ABSTRACT

During recent decades, the Swedish welfare state has weathered several crises, while its economy and public finances still perform strongly. However, the ways in which it is governed has transformed substantially since the 1990s. This chapter focuses on the processes of re-regulation and recalibration that Swedish social policies have undergone since 1995, focusing specifically on funding and administration and overall performance in such areas as pension policy, labour market and unemployment policy, education policy, healthcare and family policy, housing, social assistance, and migration policy. We argue that through mostly incremental implementation of privatisation, financialisation, and administrative overhaul, Sweden was led to the top rankings in inequality and segregation in the developed world.