ringen and H. Uusitalo (eds), The Scandinavian Model: Welfare States and Welfare Research, New York, USA and London, UK: M.E. Sharpe, pp. 3–38. Andersson, C. (2004), ‘Tudelad trots allt: dualismens överlevnad i den svenska staten 1718–1987’, Doctoral dissertation, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen, Stockholm, SE: Stockholms universitet. Andersson, C. (2006), ‘Divides after all: The survival of dualism in the Swedish state 1718–1987’, paper presented at the 20th IPSA World Congress, Fukoka, JP, 9–14 July. Atkinson, S. (2013), ‘Beyond components of wellbeing: The effects of relational and situated assemblage’, Topoi 2013, 32 (2), 137–44. Blom, B. and S. Morén (2015), Teori för Socialt Arbete, Lund, SE: Studentlitteratur. Blomgren, S., J. Karjalainen, P. Karjalainen, M. Kivipelto, P. Saikkonen and P. Saikku (2016), ‘Sosiaalityö, palvelut ja etuudet muutoksessa’, Report 4/2016, Helsinki, FI: National Institute for Health and Welfare. Brante, T. (2014), Den professionella logiken, Stockholm, SE: Liber. Cottam, H. (2011), ‘Relational welfare’, Soundings, 2011 (48), 134–44, https:// doi.org/10.3898/136266211797146855. Cottam, H. (2012), ‘From relational ideas to relational action’, in G. Cooke and N. Muir (eds), The Relational State: How Recognising the Importance of

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Human Relationships Could Revolutionise the Role of the State, London, UK: Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), pp. 49–51. Dempsey, N., G. Bramley, S. Power and C. Brown (2011), ‘The social dimension of sustainable development: Defining urban social sustainability’, Sustainable Development, 19 (5), 289–300. Diamond, P. (2017), ‘Fulfilling basic human needs: The welfare state after Beveridge’, in S. Cohen, C. Fuhr and J.-J. Bock (eds), Austerity, Community Action, and the Future of Citizenship in Europe, Bristol, UK: Policy Press, pp. 25–38. Frennered, H. (2010), ‘Nordiska rättsliga myndigheter och det straffrättsliga samarbetet i EU’, TemaNord 2010:523, Köpenhamn, DK: Nordiska ministerrådet. Garsten, C., B. Rothstein and S. Svallfors (2015), Makt utan mandat: de policyprofessionella i svensk politik, Stockholm, SE: Dialogos Förlag. Hanlon, G. (2018), ‘The first neo-liberal science: Management and neoliberalism’, Sociology, 52 (2), 298–315. Hasselbladh, H., E. Bejerot and R.Å. Gustavsson (2008), Bortom New Public Management. Institutionell transformation i svensk sjukvård, Lund, SE: Academia Adacta. Helne, T. and T. Hirvilammi (2015), ‘Wellbeing and social sustainability: A relational approach’, Sustainable Development, 23 (3), 167–75. Kangas, O. and J. Palme (2005), ‘Coming late – Catching up: The formation of a “Nordic model”’, in O. Kangas and J. Palme (eds), Social Policy and Economic Development in the Nordic Countries, New York, US: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 17–59. Kivipelto, M. and P. Saikkonen (2018), ‘Hyvinvointia niukkuudessa? Kokemuksia viimesijaisesta turvasta’, Janus, 26 (1), 57–72. Kouzes, J.M. and P.R. Mico (1979), ‘Domain theory: An introduction to organizational behaviour in human service organizations’, The Journal of Applied Behavioural Science, 15 (4), 449–69. Kuivalainen, S. (2013), ‘Toimeentulotuen muuttunut asema’, in Susan Kuivalainen (ed.), Toimeentulotuki 2010-luvulla, Raportti 9/2013, Helsinki, FI: Terveyden ja hyvinvoinnin laitos, pp. 15–34. Kuivalainen, S. and K. Nelson (2012), ‘Eroding minimum income protection in the Nordic countries? Reassessing the Nordic model of social assistance’, in J. Kvist, J. Fritzell, B. Hvinden and O. Kangas (eds), Changing Social Equality: The Nordic Welfare Model in the 21st Century, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK: The Policy Press, pp. 69–88. Liukko, E. (2006), ‘Kuntouttavaa sosiaalityötä paikantamassa’, SOCCAn ja Heikki Waris -instituutin julkaisusarja 9/2006, Helsinki, FI: Heikki Waris -instituutti/SOCCA. Local Government Act (410/2015), Helsinki: Parliament. Lundgren, M., B. Björn, S. Morén and M. Perlinski (2009), ‘Från integrering till specialisering: om organisering av socialtjänstens individ- och familjeomsorg 1988–2008’, Socialvetenskaplig tidskrift, 16 (2), 162–83.

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Mäntysaari, M. (2016), ‘Hyvinvointiliberalismi ja uusliberalismi sosiaalityön toimintaympäristönä’, in M. Törrönen, K. Hänninen, P. Jouttimäki, T. LehtoLundén, P. Salovaara and M. Veistilä (eds), Vastavuoroinen sosiaalityö, Helsinki, FI: Gaudeamus, pp. 72–84. Molander, A. and L.I. Terum (eds) (2008), Profesjonsstudier, Oslo, NO: Universitetsforlaget. Montin, S. (2007), Moderna kommuner, 3rd ed., Stockholm, SE: Liber. Morén, S., B. Blom and M. Perlinski (2013), ‘Organizing social work in public sector: A domain theory’, Conference Paper, Umeå Universitet, Institutionen för socialt arbete, accessed 18 October 2018 at http://umu.diva-portal.org/ smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A613027&dswid=9854#sthash.85z4YzvB.dpbs. Morén, S., M. Perlinski and B. Blom (2015), ‘En domänteori för organisering av socialt arbete i offentlig sektor’, Socialvetenskaplig tidskrift, 22 (1), 22–43. Pedersen, A.W. and S. Kuhnle (2017), ‘The Nordic welfare state model: Introduction – The concept of a “Nordic model”’, in O. Knutsen (ed.), The Nordic Models in Political Science: Challenged, but Still Viable?, Bergen, NO: Fagbokforlaget, pp. 1–20. Ruch, G. (2018), ‘The contemporary context of relationship-based practice’, in G. Ruch, D. Turney and A. Ward (eds), Relationship-Based Social Work, 2nd ed., London, UK: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, pp. 19–36. Saikku, P. (2018), ‘Hallinnan rajoilla: Monialainen koordinaatio vaikeasti työllistyvien työllistymisen edistämisessä’, Doctoral dissertation, Publications of the Faculty of Social Sciences 74/2018, Social Policy, Helsinki, FI: University of Helsinki. Svallfors, S. (2014), ‘Politik som organiserad kamp: nya spelare och nya spelregler i Sverige’, Arkiv, Tidskrift för samhällsanalys, 2014 (3), 39–64. Svallfors, S. (2016), ‘Politics as organized combat: New players and new rules of the game in Sweden’, New Political Economy, 21 (6), 505–19. Toikko, T. (2001), ‘Sosiaalityön amerikkalainen oppi: Yhdysvaltalaisen caseworkin kehitys ja sen yhteys suomalaiseen tapauskohtaiseen sosiaalityöhön’, Seinäjoki, FI: Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences. Turtiainen, J., A. Väänänen and P. Varje (2017), ‘The pressure of objectives and reality: Social workers’ perceptions of their occupational complexities in a trade journal in 1958–1999’, Qualitative Social Work, 17 (6), 1–16. White, S. (2016), ‘Introduction: The many faces of wellbeing’, in S. White and C. Blackmore (eds), Cultures of Wellbeing: Method, Place, Policy, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–44.

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10. Civilizing business enterprises: the search for a new Nordic growth and development model Peer Hull Kristensen, Eli Moen and Kari Lilja INTRODUCTION Where capitalism for the great majority of citizens took a more civilized turn after WWII, the past couple of decades have been a return to a more brutal form of capitalism: atypical work; low pay; declining unionization; no or negligible labour and human rights; and weakened democratic constitutional orders. So far, the Nordic countries have withstood the more severe outcomes of these global tendencies, and rather are looked to as a possible alternative. Different perspectives will emphasize different explanations of Nordic divergence dependent on whether the focus is on high living standards, growth and gross national income (GNI) per inhabitant, relative low inequality, competitiveness, taxation, unionization, happiness, trust and so forth. Differing from most approaches, this chapter focuses on the role Nordic business enterprises play in sustaining the Nordic model in the era of neo-liberalism. Despite intensive globalization, Nordic firms have been reluctant to exploit the vulnerability of their workforce. Rather, a collaborative search for new forms of work organization has formed the basis for new prospering business models by moving beyond organizational boundaries to include a multiplicity of stakeholders into their activities. In the past, the relational integration of internal and external stakeholders was often an outcome of pressure from regulatory intervention from the state, strong unions, highly skilled and autonomous workers, and communities’ solidaristic sentiments. This institutionalized relational integration, however, not only pushed business enterprises to practise a more civilized form of capitalism, it created a social space for a continuous search for how different interests 202

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could complement each other and be satisfied in constantly new ways. It also induced new forms of work organization, product portfolios and business models. From this perspective, business enterprises could be considered an arena in which different social groups and organizational entities could mutually civilize each other.1 By cooperating with multiple stakeholders, companies could search for new opportunities, solve societal challenges and champion sustainable development both at home and internationally. We render this perspective intelligible through illustrative enterprises, highlighting the relational dimension, and demonstrating how enterprises’ civilizing practices have been institutionalized. The cases are selected because they disclose important aspects of how ‘civilizing businesses’ operate through participatory forms of work organization, multistakeholder learning processes, and by developing new sustainable products. Assembling networks that make it possible for producers and customers to associate in future oriented activities is highly complicated, as recent research in actor network research tradition shows (Callon and Ḉaliṣkan 2009; 2010). Arguably, when business enterprises have learned to play such games, this relational practice continues even when states, inspired by neo-liberal practices, withdraw from their leading societal role. The chapter first presents the Danish multinational Novo Nordisk as a case-in-point of how companies can champion sustainability in emerging economies. Then follows a section that discusses how the labour movement, Nordic welfare states and various institutions have civilized enterprises in different ways that have transformed them into agencies for developing their respective economies, and for extending sustainability internationally. The chapter continues with cases of Nordic companies initiating transformative co-developments locally, followed by a section questioning the future direction of neo-liberal-oriented Nordic countries.

TRANSFORMATIVE CO-DEVELOPMENT IN EMERGING ECONOMIES Novo Nordisk produces pharmaceuticals, primarily insulin for treating diabetes. It is the highest valued corporation on the stock markets in the Nordic region. At home, it is appreciated for its corporate social responsibility (CSR), for upskilling of its employees, for creating highly attractive work organizations and for collaborating with communities to improve the environment. Attracted by low labour costs and market potential in China, like most multi-national corporations (MNCs), it

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started in the early 1990s as a production line in the Tianjin Economic Development Area and opened a sales office to also benefit from low taxes and good infrastructures (Chitour 2013, p. 33). However, by gradually developing a ‘holistic approach’, Novo Nordisk’s activities have become highly advanced development practices. In addition to its production and sales functions, the company invested in local R&D and applied high standards in quality monitoring. Furthermore, it kept labour turnover low by offering good working conditions in a team-based organization, demonstrating how business and CSR ambitions could be combined. Despite a rapid increase in diabetes in China, the health system was incapable of diagnosing and prescribing optimal treatment. As most low-cost insulin treatments often lead to serious consequences for patients and incur high costs for health systems, Novo Nordisk initiated educational programmes for doctors and pharmacists, as well as awareness campaigns and training programmes for patients to improve the effect of the insulin. Between 1997 and 2013, 55,000 doctors participated in a series of seminars and conferences and 280,000 patients had been trained. To form critical strategic partnerships with different local actors in China, it made use of its R&D centre. Through Novo Nordisk’s intervention, policymakers and healthcare administrators were able to formulate quality requirements and to set standards for local manufacturers and provide guidelines for healthcare providers for handling medicine appropriately. Lastly, it contributed to improving the awareness of diabetes in rural China and other remote areas with little or no access to healthcare professionals. By also being involved as a sponsor in national campaigns to prevent diabetes, it earned the government’s trust to be considered as a co-development partner (Chitour 2013, p. 39). Its social engagement helped Novo Nordisk to build a market of which it holds a 63 per cent share. At the same time, its relations with the Chinese government have prevented it from becoming an object of the ‘drug price slashing wave that hit many pharmaceutical companies following the Anhu Model reform’ (Chitour 2013, p. 43). Arguably, Novo Nordisk has demonstrated great skill in constructing a market to its own benefit, in addition to engaging in processes of co-development. Furthermore, it has also produced shared value for other involved actor groups: patients; health personnel; suppliers; and the government. Novo Nordisk is pursuing its China approach in other developing and emerging economies, dependent on the specific constitution and the situation of the field in which it engages. By teaching patients to advocate their interests, educating doctors, subsidizing medicine for

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low-income groups, setting up logistical systems for distributing medicine, taking care of quality, supporting NGOs for diabetes patients in improving the local healthcare systems, and by helping universities with research programmes, Novo Nordisk acts as a catalyst for system-wide improvements. In Indonesia, such relations have empowered the University of Indonesia and the professional association for doctors to improve the government’s regulatory capabilities. Improved regulation has led to early discovery of diabetes and its treatment (Girschik 2016). The Novo Nordisk case shows how an MNC can act as an agent of change, as several other Nordic companies do. By involving and orchestrating a complex set of actors, it has created an advanced organizational field for improving entire institutional systems. Girschik (2016) shows how Novo Nordisk approaches its ‘civilizing process’: first, producing monitoring reports by compiling detailed interviews about the problems, conflicts, opportunities and aspirations of the different actors in the distinct field; secondly, by composing reports on how different actors could develop new roles and interests, and how they could concentrate on complementing each other for improving the system while simultaneously meeting their own aspirations. Novo Nordisk fully recognizes its broad impact on societies. Its reporting demonstrates comprehensive sets of metrics: the number of lives saved; effects on patients and doctors; government spending; direct and indirect employment; and CO2 emissions and other environmental effects in addition to the normal financial and economic results. In this way, the company has built up a capacity for monitoring improvements in shared value and institutionalized learning processes internationally.

NORDIC PATHS TO CIVILIZED CAPITALISM Novo Nordisk epitomizes how a large number of Nordic companies disseminate their institutional legacy globally. This legacy has enabled Nordic companies to move from mediocre to top positions in terms of international competitiveness. These unexpected positions are contradictory to neo-liberal logic and are built on civilized practices and civilizing relations with both internal and external stakeholders. The labour movement, the state, different forms of patient capital, and welfare state services have been essential in the making of the figuration in which these companies are currently embedded. In addition, social movements for a wide scope of issues have also contributed to the civilization process. This evolving and expanding type of socio-genesis (cf. Elias 1994, pp. 458–60) also forms the backbone for the distinctive pattern of

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work organization facilitating continuous learning which is crucial for developing new business models.

THE LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE WAGE FORMATION SYSTEM In all the Nordic countries, the labour movement has played a pivotal role in civilizing companies. Key factors for civilized forms of capitalism include institutional practices that reduce sweat work and low wages, in addition to improving working conditions. In the Nordics, the central wage formation system has been essential. The Swedish economists Rehn and Meidner provided the basic ideas for the model in the 1940s. Norway developed its own variant, known as the Aukrust model. Inherent to the models is income equality aiming at reducing wage differences. Compressed wages are assumed to provide more equal labour relations, produce greater employee effort, and a higher output per worker. In this way, it functions as a self-maintaining upward cycle, securing increased welfare while bolstering egalitarian and collaborative values. As real wage increases are not to exceed productivity growth in the most advanced companies, the model pushes other companies to improve productivity to improve profitability. This creates pressure on unprofitable companies either to leave the market or to comply with the centralized wage bargaining, thus inciting the development of high-productivity companies. For society, the effect of rising wages is increased demand and macroeconomic growth, given that wages are calibrated to international competition (Moene and Wallerstein 1995). In Sweden, this mechanism was particularly effective under Fordism, and helped to cultivate a number of successful large companies during the 1950s and 1960s, whereas smaller companies in traditional sectors suffered. Also in Norway and Finland, the model served as a mechanism for deselecting poorly performing firms, while it framed a pattern for cooperation between unions and management to find ways of improving productivity, and to make use of new technologies (Koistinen and Lilja 1988). In Denmark, a different mechanism deselected companies. Unlike the other Nordics, the Danish economy is to a high degree based on craft workers. Embedded in state-financed educational institutions this encourages employees constantly to seek opportunities to upgrade their skills. This search creates constant and continuous competition between workers to reposition themselves in the labour markets, either by demanding the introduction of new technologies in their current jobs or by moving to other firms offering new challenges. Firms only offering repetitive tasks

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or considered below benchmarks are left with less entrepreneurial workers, and in this way become deselected over time (Kristensen et al. 2011).

STATE INTERVENTION IN SWEDEN, FINLAND AND NORWAY: INDUSTRIAL POLICY AND CREDIT REGULATION Finland, Norway and Sweden are all endowed with copious natural resources, which have formed the basis for industrial development. The state, however, has been instrumental in making investments especially in capital intensive industries and in taking into account regional development and job creation in its involvement in the economy. In Sweden, radical development from the 1930s involved building a large arms industry, which in turn served as a catalyst for heavily investing in large-scale public R&D programmes. This investment provided the basis for Sweden to become a leading high-tech country. Her technological and industrial competence formed the basis for Swedish success in the 1970s and 1980s. At the same time, the credit-based financial system enabled Swedish multinationals to engage in global expansion on a much larger scale than any other Nordic MNC. In Finland, the state’s intervention in the national economy was initiated through its ownership in the forest industry. Because of this industry’s dominance in the economy (Lilja et al. 1992), diversification became the overall goal of governmental policies after WWII. Subsequently, state-owned companies were established in the mechanical engineering, chemicals, energy and electronics industries. Favourable trade agreements with the Soviet Union secured industrial growth, as did tight financial regulation of the banking sector, securing capital for upgrading leading companies in the forest, metals, chemicals and energy industries, coordinated between banks and companies. In addition to productivity enhancing wage agreements, the state also supported the competitiveness of the key export industry by devaluating the Finnish Mark when global competitive pressure necessitated state intervention. Finland took the interventionist state to a new level in the latter decades of the 20th century by adding the development of advanced technology to its modernization programme. The state gradually increased investments in R&D. This gave boost and capacity to research institutes of the state to cooperate with companies in their R&D projects. The state also established the Science and Technology Policy Council. In

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this body, representatives of the government, science and technology institutions, companies, and central employer and employee organizations could coordinate efforts and investments, and share risks in search of new opportunities. The Finnish innovation system, like the Swedish one, has been widely admired as it resulted in technological breakthroughs in microelectronics and digital technology in the 1980s and 1990s. These breakthroughs provided the platform for Finland to become a leading information society, championed by Nokia during the 1990s (Moen and Lilja 2005; Miettinen 2013). Few Western economies are based on the exploitation of natural resources to such an extent as Norway. In managing and developing industries based on the country’s natural resources, the state has played a pivotal role. Before oil, important industrial sectors such as the electrometallurgical and electrochemical industries benefitted from access to cheap hydropower. Several of these production complexes were established during the German occupation, but taken over by the state after WWII. Supporting these industries became a prioritized growth policy, which became known as power socialism: the state subsidized energy costs and invested heavily in developing more hydropower. Its key instruments were concession laws securing state control over national resources, and tight credit regulation. This hydropower-industrial complex in turn created demand for shipping and associated industries such as shipyards and marine technologies. To some extent, the Norwegian state also supported the development of advanced technologies as Sweden and Finland did (Moen 2002). In the early 1970s, when oil was discovered, the state replicated its hydropower concession policies to maintain control as well as involving the state directly by establishing a state-owned oil company, Statoil. International companies were invited to participate in developing the Norwegian oil sector, but on the condition that they made use of Norwegian suppliers. This protectionist policy secured the development of national oil competence and knowledge, at the same time as regional development was taken care of. Taxation of all participant companies on the Norwegian shelf has provided the state with substantial windfalls and has consolidated state budgets. The protectionist – highly hierarchical and state-bureaucratically managed – oil complex was challenged by falling oil prices in the late 1980s, and when Norway joined the European Economic Area in the early 1990s. The sector was liberalized at the same time as different Norwegian actors formed a cooperative body, NORSOK, and adopted new means of contracting, engineering, procuring and constructing. Through this body new relational patterns were created. As a consequence of this

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liberalization, the state also implemented new ways to regulate health, safety and the environment. These transformations prepared the ground for a Norwegian offshore sector that globally became a technological and market leader during the noughties (Moen 2011). Despite their differing economic structures and policies, firms in all the Nordic countries have had to balance the interests of internal and external stakeholders. In Sweden, Finland and Norway, this has been mediated by an active state, which has had to legitimize its actions. The state achieved this by taking into account the interests and aspirations of its electorates as well as the needs of environment in industrial policies and projects. The state also facilitated access to financial resources, and thus contributed to the development of technology and entrepreneurship, provided companies secured a balance between a multiplicity of stakeholders.

DENMARK: CREATING A WELFARE STATE FROM THE BOTTOM UP The Danish state played a much less active role, partly because of few natural resources, but mainly because different social groups mobilized self-help movements early on. One social grouping, which comprised large companies and banks in Copenhagen, initiated corporation-based modernization through share ownership and limited liability. Another social group consisted of small farmers that created one of the most explosive growths of cooperatives by forming dairies and slaughterhouses. This group furthermore established a series of secondary cooperatives that organized exports and monitored quality and continuous improvement in a decentralized system. The third social group was linked to the craft movement that mobilized to survive liberalization and industrialization by forming technical schools, and by adopting new technologies to compete with mass-producers. In spite of the fact that these social groups frequently contested each other, they also combined to create distinct relational patterns in the Danish economy. Farmers and craftsmen combined in small railway towns, which became yeoman republics and decentralized centres for modernization. Craft working was so attractive that it also became the dominant occupational category in factories initiated by large firms in Copenhagen, then becoming less hierarchical than companies in most other countries (Kristensen 1996; Kristensen and Sabel 1997). These socio-economic movements drew part of their vitality from competing with each other. The cooperative movement would create

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competing cooperative establishments if they felt that corporations exploited their members. Corporations would try to benefit from the success of the yeoman republics by setting up competing factories, and so on. However, gradually players learned that it would be more beneficial to take the interests of other social groups into consideration in how and what to produce. The way these different forms of organization complemented each other came to constitute essential elements of the Danish economy. Whereas the modern welfare state was typically an outcome of top-down state initiatives, in Denmark the self-help movements initiated this development. Craftsmen organized mutual insurance companies, built houses for widows, helped build better houses for their members, formed health insurance, unemployment and funeral funds. Each groupings’ ability to act in concert through unions, associations or cooperatives enabled them to resist initiatives to make them servile towards corporations. Instead, corporations had to develop business models and ways of organizing work that took the interests of others into consideration. In this way, the Danish welfare state became constituted through the inclusion of institutions that had been formed by the civil society (Kristensen 1996; Kristensen and Sabel 1997). The economic system emerging from different opposing social movements proved to be highly capable of turning challenges and obstacles into new opportunities. During the 1930s, a multiplicity of craft shops in railway towns transformed themselves into the high-quality corporations that are characteristic of Denmark today. A recent example of such transformation is Vestas, a former producer of farm machinery. In the early 1980s, during the investment crisis in agriculture, it switched to windmills, as did a number of other firms. The propensity to focus on mastering processes by highly skilled workers rather than on products induced a production system based on suppliers: final assembling and marketing firms could easily have their products made by a network of different suppliers. To be able to collaborate across organizational divides became a hallmark of success, creating a highly malleable system that made the Danish economy more diversified than the other Nordics. Typically, skilled workers’ continuous search for new skills and collaborative suppliers’ search for challenging new customers laid the foundation for its innovative capacity (Kristensen 1996). Denmark also differed from the other Nordic countries with regard to the finance system. Access to long-term capital was limited. This was partly compensated for by collective credit unions, savings banks and cooperative banks. These institutions satisfied the needs of small enterprises. Large industrial enterprises, however, had to be self-financed or

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had to go public. An innovative solution to this inadequacy was the establishment of foundations, modelled by the founder of Carlsberg. Laws regulate their formal activities, and foundations benefit from a number of tax privileges if they comply with the founding charter and serve broader social interests. The effect of managing capital in this way has limited short-termism and has instead facilitated the inclusion of different stakeholders’ interests (Kristensen and Morgan 2018).

NORDIC WORK ORGANIZATION – A DISTINGUISHING FEATURE The relational, mutually civilizing process has had a unique impact on the micro-constitutional order of organizations. Even under Taylorism and Fordism, all employee groups cultivated a much higher degree of autonomy within companies than in comparable liberal market economies (Dobbin and Boychuk 1999). During the last decades of the 20th century this form of highly autonomous/discretionary work organization has become so pronounced that today Nordic countries are dominated by learning organizations (Lorenz and Valeyre 2005), or so-called active work organizations (Eurofound 2007). For example, Borregaard, a frontrunner in the Norwegian bio-economy and one of the world’s most advanced bio-refineries, typically bases its competitiveness on an active and learning type of organization. Involving all employees in improvements and innovations constitutes the foundation of its business. Formally framing this type of working life are institutions for co-determination in the form of protected and elected shop stewards and convenors, work councils and safety organizations as well as employee representation on boards. These institutions have not come about without conflicts, but over time the majority of employers have appreciated the collaborative advantages of a more participatory working life based on responsible and autonomous workers. Owners and managers taking notice of the knowledge of their employees has resulted in a deepening democratic movement at the shop floor. This involvement, as a sort of relational circle of reinforcement, has facilitated processes of learning and continuous improvement which are essential for the competitiveness of Nordic firms. In many ways, this form of work organization is also rooted in the gradual evolution of the welfare state. Firstly, universal welfare services make individual workers less dependent on a single employer, as they carry their sickness insurance, pension and other social benefits with them (Morgan 1997). Secondly, welfare services have made it easier for

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both parents to be active and creative in their jobs, in particular when women joined the labour market, facilitated by improved child-, healthand eldercare. Finally, free education and vocational training have allowed the population to achieve more equal levels of competence, enabling flatter hierarchies in work organizations (Kristensen and Lilja 2011).

FROM CONFLICTS TO CO-CREATION Whereas in many countries, states have been captured by elites to serve and protect quite narrow interests, the Nordic states have been ‘captured’ as an arena for accommodating multiple and shifting interests. In contrast to many other welfare states, the Nordic states have continuously included new social groups and movements such as the environmental and the feminist movements. Both have instigated the state to introduce new regulations, and to create new institutions. In turn, these have served to expand the socio-genetic figuration of firms, encouraged them to embrace new opportunities and to take new interests into consideration.

NORDIC CORPORATIONS INITIATING TRANSFORMATIVE CO-DEVELOPMENT: JOB CREATION AND SUSTAINABILITY While globalization, financialization and the turn to neo-liberalism have meant an end to how firms have contributed to socio-economic development, for example in the US (Davis 2009), Nordic firms have behaved in a more civilized manner to the effect that they have also civilized their national economies to some extent. Despite offshoring and outsourcing, Nordic business communities have used such strategies to undermine the position of employees to a small extent. There are numerous companies that have taken on new roles in supporting employees and local communities exposed to lay-offs and divestments at home. When key employers withdraw, old mill towns can be particularly hit by job losses, declining populations and falling house prices. The ensuing fiscal crisis and austerity would accelerate a downward spiral in local communities. The Finnish UPM Corporation represents an illustrative case of how companies have taken communitarian responsibility. In 2006, it closed down a paper mill in a small Finnish town where the mill had employed a significant proportion of the population for generations. Finland was struggling with a general unemployment rate of 8.4 per cent, and the

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closure brought local unemployment to 20 per cent. To minimize the negative consequences, UPM launched a number of arrangements: programmes for retraining and relocating employees; pension schemes; encouraging employees to apply for internal vacancies by giving them priority and retraining for new jobs; paying removal expenses; extending re-employment obligations beyond the legal ones; and giving employees access to occupational healthcare services during re-employment. UPM agreed with another industrial company to cooperate on retraining, even agreeing to pay remuneration for the entire notice period when a person started retraining at the other factory. The company also signed a letter of intent with a new medium-sized company operating in the same community to employ 50 to 100 redundant workers. Part of the deal was that UPM undertook to use its services for a minimum of three years. Employees were likewise encouraged to start new businesses, and a lump sum of 0.4 million euros was allocated as start-up support. To succeed in their efforts, UPM collaborated with the state and the local community in the different arrangements. These schemes have served as a template with regard to other plant closures in Finland (Mäkelä and Näsi 2010, pp. 157–8). Several similar cases are observable in Denmark. In 2009, in the process of closing down a huge shipyard close to Odense, the shipping company Maersk initiated retraining and re-employment schemes at the same time as it invested 200 million DKK for turning the shipyard site into an industrial park. Maersk attracted a small shipyard to the site and created an R&D centre for alternative energy, financed by the AP Møller Foundation. By 2013, 68 firms had been established, 1,200 jobs had been created and the park had developed to become a centre for the production of large wind turbines, novel forms of foundation for deep-sea windmills and other large-scale steel construction works. That year, Maersk sold the park facilities to Odense Harbour for just 300 million DKK, enabling the park to become an instrument for local economic development, and providing an important space where Danish green tech industries could take another technological leap towards a commercially viable green energy sector. By closing the yard, Maersk also closed down an R&D department working on advanced production technologies and robotics. Maersk permitted the employees to use their accumulated knowledge freely, thereby stimulating a set of new start-ups, which today have transformed Odense into a district well known for firms producing highly flexible robots. In the same manner, Novo Nordisk, after having offshored production overseas and expecting a drop in manufacturing jobs in Denmark, offered training to unskilled workers. The company reckoned that at home it

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would need highly trained workers for more critical and demanding jobs in production teams. Such training would make it easier for surplus workers to find new jobs. To support this transformation, it collaborated with a number of other firms, vocational training institutions and labour market institutions in the region. In fact, this initiative prepared a large proportion of the labour force for jobs in a high-performance work organization, becoming competitive by continuously making improvements, cutting costs and raising quality. The effect of this workforce transformation was that Novo Nordisk increased the number of Danish production workers by 1,000. This pattern of collaborating with other local firms and institutions is a repetition of former collaborative initiatives among local firms (Ehrenfeld and Gertler 1997). In Sweden, the acquisition of a pulp and paper company in 2000 by a Finnish-based MNC triggered a change process for the entire town of Örnsköldsvik and the surrounding region. The acquired company had been operating a large R&D department there. As the Finnish-based MNC had its own R&D capacity, the continuity of the R&D unit in Örnsköldsvik was soon under threat. Sensing this threat, local actors, with the consent of the Finnish-based MNC, transformed the R&D department into a business service firm. It offers to worldwide industrial customers knowledge intensive services for continuous improvement, and for optimizing entire value chains. To complement this business operation, different actor groups were mobilized to establish a technology park in the form of a research centre for process technology. These groups included business angels, local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), two large companies, and local politicians with ties to central political leaders in Stockholm. The research centre built strong linkages to universities in the regions nearby and received long-term funding from the national innovation system (Peterson 2011; Coenen et al. 2015). For upscaling bio-refinery ideas, investments in piloting facilities were made, with the support of public funding. Through a series of acquisition and mergers, the research centre is currently part of RISE Research Institutes of Sweden. It is a state-owned research institute with 2,700 researchers. In Finland, the large forest corporations have taken steps to master the transformation towards the bio-economy. The shrinking market for printing paper prompted the companies to search for new business opportunities. Major breakthroughs in multidisciplinary research programmes facilitated their reorientation to develop new bio-based products such as chemical additives, biofuel, pharmaceuticals, composite materials, textile fibres and so on. Developing new products has not only pushed the companies to change their innovation modes, from incremental to radical

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forms of innovation, but also to adopt a large number of new activities. Developing and marketing new wood-based products entails combining different technologies and competences; it also requires the optimal use of the wood resources, and to produce products with the highest possible added value (cf. Lilja and Loukola-Ruskeeniemi 2017). The companies have met these challenges by engaging in processes of co-creation by cooperating with a large number of different stakeholders. Stora Enso has engaged itself in what it terms the ‘construction revolution’. By making use of new wood-based structural frames, the construction of high-storey buildings is possible. In comparison to concrete they are more fire-resistant, and even stronger than steel. As the structural elements can be prefabricated, wood-based construction systems can also provide substantial efficiency advantages. But to push this radical systemic innovation, Stora Enso has had to make major efforts: investing in and mobilizing different stages of the value chain; continuously being in dialogue with building companies, professional service operators, architects, city planners, regulatory authorities, and customers. For optimizing the use of wood resources, the Metsä Group serves as a model. It is a cooperative, owned by 125,000 forest owners. Its main recent move into the bio-economy is the construction of a new bioproduct mill. At Äänekoski it has constructed the largest woodprocessing plant in the northern hemisphere. The main product is pulp, and the subsidiary, Metsä Fibre Ltd, which is in charge of the operation, also makes use of all sorts of side streams for the production of tall oil, turpentine, biogas, biofuel, pellets and so on. In addition to its own production, it has opened up and encouraged other companies to make use of wood and its side streams for new bio-products, signalling the need for creating a new type of ecosystem for succeeding in the emergent bio-economy. Also illustrative of this type of co-creation is one of UPM’s research initiatives. The company located an R&D team at a research centre for biomedical research, owned by a foundation and linked to the University of Helsinki. From this research ecosystem, UPM has brought a medical product branded GrowDex to the market. It is a hydrogel providing 3D cell cultures for identifying the optimal chemotherapy for cancer cells. To a great extent, the large forest companies have cooperated and coordinated their efforts with small companies. This cooperation has assumed a new decentralized format in the national innovation system, in the form of joint stock companies for developing and managing research programmes. This innovative move is supported by the state, and this novel form of agency has facilitated interaction at all stages of the

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innovation process. By taking on new roles as orchestrators and cooperating with a large number of different stakeholders, the Finnish forest companies are stimulating broad sectors of the Finnish economy to engage in the bio-economy. By taking on this responsibility, they have not only reoriented themselves, but catapulted Finland into the green economy, which, in 2017, earned the country the name of world leader in the forest-based bio-economy (Lilja and Moen 2017).

THE TURN TO NEO-LIBERALISM The neo-liberalist turn, from the 1980s onwards, represents a shift in the Nordic welfare states, although in different forms and at different points of time. Governments, whether social democrat or liberal-conservative, have generally followed a policy of reducing public costs and increasing efficiency, and introduced new public management (NPM). In particular, centre-right governments have changed the financing of the public sector by lowering the top levels of income taxes, and thus producing a systematic pressure for austerity. NPM-inspired reforms at first granted public institutions autonomy to search for new solutions to save expenses; but to compensate for devolution, the state later tightened its hierarchical control by introducing performance metrics. Such metrics provide information on how many operations hospitals perform, how many students have graduated from universities, how many jobs job centres process and so forth. However, the metrics do not reveal how well the unemployed are positioned in the labour market, or about the quality of health delivered, or about the quality of education. Since such metrics do not provide information on qualitative dimensions, they are futile for improving public services to the benefit of both the individual and the society. Rather, public services have become subject to practices of the ‘lowest bid’ rather than the ‘best value’. Subsequently, the Nordics have become less redistributive in terms of social insurance. Governments are constantly inducing labour market and welfare reforms: increasing the retirement age, lowering the duration and terms of unemployment benefits, and cutting benefits from social insurance. Such policies have led to increased inequality in the Nordic countries as living and working conditions have declined to some extent. But the reforms have not yet effected a radical turn towards atypical forms of employment and in-work poverty. Despite labour market reforms, working life overall appears to have maintained its core qualities in the Nordic countries (Eurofound 2014), although there are different tendencies as to its quality. Nordic employees

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still enjoy autonomy, mostly in Denmark, but least in Sweden (Eurofound 2014). Overall, job quality has evolved more positively in Denmark than in Finland and Sweden (Oinas et al. 2012). Sweden has also seen a sharp and continuous increase in temporary work from 1990 onwards. The increase in temporary positions in Sweden for adolescents (15 to 24 years of age) has constituted over 50 per cent of all positions available and has been higher in Sweden than in the other Nordic countries throughout the 2000s. The opportunities for transforming from temporary to permanent employment have also been lower in both Sweden and Finland (Berglund and Furåker 2011; Svalund 2013). In general, the employment rate for young people in Sweden and Finland is lower than in the other Nordic countries (OECD 2018). In Norway, tendencies towards segmentation and dualization are also present. For the past 10 to 15 years, the wage gap has increased more in Norway than in the other Nordic countries. The main reason is lower pay in the private service sector dominated by immigrant workers (Jordfall and Nymoen 2016). In some sectors such as construction, agency work has become dominant (Moen 2018). Both temporary and agency work have weakened labour’s bargaining power, and thus contributed to increased inequality (Bjørnstad et al. 2017; Moen 2017). Several surveys also demonstrate more autocratic managerial styles and less co-determination (Falkum et al. 2016). With respect to in-work poverty, Finland and Denmark are seen as countries with low risks, while these are substantially higher for Sweden (Eurofound 2017, p. 8). Yet, Eurofound (2017, p. 12) summarizes the Nordics as having the lowest levels of in-work poverty in Europe. The worsening of working conditions has largely happened in the private service sector, and in sectors where immigrant workers have captured large parts of the labour market.

WHAT FUTURE DIRECTION? The fact that working life appears to have maintained its core qualities must be seen against the backdrop of relative high union density, and coordinated decentralization of the bargaining system. This is also the reason why employees in Denmark still have labour market funds for further education and training supporting the persistence of learning organizations. These funds have come about through central agreements between the social partners after having been reduced by the government (Ibsen and Thelen 2017). The liberal government that came to power in Denmark in 2001 gradually dismantled the successful active labour market policy of the 1990s. Instead, it increased the pressure on the

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unemployed to actively search for jobs by reducing their allowances at the same time as training institutions could no longer maintain their innovative experimentation. The so-called active labour market policy with the aim of raising employment had been initiated during the 1990s by the then SocialDemocratic-centre government. The policy involved offering packages of individualized social services combining training, childcare, housing, treatment for addictions and the like for the unemployed. By offering continuous education to groups that had earlier been neglected, such as unskilled women and the unemployed, Denmark became the most training intensive nation in Europe and made a quantum jump in the level of employment (Thelen 2014). Different regions succeeded in different ways to capacitate individuals to become active participants in high performing organizations (Kristensen et al. 2011). It is probably one of the most radical experiments of aligning welfare policy with the challenges of globalization (Pedersen and Andersen 2014, pp. 79ff). It is called a silent revolution (Torfing 2007), unrecognized by the later Social Democratic government (Kristensen 2015). The dismantling of welfare services took a new twist as a result of the financial and euro crises, in which Denmark and Finland were hit particularly hard. From 2008 until 2013, the two countries experienced a depressive GDP growth of about 4 per cent (Dølvik et al. 2014, p. 35). As Denmark was linked to the euro, strict budgetary discipline was introduced which restricted public consumption and brought down the level of employment. This pro-cyclical crisis management in terms of tax cuts and obedience to the financial markets deepened the crisis further. As Kristensen (2015) has pointed out, this restrictive policy was constructed as the ministry of finance systematically overestimated deficits of public budgets over five years, and ignored the possibility of an expansive policy. The question is whether shifting governments used the EU’s finance regulation to legitimize drastic cuts in public spending. Finland, being a member of the monetary union, was also hit by the collapse of Nokia’s mobile phone business, at the same time as the demand for graphic paper decreased. To compensate for negative economic growth, public debt accumulated to such an extent that one austerity package after the other was introduced. In addition, austerity paralysed the further consolidation and upgrading of the education and innovation system. Finland’s education model was known worldwide after scoring top rankings on the PISA tests with a system of testing, diagnoses and curing learning problems for pupils before entering school and during their school time. Arguably, by capacitating individuals for constantly meeting new challenges, Finland and Denmark seemed to

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have found new ways to reform welfare service practices which were well suited for a knowledge-based society (Sabel et al. 2011). Both were, however, disregarded. However, taking on board the EU’s austerity policy and reducing welfare services did not ease either Denmark’s or Finland’s way out of their crises. They more or less joined the European folly, and made use of ‘internal devaluations’, that is, lowering the costs of business and welfare state services. They also tried to stimulate their economies through tax cuts, only to discover that their gross debt to GNP ratio increased. The rhetoric that supports this type of internal devaluation game and obedience to the financial markets enabling low interest rates echoed globalization and financialization and forces reforms. However, the effect has been pro-cyclic and has led to lower employment and growth than otherwise would have been possible.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION After the turn of the millennium, all the Nordic countries have performed well, and in 2016, they were among the ten leading green economies. In addition, according to the UN Global Compact, Nordic companies were among the early movers in introducing and elaborating CSR (Battaglia and Frey 2014). This is the outcome of highly diverse routes, but in each route relations between social movements, the state and enterprises have been essential. When actors have commenced new projects, they have managed the interests of multiple stakeholders. To become productive such projects cannot primarily be driven by short-term financial gains to serve shareholders but require long-term investments. Ownership by foundations and cooperatives provides a relevant option. As shown, Danish firms’ preference for managing their capital in this way has enabled them to take into consideration the interests of others, while shareholder primacy has de-civilized capitalism in many countries (Kristensen and Morgan 2018). Yet, with the neo-liberal turn, dominating fractions of economists and politicians, also in the Nordic countries, share the vision that the economy should be left to market forces. In the light of the states’ subsequent dominant orientation towards austerity, tax reduction, and other reforms for internal devaluation favouring low-cost competitiveness, it appears as if a number of Nordic firms have tried to do the state’s job and continued the pattern of civilized business. It is a paradox that

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the pressure for standards and regulation that secure long-term sustainable solutions now appears frequently to come from firms rather than the state. Innovative projects may be possible only if actors in emerging fields can be joined together to form platforms on which novel products and business models can create future value. The search for comparative advantages must be organized by a multiplicity of different types of actors. Private searches by individual companies alone, on the other hand, will lead to underinvestments (Rodrik 2004). However, when relational platforms have been created, visionary business enterprises seem to master the art of continuously discovering new opportunities for improvements and innovation. For Nordic companies, which have cultivated this art at home, it could become a competitive advantage. Their potential for future success, illustrated by their leading positions in the green economy, health and welfare sectors, is deeply rooted in their current expertise that can be used to solve major societal problems and other issues both at home and abroad. Thus, if the state withdraws to the limited space favoured by neoliberalism, neither search for future comparative advantages nor the cultivation of companies’ collaborative capabilities would be reproduced as efficiently as previously. When states withdraw from former figurations, they might easily become failed states, unless they ‘reset’ themselves in new relational roles and help co-create sustainable economies and societies. Even highly civilized firms can only take advanced steps in the direction of sustainability and become agencies for development when they are part of networks and experimental institutions. Together with others, states can search for new ways to balance the interests of shareholders and a multitude of different stakeholders and engage in engineering progressive development. For ‘resetting’ themselves, a starting point could be supporting the autonomous individual, and advancing his and her human capabilities over the whole life cycle. Institutional arrangements promoting these goals mean an enabling welfare state, a working life based on learning organizations, and labour markets supported by lifelong education and training. The inclusion of voluntary associations for social experimentation could invigorate learning processes (cf. Dorf and Sabel 1998; Miettinen 2013).

NOTE 1.

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The term civilizing process is used in the tradition of Elias (1994).

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Moen, E. (2002), ‘Globalisering og industriepolitiske strategier: en sammenligning av Finland og Norge’, Rapportserien No. 41, Oslo: Unipub; Makt og demokratiutredningen 1998–2003. Moen, E. (2011), ‘Norway: Raw material refinement and innovative companies in global dynamics’, in P.H. Kristensen and K. Lilja (eds), Nordic Capitalisms and Globalisation, Oxford: OUP, pp. 141–82. Moen, E. (2017), ‘Weakening trade union power: New forms of employment relations – The case of Norwegian air shuttle’, Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 23 (4), 425–39. Moen, E. (2018), ‘Går vi mot en kjosifisering av arbeidslivet?’, Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift, 35 (3–4), 206–18. Moen, E. and K. Lilja (2005), ‘Change in coordinated market economies: The case of Nokia and Finland’, in G. Morgan, R. Whitley and E. Moen (eds), Changing Capitalisms? Internationalization, Institutional Change, and Systems of Economic Organization, Oxford: OUP, pp. 352–79. Moene, K. and M. Wallerstein (1995), ‘Solidaristic wage bargaining’, Nordic Journal of Political Economy, 22, 79–94. Morgan, G. (1997), ‘Financial security, welfare regimes, and the governance of work system’, in R. Whitley and P.H. Kristensen (eds), Governance at Work: The Social Regulation of Economic Relations, Oxford: OUP, pp. 104–22. OECD (2018), ‘OECD labour force statistics’, accessed 30 March 2019 at https://doi.org/10.1787/oecd_lfs-2017-en. Oinas, T., T. Anttila, A. Mustosmäki and J. Nätti (2012), ‘The Nordic difference: Job quality in Europe 1995–2010’, Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 2 (4), 135–53. Pedersen, L. and S.K. Andersen (2014), ‘Reformernes tid: Regulering af arbejdsmarked og velfærd siden 1990’, Dansk landerapport, NordMod2030, Delrapport 7, Fafo-rapport 2014:31. Peterson, C. (2011), ‘Sweden: From large corporations towards a knowledgeintensive economy’, in P.H. Kristensen and K. Lilja (eds), Nordic Capitalisms and Globalisation, Oxford: OUP, pp. 183–219. Rodrik, D. (2004), One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions and Economic Growth, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sabel, C.F., A.L. Saxenian, R. Miettinen, P.H. Kristensen and J. Hautamäki (2011), ‘Individualized service provision in the new welfare state: Lessons from special education in Finland’, Sitra Studies, Report 62, Helsinki, October 2011. Svalund, J. (2013), ‘Labor market institutions, mobility, and dualization in the Nordic countries’, Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 3 (1), 123–44. Thelen, K. (2014), Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity, New York: Cambridge University Press. Torfing, J. (2007), Det Stille Sporskifte i Velfaerdsstaten: en diskursteoretisk beslutninsprocesanalyse, Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag.

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Epilogue: the Nordic welfare state beyond ideology and utopia Sakari Hänninen, Kirsi-Marja Lehtelä and Paula Saikkonen NEOLIBERAL UTOPIAN CHALLENGE The Nordic welfare states have nearly a century-long history which reached its apex in the late 1980s or the very early 1990s. By that time, the Nordic countries were already facing a major challenge by the neoliberal offensive – paralleled by ordo-liberal action – which had taken off in the US in the 1970s and 1980s and rapidly spread out in the Anglo-Saxon world. The Nordic welfare states had been challenged and criticised from the very beginning – as outlined by Alfred O. Hirschmann in his book The Rhetoric of Reaction (1991) – but this time the force of this challenge was powerful enough to penetrate the normative groundwork and conventional core of the Nordic societies. It could be argued, in terms of Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia (1936 [1959]), that after being confronted with this utopian challenge, many prominent advocates of the Nordic welfare state have been too seduced to invoke ideology in their defence. When the neoliberal utopia was portrayed as an alternative future to admire, as a self-fulfilling prophecy, the Nordic welfare state advocacy has too easily been satisfied with rewinding the mundane script of a lost welfare state paradise or by just adjusting to the newly restructured regime, even if it would be merely a crafty counterfeit. But what is the cutting edge of the neoliberal challenge which the Nordic welfare states cannot escape? It has to do with the globally ongoing erosion and dissolution of the familiar societal relations and social bonds which have kept these societies together. In the face of this dissolution and array, neoliberalism argues that the capitalist market is the optimal mechanism for effectively and justly integrating the immense multitude of isolated individuals. Integrating that which is fragmented, the integration of differences by market forces is the key to the utopian neoliberal ideology. In these terms, such an integration of differences 224

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presupposes that the isolated individuals recognise that they have to personally adjust their behaviour with the necessities of the market. Neoliberalism argues that personal responsibility is thus crystallised in this disciplinary recognition. The overwhelming governmental rationality of the Nordic welfare state has been to promote societal integration in terms of equality and solidarity. This ambition is altogether more difficult to manage in circumstances of globally ongoing societal dissolution and differentiation. When the divisive lines inside the complex multitude of people multiply, then equality also has to be reimagined and reconceptualised as equality of difference. If earlier we could promote equality in spite of individual differences, now we should also promote equality because of differences. Even if this challenge of the equality of difference calls for novel and unforeseen procedures in the Nordic welfare state, these must still derive from the conviction that private benefits can follow public virtues. This conviction opposes the neoliberal dogma which deduces public benefits from private vices. Neoliberalism has so many names and faces that there is no single answer to the notorious question ‘What’s in the name “neoliberalism”?’ The utopian character of neoliberalism is pivotal and has been underlined by several acute minds such as Pierre Bourdieu and Wendy Brown. Even if Joseph E. Stiglitz speaks about market liberalism, his argument applies as well to neoliberalism: The very utopianism of market liberalism is a source of its extraordinary intellectual resilience. Because societies invariably draw back from the brink of full-scale experimentation with market self-regulation, its theorists can always claim that any failures were not the result of the design but a lack of political will in its implementation. (Stiglitz 2001, p. xxvii)

If argued that market failures are due to the lack of political will, then state activity is needed to promote and safeguard the design and smooth running of markets. This is a neoliberal conclusion, but it surely cannot be equated with Keynesian solutions which seek to regulate the market mechanism. On the contrary, we should further strengthen the market mechanism since we should believe that only markets can heal market failures due to a kind of immunotherapy. Neoliberalism does not mean the annihilation or displacement of the state, but rather the restructuration or privatisation of the state – just as Sanford F. Schram has outlined in his chapter in this book. In the neoliberal (and even more so in the ordo-liberal) matrix, the ‘state’ and the ‘market’ are not opposed to each other, but their relation is rethought

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and remade. The restructuration of the state – which challenges the welfare state by dismantling public welfare services, measures and obligations – definitely characterises neoliberal governmentality and policies. However, the privatisation of the state cannot be only subsumed to such displacements. We must avoid the trap of the functionalist fallacy that treats acting subjects only as systemic effects or regime residues. The neoliberal restructuration of the state ultimately challenges politics as collective action and democracy. Wendy Brown writes: ‘neoliberal reason, ubiquitous today in statecraft and the workplace, in jurisprudence, education, culture, and a vast range of quotidian activity, is converting the distinctly political character, meaning, and operation of democracy’s constituent elements into economic ones’ (Brown 2015, p. 17, original emphasis). What does it mean if democracy’s constituent elements are converted into economic ones? Does the answer derive from our understanding of democracy’s constituent elements? Democracy is constituted by its subjects, citizens and their relations, groups, classes, coalitions, associations, unions and parties as collective subjects. If we want to truly understand the Nordic welfare states, we must start from collectively constituent political action which sustains both a strong democracy and the welfare state. This is not possible if we treat citizens as if they were only in-de-finite subjects. Pierre Bourdieu has made this point succinctly: ‘Neoliberalism tends on the whole to favour severing the economy from social realities and thereby constructing in reality an economic system conforming to its description in pure theory that is a sort of logical machine that presents itself as a chain of constraints regulating economic agents’ (Bourdieu 1998). To put it even more precisely: as a utopian programme, neoliberalism aims ‘to call into question any and all collective structures that could serve as an obstacle to the logic of the pure market’; it is ‘a programme of the methodical destruction of collectives’ (Bourdieu 1998, p. 3, original emphasis).

NEOLIBERAL DOMESTICATION OF MAN Without collective arrangements and collective subjects, democratic political action would be unthinkable except as a utopia. Neoliberal approaches argue that the core issue of economic, social and political progress resides solely in individual responsibility and action, and that such a privatised ethos has to be forcefully promoted by all means available. The secret of the neoliberal argument is that no mention is made about the relations and crucial differences between these individuals. In this fashion, the individual in abstracto is approached as a

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kind of master of her destiny or as an expression of causa sui. Referring to Nietzsche, David Owen concludes that ‘this is a (psychologically necessary) misunderstanding of human nature […] the idea of an agent-cause isolated from the circumstances in which one acts is a fiction, a version of the idea of the causa sui […]’ (Owen 2007, p. 82). In Nietzsche’s own words, it is ‘the best self-contradiction that has ever been conceived, a kind of logical rape and abomination’ (Nietzsche 2002, p. 21). Perhaps more perceptively than any other thinker, Nietzsche has unveiled the domestication of the human being to feed and meet the predominant morality. The domestication of man to conform to categorical market imperatives is a programmatic goal of neoliberalism. Conformity is the presumed guarantee of systemic stability prophetically actualised. Nietzsche makes it easier to understand why there is so little novelty in neoliberal thinking when it is read in the long history of onto-theological dogma. For Nietzsche, the long history of the origins of responsibility can be called ‘morality of custom’ (Nietzsche 2006a, pp. 10–12): ‘It is conventions that make man to a certain degree necessary, uniform […] and truly predictable. In this conventional domestication of man in terms of individual responsibility, the making of promises and the feeling of guilt play a crucial role.’ The feeling of guilt is a crucial moment in the domestication of man and in making her responsible for promises made or presumed. Nietzsche analyses this profoundly in his The Genealogy of Morals where he writes: The feeling of guilt, of personal obligation […] originated […] in the oldest and most primitive personal relationship there is, in the relationship of buyer and seller, creditor and debtor: here person met person for the first time and measured himself in person against person […] fixing prices, setting values, working out equivalences, exchanging – this preoccupied man’s first thoughts to such a degree that in a certain sense it constitutes thought; the most primitive kind of cunning was bred here, as was also, presumably, the first appearance of human pride, man’s sense of superiority over other animals, perhaps our word ‘man’ (manas) expresses something of this first sensation of self-confidence: man designated himself as the being who measures values, who values and measures, as the ‘calculating animal as such’. (Nietzsche 2006b, p. 45, original emphasis)

This could be now brought to a head by claiming that the cunning of neoliberal reason expresses that of the creditor (finance capital) who (t)hrough punishment of the debtor […] takes part in the rights of masters: at least he, too, shares the elevated feeling of being in a position to despise and

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maltreat someone as an ‘inferior’ – or at least, when the actual power of punishment, of exacting punishment, is already transferred to the ‘authorities’ of seeing the debtor despised and maltreated, so then, compensation is made up of a warrant for and entitlement to cruelty […]. (Nietzsche 2006b, p. 41, original emphasis)

The portrayal of the neoliberal advocate-agent as having the soul of the creditor (often in disguise) is not just an exaggeration in these times of finance capitalism when not only men in distress but men as taxpayers are treated and managed as debtors who have to live in constant guilt (Schuld), which as a moral concept ‘descends from the very material concept of “Schulden” (“debts”)’ (Nietzsche 2006b, p. 39). The guilt of the debtor is brought about by the promise of repayment (Nietzsche 2006b, p. 40), which is thus taken to be the responsibility of the individual. This contractual relationship between the creditor and the debtor serves more generally as a paragon for the governmental credo of neoliberalism following the logic of finance capital (Lazzarato 2014). We can find such a bio-political making up of responsible individuals – in terms of promises made and guilt experienced – in all such cases where the costs of risky, uncertain, speculative and counterproductive decisions have to be covered or compensated for by others than the original perpetrators. This is the story we can read from the narratives describing the twists and turns of the financial crises and how their damages were handled and managed so that citizens as taxpayers had to carry the liabilities of magnates. The ‘indebted man’ is an appropriate figure for neoliberalism, since she ideally represents such guilt-consciousness that is most conducive for the implementation of neoliberal responsibilisation of individuals, be it a question of incentives, activation, austerity measures, social testing, means testing or similar bio-political technologies. Breeding the sense of guilt in man is an effective mode of her domestication and in making her more governable and predictable. This is an ancient truth which has been originally developed and exploited skilfully by religious authorities to benefit the status quo. This ancient truth has not lost any of its relevance for the power holders. The guilt-consciousness makes the governance of the underclass simple if and when they blame themselves for their misfortunes, and also personally carry the responsibility for wrongs done to them. Neoliberal power holders can exploit this governmental technology tactically in situations where there is a danger that the underdogs are ready to act collectively and politically to defend their own interests. The breeding of guilt-consciousness disguised as responsibility offers an outstanding

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means of depoliticisation by domesticating the justified rage (thymos) of men in distress and in opposition to the status quo. This kind of depoliticisation challenges collective political action in public by taking advantage of sub rosa institutions of politicking in private. This depoliticisation is naturally linked to the privatisation of the state.

NEOLIBERAL IN-DE-FINITE SUBJECTIVITY The trick of neoliberal reasoning is to conceptualise the subject in such an individual fashion that all reference to external factors is made in her name. There is no need of autonomous politics understood as collective action. The subject has to be so understood that whatever should happen to her in any and every case is her own responsibility (seen as a choice). This is claimed to totally accord with the rules of the system. There is only one possibility to do so and that is to make the subject in-de-finite as if she were an empty box to be filled at will. Making the subject in-de-finite means that this agent, or agent-cause, is seen isolated from the circumstances in which she acts. This fictional subject animating the idea of causa sui cannot be restrained by place or time. She is thus understood as omnipotent in her liberty to choose. In line with the neoliberal reasoning, if someone has succeeded outstandingly well in her dealings in the world, in spite of how she has managed to accumulate her wealth and standing, she can just praise herself for that – her rationality, creativity, sense of responsibility, human or social capital. If an individual has ended up in poverty and distress, she can only blame herself for that, her irrational and wrong choices, lack of responsibility, low human or social capital. Besides, there is no need for the successful to correct their behaviour in any way. On the contrary, they should be further rewarded for that and seen as examples for others to imitate and follow. The situation of the underdogs is seen as the opposite. The setbacks and grievances of the underdog are recognised and evaluated – against the fictive ideality of the in-de-finite subject as the ‘calculating animal as such’ – to be a consequence of her unfortunate choices, and due to the lack of personal responsibility and self-mastery. It is concluded that the conduct of such a subject has to be corrected, activated (with sanctions as incentives) and domesticated to make it systematically more adept, flexible and predictable. Such a neoliberal logic reflects circular reasoning which constantly repeats and reproduces its own premises. It exclaims to the underdog: this is how the system operates, and when you recognise that and behave accordingly, it functions that way even better, and for your own good.

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The circular neoliberal reasoning intrinsically appeals to many people who, in their own opinion and also in the eyes of others, have fared well in their life socio-economically. Here we may even meet man’s feeling of superiority over others, man’s categorical self-confidence. To be able to congratulate oneself for the affluence achieved, in spite of the means used, may remind one of the blessed feeling of being an elected or selected one to enjoy the bliss of God (system). This conviction of self-complacency again reminds one of the onto-theological origins of such self-referential and circular reasoning which ultimately seeks to rationalise why and how everyone deserves what she has without having to pay any attention to possible wrongs done, or without having to answer the question of Theodicy. The fictional figure of the in-de-finite subject – as the ‘calculating animal as such’ – and how she is used in evaluating the value and worth of living wo/men makes clear that what is fundamentally at stake in the confrontation between neoliberal reasoning and the ethos and eidos of the Nordic welfare state mentality concerns the idea of man and the constitution of subjectivity. The neoliberal challenge of the Nordic welfare state is many layered, including a critique of slow and bureaucratic decision-making (old public management), a critique of political responsiveness to excess demand (agenda spillover), a critique of economic sustainability (the sustainability gap) and a critique of collective bargaining (parity). However, the most fundamental target of the neoliberal utopian critique concerns the dependencies that the Nordic welfare state is claimed to bring about in the way of life and behaviour of individuals. It is argued that welfare state measures aimed at promoting the welfare of citizens (via public services, social security and other transfer payments, and the like) can make matters worse if the end result is to diminish individual responsibility and rational self-mastery. This argument takes up the in-de-finite subject as abstracted and isolated from her circumstances, and offers justifications that typically exploit the rhetorical figures of perversity, futility and jeopardy (Hirschmann 1991).

IT IS ALL ABOUT RELATIONS We are all children of religious fathers and religion-founders. With this phrase, we only want to remind how powerfully our ways of thinking and feeling and styles of intellectual and moral reasoning have been fabricated by onto-theological logic. This handprint can be recognised as well in the neoliberal dogma as in the Nordic welfare state authorisations. If the neoliberal utopia were written in terms of eros, then the Nordic

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welfare state utopia would be written in terms of agape (Nygren 1982). In any case, both of them can be located in the onto-theological lineage of love. For this reason, Nietzsche’s account of the great influence of religion-founders applies to both of them: The true invention of the religion-founders is first to establish a certain way of life and everyday customs that work as a disciplina voluntatis while at the same time removing boredom and then to give just this life an interpretation that makes it appear illuminated by the highest worth so that henceforth it becomes a good for which one fights and under certain circumstances even gives one’s life. (Nietzsche 2001, pp. 210–11)

To establish a certain way of life as disciplina voluntatis certainly corresponds to such a conventional core that supports the smooth running of the regime, be that neoliberally managed or ordered along the Nordic welfare state rationality. Naturally these differ radically on how this way of life as disciplina voluntatis is constituted and conceptualised and how it is then illuminated by the highest worth justifying it. The neoliberal understanding of the way of life to be established is highly paradoxical, since it is no way of life of definite individuals. To have a way of life, an individual must live together and in relation to other individuals. The in-de-finite subject, the ‘calculating animal as such’, of the neoliberal discourse is treated as if she could freely choose her way of life just like that. The paradox is that the way of life is understood as an individual and not as a collective phenomenon. This is a cunning but unwarranted move which expresses the methodical destruction of collectives. The definite subject’s freedom and autonomy is always relative to that of others. The definite subject’s way of life is always in common with others; it is a collective way of life. This collective way of life cannot uniquely determine the conduct of any definite subject. A subject can be made definite in multiple ways, depending on her relations with others, but along trajectories drawn by the structured patterns of these relations. In its relations, the definite subject is collectively constituted as an interested party of competition, cooperation, conflicts and common concerns. The Nordic welfare state has been constructed by these definite subjects, not in circumstances of their own choice but in circumstances which they can try to transform together in their own interest. The more active, autonomous, involved and participating the definite subjects of the Nordic welfare states are – thanks to the strength of democracy – the better the Nordic welfare state functions. Such functioning should not be seen as self-reproducing, leading to a functionalist fallacy which neglects the action of definite subjects. Such negligence, however, characterises the static modelling of the Nordic welfare state. In

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this case, the Nordic welfare state is pictured in a static frame totally ignoring the dynamic and complex character of these states. In other words, the protean nature of the Nordic welfare state would be then amputated in the procrustean bed of static modelling, which not only blots out true transformation but also disregards crucial differences and highly relevant circumstances. In reality, the Nordic welfare state is a conventional and institutional complex in constant transformation which bears an influence on and is influenced by multiple definite collective subjects and their liaisons and confrontations. To put it in Gunnar Myrdal’s terms: ‘This is a typical cumulative process of circular causation. As a result, the whole system and the human beings within it are made to move, and to move much further than anybody could have foreseen originally […]’ (Myrdal 1960, p. 26). The Nordic welfare state as an outcome of a cumulative process of circular causation is also an intended political achievement of definite collective subjects. Instead of seeing it as a result of preplanned endeavour, we should note that (i)t happened in a very much more accidental, less direct and less purposive way: by an unending sequence of acts of intervention by the state, and many other collective bodies, in the play of market forces. These acts of intervention were mostly motivated ad hoc and regularly had the much more limited – and often, from the point of view of the now accomplished welfare state, obstructionist or even subversive – objectives, directed by special interests […] Quite regularly they were […] soon found to be hurting other interests to a degree that was intolerable to them. As interests clashed, some sort of accommodation had to be sought […]. (Myrdal 1960, pp. 58–9)

We know from the chapters in this book that the real strength of the integral Nordic welfare state has been and still is its capacity to mediate and coordinate different interests and to find solutions even to wicked problems. This is a political craft of prudence and deliberation, which is not just a characteristic of institutions but that of definite subjects of strong democracy. Gunnar Myrdal again understood this profoundly as he deliberated the progression of the Nordic welfare state: ‘If it were only a question of changes in human institutions and nothing more, those changes could be reversed and probably would be reversed. But once people have adjusted their minds to the new situations, this is no longer so’ (Myrdal 1960, p. 25). The fundamental issue of the Nordic welfare state concerns transformation. The real strength of the Nordic welfare state has been its ability to change and transform. This is not just a characteristic of institutions but that of subjects and their relations. When that which makes subjects

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definite transforms, that is, their relations, subjects and their conventions and attitudes transform too. Gunnar Myrdal argues that the progression of the Nordic welfare state has meant that subjects have become more rational and sophisticated when the minds of people have changed, and changed in the same direction by adjusting their minds to new situations and by breaking up established norms and by releasing the inhibitions of the status quo (partly due to shock events) (Myrdal 1960, p. 26). Myrdal concludes: ‘There is obviously no way back. We cannot make people less rational and sophisticated. Who would do it? In our democracy rationalistic education is our faith. Should we attempt to de-educate people?’ (Myrdal 1960, p. 26).

CREATED HARMONY Myrdal wrote his Beyond the Welfare State (1960) in the late 1950s (The Storr Lectures, Yale University, 1958). Reading these last lines from the present perspective makes one wonder how right or wrong he was. Especially since the late 1980s, or at least since the 1990s in the Nordic countries, the welfare state has been so powerfully challenged and influenced by neoliberalism that we should carefully reconsider if many rational persons have been de-educated. But de-educated in what? Myrdal emphasises that as a rational philosophy, economic liberalism or classical market liberalism was devoted to the enlightened figure of rationalistic ‘economic man’. However, he found a paradox at the heart of this rationalistic thinking of the ‘economic man’ and the static frame of the system in which she was presumed to act: The explanation of this paradox is that contrary to all the theorising about man of this intellectualistic and rationalistic liberal philosophy inherited from the era of Enlightenment, its basic assumptions – atomism and a static frame of society – implied the prevalence in society of human beings who were the very opposite to the rationalistic ‘economic man’ of its economic theory. They had to be traditionalistic, strongly inhibited by existing taboos, nonquestioning, non-experimenting, non-reflecting conventionalists. Otherwise the theory would not work. (Myrdal 1960, p. 24)

Myrdal did not think that the Nordic societies, or to put in another terminology, the Nordic variety of capitalism, functioned according to the liberal market idealisation. Myrdal argued that instead of automatic market equilibrium produced by free competition, the Nordic welfare state could and should home in on created harmony which is the harmony of interests and spirited opinions between all the citizen groups

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in the advanced welfare state (Myrdal 1960, p. 56). Rather than just an economic equilibrium the created harmony would be a kind of consensual political harmony at the foundation of the Nordic welfare state (Myrdal 1960, p. 56) or an integral societal harmony. Such an integral harmony could be generated when all the crucial circular cumulations of causes and effects worked together as a ‘virtuous circle of development’ (Myrdal 1960, p. 64). Even though the process towards ‘created harmony’, as understood by Myrdal, could not be planned in advance, it would still be a political outcome of the action of definite subjects and definite collective subjects. The definition of subjects involved is crucial when finding explanations for this process. Only undefined agents of a process would be independent of the particular interests involved. In that case, the role of politics in this process would also be neglected or denied. The working of the Nordic welfare state society cannot be made thus intelligible. To make sense of the Nordic welfare state is to make sense of the definite subjects involved. The idea of created harmony, as understood by Myrdal, is conceptualised in terms of definite subjects. Myrdal’s own analysis of the Nordic welfare state, based on the idea of a circular cumulation of causes and effects, proceeds in this fashion. However, this need not be the case if created harmony is understood as a totally random though subjectively mediated process, as a kind of actualisation of a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is the manner in which neoliberalism believes in and propagates the market idol of stability and progress. It is also a kind of created harmony, since it is assumed to be generated by individuals who are made to believe in the system in order for the programmatic prophecy to actualise. These individuals are understood as in-de-fined subjects, since this systemic task is presumed to be fit and good for any and all of us. For that reason, it should be our personal responsibility. When enough of us, facing the future and taken randomly, act in a system-affirmative manner, the presumed outcome thus created should be harmony. If classical market liberal idealisation operates with undefined infinitesimal subjects of the ever-present, then the neoliberal utopia moves in-de-finite subjects of the future. As a utopian undertaking, neoliberalism looks to the future, and this is also the secret of its force of subjectification.

WHOSE EVIDENCE CAN WE TRUST? In the Nordic countries, especially in Sweden since the 1980s and in Finland since the 1990s, a noticeable governmental turn towards

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neoliberalism manifest in economic and social policies has occurred. The neoliberal orientation, though influential, has not been able to dismantle the conventional normative core of the Nordic ethos of welfare. Stephanie L. Mudge has unveiled how in the 1980s a neoliberal turn took place even in the ranks of the economic advisers of the Swedish Labour Party (the SAP). Mudge calls this turn ‘the economist-intensive neoliberalisation of Swedish leftism’ (Mudge 2018, p. 311). She more closely describes how in the aftermath of the critique of managerial Keynesianism, a shift to American influences and a ‘denationalisation of Swedish economics’ took place (Sandelin et al. 2000, pp. 42–66). As central economic advisers of the SAP, these ‘policy people’ made a total turnabout and started to emphasise that the SAP, as the party of labour, had a special responsibility to put a check on the demands of its core constituency (Mudge 2018, p. 320). However, we should be careful not to put the blame of this neoliberal turn on economics in general as a science and certainly not on economics as an academic discipline. The neoliberal privatisation and restructuration of the state is, in any case, legitimated by economic arguments, especially when adjusted to the globalisation and financialisation of the economy. The social sciences study human beings in society. They study definite subjects who are made by their relations. From this perspective, it could be claimed that those approaches that treat human beings living in society as undefined or in-de-finite subjects do not belong, strictly speaking, to the social sciences. This is naturally a matter of definition. However, the significance of the social sciences in decision-making has drastically diminished also in the Nordic countries since the 1980s along with the strengthening of the neoliberal orientation. In the heyday of the Nordic welfare states, the role of the social sciences (not only sociology, social policy and social psychology but also political science, political and social history) were crucially important, not only in keeping up public discussion and citizen education, but also in informing decisionmakers. At that time, social-science-based counselling and discussion were done in public and often in parliamentary committees and not so much in terms of sub rosa politicking by private policy consultants and advisers, as is more and more the case today. The more the role of evidence-based decision and policymaking has increased, the less significant the role of social sciences as an evidence producer and adviser to decision-making seems to have become. Decision-makers today seem to be less willing or interested in listening to such informers and advisers who have made concrete research on definite subjects and subject groups. They seem to satisfy and do well with the evidence on the ‘average man’ and even on in-de-finite subjects.

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Neoliberally biased programmes and policies pay no serious attention to socio-economic differences such as increases in inequality and vulnerability of definite citizens. When the eidos and ethos of the Nordic welfare states have been challenged, the role of public law scholars, and especially those of constitutional law and fundamental rights, has increased in importance especially in defending the legally binding achievements of the Nordic welfare states on a scholarly and professional basis. This has been also done in terms of definite subjects, especially those subjects living in vulnerable situations facing detrimental consequences of neoliberal policies. The reasons behind this development can be found in the changed nature of decision-making procedures and ideological orientations as well as in the internal transformations of the social sciences. Nordic Symbotype of Definite Subjectivity The chapters in this book represent social, political, historical, legal and managerial sciences. Even if they are not empirical studies in the strict sense, their analyses and diagnoses have focused on definite subjects. They examine how different social, political, economic, juridical, organisational, professional, governmental and environmental relations make subjects definite in such a fashion that either promotes or delimits the enforcement, working and development of the Nordic welfare state. The chapters by Sanford F. Schram, Nina Witoszek and Sakari Hänninen have concentrated directly on the core question of subjectification and autonomy in the Nordic welfare state or in relation to it. If Sanford F. Schram diagnoses how the relational making up of definite subjects is the central question in the confrontation between the Nordic welfare state and the neoliberal paradigm, especially in terms of responsibility, and Nina Witoszek examines how the definite symbotype of subjectivity, as outlined by leading figures of Nordic humanism, helped in breaking through the Nordic welfare state, then Sakari Hänninen outlines how the normative and conventional core of the Nordic welfare state is constituted around a definite subjectivity sustained by strong political democracy and equality. Nina Witoszek unveils how such a deep cultural, value-charged structure has reinforced – in terms of ideas, norms and patterns of action – the long-standing progress of the Nordic welfare state in the form of a definite humanist habitus. If private responsibility and private providential reason are at the centre of the neoliberal paradigm, then public responsibility and public prudential reason play a major role in the workings of the Nordic welfare state.

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If hedonism, self-interest and self-love (eros) are understood by neoliberals to be the driving forces of history, then worldly humanism and collective care of others (agape) are emphasised as a strong antidote to this credo by the Nordic ethos of welfare (Nygren 1982). If the in-de-finite access to markets is applauded by neoliberalism to be the criterion of justice and equity, then the pursuit of equality and the equality of citizens as definite subjects has been the basic norm of the Nordic welfare state. The Nordic welfare state reminds us incisively why the development of a society cannot be explained solely by individual action in terms of private motives and rights, since the collective action of definite subjects pursuing their interests is truly important. Collective action has been pivotal in the construction of the Nordic welfare states. The role of collective subjects has been epochal in the development of the Nordic welfare state. The definite relations between individuals determine their common and opposite interests and organise their associations and coalitions. These constitute their collective subjectivity in terms of social citizenship, the political differentia specifica of the Nordic welfare state. Just like Pauli Kettunen points out and analyses in his chapter in this book, the Nordic notion of social citizenship perceives the individual as a party to social relationships rather than just reflecting the relationship between the state and the individual. Collective involvement and participation as crystallised in the notion of social citizenship has developed in parallel and been intertwined with the normalcy of wage labour. This linkage accentuates the point that the strong Nordic democracy has not been afraid of taking up really wicked social problems, but has rather seen them as fundamental challenges for democracy and the welfare state. When the sentiments of solidarity and social responsibility gain in prominence, or even an upper hand in public life, the nature of politics, citizenship and democracy gets transformed accordingly. The relational notions of social citizenship and social democracy reflect this transformation. This transformation illuminates why the extra-parliamentary negotiations (such as the parity-based labour market bargaining) have not been understood as a threat to parliamentary democracy, but rather have been conceived as an original and exceptional checking and balancing device of dispute settlement. In his chapter in this book, Paolo Borioni makes the point that parity is actually a complex idea of the ‘primacy of politics’. This kind of ‘primacy of politics’ means that socially and economically crucial and essentially conflictual issues are not left at the mercy of markets. These have been taken in a goal-directed fashion with a political agenda. In his chapter, Paolo Borioni has examined more closely, in different dimensions, how regulation through parity operates

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in the Nordic welfare state, and how this kind of regulation can be contrasted with the ordo-liberal regulation or reregulation through hierarchy. The concepts of social citizenship and parity-bargaining illustrate that the goal of collective political action from below has been to improve the welfare of citizens in the Nordic countries. Such a parallel action has been effectively undermined in practice along the neoliberal trajectory due to a change in the political relation of forces. There has been an outage in this development, just like Pauli Kettunen points out. This turn has certainly not meant the demolition or disaggregation of the Nordic welfare state, but rather its restructuration. This becomes clear when one examines how the Nordic welfare states have, each in their own way, managed their affairs socio-economically and politically in the context of European integration.

FROM COLLECTIVE INTERESTS TO INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS In his chapter, Kaarlo Tuori has explained why the social dimension and the social constitution of the European Union have not been at the centre of the integration process since it has been dominated by economic integration and the economic constitution both at the micro and macro levels. Concrete programmes and measures have been developed in the EU’s social dimension only when these have been linked and adjusted to the demands of economic integration. Therefore, citizens of the EU are not really treated as social citizens. Tuori points out that originally the Leitbild of social security coordination was the mobile worker, but by now the mobile European citizen has emerged as the new dominant Leitbild guiding the cross-border right to social security. As a social legislator, the EU is not totally insignificant. The EU has developed regulatory private law, especially in the fields of labour law, consumer law, anti-discrimination law and law on universal services. Even if this private regulatory law lies on the fringes of the Nordic welfare state, it can have a noteworthy bearing on definite subjects such as minority groups and their rights. The social dimension of the EU is feeble, but the member states can be highly developed welfare states just like the Nordic countries are. The development of the social dimension has been left at the hands of the member states. In the Nordic countries, this has been worked out in terms of collective interests rather than individual rights. However, in the 1990s the rights discourse has also penetrated the Nordic countries, occurring

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simultaneously with the increasing influence of neoliberalism. Toomas Kotkas, in his chapter in this book, has pointed out that neoliberalism and the individual rights discourse both share a trust in moral individualism and a suspicion of collective projects; and due to the coupling of individual rights and neoliberalism, all concerns and questions about material and social equalities tend to be set aside. The trend towards individuation – associated with the privatisation of the state and the privatisation of responsibility – has penetrated the public discussion, and the rights discourse, according to Toomas Kotkas, has not had that strong an impact on judicial practice even in the social dimension. Collective interests rather than individual rights have played a key role in the construction of the Nordic welfare states. The introduction of the individual rights discourse in the Nordic countries has not yet transformed the situation dramatically. Social rights have been strongly written into the constitution in Finland. This does not mean that the other Nordic countries would lag behind in social law legislation and implementation. However, the significance of constitutional social rights has not been totally negligent in Finland, especially when the needs and interests of definite subjects have been articulated and promoted as a kind of last resort. The force of this kind of social law depends crucially on how clearly we can define the situations and subjects who would be the bearers of these rights. We must remember that the rationality of social law follows the relational rationality of the welfare state (Tuori 2016) and that the very nature of this law as social law means that it is socially articulated. The prominence of individuals’ rights in the present public discourse reflects the many trends towards individuation and privatisation, but this always takes place in a particular fashion. As a move from interests to rights, we can recognise how the discourse on individual rights is articulated as addressing the rights of in-de-finite subjects. Individual rights of in-de-finite subjects are not necessarily concrete or material rights at all, but perhaps they are notions so abstract that they lack real-life relevance for their bearers. Therefore, the force of individuals’ rights depends on the manner in which the bearers of these rights as legal subjects and their situations via legal facts can be defined. Turning our attention to social and environmental sustainability, the question about the force of human and social rights also comes to the fore. Monika Berg and Paula Saikkonen, in their chapter in this book, have made a distinction between weak sustainability and strong sustainability. The proponents of weak sustainability are satisfied to approach nature and environment as resources of the individual human subject. The proponents of strong sustainability emphasise it as the all-encompassing

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problem of mankind which deals with the integral social foundation of humans living together. The social foundation compatible with the environment must be built on such durable human conventions and relations besides public knowledge which definite subjects can trust and adhere to. The Nordic countries afford many possibilities and potentialities for such an environmentally sustainable take-off. Such an understanding of strong sustainability, however, means that we have to move from ego-social relations to eco-social relations that are collectively constituted. If the problem of the commons appears as the main threat for the proponents of weak sustainability, then the problem of the privates shows up as the real menace for the proponents of strong sustainability. From the perspective of strong sustainability, it is easy to understand why the notion of an individual right to nature (as a resource) would be highly problematic and could even be detrimental. It should be added that the Nordic allemansrätten cannot be understood as such a private individual right but rather as a right of the commons. Even if the individual human right to nature were problematical, the fundamental right to a healthy environment, as taken up by the UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, should be welcomed. This is naturally possible only in situations and cases where those involved are clearly defined subjects, for example collective subjects of ongoing environmental movements and struggles. In other words, the force of the fundamental right to a healthy environment derives from the political will to implement it, and this is embedded in the given social foundation. Therefore, such a fundamental right to a healthy environment would be altogether nugatory without political buttress. We could say the same about the proposal concerning the individual human right to food (Riches 2018). Even if this right might appear seductive in a situation where an increasing number of people have to visit food banks for their daily nourishment, it does not necessarily penetrate the underlying socio-economic and political problem of social exclusion. Food banks could be introduced and legitimated as a concrete means of fulfilling the right of individuals for food, but naturally this mode of rationality could also be politically challenged by claiming that this would not accord with the spirit of the law.

FROM PUBLIC TO PRIVATE RESPONSIBILITY Minna Kivipelto, Merita Jokela, Sanna Blomgren and Marek Perlinski, in their chapter in this book, have argued that privatisation and outsourcing of services are increasingly prevalent ways of organising social services

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in Finland, although Finland is not an exception among the Nordic countries even if the modes of privatisation may differ somewhat. The increment of privatising and outsourcing of social services does not, however, illustrate a retreat by the state. It illustrates the transformation in the role of the state from carrying public responsibility to calling for private responsibility, from redistribution to regulation. As Minna Kivipelto et al. argue, the wilful consequence of this restructuration has been the tightening of the terms and conditions of social security, and the refocusing of social policy to endorse the individual’s own responsibility by measures of activation, incentives, means testing and sanctions. Due to this ideological turn in Finland, social work is today more individually targeted. At the same time, the study by Minna Kivipelto et al. found that the organisation of social work in Finland is hierarchical. There is no contradiction here. This top-down hierarchy exists mainly because it sustains the relationship between different domains in social work, that is, the relationship between politics, administration and professional practice. Even though the autonomy of social work as a professional practice has been characteristic of the Nordic countries, the neoliberally minded restructuration of the state, in terms of New Public Management, has amplified the fiscal accountability of the social work professional practices via administration to the political decision-making bodies in charge of the adopted policies. Instead of judicial or ethical review of the social work practices, we have here a fiscal review. Instead of strong social sustainability based on values, we have here a weak social sustainability based on money. Money mediates the relationship between these domains. It is not cooperation between these domains of politics, administration and professional practice but regulation by dictation that increasingly characterises their relationship. The neoliberally oriented tendencies in the Nordic countries are real and influential, but their significance should not be exaggerated. These tendencies reflect the change in the relation and direction of political forces. They tell about the central role of more or less neoliberally oriented business politicians (now pushing themselves into government), policy and process experts, economic advisers and investigators, political secretaries and public relations consultants, advocacy groups and think tanks. There are naturally counterforces to these political forces and tendencies. So far the neoliberally motivated offensive has not been able to displace the deep value-charged structure of the Nordic welfare states, as is especially manifested in the strong social and political support of citizens for this kind of welfare regime.

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We should avoid exaggerating the support and standing of neoliberal politics in the Nordic countries, but it is just as important to avoid associating it bigotedly with business executives and managers in general. We have already emphasised how fallacious it is to haphazardly accuse academic economists for neoliberal ideas and solutions. The same can be true in the case of business enterprises. Neoliberalism cannot tell how to govern a business enterprise, but how to govern the state. It cannot give advice to business executives, but it can to political leaders and state officials who are understood as a kind of regent. The opposition between the private and the public is altogether too simple and straightforward to be able to shed light on the relationally complex (re)structuration of the Nordic welfare state. The role of definite private enterprises and definite private business executives can be (and has been) crucial for the success of the Nordic welfare states. Peer Hull Kristensen, Eli Moen and Kari Lilja, in their chapter in this book, have challenged the simple vision that the strength of the Nordic welfare state is of public origin as if the state were an animator of its own success. This vision also cannot avoid the idea of causa sui, which is self-contradictory from a relational perspective. Just as Kristensen et al. emphasise the secret of the success of the Nordic welfare states must be recognised in the advantages of societally integral collaboration between different definite subjects, both private and public. They write about the civilising influence of both the labour movement and business enterprises. The civilising influence of the labour movement can be recognised in the improvement of working conditions, increased wages, income equality and better commitment of workers, all of which can serve as positive incentives for enterprises to innovate and increase productivity. Business enterprises can be understood as arenas of relational integration in which different social groups and organisational entities can mutually civilise each other. Business enterprises can be understood, in the best of cases, as arenas which bring together different definite subjects who can cooperate and collaborate with each other. There are multiple types of collaborators and players in these arenas ‘who can learn norms of behaviour – such as those of reciprocity, fairness, and trustworthiness – that lead them to actions that are directly contrary to those predicted by contemporary rational choice theory’ (Ostrom 2005, p. 258). Notable among the players in the Nordic business arenas are ‘strong reciprocators’, who – being motivated by both value preferences and material payoffs – will frequently adopt strategies of conditional cooperation (Ostrom 2005, p. 253). Kristensen et al. give us many examples of such Nordic civilising business enterprises as arenas for cooperation in which new forms of

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work organisation and new roles in supporting employees have been innovated and where collaborative search for new opportunities, solving acute challenges and championing sustainable development succeed. This kind of relational integration and multilateral cooperation is characterised by collaborative advantages that all participants can enjoy. The neoliberal turn has definitely diminished the prerequisites for reciprocal and collective collaboration. This is true about the restructured role of the state. The consequences penetrate deeper than that. Peer Hull Kristensen et al. argue that the neoliberal orientation to austerity, tax reductions and other reforms for internal devaluation favouring low-cost competitiveness emphasising the conviction that the economy should be left to market forces have also resulted in failures of the state in the Nordic countries. They even argue that paradoxically the pressure to secure long-term sustainable solutions now frequently appears to come from Nordic firms rather than the state. But even highly civilised firms can only take advanced steps in the direction of sustainability when they are part of the networks of experimental institutions. They must be able to operate as integral arenas of reciprocal cooperation and collaboration between different definite players known to each other.

FROM INTEGRAL TO DIFFERENTIAL WELFARE STATE In her chapter in this book, Nina Witoszek has clarified why and how we can speak of the Nordic welfare societies as socially sustainable formations thanks to their humanist legacy. Social relations such as reciprocity, trust and cooperation are evidence of the penetration of this legacy in society. In line with Elinor Ostrom’s studies on the merits of social cooperation and reciprocal interaction, Witoszek unveils the reasons why we can describe the Nordic welfare societies as representing relatively ‘civilised capitalism’. But can we trust that the force of the Nordic humanist legacy abides, now that the neoliberal offensive still continues? The neoliberal turn means the crowding out of strong reciprocity. Without explicitly mentioning neoliberalism, Elinor Ostrom writes how many policies now adopted in many modern democracies crowd out citizenship and voluntary levels of cooperation: They do this by crowding out norms of trust and reciprocity, by crowding out the knowledge of local circumstances, by crowding out the discussion of ethical issues with others who are affected, and by crowding out the

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experimentation needed to design effective institutions. Crowding out reciprocity, cooperation, and citizenship is a waste of human and material resources and presents a serious challenge to the sustainability of democratic institutions. (Ostrom 2005, p. 270)

Nina Witoszek reminds us that, in Elinor Ostrom’s terms, one of the reasons for the efficacy of the Nordic welfare state is that it has evolved in relatively small, relatively homogeneous nations that have observed norms and principles that sustain trust and reciprocity. This is a historical fact. Furthermore, it should be recalled that these collaborative advantages have turned out to also be comparative advantages for these small countries as active parties in the world economy and international politics. The real strength of the Nordic countries has been their prowess in mediating the national with the international, just like in mediating cooperation with competition. The competence of the Nordic welfare states in mediating, coordinating, balancing and integrating opposite forces and tendencies has been impressive in many other dimensions, too. This is the message of the chapters in this book. The definite collective subjects in particular have made known how such competencies are necessary in facing difficult and complex societal challenges. Nina Witoszek points out, from a cultural-evolutionary perspective, that in the present situation of late modernity – from climate change to the refugee crisis – the real challenge facing the Nordic welfare states is how to balance two pivotal and strong cultural ideas: inclusive community and personal freedom. This is the challenge of how to balance equality and difference, and how to find and apply such measures of transformative recognition that promote equality of difference among multiple types of definite subjects. The Nordic welfare states have been constructed as integral welfare states. Collective interests rather than individual rights have guided this construction. The ingenious integral management of society based on trust has characterised the functioning of these welfare states. This follows the logic of relations which understands that societies are relationally constituted. We have to pay particular attention to the relations between the micro and the macro levels that these relations mediate and coordinate. Macro-level phenomena cannot be directly conceived and managed in terms of the aggregation of micro-level individual behaviour. This leads to a dead end – for example, the famous aggregation problem in capital and social choice theory. However, the neoliberally minded managers – especially the neoliberal mind managers – want to approach and articulate current issues on the political agenda in

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this fashion. Such a style of management and intellectual reasoning accompanies the dominant individuation and privatisation tendencies. The Nordic countries have so far endured the neoliberal offensive relatively well. However, there has been a visible change from an integral welfare state towards a differential welfare state, which pays much less attention to the principles of the Nordic ethos of welfare such as equality, solidarity, universalism, public responsibility and social autonomy. The differential welfare state applies means and measures which are much more individually focused, incentive-driven, contractual, segmented, specialised, case-managerial, remedial and punitive than those of the integral welfare state. This transformation has been quite rapid due to the societal differentiation and fragmentation taking place throughout society from economy to culture, from communities to polities. The main driving force behind this transformation is the Satanic Mill of global capitalism (Polanyi 2001, p. 121), which dissolves everything that is integral and solid. Environmental, socio-economic, political and cultural fragmentation, striation and erosion is now dramatically visible in numerous megatrends such as climate change and pollution, precarisation, social stratification, political polarisation and populism, immigration and demographic deformation.

WE HAVE TO ANSWER THE CHALLENGE OF DIFFERENCE In the chapter ‘Satanic Mill’ of his book The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi writes: Nowhere has liberal philosophy failed so conspicuously as in its understanding of the problem of change. Fired by an emotional faith in spontaneity, the common-sense attitude towards change was discarded in favour of a mystical readiness to accept the social consequences of economic improvement, whatever they might be. The elementary truths of political science and statecraft were first discredited, then forgotten. It should need no elaboration that a process of undirected change, the pace of which is deemed too fast, should be slowed down, if possible, so as to safeguard the welfare of the community. (Polanyi 2001, p. 121)

These words of Polanyi should strike a chord in all of us who are concerned about the future of the Nordic welfare state. The particular strength of the Nordic welfare states has been the ability to cope with change successfully. It is not just a question of resilience or adaptability

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but about innovation and novelty. The Nordic welfare state is fundamentally a social and political innovation (Kosonen 1987, p. 18). The change of our world embodies real transformations, genuine leaps into something totally new. The present global transformation is such a deep-water motion. It cannot be mastered with traditional means. It must also be remembered that waves move much faster in deep water than on shallow shores. The deep societal transformation engendered by global capitalism and promoted by neoliberalism is a real challenge to the Nordic welfare states. This transformation goes much deeper than all earlier attempts to substitute the Nordic welfare state institutions and practices with more private and more profit-oriented alternatives. The real force of the ongoing transformation is that it penetrates the fundamental conventions and relations of societies by also deforming, disfiguring, disintegrating or even dismantling existing relations. This is a process of dissipation and diffusion which grinds these relations and multiplies all differences by making them boundless, countless and indefinite. A thoroughly commodified society characterised by such unlimited indefinite differences is a mass society in spite of the contrary claims about its individualism. However, much more serious than this domesticated normality of mass society are the unstable consequences of this undirected change, the pace of which should be slowed down at least before fatal bifurcations. This can be recognised in numerous dramatic processes which have also taken the Nordic countries by surprise. These are complex global processes such as environmental degradation, precarisation, immigration, social stratification and fragmentation, political polarisation and even uncontrolled digitalisation. The genuine risks and threats embedded in these megatrends are not limited to their downright consequences but can derive from their countless side effects and the immediate reactions thus provoked. This can be clearly recognised in the ambivalent and destructive reactions to having tried to halt these processes by concentrating the powers nationally at the hands of authoritarian regimes or governments. In spite of the breakthrough of nationalist and populist movements in the Nordic countries, the strong Nordic democracy has been able to curb and govern these myopic movements, even if these can truly disturb the running of parliamentary democracy. The major challenge to the integral Nordic welfare state and its notorious capacity to relationally manage society as a whole stems from the fact that these complex global processes, and their inherent risks, are in so many ways intertwined that any sectorial and singular solutions just do not work. Immigration provides an excellent example.

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The interdependence of the processes of immigration, social stratification, precarisation and political polarisation is easy to recognise. Immigration might be necessary for Nordic societies with ageing populations, but socio-economic problems with political effects arise if labour market precarisation will be accelerated by immigration. This depends above all on the adopted labour market, activation and social inclusion policies. So far, immigration has been primarily a consequence of wars and poverty, but in the future, climate change will most probably also increase immigration. This can dramatically change the present situation. It does not, however, change the fundamental challenge of immigration, which is social integration. This challenge can only be met relationally. Even if this challenge is most demanding in the case of immigrants, it cannot be avoided even in those spheres of life where the Nordic countries have been claimed to really triumph and excel, such as the social and political standing of women. Gender has mattered in the context of the Nordic welfare state. Gender equality has been until now a subject of intense public discussion, current interest and precise studies. It is generally acknowledged that the Nordic societies are women-friendly, especially thanks to the Nordic welfare state measures. However, these claims have also been criticised, stressing that the gender system (even in the Nordic countries) still operates through gender segregation and hierarchy, consistently positioning women in inferior positions to men in society. The high level of gendered labour market segregation can be considered as one of the weaknesses of the Nordic welfare societies. The idea has been to encourage families in the dual-earner/dual-care way of life. All the Nordic countries have been successful in increasing women’s employment rates in all socioeconomic classes. The Nordic welfare states have created a voluminous care sector with inferior salary levels to that of men. This situation can even rapidly deteriorate as a consequence of privatisation. The socioeconomic standing of women is also interlinked with processes of precarisation, social stratification and immigration. In the context of the relational welfare state, gender is to be perceived as a social relationship rather than an attribute of individuals. Gender as a social relationship varies historically and encompasses elements of labour, power, language, sentiments and emotions. It spans individual subjectivities, conventions, institutions, culture and language. But so do immigration, precarisation, social stratification, political polarisation and even environmental degradation. As bio-political challenges of the Nordic welfare state, these processes penetrate the molecular tissues of society. It is altogether more and more difficult to answer them by traditional means of recognition, redistribution and regulation. Since these processes are

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dissipating, disseminating, disintegrating and dismantling societal relations and ultimately deforming the Nordic welfare society as a socially sustainable formation, we have to find novel ways to tackle the rapid multiplication of indefinite differences stemming from these processes. We have to develop a new kind of governmental eidos and ethos that can follow and take advantage of such principles as equality of difference, democracy of difference, recognition of difference and integration of difference. In doing so, we can hope to crowd in reciprocity, cooperation, trust, social citizenship and even tacit knowledge of local circumstances to renovate the Nordic welfare state to meet decisively and efficiently the neoliberal and other utopian challenges in an egalitarian and worldly fashion.

REFERENCES Bourdieu, P. (1998), ‘The essence of neoliberalism’, Le Monde diplomatique, December, accessed 11 April 2019 at https://mondediplo.com/1998/12/08 bourdieu. Brown, W. (2015), Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, New York: Zone Books. Hirschmann, A.O. (1991), The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity – Futility – Jeopardy, Cambridge, Mass., London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Kosonen, P. (1987), Hyvinvointivaltion haasteet ja pohjoismaiset mallit, Tampere: Vastapaino. Lazzarato, M. (2014), Velkaantunut ihminen [La fabrique de l’homme endetté: Essai sur la condition néoliberale], trans. Anna Tuomikoski, Helsinki: Tutkijaliitto. Mannheim, K. (1936), Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, reprinted 1959, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. Mudge, S.L. (2018), Leftism Reinvented: Western Parties from Socialism to Neoliberalism, Cambridge, Mass., London, England: Harvard University Press. Myrdal, G. (1960), Beyond the Welfare State: Economic Planning in the Welfare States and Its International Implications – The Storr Lectures, Yale University, 1958, London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. Nietzsche, F. (2001), The Gay Science, ed. B. Williams, trans. J. Nauckhoff and A. Del Caro, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, F. (2002), Beyond Good and Evil, eds R.-P. Horstman and J. Norman, trans. J. Norman, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, F. (2006a), Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, ed. M. Clark and B. Leiter, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, F. (2006b), On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. K. Ansell-Pearson, trans. C. Diethe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Nygren, A. (1982), Agape and Eros: The Christian Idea of Love, trans. P.S. Watson, Chicago, US: University of Chicago Press. Ostrom, E. (2005), ‘Policies that Crowd out Reciprocity and Collective Action’, in H. Gintis, S. Bowles, R. Boyd and E. Fehr (eds), Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life, Cambridge, Mass., London, England: The MIT Press, pp. 253–75. Owen, D. (2007), Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality, Stocksfield: Acumen. Polanyi, K. (2001), The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press. Riches, G. (2018), Food Bank Nations: Poverty, Corporate Charity and the Right to Food, Abingdon, New York: Routledge. Sandelin, B., N. Sarafoglou and A. Veiderpass (2000), ‘The Post-1945 Development of Economics and Economists in Sweden’, in A.W. Coates (ed.), The Development of Economics in Western Europe since 1945, London: Routledge, pp. 42–66. Stiglitz, J.E. (2001), ‘Foreword’, in K. Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Boston, Mass: Beacon Press, pp. vii–xvii. Tuori, K. (2016), Critical Legal Positivism, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, New York: Routledge.

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Index access justice 8, 11, 37, 39, 142, 156–8 activation 6, 8, 82–3, 87–9, 113–14, 185, 188, 193–4, 196, 228, 241, 247 Adam Smithian see Smith agape 231 agency 43, 95–7, 186, 190, 192, 217 agency work 215, 217 agenda spillover 230 Alesina, Alberto 41 allemansrätten 169, 240 Anglo-Saxon countries 6, 30, 43 world 224 see also welfare state animateur 55–6, 58, 61–2, 68 Ankersmit, Frank 30, 98 Aronsson, Peter 41 asociality see sociality see also autonomy; Kantian Aukrust model (Norway) 206 austerity 6, 18–19, 26, 154–5, 212, 218–19, 228, 243 autonomy 2–3, 5–7, 9, 32, 35, 39–40, 69, 102–3, 120–22, 139, 187, 190, 199, 211, 216–17, 231, 236, 241 children’s 121, 124, 129 individual 4, 34–5, 64–5, 97 of the Nordic welfare state 39 personal 3–5, 8 see also equality of autonomy; Kantian average man 235 Barnard, Chester 16 basic agreement see collective agreement; national agreement

basic income 85 see also minimum benefit; minimum income; kontanthjælp Bergeström, Hans 59 Berggren, Henrik 34–5 Beveridge, William Plan 102 report 165 Bildung 58 see also Grundtvig bio-political 5–7, 228, 247 Bjørnson, Bjørnstjerne 61–2, 65 Bjørnsonian 62 see also Pan-Germanism Bourdieu, Pierre 16, 225–6 see also habitus; social capital Bremer, Fredrika 60 Brexit 25 Brown, Wendy 225–6 see also habitus Brundtland Commission 164 see also sustainability Calvinism 101 see also Lutheranism; Weber care sector 247 caring home 60, 63 chains of interdependence 17 challenge of difference 29, 35, 245 see also democracy of difference; difference; equality of difference; integration of difference; recognition of difference Charles XII (Sweden) 59 Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFREU) 140, 154–5 see also European Union

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Christian VI (Denmark) 69 Christian caritas 56–7, 62 see also Hauge; Haugianism Chydenius, Anders 60 citizenry 19, 31, 138, 153, 156 enlightened citizenry 110, 111 see also Myrdal Gunnar citizenship 6, 96, 102, 105 European 149–51, 157 social 6, 10, 11, 33, 43, 79, 96, 98, 100–104, 107, 111, 114, 237–8, 243–4, 248 see also Marshall civil rights 96, 131 civil society 4, 19, 34, 97, 169–70, 210 civilized capitalism 205, 243 see also de-civilized capitalism civilized firm 220 civilizing process 205, 211, 220 Clinton, Bill 22 Cloward, Richard 16 see also Piven; poor people’s movement co-creation 212, 215 collective action 98, 102, 226, 229, 237 collective agreement 104–7, 114 see also basic; hovedavtal; national; Saltsjöbaden collective bargaining 106, 109, 114, 155, 230 collective interest 40, 238–9, 244 see also individual right collective involvement 237 collective subject 226, 237, 240 subjectivity 237 see also definite subject collective value 132 commodification 34, 37, 68, 76, 90, 97, 156 de-commodification 33, 36, 76, 88–9, 96–8, 156 re-commodification 36, 88 rich commodification 33–4, 76, 89–90 see also Esping-Andersen common market 39, 141, 148

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see also constitutionalization; European Union communitarianism 68 see also individualism community of goodness 56 see also Hauge; Haugian; Haugianism concrete utopia 114 conflict resolution 4, 7, 42, 52 constant guilt 228 see also indebted man; Nietzsche constitution 7, 11, 30, 99, 131, 138–9, 141, 204 see also European; European economic; European social; European Union constitutional right 11, 126, 130–31 constitutionalization economic 39, 139, 156 macroeconomic 140, 154 social 39 see also common market; European; European Union convention 9, 29, 30–32, 34–5, 37–40, 44, 46, 163, 166, 169, 227, 233, 240, 246–7 Convention on the Rights of the Child see United Nations conventional coordination 30, 32, 34, 42 corporate social responsibility (CSR) see responsibility cosmopolitan homelessness 67 narcissist 51 Cox, Michael E. 52 see also Ostrom; Wilson, David Sloan created harmony 110–11, 233–4 see also Myrdal Gunnar cultural innovation 54–5, 68 Darwinism 51 Dassonville doctrine 114 Dawkins, Richard 53 day care society 130 see also home care society

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Index day care system 11, 120, 123–35 decision-making 12, 19, 42, 52, 56, 171, 174, 177, 179, 186, 196, 198, 230, 235–6, 241 de-civilized capitalism 219 see also civilized capitalism Declaration on the Rights of the Child see United Nations de-commodification see commodification see also Esping-Andersen de-familialisation 97 see also Esping-Andersen definite subject 231–2, 234–9, 240, 242, 244 definite subjectivity 236 see also definite symbotype of subjectivity; in-de-finite subject; Nietzsche; symbotype definite symbotype of subjectivity 236 see also definite subject; symbotype Deleuze, Gilles 29 democracy 11, 33, 40, 50, 68, 77, 96, 106, 108–9, 114, 143, 166, 226, 231–3, 236–7, 248 consensual 42 illiberal 24 industrial 107 liberal 24–5 Nordic 4, 6, 10, 40, 42–3, 100, 107–8, 237, 246 parliamentary 237, 246 social democracy 24, 33, 60, 101, 108, 237 democracy of difference 248 see also difference; equality of difference; integration of difference; recognition of difference denationalization 151–3, 158 Denmark 10, 24, 39, 46, 51, 58, 70, 81–2, 84–6, 89–90, 104–5, 199, 206, 209–10, 213, 217–19 Desmond, Matthew 17 deterritorialization 151–3, 158 Dewey, John 5

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difference between and inside groups of people 35 differences between welfare regimes 186 feminism 37 in income 86 in the rate of morbidity and mortality 45 in welfare state ideologies 143 indefinite 246, 248 individual 36, 225–6 regional 45 social 41–2 socio-economic 236 see also challenge of difference; democracy of difference; equality of difference; integration of difference; recognition of difference disciplina voluntatis see Nietzsche disciplining 22–3, 25, 77 distribution 32–4, 75, 142, 167 income 21, 43, 165, 167 primary 79–80 see also redistribution; welfare policy distrust 55 see also trust domain theory 12, 184, 186, 188, 192, 197 domestication of man 226–7 doughnut economy 166 see also Raworth; strong sustainability droit social see Ewald dual-earner/dual-care 247 early childhood education 121–2, 127–36 Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) 139, 141, 154 see also Maastricht provisions economic man 233 see also Myrdal Gunnar economic sustainability see sustainability

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eco-social relation 163–4, 169–70, 173, 240 relationality 163 relationship 162–3 education income 81 efterløn see unemployment insurance eidos governmental 248 of the Nordic welfare state 230, 236 see also ethos Elias, Norbert 16, 220 empowerment 8, 35, 68, 97, 107, 111 enlightened citizenry see citizenry Enlightenment 55, 58–9, 61, 233 Christian 51, 64 Lutheran peasant (folkeopplysning) 100–102 Nordic 100 pastoral 54–5 environmental governance 163, 167–8, 170–72 environmental protection 165, 168–70, 174–6 environmental sustainability see sustainability equality of autonomy 34–5, 37, 38 of difference 8, 10, 35–40, 42, 44, 46–7, 225, 244, 248 see also challenge of difference; democracy of difference; difference; intergration of difference; recognition of difference of environmental difference 38 of interest 32–4, 37 of what 32–3 of whom 32, 35 of why 32, 35 see also quality of equality Erlander, Tage 64 eros 230, 237 Esping-Andersen, Gøsta 23, 87–90, 96–7, 99, 120, 143, 151 see also commodification; de-familialisation L’État providence 132 see also Ewald

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etatism 64 ethos 52, 56–7, 64 cooperative 66 governmental 248 Haugian 57 market based 47 Nordic welfare state 47, 236 of cooperation 56–7 of entrepreneurship 112 of welfare 3, 7–8, 40, 164, 230, 235, 237, 245 of work 101 privatised 226 see also eidos Etzioni, Amitai 41 Europe 17, 24, 41, 55, 59, 61–2, 67, 74, 81, 90, 95, 107, 113, 138, 142, 153, 167, 176, 217–18 European Charter of Social Rights 155 citizen 143, 149, 152, 238 citizenship 149–50, 157 Communities 95–6 constitution 11, 138–40 constitutionalism 141–2 Convention on Human Rights 136 Court of Human Rights 134, 136 Court of Justice (ECJ) 139–40, 143–7, 149–54, 156 Economic Area 208 economic constitution 11, 39 economy 138 integration 7, 36–7, 39, 139, 153, 238 macroeconomic constitution 139–40, 158 microeconomic constitution 139, 144, 147–8, 157 regulatory private law 11, 39, 142, 156–7, 238 security 138 Social Charter of the Council of Europe 154 social constitution 11, 38–9, 139–41, 145, 148, 157, 238 Social dimension 238 Social Model 143 social welfare 138

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Index European Union (EU) 25, 39, 77, 89, 95, 113, 134, 138–40, 142–3, 149, 151–2, 154–8, 218, 238 austerity policy 219 Charter 155 constitution 138 Constitutional Treaty 138 finance regulation 62 Founding Treaties 39, 138 institution 158, 162 Parliament 162 social dimension 39, 140, 142, 144, 153, 156, 238 social policy 156–7 Treaty law 140 Europeanization 79, 141 evolution 51, 55, 98, 211 evolutionary theory 50 Ewald, François 132 droit social 132 L’État providence 132 feminist critique 97, 103 see also Fraser; universal breadwinner model financialised capitalism 11, 96 Finland 11–12, 39, 42–3, 45–6, 69, 86, 90, 102–7, 120, 122–3, 127, 129, 131, 133–4, 168, 175–6, 179, 184–8, 192, 195, 197, 199, 206–9, 212–14, 216–19, 234, 239, 241 fiscal sustainability see sustainability folkeopplysning see Enlightenment folkhem(met) (Sweden) 56, 59–61, 63–7, 69 see also Myrdal Alva; Myrdal Gunnar Fordism 206, 211 Fordist 112 forma mentis of citizenry 31 of society 31 Nordic 42 fragmentation of wage labour 36, 43

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Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) see United Nations Fraser, Nancy 103 see also feminist critique; universal breadwinner model Geijer, Gustaf 60 gender 36–7, 41, 50, 103, 246–7 contract 102 cooperation 60 division of labour 103–4, 247 equality 130, 247 inequality 121 segregation 104, 247 system 104, 114, 247 general will 30 see also social contract Ghent insurance 85–7 kind/type insurance 83–4 model 75, 79, 87 system 75, 89 Giddens, Anthony 16 Gilded Age 21 see also patrimonial capitalism Glaeser, Edward 41 global warming 171 globalization 3, 6–8, 21, 24, 36–7, 79, 88–9, 112, 184, 202, 212, 218–19, 235 see also trans-nationalisation good society (Norway) 56, 58, 61, 63, 68 see also folkhem(met); happy Christianity; symbotype good state 63 see also Myrdal Alva; Myrdal Gunnar governance 3, 12, 20, 52, 154, 163, 165, 167, 170–72, 174, 186–8, 191–3, 198, 228 Great Compression 20–22 Great Depression 18–19, 107–8 Great Recession 18–21 group interest 30 see also individual right

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Grundtvig, Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvigian folkelighed 58–9 Grundtvigianism 58 see also Bildung; happy Christianity; symbotype Gustavus Adolphus (Sweden) 59 Habitat III see United Nations habitus 16, 53, 236 see also Bourdieu Hammarskjöld, Dag 64–5, 67, 69–70 Hansson, Per Albin 59–60, 64 happy Christianity (Denmark) 56 see also Grundtvig; symbotype Hartberg, Yasha 53 see also symbotype; Wilson, David Sloan Hartz reform 87 Hauge, Hans Nielsen 56–8, 69 Haugian 57, 61 Haugianism 55–7 see also Christian caritas; community of goodness; symbotype hedonism see eros Heimat 63 Heyerdahl, Thor 62 Hirschmann, Alfred O. 224 home care society 130 see also day care society hovedavtal (Norway) see collective agreement human capital 19, 113, 229 see also Bourdieu; social investment; social capital human condition 5 human freedoms 121 human rights 7, 11, 40, 62, 64–7, 126, 131, 133–4, 136, 166, 185, 202, 240 individual right 11, 24, 30, 40, 131, 238–9, 244 see also collective interest see also European Convention on Human Rights; European Court of Human Rights; Universal Declaration of Human Rights

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humanist habitus 53, 236 Hume, David 31 Hungary 24 see also illiberal democracy; Orban; populism Iceland 199 national identity 101 idea of man 230 immigration 8–9, 24, 36, 70, 113, 167, 245–7 inclusion 2, 5–8, 11, 51, 58, 120–24, 129, 149, 179, 188, 210–11, 220, 247 see also equality; trust in others income transfer 35, 78, 81–3 indebted man 228 see also constant guilt; Nietzsche in-de-finite subject 226, 229–31, 234–5, 239 subjectivity 229 see also definite subject individual right 11, 24, 30, 40, 131, 238–9, 244 see also group interest individualism 16, 68, 246 egalitarian 101 moral 133, 239 statist 64, 96–8, 103 see also communitarianism individuation 29–30, 57, 239, 245 inequality 10, 18–21, 26, 33, 36, 43, 46–7, 74, 80, 84, 89, 110 economic 19 gender 121 income 121 social 66, 130 institution of welfare non-universalistic 75 universal 75 institutional balancing 30, 42 institutional regulation 32, 34 integration of difference 224, 248 see also challenge of difference; democracy of difference; difference; equality of

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Index difference; recognition of difference Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 171–3, 178 internal market 144–5, 148, 159 International Labour Organization (ILO) 99, 102, 109, 114 see also Philadelphia Declaration juridification 131, 134 Kantian 7, 35, 41 see also autonomy; asociality; sociality Key, Ellen 60 Keynes, John Maynard 21, 31 see also Keynesian; Keynesianism Keynesian 21–2, 109, 229 counter-cyclical policy 22 see also Keynes; Keynesianism Keynesianism 21–2, 235 see also Keynes; Keynesian Kirchheimer, Rudolf 42 knowledge production 12, 171 kontanthjælp (Denmark) 81–3, 85 see also basic income; minimum benefit; minimum income krona för krona model 85, 89 kulturkamp 51 labour market parties 77, 95, 99, 104–7, 112–15 labour movement 100, 107, 109, 203, 205–6, 242 Lagerlöf, Selma 60 laissez-faire see Smith League of Nations see Nansen Leitbild 149, 159, 238 libertarianism 156 libertarian 157 Lisbon Treaty see Treaty of Lisbon Lutheran Christianity 57, 101 Church 69, 101 see also Calvinism; Enlightenment; Lutheranism; Weber Lutheranism 55, 57–8, 101–2

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257 institutional 55 secularised 101–2 see also Calvinism; Enlightenment; Lutheran; Weber

Maastricht provisions 139 see also Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) Mandeville’s fable 6 Mannheim, Karl 2, 224 marketization of the state 22–3, 154 Marshall, Thomas Humphrey 96 Marshall-inspired analysis 96 Marshallian kind of social citizenship 98 see also citizenship Marx, Karl 44 Marxist 104 Mathews, Freya 55 Meidner, Rudolf 76, 90, 206 see also Rehn-Meidner model Micklitz, Hans-Wolfgang 142, 156, 159 minimum benefit 81, 88 see also basic income; kontanthjælp; minimum income minimum income 81–6 see also basic income; kontanthjælp; minimum benefit minimum support ceiling 81 minority 24–5, 36–7, 62 ethnic 20, 64–5, 194 racial 41 minority rights 24, 42 mistrust 134 see also trust Möller, Gustav 69 Möller solution 69 see also Myrdal solution; Myrdalian vision morality of custom 227 see also Nietzsche Moyn, Samuel 132 Myrdal, Alva 63 see also folkhem(met); good state; Myrdal solution; Myrdalian vision

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Myrdal, Gunnar 63, 69, 110–11, 232–4 Myrdal solution 69 Myrdalian vision 69 see also created harmony; economic man; enlightened citizenry; folkhem(met); good state; Möller solution; virtuous circle Næss, Arne 62 Nansen, Fridtjof 61–2 League of Nations 62 see also symbotype national agreement 105 see also collective agreement; hovedavtal; Saltsjöbaden Agreement national identity 62, 65–6, 101 national standard (Sweden) 84 needs-based testing 129 neoliberal governance 186–7 neoliberal paradigm 236 neoliberal utopia 4, 224, 230, 234 neoliberalism 5–6, 8–9, 15, 18–19, 21–3, 25–6, 36, 47, 133, 220, 224–8, 233–5, 237, 239, 242–3, 246 neo-Schumpeterian 113 new public management (NPM) 6, 37, 80, 112, 216, 241 Nietzsche, Friedrich W. 227–8, 231 see also constant guilt; disciplina voluntatis; indebted man; morality of custom; Owen nomos 31–2, 40 Norden 41–3, 100, 109 Nordic capitalism 38 Nordic council 168 Nordic Council of Ministers 43, 168 Nordic ethos of welfare see ethos Nordic humanism 10, 40, 54, 61–2, 66–9, 236 see also Scandinavian humanism Nordic model 3, 10–11, 50, 65, 67–9, 74–5, 78, 83, 87–8, 90, 95–6, 106, 112, 135, 184, 202 Nordic parity see parity

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Nordic Romanticism 100 see also Romanticism Nordic Sonderweg 100 Nordic success 3, 34 Nordic vocabulary 95 Nordic welfare regime 7 Nordic welfare state see welfare state Norway 11, 50–51, 54, 56, 58–9, 61–2, 67, 69–70, 86, 104–5, 169, 173, 199, 206–9, 217 Nozick, Robert 156 Orban, Viktor 24 see also Hungary; illiberal democracy; populism ordo-liberal regulation 10 reregulation 238 see also ordo-liberalism; welfare state ordo-liberalism 10, 74, 80–81, 87 Ostrom, Elinor 42, 52, 65, 243–4 see also Ostromian; Ostromian-Wilsonian design principles; WilsonianOstromian design Ostromian 10, 56, 66, 69 see also Cox; Hartberg; Ostromian-Wilsonian; symbotype Wilson, David Sloan; Wilsonian-Ostromian Ostromian-Wilsonian 54 Owen, David 227 Pan-Germanism Pan-Germanic League 61 see also Bjørnson parents’ right 127, 134 parity 10, 33–4, 37, 40, 74–5, 77–81, 88, 90, 96, 99, 104–8, 111, 114, 230, 237–8 bargaining 40, 238 Nordic 77, 79, 81 participation 2, 5–8, 10, 75, 105, 107, 109–10, 120–23, 128, 130, 157, 170, 188, 237 see also trust in ourselves

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Index Patients’ Rights Directive 148, 151–2 patrimonial capitalism 21 see also Gilded Age Philadelphia Declaration 99, 102, 109 see also International Labour Organization (ILO) Piketty, Thomas 20–21 Piven, Francis Fox 16 see also Cloward; poor people’s movement Polanyi, Karl 21, 97, 99, 245 political fragmentation 36–7 politicking 44, 46, 229, 235 pollution 174–6, 245 poor people’s movements 16 see also Cloward; Piven popular movement 75, 77, 80, 102, 106, 108 populism 24–5, 36, 44, 245 see also Hungary; Orban poverty 3–4, 9, 15–18, 20, 22, 25–6, 50, 82–3, 109–10, 130, 216–17, 229, 247 precarisation 36, 245–7 primacy of politics 10, 77–8, 237 principles of governance 186–7 privatisation 6, 46–7, 239, 241, 245, 247 of responsibility 239 of services 240 of the state 225–6, 229–30, 235, 239 prosocial 40, 42, 47, 51–2, 57–9, 66–7 prosociality 42, 50–52, 59 see also sociality Protestant ethics 101 public sector 91, 97, 112, 154, 186–7, 189, 191, 216 quality of equality 10 see also equality Rand, Ayn Randian 25 ratio 42

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rationality 3, 6, 12, 19, 30, 37, 55, 60, 63, 100, 105–6, 111, 163–5, 167–9, 171, 173, 178–9, 225, 229, 231, 239–40 Rawls, John 98 Raworth, Kate 166 see also doughnut economy; strong sustainability; weak sustainability Reagan, Ronald 18–19 Reaganesque 22 reciprocity 41, 59, 65–6, 242–4, 248 recognition 32, 42, 96, 111, 247–8 affirmative 32–3 disciplinary 225 mutual 159 of difference 248 transformative 35, 37–8, 42, 244 see also challenge of difference; democracy of difference; difference; equality of difference; integration of difference re-commodification see commodification see also Esping-Andersen redistribution 32–3, 41, 78–80, 98, 142–3, 153, 156, 241, 247 affirmative 33–4 preventing 41 reformative 43 transformative 33–4 see also distribution; welfare policy refolution 57 regime of goodness 50–51 see also Tvedt Rehn, Gösta 76, 90, 206 see also Rehn-Meidner model Rehn-Meidner model 75 see also Meidner; Rehn relational agenda 58 aggregate 5 approach 13, 16, 17, 185 aspect 173 basis 40, 50 character 1 circle of reinforcement 211

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configuration 13 dimension 203 ethnography 17 insight 40 integration 38, 202, 242–3 interest 38 making up definite subjects 236 nature 9 notion 237 pattern 208–9 perspective 1, 3–4, 12, 29–30, 38, 242 platform 38, 220 practice 7, 30, 203 process 211 quality 10 rationality 3, 12, 163–4, 179, 239 reorientation 198 role 220 sense 40 space 29 state 29 terms 15, 64 thinking 5, 16 topic 5 understanding 16, 43, 95 vision 111 welfare 1 welfare state 1, 7, 247 relationally coherent agendas 44 constituted 30, 244 determined 4 relations of poverty 15–16, 18, 22, 25–6 responsibility corporate social (CSR) 203, 204, 219 personal 18–19, 26, 37, 225, 229, 234 private 236, 240–41 public 3, 7–8, 32, 40, 164, 169, 236, 240–41, 245 responsibilization 18, 23, 26, 35–6, 228 restructuration 6, 45, 225–6, 235, 238, 241 retrenchment 6

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rich commodification see commodification see also Esping-Andersen rightification 134 rights discourse 11, 120, 122, 125–6, 130, 132–5, 238–9 Romanticism 55 see also Nordic Romanticism Roosevelt, Franklin D. 3 Rorty, Richard 98 Sacerdote, Bruce 41 Saltsjöbaden Agreement 105, 115 see also collective agreement, national agreement Scandinavian humanism 51, 66 see also Nordic humanism Schuld see constant guilt self-interest see eros self-love see eros Services Directive 148 Smith, Adam Adam Smithian 22 laissez-faire 22 social capital 113, 132, 229 see also Bourdieu; human capital; social investment Social Catholicism 95 social change 96 social contract 4, 30, 91, 97–8, 162 see also general will social dialogue 95 social engagement 204 social exclusion 15, 113, 240 social insurance 33, 35, 103, 132, 151, 165, 192 social investment 113, 130, 132, 165 see also human capital; social capital social justice 11, 37, 39, 55, 132, 135, 142–3, 157–8 social mobility 76 social partner 77, 95, 155, 217 social protection 8, 22, 26 social question 4 social reform 11, 96, 101, 186

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Index social security 6, 11, 32, 38–9, 97–8, 103, 111, 120, 123, 132, 146–53, 156–9, 168, 184, 230, 238, 241 social sustainability see sustainability social welfare 11–12, 20, 22–3, 39, 45, 56, 109, 120–23, 132, 135, 138, 162, 185, 187–8, 190–96 social work 12, 184–98, 241 sociality 7, 41 asociality 7, 41 see also Kantian; prosocial; prosociality societal relations 3–6, 36, 224, 248 societalisation of the state 108 solidarity 3, 7, 10, 25, 32, 34, 68, 77, 97, 108, 112, 132, 134–5, 140, 142–3, 146–7, 153–5, 157, 164, 169, 225, 237, 245 Soviet Union 64, 207 Soviet Russia 62 Soviet-type socialism 112 Sraffa, Piero 31 state intervention 34, 40, 110, 207 state manager 9, 15 state of civilisation 1, 5 statist individualism 64, 96–8, 103 see also Trägårdh Stiglitz, Joseph 19–20, 225 strength of labour 76 strength of wages 76 Strindberg, August 59 strong sustainability see sustainability subjective right 40, 123, 126–8, 133 subjectivity see definite subject; in-de-finite subject supplementary income 81–2 sustainability 2, 7–8, 135, 163–5, 203, 212, 220, 243–4 dimension of 163 economic 3, 230 environmental 8, 12, 38, 239 fiscal 44 gap 44, 46, 230 social 8, 12, 38, 120–22, 125, 184, 241 strong 163, 165–7, 170, 178, 239–40 weak 165, 178, 239–40

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see also Brundtland Commission; doughnut economy; Raworth Sustainable Development Goals 2030 see United Nations sustainable modernity 10, 40, 52, 63–4 Sweden 10, 12, 24, 34, 39, 43, 46, 51, 54, 58–9, 63–7, 85–6, 88–90, 97, 104–5, 108–9, 168, 170, 186–7, 192, 197, 206–9, 214, 217, 234 symbotype 53, 59–61, 63–5, 69 concept of 40, 53 folkhem(met) (home) 64–5 Grundtvigian 59 Nansenian 62 Nordic 67, 236 prosocial 40 Scandinavian 54, 56, 68 Scandinavian humanist 40, 66 transnational humanist 65 see also definite symbotype of subjectivity; good society; Hartberg Taylorism 211 Thatcher, Margaret 81 theologia civilis 55 Therborn, Göran 86 Tilly, Charles 16 Tocqueville, Alexis de 62 trade union 33, 77, 90, 98–9, 104–8, 145 Trägårdh, Lars 4, 34–5, 64, 96–7, 103 see also statist individualism trans-nationalisation 7 see also globalization Treaty of Amsterdam 147 see also European Union Treaty of Lisbon 95, 140–41, 148 see also European Union Treaty of Rome 139–40, 148–50 see also European Union Treaty on the European Community (TEC) 146

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Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) 146–50 Trump, Donald J. Trumpian 25–6 trust 3–4, 59, 65–6, 109, 133, 175, 202, 204, 234, 239–40, 243–4, 248 active 2 dimensions of 2, 120–23, 129, 132, 135 in interaction (sustainability) 2, 5, 120 in oneself (autonomy) 2, 5, 120, 132, 135 in others (inclusion) 2, 5, 120 in ourselves (participation) 2, 5, 120, 122 intergenerational 120 mechanism of 124 nature of 11 passive 2 practice of 2 social 41, 134 societal 176 see also distrust, mistrust trustworthiness 242 Tvedt, Terje 50, 69 see also regime of goodness unemployment insurance 75, 83–4 United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child 131, 134 Declaration on the Rights of the Child 126 Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 171 Habitat III 164 Sustainable Development Goals 2030 164, 166 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 126 universal breadwinner model 103 see also feminist critique; Fraser

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Universal Declaration of Human Rights see United Nations universalism 3, 7, 32–3, 37, 67, 111, 134, 245 virtuous circle 7, 10–11, 30, 74, 76–7, 84, 88, 96, 107–13, 234 see also Myrdal Gunnar Völkischkeit 58 voluntas 42 weak sustainability see sustainability Weber, Max 101 see also Calvinism; Lutheranism welfare policy 9, 11, 15, 25, 125, 142, 218 see also distribution; redistribution welfare services 12, 45, 76, 121–2, 141, 144–5, 147–8, 151–3, 156–7, 169, 211, 218–19, 226 welfare state Anglo-Saxon liberal 143 Bismarckian 143 Christian-Democratic 23 conservative 23 corporatist 143 differential 44, 243, 245 European-style 41 integral 232, 243–6 Liberal Democratic 23 Nordic 1–10, 12, 25, 29–41, 43–4, 46–7, 96–7, 100–102, 111, 114, 120–23, 125–6, 132, 135, 152, 162–4, 167, 184, 186–7, 203, 216, 224–6, 230–38, 241–2, 244–8 ordo-liberal 80 relational Nordic 1, 247 Social-Democratic 23 welfare system 11–12, 76, 84, 87, 120, 134, 149, 165, 167, 174 well-being 10, 20, 23, 37, 51, 66, 126, 129–30 Wergeland, Henrik 61

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Index will to work 102 Wilson, David Sloan 51–2, 65 see also Cox; Hartberg; Ostrom; Ostrom-Wilsonian; symbotype; Wilson, Edward Osborne; Wilsonian-Ostromian Wilson, Edward Osborne 51, 53

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see also symbotype; Wilson, David Sloan Wilsonian-Ostromian 52 see also Hartberg; Ostrom; Wilson, Edward Osborne; Wilson, David Sloane women-friendly 247

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