The Alternative

Abstract

Information agencies set up for business-friendly opinion moulding in Sweden worked actively with similar organizations in the Nordic countries to formulate a pro-business ideological programme after the Second World War. The intent of this so called 'Alternative' was to counteract social democratic ideas of a more state-planned economy. This article contributes to earlier research on how business interest associations in corporatist countries responded to the development of the welfare state in the Keynesian era. Over time, the programme became less about taking an ideological stance in defence of free enterprise and more about dealing with the economic consequences of record growth. Business involvement in cartelization proved difficult to combine with arguments for free competition, free markets, and non-regulated prices. Collaboration as well as new institutions for both formal and informal discussions between labour and capital during the 1950s and 1960s, at least in Sweden, seems to have reduced the sense of urgency for an ideological programme for business. In the end, no Nordic business programme was ever realized.