ABSTRACT
Sweden has long been known for both for its domestic welfare state and its embrace of international humanitarian ideals. For many years, expansive social investments in Sweden and ambitious development projects across the globe have seemed to constitute a unified commitment to solidarity and equality at home and human rights and development aid abroad. In this chapter, I will explore the historical roots of these two – sometimes competing, sometimes converging – conceptions of Swedish national identity and also consider the contemporary challenges facing Sweden as it seeks to live up to these ideals. A key question is whether it is possible to scale up this social contract from the national to the global level in an age of migration and economic globalization. Or, conversely, is the Swedish model doomed to remain a strictly national project, dependent on “clearly defined boundaries”?
