Tracing the Nordic model. French creations, Swedish appropriations and Nordic articulations

Kapitel i bok, 2021

This chapter traces the complex transnational circulation of the concepts of the ‘Swedish model’ and the ‘Nordic model.’ First launched in debates on possible alternatives to French stagnation in 1967, the reference to the ‘Swedish model’ was established as a slogan for progressive reform by the political center-right against French socialism in the aftermath of May 68. Initially met with skepticism and resistance by the Swedish social democrats, the concept eventually migrated from the French to the Swedish public sphere in the following decade and became the object of a semantic struggle between Olof Palme’s party and the conservative opposition. It was ultimately appropriated by the social democrats as an electoral slogan in 1976 and articulated as a ‘Nordic model’ as part of a collective rethinking of Scandinavian social democracy facing new challenges in the 1980s. Importantly thus, the chapter reestablishes the political import of the model concept’s historical trajectory prior to its extensive usage in comparative welfare studies and contemporary branding strategies.