Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-qlrfm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T21:37:14.301Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political Learning and Economic Policy Innovation: The United States and Sweden in the Post–World War II Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Gary Mucciaroni
Gary Mucciaroni
Affiliation:
New York University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Great Depression, World War II, and Keynesian Revolution all contributed to a transformation in the role of the state in the economy. By the postwar period, it had become politically imperative, as well as intellectually sanctioned, for the state to assume responsibility for addressing unemployment. Certain Western governments were willing and able to go to great lengths to ameliorate joblessness, and in some cases prevent it, while others seemed capable or inclined to go less far. As anyone who studies unemployment in a comparative context knows, Sweden and the United States present a vivid contrast in how seriously governments undertook this responsibility and to what degree they were willing to extend the control of the state in the market conomy. It is precisely because these two nations stand at virtually opposite poles in the commitment to eliminating unemployment and in implementing policies toward that end that many scholars have sought to compare them. Compared to the United States, Sweden's policy objectives have been much more ambitious, its policy instruments more diverse and capable of intervening more extensively in the labor market, and its budgets for training, relocation, and job-creation schemes substantially larger. In short, in Sweden we find the government doing more, and in the United States we find it doing less.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , October 1989 , pp. 391 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Ginsburg, Helen, Full Employment and Public Policy: The United States and Sweden (Lexington, MA, 1983), 53Google Scholar, 155; Henning, Roger, “Industrial Policy or Employment Policy? Sweden's Response to Unemployment,” and Janet Johnson, “An Overview of U.S. Federal Employment and Training Programs,” in Richardson, Jeremy and Henning, Roger, eds., Unemployment: Policy Responses of Western Democracies (Beverly Hills, CA, 1985), 57–115, 198–99.Google Scholar

2. Heclo, Hugh, Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden (New Haven, 1975), 306.Google Scholar

3. Barhash, Jack, Trade Unions and National Economic Policy (Baltimore, 1973), 32.Google Scholar

4. Quoted in Hancock, M. Donald, Sweden: The Politics of Postindustrial Change (Hinsdale, IL, 1972), 152Google Scholar; Johansson, Sven, Nar er Tiden Mogen? En Fraga infor Program Kommisionen (Karlskrona, 1974), 11.Google Scholar

5. Collins, Robert, The Business Response to Keynes: 1929–1964 (New York, 1981), 205.Google Scholar

6. Neal, Alfred, Business Power and Public Policy (New York, 1981), 150–51.Google Scholar

7. Johnston, T. L., ed. and trans., Economic Expansion and Structural Change: A Trade Union Manifesto (London, 1963), 17, 144.Google Scholar

8. Collins, 144.

9. Neal, 2.

10. Collins, 205.

11. Olson, Mancur, “The Political Economy of Comparative Growth Rates,” in Mueller, Dennis, ed., The Political Economy of Growth (New Haven, 1983), 22–23.Google Scholar

12. Hancock, 83.

13. Collins, 118.

14. Wilson, Graham, Business and Politics: A Comparative Introduction (Chatham, NJ, 1985), 32–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vogel, David, “Why Businessmen Distrust Their State: The Political Consciousness of American Corporate Executives,” British Journal of Political Science 8 (January 1978), 45–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. Johnston, T. L., Collective Bargaining in Sweden (Cambridge, MA, 1962), 16.Google Scholar

16. Neal, 9.

17. Quoted in Collins, 206.

18. Neal, 9.

19. Schriftgiesser, Karl, Business and Public Policy: The Role of the Committee for Economic Development, 1942–1967 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1967), 1–2Google Scholar; Schriftgiesser, Karl, Business Comes of Age (New York, 1960), 9–29.Google Scholar

20. Schriftgiesser (1967), 14.

21. Neal, 9.

22. Neal, 9, emphasis added.

23. The CED and other corporate liberals did not confine their postwar strategies to shaping public policy. They were the key constituency who persuaded Dwight Eisenhower to run for the presidency. The CED saw in Eisenhower, whose political and economic views closely approximated its own, the architect of a “corporate commonwealth.” Eisenhower could steer the United States toward a “middle way” away from both the destructive disorder of laissez-faire and the potential threat to corporate autonomy posed by an extension of the New Deal. Eisenhower shared the CED's goals in fostering cooperation and consensus among interdependent groups and classes in society, under the leadership of professionally skilled managers who were capable of discerning long-term, enlightened selfinterest rather than immediate gain. See Griffith, Robert, “Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth,” American Historical Review 80 (February 1982), 87–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. Vogel, David, “The Power of Business in America: A Re-appraisal,” British Journal of Political Science 13 (January 1983), 34–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weinstein, James, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State: 1900–1918 (Boston, 1968).Google Scholar

25. Lehmbruch, Gerhard, “Consociational Democracy, Class Conflict and the New Corporatism,” in Schmitter, Philippe and Lehmbruch, Gerhard, eds., Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation (Beverly Hills, CA, 1979), 53–62; Wilson, 104–7.Google Scholar

26. Anton, Thomas, “Policy-making and Political Culture in Sweden,” Scandinavian Political Studies (New York, 1969), 103–16Google Scholar; Rustow, Dankwart, The Politics of Compromise (New York, 1955); Hancock, 36–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. Anton, 1969; Anton, Thomas, Administered Politics: Elite Political Culture in Sweden (Boston, 1980), 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28. Johnston, 342.

29. Thomas, Brinley, Monetary Policy and Crises: A Study of Swedish Experience (London, 1936), xvi–ix.Google Scholar

30. Katznelson, Ira, “Considerations on Social Democracy in the United States,” Comparative Politics (October 1978), 98.Google Scholar

31. Skocpol, Theda and Ikenberry, John, “The Political Formation of the American Welfare State in Historical and Comparative Perspective,” in Tomasson, Richard, Comparative Social Research, vol. 6 (Greenwich, CT, 1983), 87–148Google Scholar; Furner, Mary O., Advocacy and Objectivity: A Crisis in the Professionalization of American Social Science: 1865–1905 (Lexington, KY, 1975).Google Scholar

32. Graham, Otis, Toward a Planned Society: From Roosevelt to Nixon (London, 1976).Google Scholar

33. Tilton, Timothy and Furniss, Norman, The Case for the Welfare State: From Social Security to Social Equality (Bloomington, 1977), 126.Google Scholar

34. Ohman, Berndt, LO and Labour Market Policy (Stockholm, 1973), 20–45.Google Scholar

35. Esping-Anderson, Gosta, Politics Against Markets: The Social Democratic Road to Power (Princeton, NJ, 1985), 107–8.Google Scholar

36. Bailey, Stephen, Congress Makes a Law: The Story Behind the Employment Act of 1946 (New York, 1951), 43.Google Scholar

37. Stein, Herbert, The Fiscal Revolution in America (Chicago, 1968), 174.Google Scholar

38. Bailey, 164–67.

39. Quoted in Collins, 138.

40. Collins, 183.

41. Stein, 178–79.

42. Collins, 135.

43. Stein, 186.

44. Collins, 189.

45. Collins, 180–91.

46. Sundquist, James L., Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson Years (Washington, D.C., 1968), 43–44.Google Scholar

47. Sundquist, 47–48.

48. Galbraith, John Kenneth, Economics and the Art of Controversy (New York, 1959), 55–56.Google Scholar

49. Moynihan, Daniel P., Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding (New York, 1969), 99.Google Scholar

50. Board, Joseph, The Government of Sweden (Boston, 1970), 44–45.Google Scholar

51. Collins, 147.

52. Esping-Andersen (1985), 69.

53. See Ohman; Esping-Anderson (1985), 227–33; Barbash, 8.

54. Collins, 142–43.

55. Schriftgiesser (1967), 111.

56. Collins, 151.

57. Stephens, John D., The Transition from Capitalism to Socialism (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1980)Google Scholar; Shalev, Michael, “The Social Democratic Model and Beyond: Two Generations of Comparative Research on the Welfare State,” in Comparative Social Research (Greenwich, CT, 1983), 316–54Google Scholar; Esping-Anderson, Gosta, Social Class, Social Democracy, and State Policy (Copenhagen, 1980)Google Scholar; Korpi, Walter and Shalev, Michael, “Strikes, Power, and Politics in the Western Nations, 1900–1976,” in Zeitlin, Maurice, ed., Political Power and Social Theory (Greenwich, CT, 1980), 301–34Google Scholar; Martin, Andrew, “The Politics of Economic Policy in the United States: A Tentative View from a Comparative Perspective,” in Eckstein, Harry et. al., eds., Comparative Politics Series (Beverly Hills, CA, 1973)Google Scholar; Korpi, Walter, The Working Class and Welfare Capitalism (London, 1977).Google Scholar

58. Esping-Andersen (1985), 64; Farher, Henry, “The Extent of Unionization in the U.S.,” in Kochan, Thomas, ed., Challenges and Choices Facing American Labor (Cambridge, MA, 1985), 16.Google Scholar

59. Henning, 194–95.

60. Martin, Andrew, “Is Democratic Control of Capitalist Economies Possible?” in Lindberg, Leon N. et al., eds., Stress and Contradiction in Modern Capitalism (Lexington, MA, 1975), 22.Google Scholar

61. Martin (1975), 22.

62. Dorfman, Gerald A., Wage Politics in Britain, 1945–1967: Government vs. the TUC (Ames, IA, 1973)Google Scholar; Panitch, Leo, Social Democracy and Industrial Militancy (Cambridge, 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63. See Panitch, Leo, Working-Class Politics in Crisis (London, 1986), 56–77.Google Scholar This was by no means the only reason for Britain's economic problems. The dominance of the “Sterling lobby” in British government led to currency manipulations that are widely credited with damaging the productive capacity of the economy. See Blank, Stephen, Industry and Government in Britain: The Federation of British Industries in Politics, 1945–65 (Lexington, MA, 1973).Google Scholar

64. Martin (1975), 22–23.

65. Barbash, 143; Robinson, Derek, “Implementing an Incomes Policy,” Industrial Relations (October 1968), 83.Google Scholar