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The Swedish Model

The Swedish Model is the linked pattern of welfare-state expansion, organised labour-market bargaining and pragmatic parliamentary compromise that shaped Sweden's twentieth-century political economy.

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The Swedish Model is a recurring arrangement rather than a single law. It names the pattern that tied together a broad welfare state, high organisation among unions and employers, collective bargaining, active labour-market policy and parliamentary compromise.

Its older roots run through Folkhemmet, 1933 Crisis Agreement (Kohandeln) and Saltsjöbadsandan. Its post-war form appears in welfare reforms, centralised wage bargaining and the long Social Democratic governing era. Later conflicts over wage-earner funds, EU membership, school choice, migration and NATO changed the model rather than simply ending it.

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