Renegotiating the Swedish Social Democratic Settlement: From Pension Fund Socialism to Neoliberalization

Abstract

Steering a middle course between the strong neoliberalization thesis and arguments that deny that neoliberalization has occurred, this article accounts for the complex and hybridic shift in Sweden from pension reform through share ownership as a socialist strategy to an as-of-yet incomplete and contradictory neoliberal process. Noting the broader significance of Sweden for the international debate over pension reform, the article unpacks the concept of "mass investment culture" to discern the significant headway toward neoliberalization in Swedish pension savings and provision while still noting profound sources of crisis tendencies.

A State‐centred Explanation of the Finance‐Pension Nexus: New Zealand's Pension Reforms as a Typical Case

“…It maintains that in processes of pension privatization political elites do not simple respond to the expressed preferences and lobbying efforts of financial companies; rather, they pursue their own interests by using private pensions as instruments of facilitating economic and financial development, as well as of the sustainability of public finances. In the previous literature, studies on funded pension reforms in Sweden and Japan (Pontusson ; Estévez‐Abe ; Belfrage and Ryner ) and also in Latin American countries such as Chile (Brooks ) have already confirmed the influence of governments' own economic concerns, so that it seems reasonable to assume that there are also other incidences to which a state‐centric model applies. Also, the mutation of public pension reserve funds into ‘piggy banks’ (Casey ) to tame public debt in the wake of the recent financial and debt crisis illustrates the use of such an explanation (examples are Ireland and France).…”

Caring for Debts: How the Household Economy Exposes the Limits of Financialisation

“…Other scholars of financialisation and the everyday have investigated how households are integrated into global financial markets through new investment and pensions schemes (Langley, 2008;Belfrage and Ryner, 2009), debt-fuelled highly leveraged housing markets (Schwartz and Seabrooke, 2008;Montgomerie and Büdenbender, 2014) and the creation of a debt safety net (Montgomerie, 2013;Soederberg, 2013). Taken together, these sources, at times implicitly, convincingly make the case that the household is the feedstock of global financial markets.…”

Swedish Trade Union Consent to Finance‐led Capitalism: A Question of Time

“…113–19). Furthermore, the hollowing‐out of public pensions, the encouragement of private pension savings, and the 1999 pension reform have deepened ‘everyday’ financialization on the retail side (Belfrage and Ryner 2009).…”