Follow the Money: The Political Economy of Swedish Research, 1930-1980

Research Project, 2024 – 2026

Sweden’s history of scientific research and research policy rests on flawed assumptions and data.Previous research, this project holds, has uncritically based its conclusions on discourses produced by scientists.This has resulted in a standard narrative of assumptions; about Swedish post-war research being concentrated in the university sector, about the prevalence of research councils and about dominant political preferences for ‘pure’ or ‘basic’ scientific research. Sweden’s history of scientific research and research policy rests on flawed assumptions and data. Previous research, this project holds, has uncritically based its conclusions on discourses produced by scientists. This has resulted in a standard narrative of assumptions; about Swedish post-war research being concentrated in the university sector, about the prevalence of research councils and about dominant political preferences for ‘pure’ or ‘basic’ scientific research. These ideas seem highly dubious when one examines the actual proportions and targets of funding. This project reiterates the old journalistic maxim of ‘follow the money’ by closely studying how money was distributed to scientific research from the 1930s to the 1970s, a period that witnessed the emergence of government research policies in Sweden. Methodologically, this means that the project will use recently digitalised public sources to produce an empirically informed basis for the history of science and research in Sweden. The studies are guided by questions of economic proportions, how money was distributed and which groups in society governed the research. This project, which combines approaches from economic history and the history of science, aims to produce a new narrative of the political economy of research; one that is free from myths and traded assumptions. It has apparent impact on the historiography of scientific research and will also be important in current debates on science policy.