SWEDEN

During the period under review, the electoral process was free and fair. The electoral system leaves the nomination of candidates to the political parties and their organizations. The legal framework of candidate nomination does not discriminate against any group or individual. The selection of the respective top candidates of the Swedish parties is an event intensively observed by the media and the public.
Since the national election in 1998, there is the opportunity to indicate preferences not just for a particular party but also for specific candidates. However, as of today, few voters have exercised the opportunity to indicate support for a particular candidate. This voting has been used by approximately 25% of the electorate and a declining trend is observable.

All candidates and parties have equal opportunities of access to the national media and other means of communication. However, specific parties are more extensively covered by media outlets that share the respective political attitudes. During the period of review, a right-wing party (Sverigedemokraterna, SD), founded in 1988, gained ground in the national electoral process. The biggest newspapers refused to publish advertisements of this party. However, currently the SD has accessed national media, albeit the evaluation of the party in most national news-papers is critical.

It is noteworthy that in Sweden, as in many other European countries, the usage of new media and new forms of information is increasing. In this respect, the national electoral process is observed in “old media” such as newspapers and TV but increasingly also in the internet with specific forms of advertisement, information and political campaigning.

Social media have been deemed increasingly important for private campaigns. It is not clear what role those media will play in election campaigns after the individual candidate preference indication system has been abolished.

The Swedish electoral system meets the highest requirements in terms of eligibility, transparency and the right to participate. For a long time, national turnout has been comparatively high.

Political parties in Sweden receive public financial support. From October 2009 until October 2010, the parties represented in parliament (Riksdagen) received SEK 164 million (approximately €17 million) from the state, contributed to the parties in regard to their relative strength. One party not included in the parliament, the right-wing SD, received SEK 990.000 because of the votes gained in the national election in 2006. In addition, the members of parliament receive further public support for several duties they have to accomplish (SEK 249 million, approximately €26 million). Of course, Swedish parties receive support from private sources too. There is no legislation that requires the parties to disclose the private sources of financial support. The political party organizations argue that by disclosing the names of donors they would compromise their political integrity. There is a voluntary agreement among the parties to disclose their budgets to each other but names of specific donors are not included. There is no public institution that effectively monitors contributions to the party organizations. However, despite the lacking legal framework, the intensive observation of party politics in the media and the public discussion about this salient issue makes corruption less probable compared to problems disclosed recently in other countries such as the UK or Finland.

Media freedom in Sweden is valued and well-protected. The Swedish constitution’s Freedom of the Press Act and the Fundamental Law on Freedom of Expression guarantee a secure freedom of the press.
Sweden’s state-owned radio (SR) and TV channels (SVT) have a long history as public service corporations. The incumbent governments appoint the respective boards. However, there is no evidence that Swedish governments have ever sought to use that position to control programs, productions or the political statements put forward in the public media. The Swedish Radio Act and charters between the government and SVT guarantee the independence of public media from pressure groups and political parties.
As a result of recent deregulation, the supply of private radio and TV media increased significantly. There is no evidence that these private media are influenced by the state, political parties or pressure groups.
Print media are privately owned. The private media are independent from government influence. Despite concentration of print media in some organizations and companies, these media are independent from political or financial pressures. The public places a great deal of importance on the degree of freedom of the media.
It is noteworthy that trust is especially high in public media (TV and radio), whereas trust into private media (especially TV) is lowest in Swedish society.

There is a high degree of pluralism in the media market with intense competition among different groups of publishers and consortia. In the period under review, concentration of private media increased further. However, the EU and the Swedish public have followed this process of increasing concentration with a critical view .
As in other countries, the growing importance of social media (internet, blogs etc.) should be noted. Because they operate outside the regulated and official structures of the media market, they provide new patterns of public debate. Political parties react to this trend and try to invest in new forms of campaigning in the internet. It remains to be seen if this trend will counteract the ongoing concentration in the private media market.

Sweden is a forerunner when it comes to public access of government information and documents. This fundamental principle remains cherished both by the elite and the public. If anything, the emergence of e-government has further promoted the objective of accessibility and transparency. Sweden is also pursuing greater transparency within the EU Commission.

Sweden represents a typical state under the rule of law in which a constitution defines all aspects of public, political and administrative processes. Legal security, equal treatment and predictability remain core values of public administration. That having been said, Sweden has been repeatedly criticized by international NGOs such as Amnesty International for purported flaws in the legal system and the exercise of the law. Examples include holding suspects in custody without trial for longer periods than allowed and extraditing Swedish citizens suspected of terrorism to the CIA without proper trial.
Furthermore, organized crime has taken a hold in the metropolitan regions in Sweden. A number of individuals have been the victims of extortion for “protection.” National police have made curbing organized crime a priority and crack down on these groups with increasing frequency. However, in terms of the infringement of individual freedom caused by private actors such as organized crime, this is a very real and growing problem. The incumbent government included increased spending to the police and the judicial system into the crisis package after the financial crisis. It remains to be seen if this will contribute to increasing public security and civic rights in times of increasing organized crime.

Political liberties and human rights are written into the constitution. As an advanced democracy, the judicial system and legislative institutions in Sweden effectively sustain these liberties .

Together with Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands, Sweden ranks as one of the most egalitarian societies in the world. Sweden has in many ways led the struggle for equal opportunities, equality in political representation and in the labor market. However, there are, for example, still wage differences (which are in fact increasing) between men and women doing the same job; there are few women on the boards of major corporations, and so on. Sweden’s ombudsman system includes an ombudsman for gender discrimination cases. While cases of gender discrimination are rare, they still exist.

In terms of physical ability, in 1994, Sweden introduced a rights-based legislation stating that people with severe dysfunctions should be entitled to a personal assistant to help her/him through his/her daily routines. This legislation marked a significant financial commitment by the state in the excess of SEK 10 billion (approximately €1 billion) per annum but seems not to have significantly improved the lives of people with physical dysfunctions. More recently, the National Agency for Social Insurances has begun to reassess the conditions under which physically challenged people should be entitled to a personal assistant. There are reports in the media about people with severe handicaps who are now about to lose their personal assistant.

Sweden is an increasingly heterogeneous society in terms of ethnicity. Integration policies are highly contested in the public debate. The Discrimination Ombudsman, however, ensures the visibility of ethnic discrimination and boosts the public debate. In this respect, the Swedish government critically reports on the degree of unsuccessful ethnic integration. After the election in 2006, the centre-right government installed for the first time in history a non-native citizen (Mrs. Nyanco Sabuni) as Minister of Integration and Gender Equality.

Sweden is a strong constitutional state (“Rechtsstaat”). Lawfulness, transparency and procedural fairness are core values of the Swedish democracy. Sweden belongs to a group of countries where the law is the key instrument of public decision-making. Corruption is all but non-existent.
As in many countries, however, market-based administrative reforms in the past challenged to a certain extent the legality of public administration. Redefining citizens into “customers” challenges much of the individual’s legal basis for his/her interaction with public services . These reforms may threaten entrenched norms such as equal treatment. During the period of review, no evidence can be reported that these reforms undermined legal certainty and predictability of the government and public administration. Additionally, the Ombudsman of Justice surveys the rule of law in Sweden.

The Swedish system of judicial review functions well. In contrast to, for example, Germany or the United States, judicial review in Sweden is not so elaborate and central to the legislative process. Nevertheless, under the Swedish constitution, courts are allowed to ignore legislation, which they find to be inconsistent with the constitution. In addition, Sweden has a system of judicial preview where the Council on Legislation (“lagrådet”) is to be consulted on all legislation that potentially or actually relates to constitutional matters. The institution’s review (or preview) goes beyond that assignment and nowadays includes an overall assessment of the quality of the proposed legislations. The government and the parliament have the right to ignore the Council’s advice.

The justices in the Supreme Court (“Regeringsrätten”) are appointed by the Cabinet. They are not considered to be political appointments. Candidates do not state a party preference and the only criteria for eligibility are judicial expertise and tenure. There is modest media coverage of the appointments. The reason for this may be that the Swedish Supreme Court is not a political body like in Germany or the United States. Its key roles are to serve as the final court of appeal and to set precedence on judicial matters. The neutrality of the Swedish Supreme Court can be judged as very high.

Sweden is, comparatively, one of the countries with the lowest corruption. Furthermore, trust in the institutions of the Swedish democracy and in Swedish administration is high by any international comparison. The very few cases of alleged corruption that have surfaced over the past couple of years have mainly occurred at the local government level. The low frequency of corruption may simply not be tempting, given the size of the public sector and the fairly extensive autonomy of civil servants. Despite this, however, the rule of law remains still strong and there have been very few cases of actual or alleged corruption.

The trajectory of economic development over the past decade in Sweden has been very positive. Sweden chose not to join the euro zone but its economy has consistently fared better than the euro zone countries in terms of key parameters such as inflation rate, unemployment and budgetary balance. Both the previous and the current governments can be described as financially conservative; reform is influenced by a constant close look at the economy and a fear of building up budgetary deficits.
In 2006, the center-right government inherited a flourishing economy and pursued two economic goals. First, the government launched further measures to increase employment. The main pillar of this strategy is the gradual introduction of an earned-income tax credit scheme. Second, the center-right government pursued further privatization measures of the large public sector in Sweden. And the government announced its intention to reassess the core welfare programs, to provide more choice in welfare services (education, health services etc.) and to reduce the number of persons permanently on welfare support.
The main economic problem in Sweden is how to combine economic change with economic growth and generous welfare programs. The corner stone of the Swedish model is the capability to tax Swedish firms and citizens in order to maintain fiscal solidity in an encompassing welfare state.
Since 2008, the center-right government implemented far-reaching crisis packages in order to dampen the impact of the global financial crisis. Immediate policies targeted stabilizing the Swedish financial system with an openness towards volatile East-European financial systems. In a second step, the government introduced discretionary fiscal stimuli in order to stabilize domestic demand and employment. However, the government implemented fiscal crisis policies rather slowly. As a consequence, the budgetary deficits increased slightly. The government forecasts a rapid return to balanced budgets and fiscal consolidation. This will depend on the development of the international economy and the development of open unemployment in Sweden, which has increased significantly since 2008.

A peculiarity of Swedish politics is that the battle against unemployment is a policy priority shared by all political parties. Swedish labor market policies have traditionally been built on heavy investments in active labor market policies, keeping unemployment rates very low until the crisis of the 1990s. Unemployment then began to grow, hovering at moderate levels until the global financial crisis of 2008, after which open unemployment reached 10%. A prominent contemporary problem is high youth unemployment.
Once highly regulated, the Swedish labor market has undergone some deregulation since the 1990s. Nevertheless, powerful trade unions continue to defend specific labor market regulations and have vehemently criticized European deregulation measures. Swedish employers’ organizations, however, support further deregulation and greater flexibility in negotiating conflicts. During the period under review, wage negotiations conducted rather smoothly, but the ambitious attempt to renegotiate the Swedish model of labor market rules (Saltsjöbadsavtalet) failed because of diverging goals between labor and capital.
During the economic crisis, the center-right government increased spending on active labor market policies and education measures. However, open unemployment continued to increase significantly, and youth unemployment in particular remained unaffected. However, Swedish active labor market policies are expected to reduce long-term unemployment numbers efficiently.
The center-right government also took highly controversial steps to remove the state fiscally from (voluntary) unemployment schemes. As a result, membership fees have shot up since 2007, compelling many Swedes to opt out of these unemployment insurance plans and thereby annul their membership in the trade unions administering the plans. Sweden now has a significant number of unemployed without unemployment insurance. During the crisis, the government increased public transfers to unemployment insurance schemes, but the government did not install old rules.

Sweden is usually ranked among the top three in the world in terms of research and development spending per capita. The government has made research and development a priority for a long time. In addition, the state has long had programs aimed at supporting the creation of new (small) businesses. Enterprise policy has been able to achieve the goals of fostering innovation and global competitiveness. The linkages from innovation and prototype creation over to industrial concepts are highly problematic in Sweden.
Scholars observing innovation policy in Sweden refer to it as “the Swedish paradox,” which circumscribes precisely this strange pattern of high levels of innovation spending and very low output in terms of new businesses created as a result of that spending. It is not clear what explains this paradox. An EU study shows that Swedes are the most risk-averse group within the EU, and the idea of starting a business that will not be profitable seems to be daunting to Swedes.
Partly related to this paradox, corporate investment is extremely low in Sweden - among the lowest among the OECD group of countries. Investment in research and development is high, but investing in manufacturing industry is very low.

Swedish tax policy is highly contested – in the political arena in Sweden as well as in the scientific literature. Beyond diverging evaluations, it seems fair to state that by and large the Swedish tax system meets the goals of maintaining equity, competitiveness and sufficient public revenues. It should be noted that total tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is highest in Sweden (and Denmark) compared to other OECD countries.
The current center-right government introduced an earned-income tax credit scheme. Since its time in office, three major tax cuts have been implemented. The redistributive effects of the tax cuts seem to be a growing gap between rich and poor. A study presented by the Ministry of Finance in April 2010 suggests that people with high incomes have benefited more from tax cuts than people with moderate income and that men have gained more than women. Thus, the equity of the tax system appears to have been weakened by the reforms of the center-right government.
There is currently a budget deficit in the Swedish economy. The opposition parties of the left criticize the government for financing tax cuts and generating a budget deficit, thereby threatening the goal of sound public finances. It is extremely difficult to assess to what extent the budget deficit is related to the financial crisis or whether it is on account of tax cuts. But it seems to be the case that the financial crisis is a major explanation. That does not change the fact that tax cuts are financed by international borrowing and that the balance of public budgets is threatened (albeit to a lesser extent than in most other European countries). It remains to be seen if the current government can combine tax cuts in times of economic turmoil with increasing tasks of the welfare state while maintaining the goal of sound public finances.
Corporate taxation rates, which are linked more directly to competitiveness and business innovation, rank clearly below the average of all OECD countries (and are among the lowest in Western Europe). The tax system is frequently criticized by the business community for being bureaucratic and insensitive to business needs, thereby constituting a disincentive to start new businesses.
With the partial exception of the current financial crisis, the tax system delivers sufficient resources to the public sector. Or, more correctly, the public sector adjusts its services to the resources made available through taxes. If the measures of the center-right government to deregulate the framework for start-up business are effective, remains to be seen.

With the exception of the current financial crisis, the Swedish budget and economy has been in balance since the mid-1990s. Since then, fiscal and budgetary discipline has been extraordinarily strong and the Ministry of Finance has secured a leading role in government. Taxes have not been stable, as three major tax cuts have been implemented over the past four years. Overall, however, there is a high degree of stability in budgetary politics. The OECD emphasizes the norm-based budgetary framework that enabled the consolidation of public budgets during the recent past. Because of the impact of the global financial crisis, discretionary fiscal policies somehow eroded the norm-based budgetary process. Nevertheless, the budgetary policy is fiscally sustainable (in fact, fiscal sustainability in Sweden is ranked among the highest in the EU).

The health care sector in Sweden has been subject to more or less continuous reform – as is the case in most other OECD countries. In the latest wave of reform, greater emphasis was put on primary care units as the first point of entry for people in need of health care.
Traditionally, health care in Sweden is public and organized by the counties (“landsting”). In recent years, health care has been gradually privatized. The center-right government further strengthened this policy. Today health care providers are allowed to make indefinite profits, a reform that the opposition social-democratic party after some hesitation backed.
In the past, the efficiency of health care was highly contested. Long waiting periods and restrictions on free choice of care have been criticized the most. The center-right government improved the options of the patients. During the economic crisis, the counties were confronted with fiscal problems that eroded their capacity to provide qualitatively satisfying health care. The government subsidized the counties in order to restore the quality of health care and to avoid dismissals in the health care sector. In total, privatization reduced the number of beds in hospitals as private providers were forced to contain costs.
A specific reform project in the period under review targeted dental care. Due to deregulation, private costs of dental care increased. The center-right government introduced a voucher system that subsidizes private costs to a certain extent. Furthermore, the government tried to install market transparency for the patients.
Health care in Sweden suffers – as in most other OECD countries – from governance problems. Currently, the health care sector is in a state of flux. It remains to be seen if continuing privatization increases the efficiency of the system (or undermines it). Today, the Swedish health care system provides high-quality care for the majority of the population. The cost efficiency is challenged by demographic changes, like in most OECD countries.

Sweden ranks extremely high on all indicators on social inclusion and equality. A universal welfare state has been in place for several decades and although there are signs of growing inequalities in terms of disposable income, social exclusion is still very rare in Sweden. Rising income inequalities and problems of integration for non-Swedish citizens are discussed intensely in public. Currently, the values of equality, integration and community (“Gemeinschaft”) still prevail in Swedish politics and society.
The main challenges to this pattern are, first, the increasing heterogeneity of the community in terms of ethnicity, where immigrants find it difficult to become fully integrated socially and in the workplace. However, the much debated threat of welfare tourism, i.e. EU citizens coming to Sweden in order to benefit from universal welfare programs, did not become a real problem. Second, globalization has given the government incentives to cut taxes in order to make businesses more competitive.
There are still homeless people in Sweden and people with limited material security and poor life chances. But this implies no detraction to the overall integrative character of the Swedish welfare state.

The basic idea in Swedish family policy is that the public sector should provide daycare for pre-school children and that there should be a parental insurance system that allows parents to take about a year off from work when a baby is born. These support systems have long been in place. There has been a sustained debate between the parties on the left and those on the right about whether there should also be a public subsidy (a so-called “vårdnadsbidrag”) for parents who choose to stay at home with their children.
The current center-right government advocates such a subsidy. The leftist opposition parties argue that such a subsidy will effectively prevent the mother from continuing her professional career after she has had a baby. Since women usually have a lower salary than men it would be much more common for women to use the subsidy than men, the argument goes. The government’s response to this critique has been that the subsidy facilitates choice, something which the parental leave insurance does not. In conclusion, the center-right government introduced a framework legislation that opened the way for the communes to introduce such schemes. Hence, it remains to be seen how many women or men will use this new scheme. In both models, the government’s family policy programs are generous by any international comparison.
It should be noted that family policy in Sweden is viewed in the context of gender policy, i.e. to what extent different family policy programs also promote gender equality. The current government has introduced a one-month extension of the paid parental leave, provided the father uses it. Today, about 50 percent of fathers go on parental leave for some time. However, only somewhat less than a third of the total parental leave support goes to men. Thus, women still use the parental leave program to a much larger extent than men. Despite these reservations, Swedish family policy is still in many aspects a model for other OECD countries.

The Swedish pension system underwent reforms in the 1990s. The previous so-called ATP system, which based pensions on the 15 years of highest income, was replaced by a system which based pensions on an individual’s accumulated earnings over an entire lifespan. Additionally, the reform introduced the possibility of investing a certain portion of retirement savings in an individual investment fund (“premium reserve”).
The system recalibrated burden-sharing in the Swedish pension system. Many people in the workforce sign private pension insurance schemes to secure the standard of living after retirement. Additionally, occupational pensions increased during the recent decade and became an important supplement in retirement provision.
Estimations show that the fiscal sustainability of the Swedish pension system is high compared to other OECD countries. Past reforms enabled this performance. Nevertheless, the retirement age is still an issue discussed controversially in the public. The risk of poverty caused by old age seems low in Sweden, especially for those who had a long working career and could supplement their retirement income with occupational pension schemes. The equity between the generations in the pension system is difficult to assess. Most studies state that the reform did not erode inter-generational equity – as long as the entry into the labor market for the adolescent generation is not blocked. The current problem of high youth unemployment, therefore, will determine the degree of inter-generational equity in the long run.

Swedish integration policies cover a wide range of measures (from language training programs to supportive labor market policies). However, the integration of immigrants has not yet fully been solved economically, socially or culturally. Unemployment among immigrants is higher than among Swedes. Cultural integration is slow to some extent depending on the concentration of immigrants in the three metropolitan regions in the country (Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö). This is not so much on account of a lack of financial resources or a weak political commitment to addressing these issues. On the contrary, integration policy has been a major political concern for a couple of decades. Central and local government together with voluntary associations and NGOs have been strongly committed to the complex issue of integration. It is very difficult indeed to explain the rather modest outcomes of these efforts (cultural obstacles, the regulated nature of the labor market, problems related to the complex immigration blending labor immigrants with political refugees, xenophobia among groups of the Swedish population, and so on). Swedish labor market regulations still block a pronounced low-wage sector, as seen in the USA, UK or other nations with a long history of immigration. Hence, ethnic segregation is more easily observable in Sweden than it is in countries with more deregulated labor market regimes and with dynamic low wage sectors.

The profile of the external security policy in Sweden is high. The country has a long history of staying out of international conflicts. Defense and foreign policy rest on the foundation of non-alliance in peace and neutrality in wartime. Sweden was previously a big spender on defense but since the fall of the Berlin Wall defense spending has decreased. Conscription has been dramatically reduced. Instead, Sweden as a member of the EU finds itself integrated in the emerging common foreign policy of the Union and commits resources to international missions under EU or UN auspices. Thus, the long-term development is towards a smaller but more professional defense, coupled with a commitment to international missions.
This is a policy which suffers from some inertia as rearmament would require quite some time. Sudden changes in the region such as the conflict in 2009 between Russia and Belarus triggered concerns that disarmament had gone too far too quickly and that there was a strong need to raise the capacity to deal with incidents and minor conflicts which could affect Swedish security. The fact that Sweden has an advanced defense industry does not offer much short-term help in that respect. The continuous cutbacks in defense spending may have led to refraining from the acquisition of the latest technologies in the defense sector.
Despite its commitment to non-alliance and neutrality, the Swedish defense is fully integrated with NATO and conducts joint exercises with NATO troops. NATO naval vessels are allowed into Swedish ports and NATO military aircraft may enter Swedish airspace.

Sweden ranks in the middle of the international indicators on crime rate and related measures. Understanding this ranking requires a look at the organization and management of the police, as well as at the societal context which this work is embedded in. The organization and management of the police has changed over the past several years, with changing models of central-local coordination and ambiguities about how to prioritize preventive police work and criminal investigations. New Public Management has been introduced rather extensively in the police sector with a focus on performance management, a strategy, which obviously does not encourage preventive police work because it cannot be measured.
Turning to the societal context of crime, it appears as if a degree of internationalization of crime is taking place in Sweden. This applies not least to the growing presence of organized crime. This has had an impact on the security of shop owners and restaurant owners in a number of big cities. There have also been a number of assassinations of gang members and violent turf battles in metropolitan areas. The police have made the fight against organized crime a priority but so far this campaign has only had a moderate effect.
In the discretionary policy packages implemented in 2008/2009, investment into Sweden’s police force and judicial system was announced. Currently, it is not possible to assess if these measures successfully contain organized crime in Sweden.

Sweden has had a long and strong commitment to environmental policy, so much so that recent studies in fact show that Sweden has over-implemented the EU policy goals of CO2 emissions. Sweden is in the process of changing towards an environmentally friendly economy, i.e. towards a reduction of the private use of automobiles, sustainable manufacturing processes, curbing the use of fossil and nuclear sources of energy and promoting ecologically friendly consumption. Environmental policy draws on a mix of “sticks and carrots” to attain these goals. By increasing taxes on fossil fuel systems and creating incentives for alternative production and consumption patterns, the government seeks to drive society towards sustainable development.
There is a small but noticeable difference between the two different groups of parties with regard to their commitment to environmental policy. The center-right incumbent “alliance”, while speaking of the necessity to find sustainable strategies of economic development, seems to be less keen to use taxes as a “stick” to discourage non-sustainable production or consumption processes. The center-left group of parties, on the other hand, includes the Green Party, an avid supporter of environmental policy more in favor of using the tax instrument to facilitate change towards sustainable development.
Among the political blocks, the expansion of nuclear energy plants is highly contested. In 1980, a referendum prohibited the construction of new plants, and the social democratic government implemented this decision. The contemporary center-right parties promote the expansion of nuclear power plants (despite the partial resistance of the Center-Party).

Sweden ranks among the very top of countries on public R&D spending per capita and performs quite well on many related indicators as well. Thus, this part of innovation policy works very well. The key problem is transforming innovations into prototypes and later into commercial products. In these areas, Sweden performs rather poorly; this is the essence of the “Swedish paradox” mentioned earlier. The core problem is not related to the policy as such but rather to industrial policy and pro-growth policy. In addition, cultural factors might help account for the “Swedish paradox” (see also 7.1); a fear of failure, risk avoidance, a generous welfare state which makes entrepreneurship less important to a high quality of life, and so on. Furthermore, tax policies may hamper start-up business and the exploitation of technical innovations and patent rights in Sweden. And, finally, the supply of venture capital funding may be too restrictive to allow dynamic exploitations of technical innovations in Sweden.
All in all, innovation policy offers excellent support for innovation. It is the development thereafter in the process of developing commercial products that is the problem.

During the period under review, few policy areas were more heatedly debated in Sweden than education policy. Education and retraining has been seen as integral to economic competitiveness and facilitating a structural change in the economy from a base in industry to a base in research and development. Life-long learning and continuing education have been important policy objectives towards those ends. From a comparative point of view (and referring to the Eurostat database), life-long learning is mostly spread in Sweden (and other Nordic countries).
The current government has aggressively pursued a policy that introduces a more strict education, not least in terms of grades and assessments but also in regard to order in the classroom. In terms of the education policy aimed at providing a skilled labor force, the government has taken issue with the education policy of previous governments that emphasized everyone’s right and entitlement to higher education. The current policy departs from this by suggesting that perhaps not everyone is suitable and qualified for tertiary education but would be better off in education and training programs that lead to practical work and immediate employment. This policy should help provide a labor force both for manufacturing industry and also for more knowledge-intensive types of businesses. Nevertheless, Sweden has today a very highly skilled labor force.
Sweden’s graduate output of upper secondary and tertiary education is fair. In upper secondary education, education policy emphasizes that schools should make a strong effort to get as many students as possible to graduate with passing grades at least in the core topics of the curriculum, Swedish, English and Mathematics. It should be noted, however, that the introduction of New Public Management instruments in the school sector, including competition among public schools and so-called “free schools”, has created incentives for schools to boost grades. National tests are conducted regularly to prevent such developments.
Equitable access to education has long been a keystone of education policy; this harks back to the early days of Social Democracy and the then apparent difficulties for working-class students to get access to higher education. The biggest problem today in this respect is probably second generation immigrants who might face bigger obstacles to enter higher education compared to Swedish children.