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This article focuses on the interaction between the state and Swedish banks during the establishment of two institutes for small business credit, AB Industrikredit and AB Företagskredit, between 1958 and 1962. These institutes were established as intermediaries between the supplementary pension system and the credit market. We have been able to elucidate this process by the Swedish Bankers’ Association granting us privileged access to archival material on these negotiations.

It is demonstrated that the strong ideological conflict characterizing the parliamentary debate on the supplementary pensions system did not spill over into the system being implemented within the financial sector as this was organized through the examined credit institutes. Instead, the banks and the state were able to negotiate through established channels and arenas for business-government relations in the financial sector. Even if the parties initially exhibited mistrust based on different historical interpretations of the market for small business credit, they also recognized the degree of change that would be brought on by the supplementary pension system with regard to the financial markets and capital formation as a whole. Hence, they downplayed ideological differences and strived to reach an outcomethat was mutually beneficial in its final form. A crucial indication of this consensus is that fifty percent of each institute was owned by the state while the other fifty percent was owned by the banks.

This paper deals with the introduction of marital aggregation and income splitting in Sweden in 1952. It is demonstrated that actors such as political parties, employers and white-collar unions embraced income splitting because it mitigated the effects of wage moderation and progressive income tax for most wage-earners. In this respect, we recognise that the income splitting reform was made at the expense of married women with high incomes. This result relates to previous research which has noted that women´s organizations and politicians representing women´s interests have functioned as ‘policy takers’, rather than ‘policy-makers’, in the Scandinavian corporatist system.

Denna rapport redovisar forskningsresultat från projektet Att satsa på framtiden? Den statliga kreditpolitiken och småföretagen 1933–1970 som finansierats av Handelsbankens Forskningsstiftelser under perioden 2017–2020 genom anslag P17- 0108. I rapporten redovisas empiriska-analytiska resultat från ett omfattande källmaterial som excerperats från Kommerskollegiums arkiv som finns deponerat i Riksarkivets filial i Marieberg. Fokus ligger främst på att redovisa resultat från en undersökning av alla statliga lånegarantier under perioden 1954–1965. Rapporten innehåller även ett avsnitt baserat på en urvalsundersökning av lån från Statens hantverkslånefond under perioden 1954–1956. Dessa resultat har även analyserats och diskuterats i relation till övriga forskningsresultat inom projektet. Med förbehållet att alla publikationer måste studeras för att överblicka projektets resultat på detaljnivå, utgör denna rapport därmed en sammanfattning av ovanstående forskningsprojekt.

From a European perspective, what sets apart the Swedish return to the gold standard at prewar parity in 1924 is not only that it occurred before that of every other nation, including the United Kingdom, but also that it could be made by politicians without interference from the central bank. Against this background, it is argued that this decision may be related to the combined impact of two political positions that affected policy making in a crucial way. In a domestic policy context in which minority governments needed support from other parties to realize their political ambitions, the Social Democrats and Conservatives both developed separate positions in favor of an early return of the gold standard during the first part of the 1920s. Because these parties together formed a majority in both chambers of Parliament, a stable political support for a return of the gold standard could thereby emerge.

This article deals with the abortive attempt by the Swedish Socialisation Commission to reform the Swedish State Railways (SJ) after World War I. It is argued that the decisive opposition to this proposal from SJ and the Swedish Federation of Industries may be related to the fact that railway policy in Sweden, as in many other countries, included a number of conditions that predisposed these agencies to established policy and budgets. In this regard, the article demonstrates how existing railway policy constrained the involved actors to such an extent that they persisted with the established arrangements, even if that decision implied a continued inability to deal with the financial imbalances that gradually undermined the railway sector.

Uppsatsen behandlar Fonden för vissa stödåtgärder inom malmkommunerna som ett exempel på hur mellankrigstidens regionalpolitik tog sig uttryck i Sverige. Den visar att en avgörande skillnad mellan 1930-talets regionalpolitik och de större, mer permanenta program som utvecklades från och med 1960-talet var att 1930-talets regionalpolitik byggde på analysen att rumsliga problem var relaterade till övergående ekonomiska cykler, snarare än strukturella ekonomiska problem. Denna tanke medförde att regionalpolitiken utformades med inspiration från den kontracykliska arbetsmarknadspolitiken och i dialog med de parter på arbetsmarknaden som berördes av åtgärderna. 

This paper studies the liberalization of the Swedish transport utilities during the last decades from a regime change perspective. Here, focus lies on how regime coordination mechanisms such as the regulation of markets, the administrative and bureaucratic organization of utilities and the State-interest group relations has changed as a market-oriented regime has replaced a State-oriented regime after 1990. It is demonstrated that these changes do not follow the general patterns of policy change identified within previous research. Rather than as an institutional continuity through reproductive adaptation or abrupt disruptive change caused by exogenous pressures, regime change in the examined cases has a different character which combines these elements. Even if it the process of change was triggered by the economic crisis in the 1990s as an exogenous force, it is demonstrated that the previous regime has been transformed through a slow, yet distinctively disruptive change over the last decades.  

This article examines the expansion of post-war Swedish ice-breaking and winter navigation from a small state perspective previously put forth in research on the corresponding historical developments in Finland. The results confirm the notion that the post-war expansion of winter navigation was related to the contemporary transformation within the forestry industries. Both State maritime actors and interest groups from the forestry industries framed ice-breaking as a decisive instrument to promote the exports of pulp and paper. This coincided with the introduction of cost-efficiency measures within transport policy, which allowed the State ice-breaker service to expand at the expense of the railways.

As in other Western European countries, the emergence of a national network for electricity transmission in Sweden was accompanied by a greater degree of State intervention in the electricity supply sector. The aim of this article is to elucidate the institutional background to the decision in 1946 by the Social Democratic government to transfer control of the national grid to the Swedish National Power Board. It is demonstrated that this decision not only was linked to a general industrial policy to promote energy supply. It was also linked to the agricultural and cohesion policies which emerged during the 1940s.

This paper deals with the negotiations and the decision-making process related to the nationalisation of the GDG rail network in Sweden during the period 1939–47. It highlights some of the distinct features of the railway nationalisation process in Sweden. It is noted that the nationalisation of GDG was exposed to factors and contexts that had not been anticipated when Parliament made the policy decision to nationalise the non-State railways in 1939. During World War II, the financial situation of GDG had benefited from new transport conditions which limited road–rail competition. Furthermore, the Social Democrats began to implement a more active transport policy as part of their post-war economic policy. This led to an outcome in 1947 where the GDG shareholders were compensated more generously than they would have been in 1939.

This article examines the business–government relations during the policy and decision-making processes that preceded the 1938 corporate tax reform in Sweden. This reform involved creating a new tax system under the turbulent economic conditions of the interwar period. But while literature on tax history has found that such circumstances often disable actors from agreeing on tax policies, a constructive outcome was still reached in the Swedish case. In this regard, it is demonstrated that one crucial factor behind the creation of the 1938 corporate tax reform was the formation of a coalition between the Social Democratic party and the business peak associations around a number of areas where their taxation interests coincided. Here, the Social Democrats agreed to shelter profits from corporations as long as they were managed according to the intentions of their countercyclical economic policy that encouraged industrial investments and employment expansion.

The introduction of the cost-bearing principle as part of the 1963 white paper on transport policy (1963 års trafikpolitiska beslut) is usually considered as the major transport policy change in Sweden during the post-war period. However, as the white paper almost exclusively focused on issues related to road-railway competition, previous research has neglected its significance for the gradual policy shift within the maritime sector which begun in the middle of the 1960s. The Social Democrats begun to analyse important contemporary trends in the shipping sector and make forecasts concerning future scenarios. It was concluded that since international competitiveness of the large export firms was at stake, government maritime policy should encourage them to adapt their transport and logistics chains to the new conditions which emerged during the 1960s.

Against this background, this paper deals with how this policy shift was manifested during the decision-making process concerning the icebreaker Njord during the period 1965–1967. During this decision-making process, that state demonstrated a new policy-making style in relation to the icebreaking policy during the 1950s. Instead of relying on cooperation and consensus-building within corporatist arrangements, the state wanted to persuade stakeholders in the forestry and metals sectors to modernize their transport and logistics systems. Winter shipping was framed as a technical system, where icebreakers were integrated with firm-controlled elements such as freight vessels, port facilities and land transports. In this respect, stakeholders were expected to adapt the system introduced by the forestry firm Skandinaviska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget (SCA), which in 1965 began concentrating its export traffic on two deep-water terminals, thereby ceasing to use a large number of small, often shallow landing places. Three specially designed cargo vessels were also built to guarantee year-round shipping with icebreaker assistance. Through this system-building approach, the Social Democrats and then-minister of communications Olof Palme were able to negotiate the investment in Njord through the constrains presented by the cost-bearing principle. Since the icebreakers were becoming integrated in a modernized technical system for winter shipping, a new icebreaker could be motivated from a wider industrial reform perspective rather than as an isolated transport policy issue.

Under de senaste åren har den regionala utvecklingspolitiken i Västerbotten förändrats kraftigt. Början på denna process var bildandet av Region Västerbotten 2008, som då tog över ansvaret för länets näringspolitik. Det förslag till regional utvecklingsstrategi som Region Västerbotten sedan presenterade i mars 2011 skiljer sig starkt från den traditionella bilden av hur näringspolitik har bedrivits i Norrland. Region Västerbotten framhåller bland annat att länets näringsliv och innovativa miljöer utgör centrala faktorer för att stärka konkurrenskraften. Istället för att ensidigt fokusera på kompenserande bidrag och subsidier från staten, lyfter Region Västerbotten fram länets näringsliv och kompetensgivare som både givare och mottagare i den regionala utvecklingen.

Humankapitalets och befolkningens betydelse för en utveckling som kännetecknas av kreativitet, förnyelse och omvandling betonas därmed på ett sätt som inte tidigare har förekommit under vare sig Västerbottens eller Norrlands ekonomiska historia. Denna studie, som undersöker den utvecklingspolitiken i de fyra nordligaste länen under perioden 1990-2010, visar på kraften hos och betydelsen av detta politikbyte. När länsstyrelsen hade ansvaret för länets näringspolitik återspeglade tillväxt- och utvecklingsstrategin endast i begränsad utsträckning det mönster som kännetecknade framgångsrika regioner. Inställningen i Norrland till de nya idéer om regioners möjligheter och agerande som växte fram under 1990-talet var defensiv och avvaktande. Det var uppenbarligen svårt att frigöra sig från de mönster som dominerat den norrländska utvecklingsdebatten sedan efterkrigstiden, vilket påverkade regionens konkurrenskraft.

Rapporten har genomförts inom ramen för projektet ACANALYS. Projektet syftar till att utveckla kompetens för analys av hållbar regional utveckling i Västerbotten. ACANALYS bedrivs av CERUM, Umeå universitet och finansieras av EU:s strukturfonder, Region Västerbotten, Västerbottens Läns Landsting, Umeå, Skellefteå och Lycksele kommuner samt stöds av Företagarna Västerbotten och Västerbottens Handelskammare

Due to the cold climate, navigation along the coast lines of the northern regions in Sweden, Finland, Canada, Russia and the United States must negotiate winter conditions which cause ports to freeze over. In order to avoid the negative economic effects of such interruptions, ice-breaking and other measures to facilitate winter navigation have been introduced. This article deals with the introduction of ice-breaking along the coast line of the five northernmost counties in Sweden, the Norrland region, from a perspective that examines and analyzes the underlying decision-making processes. It is concluded that the ability of regional interest groups to link their demands for an improved ice-breaker service to important aims within macro policy such as trade policy, growth policy and regional development policy contributed to the outcome of the decision-making processes. The international competitiveness of the export industries in Norrland was therefore regarded as a national concern during the decision-making processes. Another factor that contributed to the outcome of the decision-making processes was the sectoral organization within the government maritime bodies. Large-scale planning and operational experimentation was allowed to take place within the ice-breaker service, which convinced the government that ice-breaking and winter navigation were a feasible transport alternative.

In the latter part of the 1930s, the direction of Swedish transport and communications policy changed. The policies which had been formed during the industrialization process, which began in the 1850s, had been characterized by dual regimes. Even if the State-owned public utility enterprises (affärsverken) had the largest market shares within these dual regimes, they coexisted with private enterprises. However, during the 1930s and 40s the segments within the Swedish transport and communication infrastructure which were controlled by the private enterprises were nationalized. Against this background, this paper examines how this relation between the Swedish National Power Board (Vattenfall) and the private electricity enterprises unfolded with regard to the control and ownership of the national power grid. 

The national power grid is the infrastructure which provides the transmission of power between the power plants and industries and households. During the examined time period, many hydro power plants were constructed in the northern part of Sweden, which was sparsely-populated and agrarian. Consequently, the electricity they produced had to be transmitted to the industrialized and urban parts in the middle and southern parts of Sweden. This situation actualized the need for an expansion of the national power grid. Consequently, new power transmission lines had to be constructed.

At first, this situation produced a conflict of interest between the Swedish National Power Board on the one hand and the private electricity enterprises on the other hand as they could not agree upon their respective roles in the process. However, after mediation efforts from the government, the previous cooperation within the dual regime was reestablished. As a result, the Swedish National Power Board and the private electricity enterprises would cooperate regarding the construction of the power transmission lines within the national power grid. Over time, this cooperation was considered so successful that they in 1945 planned to form a joint enterprise for the construction and control of the national power grid.

However, the direction of government electricity policy since the last years of the 1930s had been shifting towards emphasizing the need for a State monopoly over the national power grid, rather than upholding the dual regime. At several times, the Social Democratic and Agrarian parties expressed strong suspicion that the private enterprises eventually would put their own commercial interests and not the public interest first if the existing cooperation arrangements were allowed to carry on. In 1946, as a Social Democratic majority government had come into office, the plans for a joint national grid enterprise was rejected. Instead, the Swedish National Power Board was given a monopoly over the national power grid.

The national power grid had then been nationalized just as the railways (in 1939), the trunk roads and highways (in 1944) and the civil airports (in 1946). In the paper, this shift in policy is explained by the ambition of the Social Democrats to use transport policy as an instrument and mechanism to influence the direction of the economy as a whole. As for the national power grid, it was deemed necessary to control the production and distribution of electricity in order to ensure the competitiveness and development of Swedish industry.

Already in 1934, Professor Gunnar Myrdal had outlined the general principles for a Social Democratic transport policy. Myrdal stated that private enterprises in sectors such as transport and communications should be regarded as profit-maximizing agents, which could not serve the public interest as constructed by the political majority in society. Instead, these tasks had to be performed by companies controlled by a public agent. Accordingly, the dual regimes in the transport and communications sector were replaced by State monopolies as the State-owned public utility enterprises amalgated the operations from the private enterprises into their own structures.

In the final part of the paper, this aspect is discussed as an important factor behind the decision to nationalize the transport and communication infrastructure, while other sectors of the economy were left in private ownership (although heavily regulated). Here, an institutionalist perspective is applied. It is argued that as the State-owned public utility enterprises already were dominating agents within their domain, they provided politicians and decision-makers with an existing alternative, into where the private operations only had to be amalgated. As a result, the role of the State-owned public utility enterprises also changed. From being dominating agents in a dual regime, they were transformed into monopolists and would keep that role until the Swedish transport and communication markets were deregulated during the first part of the 1990s. 

This licentiate thesis investigates the decision-making process behind the regulation of winter shipping along the coast of the northern part of Sweden, the Norrland region, in the period 1940-1975. The licentiate thesis examines two aspects of this decision-making process. First, how the regulations in the field of winter shipping were designed in the period. Second, this work examines the underlying factors behind this regulatory outcome on the premise that the regulatory design in the field was the result of an interaction between the regulating actors in the government and their political and economic institutional context.

As for the first issue, it is demonstrated that the period 1940-1975 was characterised by a regulatory ambition to expand winter shipping along the coast of Norrland. This meant that the government made substantial investments in ice-breakers during the period, which gradually expanded the shipping season until the target of year-round shipping even to the northernmost ports was established in the first part of the 1970s. Accordingly, those dues for ice-breaker services proposed by several committees that investigated the issue were never introduced. Instead, government-led ice-breaking has served to compensate Norrland as a peripheral region for its relatively high transport costs.

Regarding the second issue, it is showed that the decision-making process was influenced by developments at different policy levels of the government hierarchy. In the period 1940-1964, when a public authority within the maritime sector emerged and was consolidated, developments at the maritime sector level affected the decision-making process to a large extent. In turn, the period after 1964 witnessed a change in government policy towards the Norrland region as a more interventionist regional and industrial policy than earlier was implemented. This meant that the decision-making process to a larger extent was influenced by factors originating from a macro policy level.

During the decision-making process, actors at both the maritime sector level and the macro level emphasized the importance of government-regulated winter shipping for the regional industrialization of the Norrland region in terms that reflected the aims and interests of their policy levels. In this respect, actors in the maritime sector pointed to the role of winter shipping as a trade policy instrument while actors who represented the interests of regional development policy and industrial policy considered the expansion of winter shipping as crucial in achieving the general ambition to create a geographically egalitarian welfare state, characterised by high levels of growth and low unemployment.

Redan på medeltiden var kungen mån om att hålla samman riket. Bönderna i varje län fick bygga landsvägar. På 1600-talet tillkom gästgivargårdar, där det fanns kost och logi, men även möjlighet att hyra hästskjuts. På 1850-talet byggde staten telegraflinjer och i södra Sverige även järnvägar. Först 1891 nådde emellertid norra stambanan Vännäs och fem år senare även Umeå. Redan 1914 började man dessutom tala om flygplatser. Men det skulle dröja ytterligare ett halvsekel innan dessa började anläggas i Västerbotten.

Denna rapport belyser vad som hänt med turtäthet och trafikutbud i några glesa områden sedan 1989 – då trafikhuvudmannareformen genomfördes. Rapporten ingår i det av Vinnova finansierade projektet Resande i glesa bygder – kvinnors och mäns livsförutsättningar (Dnr 2006-02279), ett projekt som syftar till att belysa och diskutera de olika villkor för dagligt resande och dagligt liv som människor i glesare områden har.

I projektet testar vi tre myter; (i) den om den homogena glesbygden, alltså det faktum att "glesbygden" inte är en, utan många, sinsemellan olika och mer eller mindre områden, (ii) den om förstelnade könsrelationer i glesbygd och (iii) den om en transportpolitik som är anpassad till de behov människor i skilda geografiska miljöer har. I denna rapport knyter vi an till den tredje myten om ensammanhållen och oföränderlig transportpolitik för hela landet. En övergripande trafikpolitisk målsättning är att erbjuda människor och näringsliv i samtliga landets delar en tillfredsställande transportförsörjning. Sedan Länshuvudmannareformen 1988 har stora insatser gjorts för att få till stånd fungerande, för resenärerna attraktiv, och samhällsekonomiskt lönsam kollektivtrafik. Inte minst har olika försök gjorts att finna alternativa trafiklösningar i glesbygd. Det nedslående resultatet är dock att trots många och goda försök fungerar inte kollektivtrafik i glesbygd; passagerarunderlaget är för lågt, länstrafikbolagen kan inte få ekonomi i verksamheten, och resenärerna – både kvinnor och män – väljer bil. Skillnaden mellan politiska mål och faktiskt vardagsliv har till stor del att göra med myten om den oföränderliga glesbygden.

Socialt och ekonomiskt framgångsrika regioner kännetecknas ofta av en hög förmåga till att fånga upp den forskning och de idéer som finns i den nationella och internationella debatten och omsätta dessa till fungerande och effektiva utvecklingsstrategier. Internationella erfarenheter visar även att regioner på detta sätt kan klara av att förnya sig och byta inriktning i perioder av förändrad konkurrenskraft. Framgångsrika regioner blir mot den bakgrunden allt mer beroende av information om sin egen och omvärldens utveckling samt att även bygga upp sin förmåga att hantera sådan kunskap.

Kunskapen om hur denna typ av processer har ägt rum i Västerbotten och Norrland är dock begränsad. För att genera ny kunskap om detta område syftar denna rapport därför till att kartlägga de utvecklingstankar och omvärldsanalyser som kom till uttryck bland forskare i den norrländska utvecklingsdebatten under perioden 1940-1970. Dessa tankar relateras även till idéerna i den allmänna politiska och ekonomiska debatten om Norrland.

Rapporten visar att det fanns en omfattande forskning och debatt om norrländsk ekonomi och samhällsliv under efterkrigstiden. Mycket av det tankegods och de argument som fortfarande präglar norrländsk politik och samhällsdebatt utvecklades under denna period. De idéer som tidigare har präglat en framgångsrik utveckling i samhället är dock inte med nödvändighet gångbara i ett framtida läge då exempelvis snabba omvärldsförändringar ställer nya krav på politisk inlärning. Det är därför nödvändigt för politiker och beslutsfattare att aktivt och med ett kritiskt perspektiv förhålla sig till det material som redovisas i denna rapport.

This article deals with the Nordic Council as a cooperation organ for building transnational roads outside of the E-road network during the period 1956–1966. The Nordic experience of planning and interconnecting transnational roads is related to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) and the development of the E-road network. It is noted that whereas the E-road network built on an ambition within the ECE to create mutual understanding and fraternity between the European nations, the Nordic Council viewed roads as instruments to deal with shared economic and social problems. Another difference is that while the member states of the ECE interacted with societal groups and expert organisations during the interconnection of the E-road network, such actors did not participate directly with the Nordic Council. The inter-Nordic stream of technical expertise was primarily channelled through the national road administrations which cooperated to interconnect the trans-Nordic network.

The aim of this thesis is to understand the decision-making processes concerning ice-breaking along the coast of Norrland, with the specific aim to analyse the activities of regional interest groups in the Norrland region and government agents at different administrative levels at the key stages of the decision-making processes: initiation, drafting and decision-making. The thesis also explores how institutional factors at different administrative levels affected the agents that were involved at those stages of the decision-making processes.

As navigation along the northern Swedish coast must negotiate winter conditions which causes ports to freeze over, the government ice-breaking service functions as an instrument to compensate the export firms in Norrland for these constrains. Year-round navigation in the north Swedish coastal waters was achieved through a series of decision-making processes that took place during the period from 1940 to 1975. These decision-making processes are important to study since ice-breaking was an integrated component of the expanding heavy basic industries in Norrland and thereby for the rapidly growing exports during the 1950s and 1960s. This period is the decisive point in the economic history of the Norrland region regarding how the natural resources should be exploited and how exports should be advanced.

This study concludes that the decision-making processes were initiated by government agents at different administrative levels. Official investigatory commissions were set up at several occasions to deal with issues related to the government ice-breaker service by the ministries responsible for ice-breaker policy. It is also demonstrated that the decision-making processes concerning ice-breaker investments were initiated by the government boards that were responsible for the operation of the ice-breaker service. In this respect, the study concludes that the government activities during the initiation stages should not be confused as a sign of regional interest group passivity on these issues. The activities of the interest groups during the initiation stages were primarily intended to draw attention to the problems caused by winter to regional shipping, in order to put the issue on the political agenda.

As the decision-making processes proceeded into the drafting stages, the participation from regional interest groups was much more significant as the government offered interest groups forums and procedures for structural consulting through various organisational arrangements. The regional interest groups that participated in those arrangements were industrial firms in the heavy basic industries sector. In those cases other regional interest groups participated, they would promote the interests of those firms. As a result, the final drafts from committees and government bodies included arguments that favoured an expansion of ice-breaking to promote the growth of the heavy basic industries in the Norrland region.

The analysis of the decision-making stages suggests that a combination of institutional factors at different administrative levels contributed to the outcome of the decision-making processes. One result is that the general aims of macro policy such as trade policy, growth policy and regional development policy were favourable towards an expansion of the government ice-breaker service, which would benefit the export industries in the Norrland region. Another result is that the sectoral organization within the government maritime bodies contributed significantly to the outcome of the decision-making processes. Large-scale planning and operational experimentation was allowed to take place within the ice-breaker service, which convinced the government that ice-breaking and winter navigation was a feasible transport alternative.

This article examines and discusses how different theoretical perspectives from historical political economy may contribute to the understanding of why the regionalization attempt in northern Sweden has failed. Since cohesion and adaptation at the intermediate level of government has been a crucial factor behind successful regionalization in Sweden, the article focuses on the county council in Västernorrland. It is argued that the long-standing political differences and disputes between agents from different geographical areas within the county council in Västernorrland was one of the most important causes behind the failed regionalization attempt. In order to elucidate these disputes and thereby to increase the understanding of the failed regionalization process, this article deals with three different theoretical perspectives, which complement and interface with each other. The first perspective focuses on voters and elections and is broadly based on the rational choice political theory. The second perspective deals with the role of the bureaucracy and introduces theories related to governance and control. Finally, the third perspective discusses the role of historical institutions such as spatial policy.

When the Swedish state nationalised the mining company LKAB in 1957, it became the sole owner of one of the richest iron ore fields in the world. The government was aware that iron ore was a non-renewable resource and wished to conserve this wealth for future generations by allocating part of the revenue from LKAB to a mineral trust fund. This article investigates the decision-making process that created the LKAB trust fund. We demonstrate that, initially, the Social Democratic government had a dual goal with the LKAB trust fund. On the one hand, it wanted to use the revenue from LKAB to fund applied scientific and technical research to complement research and development within the private sector, thereby aiming to accelerate economic growth. On the other hand, the government were very concerned about the economic development of northern Sweden, where LKAB´s mines were located. It wished to reduce the dependence on natural resource exports and to diversify the regional economy by providing capital for investments in the manufacturing industry. 

However, the government eventually came to the decision that these disparate goals could only be realized by creating two separate funds. One fund, the so-called Ore fund (Malmfonden) was created to fund applied technical and scientific research. The other fund, the so-called Norrland fund (Norrlandsfonden), was created to provide investment capital for manufacturing industries in northern Sweden. The Social Democratic government had strong political ambitions to develop both these areas. To retain its commitment to national growth, it wanted the state to keep technological development in the economy at a sufficient level. The government also had a growing commitment towards spatial cohesion and began to implement active regional policies in northern Sweden. By stimulating investment in manufacturing industries, it hoped to break what was perceived as long-standing structural problems of regional unemployment and unbalanced outmigration.

When the Swedish state nationalised the mining company LKAB in 1957, it became the sole owner of one of the richest iron ore fields in the world. The government was aware that iron ore was a non-renewable resource and wished to conserve this wealth for future generations by allocating part of the revenue from LKAB to a mineral trust fund. This article investigates the decision-making process that created the LKAB trust fund. We demonstrate that, initially, the Social Democratic government had a dual goal with the LKAB trust fund. On the one hand, it wanted to use the revenue from LKAB to fund applied scientific and technical research to complement research and development within the private sector, thereby aiming to accelerate economic growth. On the other hand, the government were very concerned about the economic development of northern Sweden, where LKAB's mines were located. It wished to reduce the dependence on natural resource exports and to diversify the regional economy by providing capital for investments in the manufacturing industry.

However, the government eventually came to the decision that these disparate goals could only be realized by creating two separate funds. One fund, the so-called Ore fund (Malmfonden) was created to fund applied technical and scientific research. The other fund, the so-called Norrland fund (Norrlandsfonden), was created to provide investment capital for manufacturing industries in northern Sweden. The Social Democratic government had strong political ambitions to develop both these areas. To retain its commitment to national growth, it wanted the state to keep technological development in the economy at a sufficient level. The government also had a growing commitment towards spatial cohesion and began to implement active regional policies in northern Sweden. By stimulating investment in manufacturing industries, it hoped to break what was perceived as long-standing structural problems of regional unemployment and unbalanced outmigration.

One debate within the varieties of capitalism approach deals with the significance of institutions below the national level. On the basis of a case study of the loan guarantee system, this article deals with the interaction between institutions and regional actors in Sweden during the formation of post-war regional development policy. We conclude that regional economic problems have been addressed through adaptation of national institutions. From an actor perspective, these results correspond with the revised VoC framework which emphasises that state institutions provide both a framework for business activities and a means for pursuing them.

During the period 1991–2004, political support for the inheritance and gift taxation in Sweden diminished, which contributed to two major policy shifts. In 1991, a new tax schedule which reduced top rates was introduced. The tax was thereafter completely repealed in 2004. In this paper, we examine how background factors such as competitiveness and political legitimacy influenced these decisions. By studying the preceding decision-making processes, we find that the influence of these factors shifted over time and appeared in different combinations. While the 1991 reform was strongly influenced by competitiveness arguments, the repeal of the inheritance and gift tax was primarily a result of the declining legitimacy of the tax.

In this comparative analysis of the UK and Sweden, we consider, if inherited wealth is most deserving of redistributive taxation, then what lessons, if any, may be learned from the difficult paths faced by this tax in these countries. We conclude that the political momentum behind the Swedish family business was distinct, and, possibly, capable of travel to the UK.

This article investigates how the last two decades of Swedish deregulation and liberalization of railwaysand airlines have affected the government procurement of interregional passenger transports in sparselypopulated areas. Regarding railways, our investigation shows that the area traditionally targeted forregional policy received in 2008 slightly more government procured traffic in personal kilometers perpopulation share than in 1989. As for civil aviation, the number of passengers travelling between theStockholm-Arlanda airport and airports in the regional development area had increased substantiallyduring the same period. This continuity of territorial cohesion suggests that while the new procurementpolicies were based on a general ambition to deregulate and liberalize the markets, they still allowed for areproduction and assimilation of certain elements in the previous policy.

As a reaction to emerging regional imbalances, discussions regarding growth centre policy began in the Nordic countries during the latter part of the 1960s. At this time, a working group within EFTA provided a policy option based on international theories from urban and agglomeration economics. Within the actual growth centre policies in Norway, Sweden and Finland, central elements from the EFTA concept related to the scale of the centres were however not adopted. Instead, growth centres were located to places which had a smaller population than the 30 000 inhabitants recommended by the EFTA concept. This outcome was related to the fact that the EFTA concept was adapted to the existing regional policy institutions. As these institutions were egalitarian and redistributive in character, the Nordic growth centre policies favoured a more dispersed settlement structure than suggested by the EFTA concept.

The long time perspective on tax principles and tax policies in this discussion paper identifies some of the most important and relevant contexts for major Swedish tax reforms from 1902 until the present time. Until the 1991 tax reform principles played a significant role in tax law design. The relation between principles and legal concepts was quite consistent.

However, the 1991 tax reform seems to mark the end of a period when Swedish governments, with a certain regularity, initiated tax reforms to tackle contemporary economic and social challenges. In spite of several initiatives, proposed in well investigated study commission reports, no comprehensive tax reforms have been launched during a quarter of a decade. Instead hundreds of small, partial reforms have been implemented in tax law. Together with a new budgetary framework these gradual changes have changed the overall revenue basis for the public sector and the welfare state. In tandem with this development, the policy discourse on taxing for economic growth has increasingly gained in influence.

Even though environmental sustainability, and later also fiscal sustainability, have been prominent in the design of the tax system, we also note that Swedish tax policy has potential to further integrate important economic and social sustainability goals such as gender equality, social inclusion and income distribution.

A result of the study is to show the complexity of a national agenda on tax policy. Legally enshrined goals and principles cannot easily be superseded with tax policies on a supranational level, particularly if these policies are solely drawn from macroeconomic analysis on the mechanisms and trajectories of economic crises.

This paper examines the different elements included in the Swedish partial individual taxation reform in 1971. The purpose is to identify what policy lessons this reform holds for contemporary tax policy in the European Union member states that currently apply joint tax and benefit provisions. Even though contemporary circumstances have changed in relation to the historical context for Swedish reform, the common strand is that the provisions create both inactivity incentives on the labor market and low income traps for secondary earners. We suggest that a shift to individual taxation should be a part of family and social policies that promote gender equality, and that in turn should be consolidated within a sustainable idea about tax fairness.

This article by Pär Malmberg, Jan Ottosson, Martin Eriksson, and Olle Jansson discusses Sweden’s work with industry as part of its total defence concept and whole-of-society approach to national preparedness. The article covers the past and the formative years in the early 1960s, up to the gradual discontinuation of total defence planning at the turn of the 21st century. It also presents the status and possible future developments in the context of changing industrial and geopolitical realities. The focus is on the forms of collaboration and coordination between the State and companies, both private and publicly owned.

Denna studie analyserar hur frågan om fördelning och placering av räntan från de norrländska naturresurserna uppkommit, gestaltats och utvecklats av norrländska företrädare och i den nationella politiken gentemot Norrland under perioden 1850-2016. Utgångspunkten för analysen är att Norrlands utveckling under perioden följer ett mönster som visar stora likheter med vad andra naturresursrika regioner i världen upplevt. Samtidigt har det norrländska förloppet även präglats av unika aspekter relaterade till den svenska välfärdsstatens utveckling samt den svenska ekonomins position i internationell ekonomi under 1900-talet.

Inledningsvis visar vi hur Norrland från 1850 fram till omkring 1940 följde ett mönster för en naturresursrik region i enlighet med vad nordamerikanska ekonomisk-historiker som Douglass C. North och Harold A. Innis beskriver. Naturresursexporten expanderade kraftigt men produktionen kom till följd av regionens alltför svaga strukturer för finansiering och ägande att hamna under exogena aktörer. Genom arbetet med att attrahera investeringar till Norrland kom regionens politiska aktörer däremot att bli medvetna om hur politisk mobilisering och organisering kunde få nationalstatsnivån att tilldela Norrland olika offentliga resurser. Perioden från 1940 till 1990 kännetecknades sedan av en rent-seeking-strategi vars mål var att indirekt återföra delar av den ”förlorade” naturresursräntan till Norrland genom agerande inom det politiska systemet. Norrlandskommitténs betänkande från 1949 satte dagordningen för denna strategi. Ett avgörande argument för en expansion av den statliga Norrlandspolitiken i storlek och omfattning från 1940-talet blev att regionen förtjänade kompensation för den naturresursränta som dittills ofta tillfallit exogena aktörer. Den politiska strategin, där naturresursräntan kopplas samman med offentliga utgifter, blev med tiden så dominerande att den nästan helt trängt undan alternativa utvecklingsstrategier. Det blir särskilt tydligt i vår analys av perioden efter 1990 då de dominerande regionala aktörerna inte förmådde förändra sitt agerande och målsättningar, trots att det fanns tydliga indikatorer på att den traditionella strategin borde ha ifrågasatts.

Den norrlandspolitik som utvecklats efter 1940 kan därigenom betraktas som en kompensation för oförmågan hos företagare och politiker i Norrlands eliter att uthålligt transformera förmögenheter baserade på resursräntor till nya och diversifierade verksamheter i starka urbana strukturer. Regionens politiska strategi har istället varit inriktad på att genom offentliga satsningar och transfereringar återföra räntan från naturresurserna till regionen med så begränsad påverkan på lokaliseringsmönstret som möjligt. Naturresursräntan har använts till att säkra väljarbasen för de politiska eliternas strukturer i allians med den naturresursintensiva basindustrins företrädare och ägare. Därmed har inte heller en förskjutning av fokus i Norrland, en strukturomvandling, från naturresursutvinning till en placering av räntan i urbant lokaliserade förädlande näringar varit aktuell. En starkare direkt regional och icke-politiskt bestämd kontroll av räntan t.ex. via ett decentraliserat ägande av aktier i naturresursnäringar och fastigheter har istället vanligen avvisats av de aktörer som formulerat regionens problem och agenda.

'Modern regional policy,' the territorially directed policies developed after WWII represent only a subset of the measures a central power may use to direct development in its territory. The larger set of policies we denote 'Classical regional policy.' The policies developed in Nordic countries after 1950 could not promote a limited set of cities, although 'growth center policies' had been attempted with some success in France and the UK. Instead, tax and subsidy structures, support for investments, and transport subsidies directed towards less populated areas were favored. We argue that this choice was a result of the political processes in the Nordic welfare states. The attempts to implement growth pole strategies in the Nordic countries are discussed and analyzed in a context where unbalanced growth between regions is generic and the alternatives available to a national power in order not to lose control over its territory are made explicit. The attempts to implement a city-based growth pole-oriented regional policy in Norway, Sweden, and Finland are summarized. We find that such an explicit policy mostly is impossible within 'modern regional policy', but that the pitfalls of this policy in the 1980s led to the 'broad regional policy.' This policy has much in common with the classical policy. However, we also found that such a policy was, to some extent, actually formulated when the location of public facilities was decided.