ABSTRACT
This chapter interprets the 1990 Food Policy legislation at a somewhat more systematic level as one of many signs that core institutions and relationships of Sweden's governance regime the "negotiated economy" are unraveling and that the country's distinction as a "middle way" between unfettered capitalism and bureaucratic centralism may be waning along with the twentieth century. The negotiated economy is embedded in specific historically evolved class relations and sociocultural conditions. The new Food Policy calls for decentralization of many programmatic decisions, and farmers' agents dominate the County Agricultural Boards that will allocate public funds for such programs as landscape preservation and rural development. The negotiated economy has been described as a dialectical interaction among markets, democratic processes, bureaucracy, and negotiations. Readiness to phase out import protection and export subsidies was in reality a Swedish bargaining chip in the current trade negotiations of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
