Nordic Neoliberalisms : Perspectives on Economic, Social and Cultural Change in the Nordics after 1970

Abstract

Drawing on a cross-disciplinary perspective from history and social science, this book examines what is common to neoliberalism, and where it differs, in four Nordic countries across four key sectors of liberalization: capital markets, labor markets, industrial relations and the welfare state. Assessing its scope and forms, the actors involved, processes and mechanisms, and how it has been experienced by citizens and consumers, the book offers accounts of the historical antecedents of neoliberalism in the Nordics as well as studies of it as lived experience through a fundamentally transformed relationship between citizens and the market and between welfare and the state. It asserts that neoliberalism both shapes and adapts to the political-economic terrain into which it is introduced to form a hybrid relationship of market ideology with distinct indigenous political cultures and political institutions. This book is of key interest to scholars and students of Nordic studies, neoliberalism, political economy and more broadly to contemporary/modern history, sociology, comparative politics, European History and the welfare state.