http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=117730&d=1&m=1&y=2009
Thursday 1 January 2009 (05 Muharram 1430)
Is Sweden in the midst of political change?
Jonathan Power | Arab News
Is the state an opponent?" I asked one top Gothenburg lawyer, Christina
Ramberg, a former academic and now working in a prosperous private practice.
"No it's a friend," she replied, although she never votes for the Socialists,
the supposed authors of Sweden's top-heavy welfare state. Another, Alexandra
von Schwerin, an aristocratic businesswoman paying high taxes, said, "No, it's
a father."
Not even Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, leader of a conservative
coalition that two years' ago replaced the habitual governing party, the Social
Democrats, is much against the state. He has dropped the old right-wing mantra
of calling for lowering taxes and wants to see only "a more efficient and less
conformist state and society."
In an interview just before Christmas he told me that "We are not asking
for a different system, just for better results."
The sense of equality goes deep down in the Swedish psyche, he explained.
"The Swedish electorate don't always look at their wallet. They do want to see
other people better off, as well as themselves."
I asked him where did this unusually benign development in human nature
come from - the church, politics, or what exactly? Some part religion, he
answered, "Although hardly anyone goes to church these days ...the basic ideas
of Christianity stayed on."
He also pointed to the fact that Sweden has avoided war for 200 years, so
it has long been able to benefit from economic growth. "Because of that we had
the wherewithal to develop the welfare state in the 1950s. In fact in the 1950s
we all thought it was a happy time. We had a deeply felt feeling we can afford
it."
In the late 1980s Sweden began to lose its economic momentum. The
right-wing parties came into government for the first time in years and there
were severe cutbacks in social services. Their pairing back, tax cuts and
famous bank rescue. That the US and the UK have partly modeled their recent
bank resuscitation on did help to refloat Sweden. But it only made the
electorate nostalgic for the Social Democrats.
Under the self-confident Socialist and economically skilled Prime
Minister, Goran Persson, Sweden stormed back into the fight - producing annual
per head growth rates year after year that were the highest among the larger
Western countries. The social services began to be restored - but not to their
former glory.
Sclerosis of the system had set in a more bureaucratic health and welfare
service. A senior local politician Tove Klette, told me that in the old
people's homes of Lund, a prosperous university town, 47 percent of the time of
the staff is spent in administration. It is the same in the hospitals. People
feel entitled to sick leave, even if it is just to watch an important football
match. Holidays are regular and long - in the summer stretching to five weeks.
Still, the economy, until the present world crisis, has purred on.
Swedes are simply extraordinarily efficient and use their time at work
very well. "When we work," said Professor Ramberg, "We work very well, even
without the boss pushing us. No one here could write a book like that French
woman last year on how not to work at work."
The prime minister added, "If a plumber says he'll come to your home at 7
a.m. he'll be there at 7, and do the job fast and to a high standard."
Swedes are the Japanese of Europe, I've concluded, an observation that
the prime minister doesn't demur from. Swedes are conformists, by temperament.
It is hard to break out and become a highly successful individual, head and
shoulders above everyone else. Of course, this isn't universal or otherwise
there'd be no Swedish Ericsson or Electrolux or Volvo, but it's the going ethos.
The conservative government is now trying to loosen up the conformism of
Swedish society, destroying monopolies, introducing competition in the health
services and schools and removing petty rules. "We want individual life to
flourish more, with greater freedom," says Reinfeldt.
I see it on a small scale in Lund. A few years ago cafes had no outside
chairs. Then, copying what Swedes had seen on southern holidays, they started
putting them out. But the town council stepped in and said they must all be
dismantled by Oct. 31. Now they are allowed to be there all year round.
Sweden seems to be finding a balance in its basic socialist ethos.
Probity, self-discipline and high productivity define the market place.
Breaking apart the "Japanese" mentality is now a widely accepted social goal.
The first goes fast. The second is not sprinting yet. But if this government
wins a second term in two years' time, it will doubtless accelerate.
