Fälldin II Cabinet 1979–1981
Reconstituted Centerpartiet–Liberal–Moderate coalition under Thorbjörn Fälldin after the 1979 election. Held the 1980 nuclear-power referendum, absorbed the nationwide Storkonflikten strike-and-lockout, and pivoted Sweden from Keynesian stimulus toward austerity macroeconomic policy.
The Fälldin II Cabinet, headed by Thorbjörn Fälldin, reconstituted the bourgeois three-party coalition between Centerpartiet, Folkpartiet (today’s Liberalerna) and Moderaterna after the September 1979 election. The coalition that had broken apart under Fälldin I over nuclear power put itself back together with a narrow Riksdag majority — and would break apart again, this time over taxes.
The cabinet inherited two policy fronts that defined its short tenure. The first was the 1980 multi-option referendum on nuclear power on 23 March: Option 2 — phase-out at the end of reactors’ technical lifetime — won a plurality and set Sweden’s long path away from nuclear, a path that itself would be reversed only decades later. The second was the 1980 Storkonflikten, the largest labour-market conflict in modern Swedish history: LO and TCO unions faced the SAF employers’ confederation in a nationwide strike-and-lockout after the cabinet failed to deliver an acceptable economic package.
The deeper shift was macroeconomic: across 1980–1981 the cabinet pivoted from Keynesian stimulus to austerity, foreshadowing the harder turn taken by Palme II from 1982. The coalition fractured in 1981 when Moderaterna left over tax policy, leaving Fälldin to continue at the head of the smaller Fälldin III minority cabinet.