This study explores the strategies employed by the Swedish Railway Council to influence national railway policy from 1902 to 1967. The Council was a corporatist arrangement and functioned as a broker between industrial and regional interests and the public railways. The results show that though the Council's policy influence in many cases was marginal, there were occasions when the members could use the Council as a tool to influence railway policy, most notably the division of the network into profitable and unprofitable lines, with different forms of government subsidies. The Council's influence increased through a shift in arguments, from a position that tariffs should be high enough to deliver a return on the invested capital, to an emphasis on having tariffs that could support national and regional economic development, even if it created commercial losses. When Swedish transport policy shifted in the 1960s, the Railway Council gradually lost its importance and eventually dissolved.
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.
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 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 diffusion of private cars in Sweden has not yet been examined in a national long-run perspective covering all individuals. This article enquires whether the diffusion of private cars followed the overall socioeconomic and geographical changes in Sweden from 1960 to 1975. In particular, it asks if ownership per capita followed changes in incomes or changes in population density (urbanisation). In the 1960s Swedish traffic and regional policy aimed at making the car an instrument of national integration and regional equality, and making it available throughout the country. This article tracks the effects of that policy. The analysis is based on Swedish parish-scale census material that includes all car owners for the years 1960, 1970 and 1975. The conclusion is that income levels were more important than other explanations for the diffusion of private cars in Sweden between 1960 and 1975. National policy goals regarding cars as means of regional integration and equalisation were not fulfilled up to 1975.
We explore the decisions in Parliament about the Swedish tax deduction for commuting since the 1980s. The aim is to explain the continuity of the tax regulation despite several attempts from motions in Parliament and public investigations to reform it towards environmental goals, e.g., reduced emissions of CO2. When reforms have been proposed, the political majority in Parliament has regardless of political colour voted against and retreated to the original motives for the tax deduction; economic growth and the enlargement of regional labour markets. The interests of Swedish mass motorisation succeeded in finding the arguments to slow down reforms and at the same time reinforce the path dependency by adding new legitimacy to the regulation. If the attempts to reform the tax deduction had been part of a broader reform of the transport sector and the tax system, they might have succeeded in breaking with the old path.