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Actors Behind Contention Over the Welfare State in the 1980s
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Government.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3645-0399
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Government.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-0715-6492
2023 (English)In: Social Movements in 1980s Sweden: Contention in the Welfare State / [ed] Hill, Helena; Brink Pinto, Andrés, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, p. 27-53Chapter in book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

The 1980s has been described as a time when there was a ‘neoliberal turn’ in public and political debate. In Sweden, many of these new ideas focused on the size and organisation of the welfare state. Although the government implemented a few reforms in the 1980s, activists mobilised many welfare-state-related protests. In this chapter, we describe the trends of these actions and investigate which actors were behind these protests. Our findings show that trade unions and client groups of the welfare state were particularly active, and this aligns well with research on the retrenchment of the welfare state that has shown unions’ and client groups’ opposition to cutbacks everywhere. The third group that we expected to mobilise concerning welfare state issues comprised the proponents of neoliberal reforms, such as pro-business groups. Similar to other studies on the rich people’s movement, we show how these groups seldom choose visible actions, but when they do, they have the resources to organise significant and spectacular events. For example, the Fourth of October demonstration in 1983 was one of the largest demonstrations organised in Sweden. We also note that the mobilisation in the 1980s could not stop the significant welfare retrenchment that followed during the 1990s.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. p. 27-53
Series
Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements ((PSHSM)), ISSN 2634-6559, E-ISSN 2634-6567
Keywords [en]
trade unions, client groups, retrenchment, protest
National Category
Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalisation Studies)
Research subject
Political Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-501292DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-27370-4_2Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85158157464ISBN: 978-3-031-27372-8 (print)ISBN: 978-3-031-27370-4 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-501292DiVA, id: diva2:1754854
Available from: 2023-05-04 Created: 2023-05-04 Last updated: 2024-12-05Bibliographically approved

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Jansson, JennyUba, Katrin

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