Individuals, Alone. The Liberal Turn in the Nordic Welfare State Model

• In Event: 4261 - Popular Support, Perceptions, and Political Discourse: Welfare states in cross-national comparison

Abstract

Nordic welfare states have been under neoliberal attacks since the early 1980s, when the financial markets were liberalized. The criticisms have referred to the fiscal crisis of the state as well as to competitiveness of the national economies, but also to issues of freedom to choose, self-responsibility, and rights to earn money instead of paying high taxes. Yet the welfare state institutions are still in place and no essential long-term cuts can be seen: public insurance, health, education, child and senior care, and labor policy, are maintained. This paper argues that the criticisms have been directed more against the state than against welfare. The Nordic states, with their Lutheran state churches, have stressed normative uniformity, which eroded radically as the post-war generation came of age in the 1960s and 1970s. The welfare state itself has successfully promoted individual autonomy, followed by the “artistic critique” (Boltanski and Chiapello) against cultural homogeneity, stressing not only the sovereignty of individuals but also their right to intimacy and difference. The uneasy blend of autonomy and intimacy has sought solutions in neutralizations (Carl Schmitt), divisions between the public and the private, and governance from a distance (Foucault). This background is today reflected in neo-populist discourse as simultaneous defense of welfare rights and attacks on the state that is supposed to assure it.

Author

• Pekka Juhani Sulkunen, University of Helsinki