ABSTRACT
The well documented difficulties facing the ‘Swedish Model’, in the aftermath of its peak during the early 1970s, have been in large part the consequence of successive economic policy mismanagement. This included mistimed fiscal interventions, inappropriately lax policies that did not suppress excess profits, and consequently, failure to prevent compensatory, yet inflationary wage increases that undermined international competitiveness. Nevertheless, even if these had been avoided, there is considerable evidence to suggest that the social democratic strategy would have experienced significant internal and external challenges, which threatened the future development of traditional solutions (Ingebritsen, 1998:60).
