Partisan Strategy at the Post-War Emergence of the British and Swedish Health Systems

A simplistic analysis of Swedish and British politics in the aftermath of the Second World War could lead to a belief that the Swedish welfare state would develop in a more statist, bureaucratised way than its British counterpart. The logic being that Social Democratic hegemony in Sweden should be contrasted with regular periods in office for the British Conservative Party. This paper provides theory and evidence that suggests such an analysis is misleading. Following strategic calculations as to the likely durability of the redistributive aspects of the welfare state in each country, the Swedish Social Democrats were able to pursue a welfare state programme of a far less rigidly statist nature. By contrast, the British Labour Party, fearing future Conservative rule, were constrained to pursue more traditional `nationalised' welfare state structures. The consequence was far more effective redistribution of income in Sweden than the UK.