Palme I Cabinet 1969–1976
Single-party Social Democratic government under Olof Palme that rewrote the constitution, abolished bicameralism, and massively expanded the welfare state — and which had to govern the 1973–1976 Riksdag through cross-bloc consensus and, on tied votes, by drawing lots.
The Palme I Cabinet, headed by Olof Palme, governed Sweden from 14 October 1969 to 8 October 1976 as a single-party Socialdemokraterna minority government, continuing 33 years of unbroken Social Democratic rule begun under Per Albin Hansson and continued by Tage Erlander.
Constitutionally it was the most ambitious cabinet of the post-war period. It pushed through the 1971 switch from bicameralism to a unicameral Riksdag, and the new Instrument of Government adopted in 1974 stripped the monarchy of formal political power. On welfare policy it added universal dental insurance, expanded supplementary unemployment assistance, and launched parental allowances in 1974, then strengthened labour-market regulation through the 1974 Employment Protection Act (LAS) and the 1976 Co-determination Act (MBL).
The 1973 election produced an exact 175–175 split between the socialist and bourgeois blocs in the new unicameral chamber — the lotteririksdag. The cabinet survived three years of bill-by-bill negotiation with the opposition and a small number of literal lottery decisions on tied votes. Foreign-policy posture turned the cabinet into a global lightning rod: Palme’s 1972 condemnation of the US bombing of Hanoi froze relations with Washington and made Sweden a vocal supporter of Third World liberation movements.
The cabinet was defeated in the September 1976 election, ending forty years of unbroken Social Democratic government and bringing in the Fälldin I cabinet of the bourgeois bloc.