ABSTRACT
At least as far as Western Europe is concerned, conventional wisdom associates the nationalisation of industry with left-wing government and privatisation with right-wing government. From this perspective, Sweden represents something of a paradox. In no other West European country has a reformist working-class party (or any other type of left party) held government office for so long; yet public ownership of industrial/commercial enterprise is quite limited by comparative standards. While public expenditures increased greatly as a proportion of Sweden’s Gross Domestic Product, State enterprise barely kept up with the expansion of the economy as a whole during the Social Democratic government tenure of 1932-76. The paradox here becomes particularly pronounced when we turn to the period since 1976. For the so-called ‘bourgeois parties’—Liberals, Centre, and Conservatives-nationalised more industry during their first three years in office than the Social Democrats had done in the previous 44 years. And since they returned to office in 1982, the Social Democrats have undertaken several privatisation measures.
