Swedish Elections—a Test for Socialism?

It was widely, and correctly, noted after the defeat of Sweden’s Social Democratic party that the new “bourgeois” government was unlikely to turn back the clock on the welfare-state policies for which Sweden is renowned. (Swedes, including members of these parties themselves, generally refer to the nonsocialist parties as de borgerliga partierna—”the bourgeois parties.”) This is not necessarily because a majority of nonsocialist voters do not desire cutbacks: survey data show that a majority of nonsocialist voters believe welfare spending should be cut back, and a not insignificant minority among nonsocialist voters believes in radical changes away from government “interference.” That ...