ABSTRACT
Stressing the importance of rigid constitutions that protect the rules of the market economy from the dangers of popular sovereignty and democracy is a leading theme in the canon of neoliberal thought. Yet, these ideas have seldom been analysed as part of the political rhetoric during the neoliberal era itself. This chapter discusses how a Swedish market-friendly think tank, Timbro, mobilised legalist constitutionalism against social democracy in the 1980s and 1990s. Their arguments ranged from calling for stronger protection of individual rights, particularly property rights, to strengthening of the judiciary in order to restrict the power of the government and the parliamentary majority. The central idea was to reduce the space for politics and democracy to better safeguard the rules of the market. Estimating the impact of Timbro’s publications is difficult. Recent research has found that ‘the Scandinavian rights revolution’ was driven by a range of different actors, many of whom represented quite different political positions from the neoliberals at Timbro. However, this chapter suggests that there are historical, political and philosophical reasons for not underestimating the role of neoliberalism in the judicialisation of the Nordic democracies.
