Challenges of Globalization to the Role of Welfare State --The Case Study of the 2006 Swedish Riksdag Election
Date Issued
2007
Date
2007
Author(s)
Wu, Chia-Jung
DOI
zh-TW
Abstract
The Moderate Party-dominated center-right coalition defeated the Social Democratic Party (SocDem)-dominated center-left coalition and won the victory of Sweden’s 2006 Riksdag (parliamentary) election on Sept 18. And the Social Democratic Party ended years of rule. From the pragmatical historical point of view, SocDem contributed to the foundation of Sweden’s national welfare system. SocDem also claimed the 5.7% unemployment last season in 2006 and the brilliant achievements in the highly-developed welfare system, but still failed to win in the general election. The thesis first investigates issues on welfare regime and social policy reforms in Sweden’s Riksdag (parliamentary) elections in the past decades, and then discusses on how Sweden face the multiple challenges as a welfare state and the counteractions, and at last focusing on economic globalization and European Union framework, investigates social policy transformations after Sweden’s Riksdag (parliamentary) election in 2006 and the ideology they appear.
Under economic globalization and European Union framework, when external environment changes, Swedish welfare state not only deals with the burden of enormous internal welfare expenditures, and besides, if the welfare state regime and social policy can’t catch up with the times, then they also should be replaced. It is noteworthy that, firstly, if the right-turned result magnified into a global viewpoint, the separation of right wing and left wing routes are mainly split within the boundary of left-wing planned economic system. Moreover, the center-right coalition such as the Moderate Party, which advocated vigorous reforms on welfare policy and fell in 2002, also compromised with the left wing in the 2006 election and put forth moderate reform proposals instead of radical reforms.
In other words, Swedish people make a turn and embrace the social policy system of the center-right coalition in this Riksdag (parliamentary) election, but form the viewpoint of global framework; it still lies within the boundary of left wing system. Accompanying with the impact of globalization, under EU’s integration policy fighting against poverty and inequality, the social economic system turned a little bit to the right, but the indigenous traditional values and concepts still remained. Accompanying with the structural changes, such as the heavy burden of its own welfare system, population aging and immigration problems, there must be a fine tuning.
Keywords: Economic globalization, European Union (EU), Sweden,
welfare state, Swedish parliamentary election, welfare regime
Subjects
經濟全球化
歐盟
瑞典
福利體制
Economical globalization
European Union
Sweden
welfare state
Swedish parliamentary election
welfare regime
Type
thesis