ABSTRACT
It is commonly thought that the Swedish third sector is not very developed because of the existence of an extensive welfare state, but reality differs from this widespread perception. In fact, the Swedish third sector consists of some 200,000 organisations that manage an aggregated input of nearly 400,000 manyears of paid or voluntary labour – a volume that is fully comparable with that of other Western European countries (Lundström and Wijkström 1998). However, the sector’s activity profile and the associations which characterise it differ from their European counterparts. Traditionally, Swedish third-sector organisations engaged primarily in the fields of culture, leisure, adult education and interest representation. Relatively few organisations were engaged in actual production of goods or welfare services (Stryjan and Wijkström 1996). The institutional roots of this situation will be outlined in the opening sections of this chapter.
