Retrenchment without Liberalisation: Making Sense of Sweden's Shift Away from Consensual and Evidence-Based Politics

Fifteen years ago, Bergh and Erlingsson (2009) argued that Sweden's period from 1980 to 2000 was characterised by “liberalisation without retrenchment”. This resulted from pragmatic policymaking, a consensus-building governmental inquiry system, and close links between policymakers and academics. We use new data to confirm that total tax revenue and economic freedom increased in Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s. After 2000, however, the trends reversed: between 2000 and 2020, taxes, welfare state generosity, and economic freedom declined. To explain the shift from “liberalisation without retrenchment” to “retrenchment without liberalisation”, we explore seven tentative explanations: 1) changes in the system of government commissions, 2) social media’s impact, 3) deteriorating relations between politics and academics, 4) the death of bloc politics and increasing fragmentation of the party system, 5) the decline of corporatism and the rise of lobbying, 6) changes in the policies promoted by the European Union and the OECD, and 7) younger politicians in parliament and government.