ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the way in which successive Swedish governments have put in place political and bureaucratic structures of decision-making designed to organise government funding to control research so that it is tailored to meet the demands of political and economic interests. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of European communism Sweden's welfare system has been undergoing a process of degeneration. Since the collapse of the USSR, reference to the Swedish Third Way between communism and capitalism is hardly ever made in Swedish politics. Key sectors of Sweden's welfare such as public health, housing and education have experienced falling standards and creeping privatisation. It is therefore not surprising that this is also reflected in terms of the financing and organisation of research. A radical and far-reaching reform of contract research funding was introduced in 2001, creating a new system of funding bodies with a new organisation and a new more uniform structure of decision-making.
