Flight of the Swedish bumblebee.

AuthorKielos, Katrine
PositionSweden's economic and social models

Once upon a time, a Swiss aerodynamicist had the idea of applying air resistance equations to insects. He made some rough calculations and soon concluded that according to his equations and all scientific knowledge available: bumblebees cannot fly.

With its heavy body and small wings, the bumblebee simply does not have the capacity to get airborne: it doesn't have the degree of wing loading necessary.

The aerodynamicist immediately ran out in his garden to show the equations to the bumblebee. 'You can't fly', he told her. 'It's impossible!'

The bumblebee looked at him. Then she looked at his mathematical model. And then she just carried on flying. From one flower to the next, under the power of her own ignorance.

'Yes we can', as we say nowadays.

Lessons for Europe

The Swedish model is often compared to a bumblebee. Capitalism and high taxes. Profitable industries and strong trade unions. It is not supposed to be able to fly. But it does.

Sweden has established a universal model of social protection: benefits and services based on residence are combined with earnings-related social insurance programmes, strong emphasis on education and active labour market policies as well as flexible labour markets.

In the wake of the present economics crisis this model has attracted new attention: 'Do we really want to turn America into Sweden?', Bill O'Reilly asked as if this was the worst thing he could possibly accuse of Barack Obama (1).

On 1 July 2009, Sweden will take over the Presidency of the EU and this will again put the Swedish welfare state in the spotlight of European policy debate. Many recent studies have in fact suggested that Europe should borrow from Nordic nations rather than adopt the Franco-German model, or Britain's free-market approach.

The Swedish model has been successful, but it has also been a product of very specific historical conditions. The European Union, with its huge wealth and income differences, can't adopt the social model of a small member state like Sweden. What has worked in a small, consensual, and ethnically homogenous country can't be translated into a European social model for the twenty-first century. Discussing social models in that sense is not very useful.

The challenge for the EU today is not to try to replicate one model or even to create a hybrid, but rather to put together a European solution to the problems our societies face. In that sense the Swedish case is useful more as a political framework, than a set of static policies.

I want to argue that the Swedish model in a wider sense was built around three political paradoxes, relationships that, just like the flight of the bumblebee, seem impossible and are useful to discuss in new contexts because they expand the progressive vision. The European progressive movement should study the principles behind the flight of the Swedish bumblebee, not the movement of the wings.

Paradox one: individualism requires a large public sector

How a society is organised is determined in a menage a trois between the state, the individual and the family. The discourse around public policy in every country is based on assumptions about the relationship between the three corners of this triangle.

The Swedish model is focused around a direct relationship between an atomised individual and an impersonal state. The political project of social democracy in Sweden has been very specific and always concerned with liberating the individual from unequal relationships of dependency (Berggren and Tragardh, 2006). This has been branded 'statist individualism'. 'Statist individualism' might sound like a contradiction in terms, like 'peace-keeping missile' or 'progressive conservatism'. But it is perhaps the most important feature of the Swedish model. Comparative studies of attitudes show that Sweden is one of the most individualistic countries in the world. As one commentator put it: 'Like Garbo, the Swedes just want to be alone' (Ekman, 2006).

The political narrative around the welfare state in Sweden has always been about the pursuit of personal autonomy. If grandma can move...

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