Rethinking the Nordic welfare state through a neo-Hegelian theory of state and civil society

Journal of Political Ideologies

Volumn 15, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 227-239

  Trägårdh, Lars ^a  

^a Ersta Skondal University College   (Sweden)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CIVIL SOCIETY; CRITICAL ANALYSIS; POLITICAL IDEOLOGY; POLITICAL THEORY; STATE-LOCAL RELATIONS;

SWEDEN;

EID: 77957936196     PISSN: 13569317     EISSN: 14699613     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13569317.2010.513853     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. Marilyn Taylor, 'Community participation in the real world: the opportunities and pitfalls in new governance spaces', Presentation to the Kick-Off Conference for the CINEFOGO Network of Excellence, Roskilde, Denmark, 17-19 October 2005;
2. Lars Trägårdh, 'Democratic governance and the creation of social capital in Sweden: the discreet charm of Governmental Commissions', in Lars Träga °rdh (Ed.) State and Civil Society in Northern Europe: The Swedish Model Reconsidered (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), pp. 254-270.
3. Taylor, ibid.; G. Perry and M. Moran, Democracy and Democratization (London: Routledge, 1994); R. Rhodes, Understanding Governance Policy Networks, Governance Reflexivity and Accountability (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 1997).
4. Note that in using the notion "Anglo-American' I here follow the convention suggested by Margaret Somers. One might want to argue that British tradition differs in that historically British liberalism has played a role in the development of the welfare state with its appetite for the regulation of markets. At the same token, most attempt at describing "welfare regimes' (most following Esping-Andersen's famous analysis in his book on the three worlds of welfare capitalism') tends to group the US and the UK in the same category of "liberal' regimes.
5. Margaret Somers, 'What's political or cultural about political culture and the public sphere? Toward a historical sociology of concept formation', Sociological Theory, 13(2) (1995), pp. 113-144;
6. Somers, 'Narrating and naturalizing civil society and citizenship theory: the place of political culture and the publicsphere', ibid., (3), pp. 229-274. Sections of this paper are taken from chapters first published in Träga °rdh, op. cit., Ref. 1.
7. Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, To Empower People: The Role of Mediating Structures in Public Policy (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1977).
8. Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, To Empower People: From State to Civil Society (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1996).
9. Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985);
10. Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton, The Good Society (New York: Knopf, 1991);
11. Amitai Etzioni, The Spirit of Community. Rights, Responsibilities and the Communitarian Agenda (New York: Crown Publishers, 1993);
12. Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (New York: Norton, 1991);
13. Alan Wolfe, Whose Keeper? Social Science and Moral Obligation (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989);
14. Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone. The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
15. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989);
16. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (London: Polity, 1996);
17. Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992);
18. John Keane, Democracy and Civil Society (London: Verso, 1988a);
19. John Keane (Ed.) Civil Society and the State (London: Verso, 1988b);
20. Michael Walzer, 'The idea of Civil Society', Dissent (Spring 1991).
21. Norbert Waszek, The Scottish Enlightenment and Hegel's Account of 'Civil Society' (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishing, 1988).
22. G. W. F. Hegel, 'Elements of the philosophy of right', in Allen Wood (Ed.) Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
23. Somers, op. cit., Ref. 4.
24. Somers, ibid., p. 259.
25. Roland Huntford, The New Totalitarians (New York: Stein and Day, 1971).
26. Huntford, ibid., pp. 347-348.
27. Gunnar Heckscher, Staten och organisationerna (Translation) (Stockholm: KFs bokförlag, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946);
28. Bo Rothstein, Den korporativa staten (Translation) (Stockholm: Nordstedts, 1992).
29. Hilding Johansson, Folkrörelserna och det demokratiska statskicket i Sverige (Translation) (Karlstad: Gleerups, 1952), p. 244.
30. Maciej Zaremba, 'Byalagets diskreta charm eller folkhemmets demokratiuppfattning', in Sekretariatet för framtidsstudier (Ed.) Du sköna gamla värld (Stockholm: Liber Förlag, 1987).
31. By liberal I refer to classical liberalism, not to the contemporary usage common in the US, where "liberal' has come to stand for the very opposite of classical liberal ideas, suggesting a pro-big government, left-wing type of politics, nor to the "social liberalism' of British liberals in the 20th century.
32. Lars Trägårdh, 'Statist individualism: on the culturality of the Nordic welfare state', in Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth (Eds) The Cultural Construction of Norden (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997);
33. Henrik Berggren and Lars Trägårdh, Är svensken människa? Gemenskap och oberoende i det moderna Sverige (Stockholm: Norstedts, 2006).
34. Trägårdh, op. cit., Ref. 1.
35. Erik Amnå, 'Associational life, youth, and political culture formation in Sweden: historical legacies and contemporary trends', in Trägårdh, ibid.;
36. Baer Douglas, 'Voluntary association involvement in comparative perspective', in Trägårdh, ibid.;
37. Eva Jeppsson Grassman and Lars Svedberg, 'Civic participation in a Scandinavian welfare state: patterns in contemporary Sweden', in Trägårdh, ibid.
38. Hegel's political philosophy was long condemned by liberals and leftists for its alleged worship of theauthoritarian, and more specifically, Prussian state. A more nuanced view, which recognizes Hegel's concern to preserve civil society and the domain of individual self-determination, emerged in the 1970s and 1980s with works like Shlomo Avineri's Hegel's Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972);
39. Charles Taylor's Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Z. A. Pelczynski (Ed.), The State and Civil Society: Studies in Hegel's Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Manfred Riedel, Between Tradition and Revolution: The Hegelian Transformation of Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). For the controversy about the meaning of Hegel's political philosophy among both left- and right-wing German thinkers in his own period, see Warren Breckman, Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory: Dethroning the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
40. Trägårdh, op. cit., Ref. 1.
41. Taylor, op. cit., Ref. 2.
42. See, for example, Per Selle in this issue, also Tommy Lundström and Filip Wijkström, "Från röst till service: den svenska ideella sektorn i förändring', Sköndalsinstitutets skriftserie, vol. 4 (Stockholm: Sköndalinstitutet, 1995).
43. The "compact' was introduced in 1998 by the Labour government under Tony Blair, as part of his attempt at creating a "third way' between traditional statist labour policies and the neo-liberal policies of That cherite conservatives.
44. See J. Kendall, 'Bringing ideology back in', Journal of Political Ideologies, 15 (2010), pp. 241-258.