# Social Movements in 1980s Sweden

Contention in the Welfare State

*Edited by* Helena Hill Andrés Brink Pinto

*Edited by*

Helena Hill · Andrés Brink Pinto

Social Movements in 1980s Sweden

# Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements

Series Editors

Stefan Berger, Institute for Social Movements, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany Holger Nehring, Contemporary European History, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK

Around the world, social movements have become legitimate, yet contested, actors in local, national and global politics and civil society, yet we still know relatively little about their longer histories and the trajectories of their development. This series seeks to promote innovative historical research on the history of social movements in the modern period since around 1750. We bring together conceptually-informed studies that analyse labour movements, new social movements and other forms of protest from early modernity to the present. We conceive of 'social movements' in the broadest possible sense, encompassing social formations that lie between formal organisations and mere protest events. We also offer a home for studies that systematically explore the political, social, economic and cultural conditions in which social movements can emerge. We are especially interested in transnational and global perspectives on the history of social movements, and in studies that engage critically and creatively with political, social and sociological theories in order to make historically grounded arguments about social movements. This new series seeks to offer innovative historical work on social movements, while also helping to historicise the concept of 'social movement'. It hopes to revitalise the conversation between historians and historical sociologists in analysing what Charles Tilly has called the 'dynamics of contention'.

Editorial Board:

John Chalcraft (London School of Economics, UK)

Andreas Eckert (Humboldt-University, Germany)

Susan Eckstein (Boston University, USA)

Felicia Kornbluh (University of Vermont, USA)

Jie-Hyun Lim (Research Institute for Comparative History, Hanyang University Seoul, South Korea)

Marcel van der Linden (International Institute of Social History, The Netherlands)

Rochona Majumdar (University of Chicago, USA)

Sean Raymond Scalmer (University of Melbourne, Australia)

Alexander Sedlmaier (Bangor University, UK)

Helena Hill · Andrés Brink Pinto Editors

# Social Movements in 1980s Sweden

Contention in the Welfare State

*Editors*  Helena Hill School of Culture and Education Södertörn University Huddinge, Sweden

Andrés Brink Pinto Department of Gender Studies Lund University Lund, Sweden

ISSN 2634-6559 ISSN 2634-6567 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements ISBN 978-3-031-27369-8 ISBN 978-3-031-27370-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27370-4

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2023. This book is an open access publication.

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# Series Editors' Preface

Around the world, social movements have become legitimate, yet contested, actors in local, national and global politics and civil society, yet we still know relatively little about their longer histories and the trajectories of their development. Our series reacts to what can be described as a recent boom in the history of social movements. We can observe a development from the crisis of labour history in the 1980s to the boom in research on social movements in the 2000s. The rise of historical interests in the development of civil society and the role of strong civil societies as well as non-governmental organisations in stabilizing democratically constituted polities has strengthened the interest in social movements as a constituent element of civil societies.

In different parts of the world, social movements continue to have a strong influence on contemporary politics. In Latin America, trade unions, labour parties and various left-of-centre civil society organisations have succeeded in supporting left-of-centre governments. In Europe, peace movements, ecological movements and alliances intent on campaigning against poverty and racial discrimination and discrimination on the basis of gender and sexual orientation have been able to set important political agendas for decades. In other parts of the world, including Africa, India and South East Asia, social movements have played a significant role in various forms of community building and community politics. The contemporary political relevance of social movements has undoubtedly contributed to a growing historical interest in the topic.

Contemporary historians are not only beginning to historicise these relatively recent political developments; they are also trying to relate them to a longer history of social movements, including traditional labour organisations, such as working-class parties and trade unions. In the longue durée, we recognise that social movements are by no means a recent phenomenon and are not even an exclusively modern phenomenon, although we realise that the onset of modernity emanating from Europe and North America across the wider world from the eighteenth century onwards marks an important departure point for the development of civil societies and social movements.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the dominance of national history over all other forms of history writing led to a thorough nationalisation of the historical sciences. Hence social movements have been examined traditionally within the framework of the nation state. Only during the last two decades have historians begun to question the validity of such methodological nationalism and to explore the development of social movements in comparative, connective and transnational perspective taking into account processes of transfer, reception and adaptation. While our book series does not preclude work that is still being carried out within national frameworks (for, clearly, there is a place for such studies, given the historical importance of the nation state in history), it hopes to encourage comparative and transnational histories on social movements.

At the same time as historians have begun to research the history of those movements, a range of social theorists, from Jürgen Habermas to Pierre Bourdieu and from Slavoj Žižek to Alain Badiou as well as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to Miguel Abensour, to name but a few, have attempted to provide philosophical-cum-theoretical frameworks in which to place and contextualise the development of social movements. History has arguably been the most empirical of all the social and human sciences, but it will be necessary for historians to explore further to what extent these social theories can be helpful in guiding and framing the empirical work of the historian in making sense of the historical development of social movements. Hence the current series is also hoping to make a contribution to the ongoing dialogue between social theory and the history of social movements.

This series seeks to promote innovative historical research on the history of social movements in the modern period since around 1750. We bring together conceptually-informed studies that analyse labour movements, new social movements and other forms of protest from early modernity to the present. With this series, we seek to revive, within the context of historiographical developments since the 1970s, a conversation between historians on the one hand and sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists on the other.

Unlike most of the concepts and theories developed by social scientists, we do not see social movements as directly linked, a priori, to processes of social and cultural change and therefore do not adhere to a view that distinguishes between old (labour) and new (middle-class) social movements. Instead, we want to establish the concept 'social movement' as a heuristic device that allows historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to investigate social and political protests in novel settings. Our aim is to historicise notions of social and political activism in order to highlight different notions of political and social protest on both left and right.

Hence, we conceive of 'social movements' in the broadest possible sense, encompassing social formations that lie between formal organisations and mere protest events. But we also include processes of social and cultural change more generally in our understanding of social movements: this goes back to nineteenth-century understandings of 'social movement' as processes of social and cultural change more generally. We also offer a home for studies that systematically explore the political, social, economic and cultural conditions in which social movements can emerge. We are especially interested in transnational and global perspectives on the history of social movements, and in studies that engage critically and creatively with political, social and sociological theories in order to make historically grounded arguments about social movements. In short, this series seeks to offer innovative historical work on social movements, while also helping to historicise the concept of 'social movement'. It also hopes to revitalise the conversation between historians and historical sociologists in analysing what Charles Tilly has called the 'dynamics of contention'.

Helena Hill's and Andrés Brink Pinto's edited collection entitled *Social Movements in 1980s Sweden: Contention in the Welfare State* features a whole range of protest movements that organised against changes to the welfare state as well as mobilizing opposition to neoliberalism and rightwing politics. It ranges widely across squatter movements, environmental movements, anarchist movements, punk movements, and movements organizing rent strikes. While its focus is on 1980s Sweden, it manages successfully to contextualise developments in the model Social Democratic country of Scandinavia in wider European developments. The volume effectively challenges the notion of the 1980s as a decade in which neoliberalism drove everything before it. Instead it highlights the manifold forms of opposition provided by a wide variety of social movements that had originated in the 1960s and 1970s and were often changing their repertoires of contention in reply to the neoliberal challenges of the 1980s.

The volume also very effectively challenges the widespread notion that social movement protests in Sweden were far less contentious and especially far less violent than in other continental European countries, although several contributions also point out how keeping up a sense of respectability and 'worthiness' did help several social movements in Sweden to get their voice heard and mobilise widely in Swedish society. There was, however, as the editors argue in their introduction, no Swedish exceptionalism in the history of contentious politics in Europe since the 1980s. If there was no conflict-free consensual relationship between social movements and the Swedish state, the question arises how the social movements since the 1980s related to previous movements in Sweden and to contemporary movements elsewhere in Europe. Many of the contributions of this volume shed considerable light of these important questions of chronological (dis)continuity and of transnational exchanges and connections. In doing so they provide a more nuanced and complex picture of the role and positioning of social movements in 1980s Sweden than is prevalent in the existing literature to date.

As the long Social Democratic hegemony drew to an end in the 1980s and as Social Democracy came to accept some of the key neoliberal premises losing its earlier, more radical touch, associated, above all, with the failed Meidner Plan, social movements also began to challenge Social Democracy from the left providing an important forum for mobilising in favour of aims and policies that were previously represented through Swedish Social Democracy. The volume thus, for example, demonstrates very well how the social movements analysed in this book were extremely important for the formation of an autonomous Left and a militant antifascism in 1980s Sweden. On the other hand we also see very clearly, how some social movements, in particular the environmental and the peace movement, influenced the mainstream left, in the form of Swedish Social Democracy, to adopt 'greener' policies and policies geared more towards armament controls and disarmament. This points to broader issues of looking at the intersectionality of social movements with a range of more formal political organisations, such as political parties or trade unions that often shared similar concerns to those advanced by specific social movements.

> Stefan Berger Ruhr University Bochum Bochum, Germany

> > Holger Nehring University of Stirling Stirling, UK

# Acknowledgements

We would like to thank those who made this edited volume possible. First, we would like to thank all contributing authors for their work on this book. We have discussed the content at several workshops, online and at Södertörn University and together developed the theme for the book. Thanks to *Riksbankens jubileumsfond*, which financed a workshop at Södertörn University with all participants on 1–2 December 2021. We also want to thank Lund University, which contributed funds to be able to publish the book with open access.

Stockholm/Lund September 2022

Helena Hill Andrés Brink Pinto

# About This Book

This book contains research that highlights social movements in 1980s Sweden and their protests against the welfare state, right-wing politics and neoliberalism from different perspectives. The anthology is a contribution to international historical research of 1980s social movements, to Swedish historical research, and to the understanding of the development of social movements and new forms of protest. It is also a contribution to the history of opposition to political parliamentary development in Sweden, as well as opposition to the increasingly influential right-wing politics during the vibrant 1980s. The history about social movements in the 1980s has so far not been researched to any great extent. The book contains chapters dealing with the rise, emergence and development of social movements such as squatter movements, environmental movements and peace movements. It further deals with anarchism and punk as well as rent strikes during the decade. Finally, it is an important contribution to and sheds light on related developments in Europe and places the development in Sweden in a European context.

# Contents

**Index** 239

# Notes on Contributors

**Fredrik Egefur** has a Ph.D. in history from Lund University. His dissertation *Borderless Movements for Peace 1889–1914: Agency, strategy and conceptual world of socialist and liberal peace activism* came out in 2020. Egefur has also written several articles on political youth groups. He currently works as the director of The Labour Movement's Archive in Skåne.

**Helena Hill** is an Associate Professor in History of ideas and Lecturer in Gender studies at Södertörn University. Her research interests are mainly social movements, politics and gender. Her current research is about political youth struggle at *Ultrahuset* in Sweden in the 1980s and she is also doing research about Swedish men's movements and discourses of a masculinity in crisis. Among her recent publications are "'Normkritisk vaccination'—Normkritik och normkritisk pedagogik i Skolverkets rapporter och råd 2009–2014", *Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige* 26: 2–3 (2014) and *Revolutionärer* (2017).

**Jenny Jansson** is an Associate Professor at the Department of Government, Uppsala University. Her research interests include labour studies, digitalisation and e-archives. She is the author of *Crafting the Movement*, published by Cornell University Press (2020).

**Markus Lundström** is an economic historian and an Associate Professor in Sociology at Uppsala University, Sweden. He has written numerous articles on political ideas developed in social movements. His recent work includes co-editing of the anthology *Nordic Fascism: Fragments of an Entangled History* (Routledge, 2022) and the second edition of *Anarchist Critique of Radical Democracy: The Impossible Argument* (PM Press, 2023).

**Anton Öhman** is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Lund University. Öhman studies the history of opposition to nuclear weapons, peace, and nuclear disarmament endeavours of the late twentieth century. His thesis project examines transnational activist networks for witnessing and opposing nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific.

**Andrés Brink Pinto** is an Associate Professor (docent) in History at Lund University. His research deals with the urban, with a focus on the regulation and use of urban space. Currently he is working on a project about the policing of homosexuality in Stockholm 1944–1968. Among his latest publications are "Youth Riots and the concept of Contentious Politics in historical research", *Scandinavian Journal of History* 44:1 (2019), with Martin Ericsson, "Public toilets for women", *Women's History Review* 33:3 (2022), with Malin Arvidsson and "Panopticon in the Urinal", *NORA*—*Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research*  30:3 (2022).

**Dominika V. Polanska** is an Associate Professor in Sociology and Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Södertörn University, working as a researcher at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research, Uppsala University. Her research interests encompass urban transformation, housing, displacement and urban movements. Her current research focuses on rental housing renovations in Sweden, and their social and legal aspects. She is the author of *Contentious Politics and the Welfare State: Squatting in Sweden* (Routledge, 2019).

**Monica Quirico** is a free-standing historian qualified as an Associate Professor in Italy. She has extensively researched Swedish and Italian history, with a focus on social movements and anti-capitalist theories. Among her latest publications is (with Ragona, G.) *Frontier Socialism. Self-organisation and Anti-capitalism*, NY: Palgrave, 2021) and "Lotta Continua and the Italian housing movement in the 1970s: Ancient history or present challenges?", *Radical Housing Journal*, no. 1, 3 (2021).

**Hannes Rolf** is an assistant professor at the Institute for Urban History at Stockholm University. Hannes's research interests are urban history, historical social movements and interest organisations. His research has so far been focused on the history of housing, housing policy and housing organisations, such as tenant's unions, landlord's associations and housing cooperatives. Hannes is currently doing research on rent control and interest organisations. Recent publication: Rolf, Hannes, "A Union for Tenants: Tenant militancy in Gothenburg as a historical example", *Radical Housing Journal*, 3 no. 1 (2021), 167–186; https://doi. org/10.54825/VFOQ7982.

**Katrin Uba** is an Associate Professor at the Department of Government, Uppsala University. Her research focuses on political outcomes of environmental protests and climate strikes, labour movement mobilisation in Sweden and youth political activism and protest-event analysis.

**Bart van der Steen** is a Subject Librarian at Leiden University Libraries. His research focuses on interwar labour movements and New Social Movements from 1968 to the present. His most recent publications include *Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory* (Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, 2020), co-edited with T.P.F. Verburgh.

# List of Figures

# List of Tables

# Introduction

# *Helena Hill and Andrés Brink Pinto*

In this edited volume the authors examine and analyse the emergence and development, and in some cases also the disappearance, of social movements and activism in the Swedish 1980s. The 1980s have often been described as a decade when the radical social movements of the 1960s and 1970s lost their influence in society and instead, right-wing politics and neoliberalism gained increasingly more impact in many parts of the world. However, the description of the 1980s as dominated by rightwing politics and neoliberal ideas needs to be problematized, since the decade encompassed so much more, and a number of social movements that opposed the political development and protested against neoliberal

© The Author(s) 2023 H. Hill and A. B. Pinto (eds.), *Social Movements in 1980s Sweden*, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27370-4\_1

H. Hill (B)

School of Culture and Education, Södertörn University, Huddinge, Sweden e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
A. Brink Pinto Department of Gender Studies, Lund University, Lund, Sweden e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
and conservative politics also emerged.1 The new social movements often used new forms of protest and resistance, and organized themselves in new ways compared to the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In recent years, these movements have increasingly become the subject of research. In Europe, research shows that there were several waves of protests during the 1980s against right-wing politics, conservatism, neoliberalism and the state. Protest movements emerged for example in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Denmark and in cities such as Berlin, Zurich and Amsterdam confrontations with the authorities and the police occasionally became both contentious and violent.2

Sweden has, together with other Scandinavian countries, been described as distinct from the rest of Europe. Development in Sweden is often considered the product of consensus between the state and society, and Sweden is seen as a country where few major conflicts took place.3 However, the argument can also be made for a contentious Scandinavian political history, where contentious performances and social movements played an important part in the democratization of Scandinavian societies

1 Jonathan Davies**,** *The Global 1980s: People, Power and Profit* (London and New York: Routledge, 2019); Bradford Martin, *The other eighties: A Secret History of America in the age of Reagan* (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010); Stephen Foley, *Front Porch Politics: The forgotten Heyday of American Activism in the 1970s and 1980s* (New York: Hill and Wang, 2013).

2 Knud Andresen and Bart van der Steen, eds., *A European Youth Revolt: European Perspectives on Youth Protest and Social Movements in the 1980s* (Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Bart van der Steen, Ask Katzeff and Leendert van Hoogenhuijze, *The City is Ours: Squatting and Autonomous Movements in Europe from the 1970s to the Present* (Oakland: Pm Press, 2014); Joachim C. Häberlen and Jakep Smith, "Struggling for Feelings. The politics of Emotions in the Radical new Left in West-Germany, c 1968–1984," *Contemporary European History* 23, no. 4 (2014): 616–637; Claudio Cattaneo and Miguel A. Martínez, eds., *The Squatters' Movement in Europe: Commons and Autonomy as Alternatives to Capitalism* (London: Pluto Press, 2014); Squatting Europe Kollective, eds., *Squatting in Europe: Radical Spaces, Urban Struggles*  (Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions, 2013); Cristina Flesher Fominaya and Laurence Cox, eds., *Understanding European Movements: New Social Movements, Global Justice Struggle, Anti-austerity Protest* (London and New York: Routledge, 2013).

3 Cf. Francis Fukuyama, *The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution* (London: Profile Books, 2012), 434; Bo Rothstein and Lars Trägårdh, "The State and Civil Society in a Historical Perspective. The Swedish Case," in *State and Civil Society in Northern Europe: The Swedish Model Reconsidered*, ed. Lars Trägårdh, (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007).

during the last 150 years.4 Looking back on the last four decades there are numerous examples of social movements that have opposed the prevalent political order. Protests have been directed against the state, the welfare society, Social Democrats and against the growing influence of right-wing politics and neoliberalism. There is still a significant lack of research on social movements in Sweden during the 1980s. The research that has been done shows that protests in Sweden seldom became as violent, spectacular or contentious as in some other European cities, and the protests often lacked the most spectacular instances of conflict between militant social movements and the state that could be seen in other parts of Europe. Although the protests in Sweden were rarely as contentious as in some other places, confrontations between activists and national and local authorities could be both contentious and violent, and the confrontations increased during the decade. At the end of the 1980s, confrontations between the police and squatters, for example, became increasingly more contentious.5 As Peterson et al. show, most social movements in Sweden have oscillated between two poles in how to engage with the welfare state, to local and national authorities, and to the police force. On the one hand the infrastructure of the welfare state—particularly on a local level—often played a crucial part in enabling organization and activity possible for the movements, and movements were at times met with a benevolent attitude from governmental actors in general and the police in particular. On the other hand, protests were often directed against the welfare state

<sup>4</sup> Flemming Mikkelsen and Stefan Nyzell, "Introduction," in *Popular struggle and democracy in Scandinavia: 1700–present*, eds. Flemming Mikkelsen, Knut Kjeldstadli and Stefan Nyzell (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

<sup>5</sup> Dominika V. Polanska, *Contentious Politics and the welfare state: Squatting in Sweden*  (New York: Routledge, 2019); Dominika V Polanska and Mattias Wåg, eds., *Ockuperat! Svenska husockupationer 1968–2018* (Stockholm: Verbal förlag, 2019); Jan Jämte and Adrienne Sörbom, "Why Did it Not Happen Here? The Gradual Radicalization of the Anarchist Movement in Sweden 190-1990," in *A European Youth Revolt: European Perspectives on Youth Protest and Social Movements in the 1980s*, eds. Knud Andresen and Bart van der Steen (Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Martin Ericsson, "Ockuperat område. Striden om brandstationen i Jönköping 1982," in *Politik underifrån: Kollektiva konfrontationer under Sveriges 1900-tal*, eds. Andrés Brink Pinto and Martin Ericsson (Lund: Arkiv förlag 2016); Johan Pries and Karin Zackari,"'Här slutar Sverige.' Ockupationen av Ringgatan i Malmö 10," in *Politik underifrån: Kollektiva konfrontationer under Sveriges 1900-tal*, eds. Andrés Brink Pinto and Martin Ericsson (Lund: Arkiv förlag 2016).

and local authorities.6 This complex relationship is discernible in many of this volume's contributions but perhaps most clearly visible in Fredrik Egefur's article about the Swedish anarchists at the *Winter Palace*. Thus, in contrast to the more militant movements in many European cities, the development in Sweden seems to have had a contentious repertoire with relatively more aspects of consensus and negotiation.<sup>7</sup>

However, one main argument of this volume is that we shouldn't take this historical narrative as evidence of an all-encompassing Swedish exceptionalism devoid of contentious social movements. As we hope the contributions will show, struggle, resistance and protests played a greater role in political development in the 1980s Sweden than hitherto has been shown. As put forward by Bart van der Steen in the concluding chapter, we would argue that social movement scholars and historians should be wary of a history that focuses on the most spectacular, contentious or militant expressions of social movements, as this runs the risk of shrouding more commonplace instances of negotiation and navigation within existing political structures. Thus, Sweden is an interesting example of how resistance and conflict have been influenced by violent and contentious movements, as well as by a long tradition of consensus and negotiation, something that this edited volume aims to explore and discuss. We therefore argue that the idea of a Swedish exceptionalism of peaceful cooperation (and perhaps co-optation) between social movements and the state, based upon a national or historical Swedish spirit of consensus (*samförstånd*), needs to be nuanced since it runs the risk of naturalizing a political and social state of phenomena, which should be the focus of research.

The aim of this edited volume is to present new research that analyses social movements and contention in 1980s Sweden in order to challenge and nuance the idea of a conflict-free Scandinavian model where political development has occurred peacefully and in consensus. With the anthology, we want to show social movements with outward and more

6 Abby Peterson, Håkan Thörn and Mattias Wahlström, "Sweden 1950–2015: Contentious Politics and Social Movements between Confrontation and Conditioned Cooperation," in *Popular Struggle and Democracy in Scandinavia: 1700–Present*, eds. Flemming Mikkelsen, Knut Kjeldstadli and Stefan Nyzell (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 103–110. See also Erik Hannerz, *Performing Punk: Subcultural Authentications and the Positioning of the Mainstream*. Diss. (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 2013).

7 Polanska, *Contentious Politics in the Welfare State*; Polanska and Wåg, *Ockuperat!*; Jämte and Sörbom, "Why Did it Not Happen Here?"

militant repertoires, as well as movements that were not as contentious. By showing a variety of social movements and their different protest repertoires against the state, the welfare society and right-wing politics, we want to illustrate the diversity within a complex and multifaceted Swedish 1980s, and the different movements and ideas that existed side by side. The questions examined in the volume are: what social movements arose during the decade, what issues did these pursue, and what did the protests look like? Furthermore, the movements' relations to other social movements in Sweden and the rest of Europe, as well as relations to both earlier and later social movements, are also discussed.

The idea of a Swedish exceptionalism has been increasingly questioned and problematized by scholars. Previous research on social movements and protests in Sweden has shown that popular struggle and collective actions by social movement actors have played an important role in Swedish political history.8 Social movements that have been studied include, for example, the squatting movement.9 Håkan Thörn has studied squatting in Gothenburg and Copenhagen during the decade in several publications and has also covered the solidarity movement, for example the movement to support the ANC.10 However, we still see a lack of studies of social movements and political protest specifically focused on the Swedish 1980s, for example different feminist movements, as well as studies with a synthesizing approach or studies of relations to movements in earlier or later periods.

This edited volume intends to fill part of that research gap. We see the social movements of the 1980s as important to the political development

8 Cf. Polanska, *Contentious Politics in the Welfare State*; Flemming Mikkelsen, Knut Kjelstadi and Stefan Nyzell, eds., *Popular Struggle and Democracy in Scandinavia: 1700 present* (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Andrés Brink Pinto and Martin Ericsson, eds., *Politik underifrån: Kollektiva konfrontationer under Sveriges 1900-tal* (Lund: Arkiv, 2016).

9 Polanska, *Contentious Politics in the Welfare State*; Polanska and Wåg, Ockuperat!; Håkan Thörn, *Solidaritetens betydelse: Kampen mot apartheid i Sydafrika och framväxen av det globala civilsamhället* (Stockholm: Atlas, 2010); Håkan Thörn, Stad i rörelse. Stadsomvandlingen och striderna i Haga och Christiania (Stockholm: Atlas akademi, 2013).

10 Thörn, Solidaritetens betydelse (Stockholm; Håkan Thörn, Stad i rörelse); Håkan Thörn, Catrin Wasshede and Tomas Nilson, eds., *Space for Urban Alternatives? Christiania 1971–2011* (Möklinta: Gidlunds Förlag, 2011).

during the decade but also as forerunners to the more radical social movements of the 1990s and onwards. Accordingly, the history of the social movements of the 1980s and the issues that these movements fought for, such as the climate issue, the nuclear issue, identity politics, the rights of minorities, and growing social and economic gaps around the world, are highly topical today.

The chapters included in this volume have been selected because they contain current and new research on social movements in the 1980s Sweden. However, the anthology does not claim to be comprehensive or in any way depict all the social movements, protests, resistance and political struggles that took place in the 1980s; instead, we want to highlight and put forward a selection of different social movements, protesting against different issues during the decade. There are thus a number of different social movements that have not been included here.

In the following, we first describe why we think it is important to discuss historical periodization and why periodization runs the risk of homogenizing history. This is followed by a section on political development during the 1980s, both internationally and in Sweden, and what new social movements occurred during the decade. After that, we describe key concepts and theories in research on social movements that some or all contributions engage with. Finally, the common thread in the anthology's contributions and their main content is described.

### Periodization in Historical Analysis

One purpose of this anthology is to discuss historiography and epoch divisions. History is often described in terms such as "waves" (e.g. "the right-wing wave") or "turns" (e.g. "the linguistic turn"). As described above, we want to nuance and problematize the image of the 1980s rightwing wave by pointing to a number of different social movements that emerged during the decade, partly as protests against the welfare state, right-wing politics and neoliberalism. We do not intend to deny that there was a shift towards right-wing politics in many countries, but we want to highlight that this shift does not mean that there were no simultaneous series of protests and social movements opposing this development.

Clare Hemmings has problematized the use of concepts as epochs, turns and waves. Hemmings believes that events and movements are often fixed to certain decades and historical narratives, and when historical development is described as waves or turns, history runs the risk of being homogenized and simplified, thereby obscuring all the opposite expressions, currents and political ideologies and opinions that exist in parallel. A number of different and significant events, movements and protests thereby run the risk of becoming invisible.11 Kathleen Laughlin et al. believe that the wave metaphor can help to identify the specific issues that were highlighted and received attention at a particular time, and that it can help identify historical changes. At the same time, they believe that the wave metaphor also contributes to simplifications, and that the more everyday activism of social movements is at risk of being made invisible. The use of the wave metaphor also implies that events have a clear beginning and end, and thus overemphasizes change.12 We should therefore be careful with *how* we use the wave metaphor. Contradicting ideologies are dependent on each other and right-wing politics would probably not have become so strong during the decade if opposition to it had not also been so strong. In order to avoid simplifying and homogenizing historiographies, we therefore should problematize historical periodization and the use of terms as "turns" and "waves", and understand history as a series of events that replace each other and examine the dynamics and all the different links and relationships between movements and different time periods, and how they are related to each other.13 In this volume the authors try to do precisely that.

In the volume we want to understand history pluralistically, and study the dynamics of different events, movements and times, as well as how they are interrelated. The point of departure in the 1980s is therefore not a way to fix certain movements and events to a specific decade, but rather to show the complexity and variety of the decade. It also means that we examine both links and connections to various contemporary political movements and events, as well as to movements and events both before and after the 1980s. The social movements we describe here are not

11 Clare Hemmings, *Considering Emma Goldman: Feminist political ambivalence and the imaginative archive* (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2018); Clare Hemmings, *Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory* (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2011); Hemmings, Clare. "Telling feminist stories," *Feminist Theory* 6 no 2 (2005); see also Wendy Brown, *Politics out of history* (Princeton, New Jersey; Princeton University Press, 2001), 100–102.

12 Kathleen, A. Laughlin et al. "Is it time to jump ship? Historians Rethinking the Waves Metaphor", *Feminist Formations* 22, no. 1 (2010).

13 Hemmings, "Telling feminist stories".

specific to the 1980s, although the specific political contexts of the 1980s are of course of importance for the movements' development. Nor do we intend to establish a new hegemonic picture of the 1980s. The purpose is instead to illustrate the 1980s as a multifaceted decade where contradictory political and social movements arose and sometimes clashed. The ambition is to discuss how different political movements and ideologies are constantly evolving through opposition and conflict and in relation to each other. Several chapters in the anthology therefore discuss relations to previous and later movements, and how the movements in the 1980s can be understood as both successors to earlier movements and predecessors to movements in later periods.

#### 1980s Europe

The 1980s can be described in many ways. As already described above, the decade has been characterized by emerging right-wing politics. Another way to describe it is to talk about the long 1980s. The starting point then is the changes that took place in the late 1970s in several countries around the world, for example the many political revolutions and ideological changes that led to the increasing impact of right-wing politics and neoliberalism.14 From the end of the 1970s, right-wing and neoliberal political values gained increasing influence around the world. Although many neoliberal political reforms were not implemented until the 1990s in Sweden, it was in the 1980s that neoliberal values started to really have an impact. Strong political representatives, such as Ronald Reagan (President of the United States 1981–1989) and Margaret Thatcher (British Prime Minister 1979–1990), and their long tenure of power is often taken as symbolic of the international impact of rightwing politics during the decade. The neoliberal ideas of the 1980s, which gained influence in several different ideological political parties, from Social Democrats to Conservatives, thereby helped to turn the political map far to the right.<sup>15</sup>

Although many anti-democratic regimes remained in power during the 1980s, for example in South Korea, South Africa, Poland or East Germany, the 1980s saw a growing movement of opposition and a

<sup>14</sup> Davies, *The Global 1980s*, 237.

<sup>15</sup> Davies, *The Global 1980s*; Martin, *The Other Eighties*.

number of new social movements emerged around the world, fighting for democracy and freedom. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, many dictatorships fell as the result of collective action and social movement struggles; this happened in, for example, South Africa, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990 and ANC won the election in 1994. The long 1980s are usually considered to have ended with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. In Poland, the freedom movement Solidarity led to Lech Walesa becoming president in 1990. Perhaps the most symbolic event for the democracy and solidarity movements of the 1980s was the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. With that, the Cold War, which had marked world development for over 50 years, was thought to have ended.16

The countries of Europe were, of course, strongly influenced by the conservative and neoliberal ideas of the 1980s, but also by the movements for freedom and the movements that led to the fall of the Iron Curtain in the early 1990s. The social movements that emerged in 1980s Europe took on the new issues that had become topical. New radical social movements protested against conservative politics and neoliberalism, against housing and youth politics and against the growing economic divisions that increased in several countries. Resistance against nuclear weapons, nuclear power and environmental pollution were other current issues that were brought to attention. In several large cities around Europe, waves of violent riots and confrontations between different political factions arose, and here squatting and protests against prevailing housing policies were central issues that created conflict and contradiction.<sup>17</sup>

Other social movements continued their earlier struggles but often in new arenas and forms, such as the new women's liberation movement. Older movements, such as anarchism, got a boost during the decade and with the punk wave came a new "anti-establishment attitude that became widespread.18 Markus Lundström's chapter "When anarchism met Punk

#### 16 Davies, *The Global 1980s*, 240ff.

17 Cf. Andresen and van der Steen, *A European Youth Revolt*; van der Steen, Katzeff and van Hoogenhuijze, *The City is Ours*.

18 See for example Matthew Worley, "Punk, Politics and British (fan)zines, 1976–84: 'While the World was Dying, did you Wonder why?'" in *History Journal Workshop* 79 (2015): 76–106; Ryan Moore and Michael Roberts, "Do-it-yourself Mobilization: Punk and Social movements," *Mobilization* 14, no. 3 (2009): 273–291; Brian Cogan, "Do They Owe us a Living? Of Course They Do!' Crass, Throbbing Gristle, and Anarchy and in this volume discusses how the meeting between anarchism and punk revitalized the anarchist movement and contributed to new forms of protest and resistance.

The movements that emerged in Europe were largely transnational and activists in different countries exchanged contacts and travelled between different protest events. At the same time, Bart van der Steen and Knut Andresen stress that the protest movements that emerged in Europe during the 1980s should not be seen as homogeneous. The movements differed in the content of ideas, in who was active, in what political repertoires were used, and in their relation to the state and authorities.<sup>19</sup> The contributions in this volume, which deal with social movements in Sweden, highlight the movements' relationship to and influence from various other social movements in Europe but also show that the diversity of the social movements that arose in Sweden, just as in Europe, was vast.

### The Swedish Model and Social Democratic Hegemony

Swedish social democracy shaped Swedish society from the end of the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin wall. During these decades, the Social Democrats typically polled around 45% of votes in general elections, and in 1968 even got more than 50% of votes. Further, the unions saw high rates of membership, often exceeding 80% of the workforce as a whole, and in practice enacted closed shops in some central exportoriented industries such as the auto industry. This was in part closely connected to the historical compromise between labour and capital, where the state left most of the workings of the labour market to be regulated through collective bargaining on the national level. Within this so-called Swedish model, the state took on responsibilities for the reproductive sector and secured social levelling and social security through a growing welfare state.<sup>20</sup>

Radicalism in Early English Punk Rock," *Journal for study of Radicalism* 1, no. 2 (2008): 77–90.

19 Andresen and van der Steen, *A European Youth Revolt*.

20 Klas Åmark, *Hundra år av välfärdspolitik: välfärdsstatens framväxt i Norge och Sverige*, 1st ed., (Boréa: Umeå, 2005).

In many ways, the 1980s can be said to have been the pinnacle of the social democratic economic and welfare regime. In 1980, economic equality was at an all-time high. Further, the labour market saw low unemployment rates. For instance, the highpoint of 3.5% in 1983 was described as a sure sign of economic recession and mass unemployment. This was paired with a large public sector, a large welfare state, and generous systems of transference, such as unemployment benefits and social security.21

One way of showcasing the hegemonic position of social democracy is to point towards the fact that some of the perhaps most emblematic welfare reforms, such as a widespread expansion of universally available municipal child care and a significant expansion of the amount of paid maternal/paternal leave (in practice this turned out to be mostly maternal) was enacted by centre-right parties that governed from 1976 to 1982. Another way of illustrating social democratic hegemony can be the absence of a militant or street oriented new left post-1968—such as the *spontis* in Germany—in Sweden. Instead, the leading tendency within the new left, the Maoist Swedish Communist Party SKP (formerly KFML), stressed respectability and work within the traditionally social democratic "old" social movements, such as the unions and the tenants' movement.<sup>22</sup>

Peterson, Thörn and Wahlström argue that the so-called Swedish model was firmly rooted in the political culture of the old social movements (*folkrörelserna*), and that the social democratic government had close ties to and employed an inclusive strategy towards social movements throughout the post-war decades up to the 1990s. From the 1950s onwards, the Swedish welfare state also took an increasing interest in supporting organizations within civil society. As the traditional social movements, that is the labour movement, the agrarian movement and the free churches, saw falling levels of membership and engagement, the spectre of youth lacking membership in an association (so-called

21 Jesper Roine and Daniel Waldenström. "Top Incomes in Sweden over the Twentieth Century," in *Top Incomes: A Global Perspective*, eds. Anthony B. Atkinson, and Thomas Piketty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Erik Bengtsson, *Världens jämlikaste land?* (Lund: Arkiv förlag, 2020).

22 Anne Hedén, *Röd stjärna över Sverige, Folkrepubliken Kina som resurs i den svenska vänsterradikaliseringen under 1960- och 1970-talen* (Lund: Sekel, 2008); Helena Hill, *Revolutionärer: kön, klass och kvinnokamp i svensk 1970-talsvänster* (Makadam, Göteborg, 2017); Kjell Östberg, *1968—när allt var i rörelse: sextiotalsradikaliseringen och de sociala rörelserna* (Stockholm: Prisma, 2002).

*föreningslös ungdom*) was put forward as a worrying sign of increasing alienation in a modern society. During the post-war decades, state public inquiries pointed out that membership of any kind of civil society association or social movement correlated with higher levels of political engagement and even better health.<sup>23</sup>

Thus, civil society as a whole was given increasingly generous support from governmental agencies as well as local municipalities. In 1985, membership in youth organizations peaked. In the same year, the state and municipalities supported civil society organizations with substantial sums of money (about 3 billion SEK from the state, and an additional 600 million SEK from the municipalities). Furthermore, social movements could often count on generous—often rent-free—arrangements when an association wanted to use municipal locales, as well as support from the local municipal bureaucracy with how to apply for financial support and in general how to run an association in accordance with older Swedish social movement tradition, that is with formal membership, statutes and representative democracy.<sup>24</sup>

This state support potentially included radical new social movements, at least as long as they adhered to formal democratic internal structures that mirrored established forms of movement, as shown by Fredrik Egefur in this volume. Indeed, the argument can be made that, by international comparison, the generous and inclusive Swedish system also functioned as a form of repressive tolerance or regulatory technique that accepted and incorporated contentious issues and movements—thus leading to a lesser prevalence of street-based militancy or direct confrontations between social movements and the state.25

23 Anders Kassman and Johan Vanstad, "Historiska förändringar av ungdomars engagemang i civilsamhället—en demokratifråga?" *Statsvetenskaplig tidskrift* 124, no. 2 (2022); Peterson, Thörn and Wahlström, "Sweden 1950–2015".

24 Kassman and Vanstad, "Historiska förändringar av ungdomars engagemang i civilsamhället"; *Sverige 1986 års folkrörelseutredning* (SOU 1987:33). Ju mer vi är tillsammans betänkande. [D. 1] [Ett förslag som öppnar vägen för utökad föreningsmedverkan i kommuner och landsting]. Stockholm: Allmänna förl., 1987), 55–58.

25 Jan Jämte and Adrienne Sörbom, "Why did it not happen here"; Peterson, Thörn and Wahlström, "Sweden 1950–2015".

#### The Swedish 1980s

During the 1980s, neoliberal and right-wing ideas also began to gain ground in Sweden. The neoliberal and right-wing political currents had taken hold in society, and throughout the 1980s a series of discursive political changes took place that led politics to the right.26 In Sweden, the Social Democrats' 40-years in government was broken in 1976 when the three centre-right parties won the election and formed an alliance government. The Social Democratic party did, however, regain power in 1982 and continued to rule until 1991. There was also a shift to the right within the Social Democrats. The welfare system was increasingly examined and criticized in the public debate. Kjell Östberg and Jenny Anderson conclude that parties from "the right to the left"27 came to accept many of the neoliberal demands made during the period and by the end of the 1980s both "the Swedish model" and the welfare society had "been thoroughly questioned and criticized".<sup>28</sup>

Neoliberal politics that became more influential during the 1980s, was the belief in greater economic and individual freedom, the belief that the state would make as little intervention as possible in the lives of individuals, and the praising of the free market.29 At the same time, the welfare state was criticized and challenged to an increasing degree, often from the right as shown by Katrin Uba and Jenny Jansson in this volume.30 In

26 Kristina Boréus, *Högervåg: nyliberalismen och kampen om språket i svensk debatt 1969–1989* (Stockholm: Tiden, 1994); Kristina Boréus, "The shift to the right: Neoliberalism in argumentation and language in the Swedish public debate since 1969, *European Journal of Political Research* 31, no. 3 (1997): 257–286.

27 Kjell Östberg and Jenny Andersson, *Sveriges historia 1965–2012* (Stockholm: Norstedts, 2013), 302.

28 Östberg and Andersson, *Sveriges historia 1965–2012*, 302. See also Lars Trägårdh, "The 'Civil Society' Debate in Sweden. The Welfare State Challenged," in *State and Civil Society in Northern Europe: The Swedish Model Reconsidered*. ed. Lars Trägårdh (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007).

29 Carl-Michael Edenborg, "Nyliberalismen från vaggan till graven," in *Sekelslut: Idéhistoriska perspektiv på 1980- och 1990-talen*, eds. Anders Burman and Lena Lennerhed (Stockholm: Atlas akademi, 2011); Torbjörn Nilsson, *Moderaterna, marknaden och makten: svensk högerpolitik under avregleringens tid*, 1976–1991 (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola 2003); Martin Wiklund, *I det modernas landskap: Historisk orientering och kritiska berättelser om det moderna Sverige mellan 1960 och 1990* (Stockholm/Stehag: Symposion, 2006).

30 See also Nilsson, *Moderaterna, marknaden och makten*; Wiklund, *I det modernas landskap.*

1978, the right-wing influential think tank and book publisher Timbro was created, which became a strong channel for the Swedish Employers' Association (SAF) and its neoliberal message during the 1980s. Another symbolic event that marked the turn towards right-wing politics and neoliberalism was the demonstration against wage earners funds in October 1983, which gathered 75,000 demonstrators, one of the largest demonstrations in Sweden ever.<sup>31</sup>

However, it is important to note that most institutional and policy changes that we can describe as neoliberal were enacted later in Sweden. For instance, the cutbacks and austerity measures enacted towards unemployment benefits, the privatization of telecommunications and the construction of a voucher system and a pseudo-market in primary education all were enacted during the 1990s. Further, disciplinary and regulatory biopolitical regimes towards welfare recipients and the shifting of primary care responsibilities towards civil society and/or families belong primarily to the 2000s. Even though the 1980s saw a change in political discourse and deregulations of the financial market, as a whole Swedish society still remained a social democratic welfare regime with comparatively generous systems and a high degree of decommodification.32 This is especially clear in contrast to the early wave of neoliberal politics in the Anglo-American world, as well as in comparison to austerity politics in other western European countries.

When the 1970s turned into the 1980s, many of the previously influential radical left movements in Sweden had disappeared, changed or lost their influence in society and as described above, neoliberal and conservative currents were progressing. This development took place in a number of different western countries. Despite, or perhaps because of, the impact of neoliberalism and right-wing politics, opposition and resistance did not subside and opposition to neoliberalism and right-wing politics remained strong during the decade, although it was often performed in new forms and new arenas, as many of the chapters in this volume show. For instance, the 1980s saw a growth and entrenchment of the prominent peace movement and environmental movement, with a national organizational framework that reached most municipalities. The national

31 Edenborg, "Nyliberalismen från vaggan till graven", 34.

32 Gøsta Esping-Andersen, *The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism* (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990).

referendum on nuclear power, and its somewhat inconclusive result, made these issues highly topical during the decade. As Anton Öhman shows in his contribution, the question of peace and disarmament was closely intertwined with nuclear weapons and civilian nuclear power. Monica Quirico discusses in her chapter how parts of the environmental movement were radicalized during the decade, while other parts were institutionalized.

Other social movements that arose or developed from previous movements were the solidarity movement where, for example, support for the ANC in South Africa was strong throughout the decade, and the squatting movement. The relationship between squatters and the police was initially relatively good, but developed over the decade to become increasingly confrontational. Other social movements that continued their activities but in other forms included the women's movement. On the one hand, many activists continued within the women's shelter movement and on the other hand, many women got involved in universities and worked to create new spaces such as forums for women's research.33 As mentioned, research on these movements is still lacking but this anthology examines, highlights and discusses some of these movements.

#### Historical Social Movement Studies

What is, and isn't, to be counted as a social movement, and exactly where the boundaries should be drawn is a recurring discussion within social movement studies. A minimal definition that is often used, could be that a social movement has some degree of organization, some degree of continuity over time and some use of extra-institutional forms of action.<sup>34</sup> Snow, Soule and Kriesi state that:

…social movements can be thought of as collectivities acting with some degree of organization and continuity outside of institutional or organizational channels for the purpose of challenging or defending extant

33 Ulla Manns, "På två ben i akademin. Om den tidiga kvinnoforskningens projekt," in *Blad till Bladh: en vänbok till Christine våren 2006*, eds. Monica Einarsson, Robert Sandberg, Kekke Stadin, and Martin Wottle (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2006), 107–116; Kerstin Norlander and Kristina Larsson, eds., *Kvinnohus nu! Dagbok från Kvinnohusockupationen i Umeå 13* (Umeå: H:ström akademi 2017).

34 Doug McAdam and David A. Snow, *Readings on Social Movements: Origins, Dynamics and Outcomes* (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

authority, whether it is institutionally or culturally based, in the group, organization, society, culture or world order, of which they are part.35

One central intersection in social movements theories is the relationships between "old" and "new" social movements. The established grand narrative in social movement studies typically makes a distinction between social movements that were formed in the late nineteenth century, in Sweden characterized by the triad of the so-called people's movements of the (social democratic) labour movement, the free churches and the temperance movement, and the new social movements that erupted post-1968. Whereas the old movements are often described as hierarchical, with formal decision structures and an engagement with the parliamentary political system, the new movements are often described as horizontal, direct democratic and extra-parliamentary. A characterization of old movements as class-based and new as post-material identity-driven can be added to this overarching narrative.36

However, once we read this grand narrative in a specific geographical and historical context, such as the Swedish 1980s, and in relation to specific movements, the boundaries become blurred. Alberto Melucci, who was one of those who introduced the theory of new social movements (NSM), has in retrospect played down the distinction between new and old movements and believes that the qualitative difference isn't so significant.37 As the authors of the individual chapters in this edited volume clearly demonstrate, the interconnectedness of old and new social movements is clear.

Further, social movements have mainly been associated with various forms of organized and outward-looking, often contentious, forms of protest and resistance.38 The field of Contentious Politics Studies (CPS)

35 David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule and Hanspeter Kriesi, "Mapping the Terrain," in *The Blackwell companion to social movements*, eds. David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule and Hanspeter Kriesi [Electronic resource] (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004).

36 Claus Offe, "New Social Movements: Challenging the Boundaries of Institutional Politics," *Social Research* 52, no. 4 (1985); Della Porta and Diani, Social movements.

37 Alberto Melucci, *Nomader i nuet: Sociala rörelser och individuella behov i dagens samhälle* (Göteborg: Daidalos, 1992).

38 See Charles Tilly and Siney Tarrow, *Contentious Politics* (Boulder Colorado: Paradigm Publishers, 2007); Magnus Wennerhag, *Global rörelse: den globala rättviserörelsen och modernitetens omvandlingar* (Stockholm: Atlas, 2008); Della Porta and Diani, *Social movements*.

is one influential way of analysing social movements. Studies within CPS are often centred on relations between social movement organizations (SMOs) and the state, that either is the direct recipient of claims or a mediator between different collective actors in conflict.39 The contributions of this edited volume engage with one or more of the analytical concepts from this tradition, such as repertoires of contention, political opportunity structures and collective action. Tilly points towards claimmaking performances as a central part of contentious politics, i.e. when people come together in collective actions in order to make a claim directed at an opposing entity (most often the state, but employers or other social movements can also be targets for the claim). These claimmaking performances can, on aggregate, be understood as part of a repertoire of contention. The idea here is that contentious performances are defined not only through what people do when in conflict but also through a shared cultural and collective knowledge of what to do in certain conflicts, as well as what is expected of other actors. On a purely descriptive level, there is a historical importance to map out and describe the evolution of repertoires of contention, especially as contention hasn't been part of a historical narrative on the Swedish 1980s. By identifying performances and by tracing the contours of repertoires of contention it is also possible to connect to the two overarching problem complexes of this volume: if (and if so, how) repertoires of contention evolved in Sweden can be compared to a broader European context. The contribution by Katrin Uba and Jenny Jansson identifies some of the most prevalent forms of contention in relation to the welfare state and makes it possible to discern how the welfare state impacted and shaped repertoires of contention in Sweden during the 1980s.

Another cornerstone of Tilly's original concept of the social movement is that social movements tend to mold collective performances to signal worthiness, unity, commitment and numbers (WUNC).40 The ideal of worthiness seems to correspond to the social democratic ideal of respectability (*skötsamhet*) that formed a central ideal within the

39 Tilly and Tarrow, *Contentious Politics*, 4–16, 45–67; Charles Tilly, *Contentious Performances* (Cambridge: Cambridge university press, 2008), 1–30; Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, *Dynamics of Contention* (Cambridge, Cambridge university press 2001), 14–24; Sidney Tarrow, *Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics* (Cambridge, Cambridge university press 2011), 16–34.

40 Tilly, *Contentious Performances*.

Swedish labour movement.41 As shown by most contributions in this volume, worthiness played an important part in social movements of 1980s Sweden and this seems to have included self-styled radicals who in other contexts perhaps would have been less predisposed to manifest respectability in the social democratic tradition. This can partly be understood in relation to the political opportunity structure.42 Social movements could count on quite substantial support on both a national and municipal level as long as they acted within the rules of the political system. Lastly, some participating authors engage with the concept of frames and framing in relation to social movements. Framing allows the study of how meaning is ascribed to certain events, as well as the study of how social movements engage in a discursive conflict around how the movement should be understood.43

While the CPS field is clearly productive in the historical study of collective performances and repertoires, we would argue that cultural or social history with a focus on moral cosmologies adds an important aspect to the historical study of social movements. Social movements should not be reduced to contentious performances and visible protests, and we strive to also bring forward emphasized collective identification, relationships and the processes that lead to the movement's growth. It should be noted that the late Tilly argued for a processual approach in which the cultural aspects of repertoires of contention are brought to the forefront.44 Other scholars have pinpointed that social movements contain a series of different and varying forms of protest and resistance, and that outwarded protests and activities are only part of the movement. Social movements consist of different groups, networks and their relations and daily practices, and are described as "actions of collective actors" aiming

41 Ronny Ambjörnsson, *Den skötsamme arbetaren. Idéer och ideal i ett norrländskt sågverkssamhälle 1880*–*1930* (Stockholm: Carlssons, 1988).

42 McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, *Dynamics of Contention*, 14–24; Tarrow, Power in Movement, 16–34.

43 David A. Snow, Rens Vliegenthart and Pauline Ketelaars, "The Framing Perspective on Social Movements. Its Conceptual Roots and Architecture," in *The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements* (second ed.). eds. David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, Hanspeter Kriesi, and Holly J. McCammon (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2019).

44 Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow, "Strands of Classical Theory in the Study of Social Movements," in *Handbook of Classical Sociological Theory* [electronic resource], eds. Seth Abrutyn and Omar Lizardo (Springer, 2021), 480.

at social change.45 Melucci believes that this forms the basis of social movements and therefore it is important to study the many everyday practices and actions that are performed and how they are part of different networks.46 As Della Porta and Diani have pointed out, collective identification and feelings of community and belonging are important for social movements' ability to attract members and create action.<sup>47</sup>

In this edited volume we adhere to a broad understanding of social movement where organizations can be part of, but never solely consist of, social movements. In practice the formal organization—especially in a political context dominated by the Social Democrats gives an obvious inroad to the study of social movements. Many of the cases in this volume have a clear social movement organization as a focus for the study, and most of the cases consist of collective actors posing claims, often aimed at the state, and would thus fall into the definition of contentious politics posed by Tilly.48 However, some of the cases studied don't sit as clearly in these categories, and study groups and networks without a formal organizations or common outward claims, but which at the same time are obviously part of a larger social movement context. For example, the self-styled anarchists studied by Fredrik Egefur primarily forged a shared collective identity through cultural politics. At the same time, they worked in close cooperation with the municipality and formed a formal association with spotless bureaucratic acumen in the forms of statutes and protocols.49 On the other hand, the tenants' association, with roots in the old labour movement and part of a broad family of social movements associated with the Social Democrats, was revitalized by the new left during the 1970s and revived forms of collective contentious action from the inter-war period, such as the rent strike. As shown by Hannes Rolf in his chapter, the decline of the rent strike as performance can be understood within a wider decline of the new left during the 1980s.

Furthermore, as van der Steen stresses in his concluding chapter, it is important to not equate the collective actions of social movement with

45 Melucci, *Nomader i nuet*, 12.

46 Melucci, *Nomader i nuet*; Håkan Thörn, *Globaliseringens dimensioner: Nationalstat, världssamhälle, demokrati och sociala rörelser* (Stockholm: Atlas, 2002).

47 Della Porta and Diani, *Social Movements*, 105–113.

48 Tilly, *Contentious Performances*, 5.

49 Cf. Ericsson, "Ockuperat område".

militant or violent forms of action or contention. Indeed, one of our ambitions with this edited volume is to do away with a dichotomy of radical and co-opted social movements. Instead, we aim to situate the studied social movements in a historical context in order to show how they employed a variety of forms of collective actions in navigating their relations to a strong welfare state.

### Participating Chapters

The contributors in this volume discuss social movements from different perspectives and the chapters deal with and discuss relations with the state, the welfare society, right-wing politics and neoliberalism, as well as temporal aspects of the movements. Questions about continuity and change, relations to previous movements (for example the 68 left or the labour movement) and the significance of the movement for later movements are also discussed. The chapters presented here also have in common that they discuss the movements' relations to movements in other European countries, problematize and relate to the specific time frame (1980s), and discuss the movements in relation to earlier and later movements. Some of the movements discussed have long historical roots while others arose during the 1980s. While some movements can be understood as predecessors to later more outward-looking and contentious movements, others evolved in an opposite direction and more or less disappeared, or were taken over by new, more radical forms of protest during the decade. Common to all chapters is a wish to highlight some of the different social movements and protests that existed during the decade but that so far have been more or less unexplored, and discuss them in the light of social and political movements in both Sweden and Europe.

The first two chapters after this chapter Introduction, provide an overarching, long-term perspective of protests and squatting during the 1980s. In Chapter 2, Katrin Uba and Jenny Jansson take as their starting point the 1980s protests against the welfare state. They have mapped various protest events, examining the actors behind them and these actors' relationships to social movements, describing patterns in significant actors and examining whether these patterns changed during the decade. The results show, among other things, that actors were more diverse than supposed by previous research. In the third chapter, Dominika Polanska shows that the 1980s saw a peak of squatting events, and that the character of squatting at the same time partly changed, which has so far only been studied fragmentarily. Squatting in Sweden is based on a tradition of respectability, but, according to Polanska, by the end of the 1980s, squatting events became more confrontative and violent. How can we understand the conflicting ideals of respectability and violence?

Chapters 4 and 5 consist of case studies of movements influenced by punk, anarchism and the emerging and increasingly contentious squatting movement described above. The results of these studies also indicate that these events were important for the formation of later movements, such as militant anti-fascism and the autonomous left. In Chapter 4, Markus Lundström discusses anarchism and how it was revitalized during the decade, partly with influences from the new and emerging punk scene. Lundström shows that anarchism in the 1980s, in its encounter with punk, developed new forms of protest, but also that the legacy from the long history of anarchism was very much alive and shaped the anarchist struggle of the 1980s. In Chapter 5, the anarchist theme is followed up in Fredrik Egefur's study of the alternative environment in Malmö. Egefur discusses activities at the social centre "the Winter Palace" in relation to radical social movements and the squatting movement. The anarchists in the Winter Palace were inspired by European squatters but rented their own house from the city. Egefur finds that the activists he studies both identified with a contentious ideal of European anarchists and squatters, but also with a Swedish historical tradition of conscientiousness.

Chapters 6 and 7 consider two radical social movements; the environmental movement and the anti-nuclear peace movement are examined, both of which had a peak of activity during the 1980s. Monica Quirico's chapter examines how the environmental movement in Sweden, formed during the 1970s, and then developed and changed during the 1980s. The chapter shows how environmental issues were incorporated early on by the Social Democratic Party, and how the referendum against nuclear power in 1980 renewed commitment to various environmental movements. During the 1980s, environmental movements vacillated between trying to gain parliamentary influence and waging a more radical extraparliamentary struggle. In Chapter 7, Öhman revisits the early 1980s uproar of popular peace and anti-nuclear resistance, in light of how the peace movement collective actions were framed in concurrence with mainstream media. Drawing on material from daily newspapers the mediated conceptions and debates of the movement and events are analysed. Hereby, conceptions of the movements' tactics in relation to international and popular framing in "reproductions of peace-movement identity", internally and externally, are problematized.

The subsequent Chapter 8 takes a slightly different approach to social movements, instead discussing how the legacy of previous social movements was managed during the 1980s. In this chapter, Hannes Rolf shows how the 1980s seems to have ended a long tradition of rent strikes in Sweden, and he discusses various explanations for this. One partial explanation is that the tenants' association was radicalized in the early 1980s, and that many of the more radical rent strikes turned instead into squatting events. In the final concluding Chapter 9, Bart van der Steen reflects on the Swedish development in a broader European context. van der Steen believes that it is important not to overemphasize differences between Sweden and the rest of Europe, since such a view can easily lead to distortions and a downplaying of Swedish radicalism, and an overemphasis on militancy in the rest of Europe. A balanced discussion of similarities and differences creates a better understanding of developments in Sweden, as well as those in the rest of Europe.

#### References

*the 1980s*, ed. Knud Andresen and Bart van der Steen, 97–111. Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

and Conditioned Cooperation. In *Popular Struggle and Democracy in Scandinavia. 1700–Present*, ed. Flemming Mikkelsen, Knut Kjeldstadli and Stefan Nyzell, 377–432. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# Actors Behind Contention Over the Welfare State in the 1980s

*Jenny Jansson and Katrin Uba*

# Introduction

The 1980s have often been described as the 'neoliberal decade' and as an era characterised by a new societal analysis advocated by politicians such as Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US. Originating from liberal theorists such as Milton Friedman, criticism against Keynesianism and Social Democracy entered the public debate even in Sweden, a country famous for its strong labour movement.1 The

1 Kristina Boréus, *Högervåg: Nyliberalismen Och Kampen Om Språket I Svensk Debatt 1969–1989* (Stockholm: Tiden, 1994).

J. Jansson (B) · K. Uba

Department of Government, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
K. Uba e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
© The Author(s) 2023 H. Hill and A. B. Pinto (eds.), *Social Movements in 1980s Sweden*, Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27370-4\_2

welfare state stood at the centre of this debate, as the primary neoliberal ideas—namely, the primacy of market forces and individualism—led to the conclusion that the state should withdraw and shrink.2 Thus, the welfare state became a contested and central arena for anyone advocating or protesting neoliberalism, which was evident in the Swedish 'neoliberal turn' in public and political debate in the 1980s.<sup>3</sup>

One of the main proponents of the new societal analysis in Sweden was the Employers' Organisation (Svensk arbetsgivarförening or SAF). By establishing close contact with the conservative party, the Moderates, SAF obtained an ally that became the primary voice for neoliberal ideas in parliament.4 These new ideas affected the Social Democrats (SAP) as well. In the 1980s, for the first time, a (small) party faction of SAP led by the Minister of Finance, Kjell-Olof Feldt, claimed that the welfare state had become inefficient and needed reforms: the welfare state should not expand further but should be made more efficient.<sup>5</sup>

These new ideas of welfare state reform were driven by a political elite and had little support among the grassroots. Above all, unsurprisingly, the trade union movement rejected all discussions on cutbacks and privatisation. Among Swedish citizens, the welfare state enjoyed general, strong and stable support in the 1980s. However, citizens had begun to perceive the welfare state as bureaucratic. The public did not necessarily want a smaller welfare state but favoured a welfare state that adjusted its services to meet citizens' individual needs.6 Some actors, such as the

2 Mark Blyth, *Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea* (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 38–42.

3 Boréus, *Högervåg*; Mark Blyth, "The Transformation of the Swedish Model: Economic Ideas, Distributional Conflict, and Institutional Change," *World Politics* 54, no. 1 (2001).

4 Torbjörn Nilsson, "Nyliberalismens Spöke Och Moderaternas Politik," in *Det Långa 1990-Talet.*, eds. Anders Ivarsson Westerberg, Ylva Waldemarson, and Kjell Östberg (Umeå: Boréa, 2014).

5 Göran Therborn, "Sweden's Turn to Economic Inequality, 1982–2019," *Structural Change and Economic Dynamics* 52 (2020). Boréus, *Högervåg*; Blyth, "The Transformation of the Swedish Model."

6 Stefan Svallfors, *Klassamhällets Kollektiva Medvetande* (Umeå: Boréa, 2004); *Vem Älskar Välfärdsstaten?: Attityder, Organiserade Intressen Och Svensk Välfärdspolitik*, Arkiv Avhandlingsserie, 0347-4909; 30 (Lund: Arkiv, 1989). SOU 1990:44, "Demokrati Och Makt I Sverige," (1990).

Social Democrats' Youth Wing (SSU), suggested reforms to increase citizens' control of welfare state services.7 These proposals did not include privatisation, which was an often-proposed solution at that time for problems in the welfare state. Instead, they emphasised decentralisation and increased democratic control over the welfare state.

Although the welfare state was contested in the 1980s, actual reforms involving welfare state retrenchment and cutbacks only emerged after the economic crisis in the 1990s.8 These reforms involved cutbacks in all social insurances and restrictions on municipalities' budgets. While welfare state scholars have thoroughly examined these reforms and noted the remarkable mobilisation of client groups, we argue that gaining a full understanding of the events in the 1990s requires a careful analysis of the contention over the welfare state that was already occurring in the 1980s.9 Social movement research has indicated that the perceived threat of a worsening situation in the future can lead to collective action.10 Therefore, we should expect to see mobilisation around welfare state issues before the 1990s. Although such mobilisation has been ignored by prior studies, we contend that analysing the period leading up to the reforms

7 Bo Bernhardsson, "Uppbrottet Från Den Svenska Modellen," in *Kan(S)Lihushögern: Frälsare Eller Dödgrävare?*, ed. Marika Lindgren Åsbrink (Stockholm: Tiden, 2019).

8 Nadja Grees, *Changing Swedish Sickness Insurance: Policies, Institutions and Outcomes*  (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2019); Anders Lindbom, "Dismantling the Social Democratic Welfare Model? Has the Swedish Welfare State Lost Its Defining Characteristics?," *Scandinavian Political Studies* 24, no. 3 (2001). Anders Ivarsson Westerberg, Ylva Waldemarson, and Kjell Östberg, *Det Långa 1990-Talet: När Sverige Förändrades*  (Umeå: Boréa, 2014). The most prominent reforms in the 1980s were the waiting days in sickness insurance, the deregulation of the financial sector and the credit market, and a tax reform. Peter Englund, "Vad Kan Vi Lära Oss Av Skattereformen?," in *Arbete, Löner Och Politik*, ed. Bertil Holmlund (Stockholm: Publica/Frizes, 1994); Kjell-Olof Feldt, "Hur Liberal Var 80-Talets Kanslihushöger?," in *Kan(S)Lihushögern*, ed. Marika Lindgren Åsbrink (Stockholm: Tiden, 2019).

9 Karen M. Anderson, "The Politics of Retrenchment in a Social Democratic Welfare State: Reform of Swedish Pensions and Unemployment Insurance," *Comparative Political Studies* 34, no. 9 (2001); Paul Pierson, "The New Politics of the Welfare State," *World Politics* 48, no. 2 (1996); A. Lindbom, "Obfuscating Retrenchment: Swedish Welfare Policy in the 1990s," *Journal of Public Policy* 27, no. 2 (2007); Lindbom, "Dismantling the Social"; Jonas Larsson Taghizadeh and Anders Lindbom, "Protests against Welfare Retrenchment: Healthcare Restructuring in Sweden," *Scandinavian Political Studies* 37, no. 1 (2014).

10 Paul D Almeida, "The Role of Threat in Collective Action," *Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Social Movements*. Oxford: Blackwell. 2nd (2018).

may shed new light upon the explanations that have been developed to understand resistance against cutbacks.

Drawing from previous research on welfare state protests in the 1990s, we expect at least three groups of actors to have mobilised in the 1980s: client groups, trade unions and proponents of welfare state reform. Whereas the two first actors (i.e. client groups and trade unions) have been emphasised as essential players in protests against cutbacks, the welfare state retrenchment literature has neglected the proponents of welfare state reforms. Although we pay particular attention to these three groups and their claims and strategies, whether dialogue or protests, we do not rule out the possibility that contention over the welfare state involved other actors.

This chapter starts with a description of actors who—according to prior research—are expected to have mobilised concerning welfare-state-related issues in Sweden. This description is then followed by a short overview of how the data used for the analysis was collected. The empirical section provides a general overview of the waves of welfare protests that took place in the 1980s and a detailed analysis of how different actors—namely, the trade union movement, proponents of neoliberal reforms and client groups—mobilised the Swedish welfare-related contention in the 1980s.

#### Who Values the Welfare State?

Considering the lack of welfare state reforms being adopted in the 1980s, the expectation of any significant welfare state protests might seem audacious. However, social movement research has shown that protests can be mobilised in the absence of any proposed or implemented policy changes or experience of objective grievances (e.g. increased unemployment). It has been well established that even the perceived threat of a worsening situation in the future can lead to collective action.11 Thus, when elite actors such as economists, party leaders and business owners start to publicly discuss problems with the welfare state, it sets a new political agenda. Such a change in discourse can be perceived as a potential threat to the security created by the welfare state. A change in how elites talk about the welfare state can be perceived as a threat to the rights certain

<sup>11</sup> Almeida, "The Role of Threat."

specific groups have become accustomed to. Mobilisation against a potential erosion of rights or a possible loss of power has been well-documented in other countries, and we expect it to occur in Sweden as well.12 Considering the widespread public debate, the parties' initiatives to include welfare state reforms in election programmes and the introduction of cuts into the budgets of several municipalities and regions providing a large share of Swedish welfare state services (e.g. elderly care and health care), it is reasonable to expect that some protest mobilisation regarding the issue had already occurred in the 1980s.13 According to previous research on welfare state retrenchment and privatisation, at least three groups are known to mobilise around welfare state issues: trade unions, proponents of the reforms and client groups—that is, the beneficiaries of the welfare state.14

The first group we expect to protest is the trade union movement, as studies on the growth of the welfare state emphasise the importance of working-class protests in the development of a welfare state.15 Similarly, there is compelling evidence that trade unions actively mobilise against retrenchment, privatisation, austerity and other neoliberal reforms.<sup>16</sup> Economic problems such as increased unemployment, increased prices

12 Kelly Bergstrand, "The Mobilizing Power of Grievances: Applying Loss Aversion and Omission Bias to Social Movements," *Mobilization: An International Quarterly* 19, no. 2 (2014); Rory McVeigh, *The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right-Wing Movements and National Politics*, vol. 32 (U of Minnesota Press, 2009); Nella Van Dyke and Marc Dixon, "Activist Human Capital: Skills Acquisition and the Development of Commitment to Social Movement Activism," *Mobilization: An International Quarterly* 18, no. 2 (2013).

13 Therborn, "Sweden's Turn to Economic Inequality, 1982–2019"; Kjell-Olof Feldt, Berndt Ahlqvist, and Lars Engqvist, *Samtal Med Feldt: Berndt Ahlqvist Och Lars Engqvist Intervjuar Finansministern* (Stockholm: Tiden, 1984).

14 Peter Starke, "The Politics of Welfare State Retrenchment: A Literature Review," *Social Policy & Administration* 40, no. 1 (2006).

15 Duane H Swank, "Between Incrementalism and Revolution: Group Protest and the Growth of the Welfare State," *American Behavioral Scientist* 26, no. 3 (1983).

16 Daniel Béland and Patrik Marier, "Protest Avoidance: Labor Mobilization and Social Policy Reform in France," *Mobilization: An International Quarterly* 11, no. 3 (2006); Katrin Uba, "Political Protest and Policy Change: The Direct Impacts of Indian Anti-Privatization Mobilizations, 1990–2003," *Mobilization: An International Quarterly* 10, no. 3 (2005). Marco Giugni and Maria T Grasso, "How Civil Society Actors Responded to the Economic Crisis: The Interaction of Material Deprivation and Perceptions of Political Opportunity Structures," *Politics & Policy* 44, no. 3 (2016); Donatella Della Porta, *Social Movements in Times of Austerity: Bringing Capitalism Back into Protest Analysis*  (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2015).

and factory closures are also well known to increase the likelihood of union and worker protests.17 According to the resource mobilisation theory, trade unions are one of the most likely actors to mobilise in times of threat, because they have many members and a formalised organisational structure.18 Hence, trade unions may mobilise fierce opposition if and when they perceive that the welfare state is threatened.

On the other hand, social movement theory predicts that the protest mobilisation of trade unions is less likely when their allies form the government, because the situation provides challengers with many different access points of influence, thereby dampening the need for protest.19 The traditional political ally of the trade union movement in Sweden, the Social Democrats, formed the government in 1982 and ruled throughout the rest of the decade, making mobilisation by trade unions less likely. Prior studies on the Swedish case, however, have shown that tensions between SAP and the Trade Union Confederation grew stronger during the 1980s and culminated in 1986 with massive protests against the government's budget, which contained cutbacks in unemployment insurance.20 Thus, based on previous research, we already know that unions engaged in some actions, often directed towards the government and the Minister of Finance, Kjell-Olof Feldt. Still, only a systematic protest event analysis will allow us to detect the level and patterns of this mobilisation during the whole decade.

The second group we expect to engage in contention over the welfare state comprises the *proponents of the reforms*. The (perceived) inefficiency of the over-bureaucratised system, high taxes, non-flexibility and a lack of freedom of choice were the most repeated grievances by various actors supporting reforms. The main criticism against the welfare state came (and still comes) from the upper classes and business owners, whereas

17 Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, *Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail* (New York: Vintage books, 1979); Paul D. Almeida, "Defensive Mobilization: Popular Movements against Economic Adjustment Policies in Latin America," *Latin American Perspectives* 34, no. 3 (2007).

18 J. Craig Jenkins, "Resource Mobilization Theory and the Study of Social Movements," *Annual Review of Sociology* 9 (1983).

19 Hanspeter Kriesi et al., "New Social Movements and Political Opportunities in Western Europe," *European Journal of Political Research* 22, no. 2 (1992).

20 Kjell Östberg, *När Vinden Vände: Olof Palme 1969–1986* (Stockholm: Leopard, 2009), 375–385.

support for the welfare state has always been more substantial within the working class.21 Even though social movement research usually focuses on weaker societal groups, such as minorities or poor segments of society, studies have examined the pro-business protests mobilised by privileged and wealthy groups.22 The best-known example of such a movement is the Tea Party movement in the US, which Martin called the 'rich people's movement'.23 Rich people's movements often opt for 'quiet mobilisation'—that is, daily meetings and local-level civil society engagement or lobbying, rather than large demonstrations or acts of civil disobedience.<sup>24</sup> However, in regard to tax policies, these groups have also used more disruptive protest repertoires such as marches and demonstrations. In particular, taxes that affect industry are likely to provoke protests.25 While the changed elite discourse about the Swedish welfare state could be perceived as a threat by labour activists, discussions about the economic crisis and the increasing costs of the public sector, which may require an eventual tax raise or redistribution of wealth, are a potential threat to business interests. Hence, we expect to find pro-business mobilisation over the welfare state.

More specifically, these protests are likely to be mobilised by wellorganised actors such as SAF, various business owners and conservative groups. Starting in the 1980s, SAF made strategic investments in developing think-tanks (Timbro), research institutes (Ratio) and research publishers (SNS förlag). SAF also launched a nationwide campaign called 'invest in yourself' in 1979, using a number of successful celebrities on the posters for the campaign (e.g. one of the singers from ABBA). Similar to SAF's other actions, the campaign was meant to make Swedes aware of an

21 Svallfors, *Klassamhällets Kollektiva; Vem Älskar Välfärdsstaten?*

22 Isaac William Martin, *Rich People's Movements: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

23 Andreas Madestam et al., "Do Political Protests Matter? Evidence from the Tea Party Movement\*," *The Quarterly Journal of Economics* 128, no. 4 (2013).

24 Colin Jerolmack and Edward T Walker, "Please in My Backyard: Quiet Mobilization in Support of Fracking in an Appalachian Community," *American Journal of Sociology*  124, no. 2 (2018).

25 Isaac William Martin and Nadav Gabay, "Tax Policy and Tax Protest in 20 Rich Democracies, 1980–2010," *The British Journal of Sociology* 69, no. 3 (2018).

alternative to the social democratic welfare state and to change Swedish public opinion about the state and welfare state services.<sup>26</sup>

Finally, the third group likely to react to welfare state policy changes is the so-called *'clients'*. According to the famous study 'Dismantling the Welfare State' by Paul Pierson, the welfare state creates groups of beneficiaries of particular welfare state services.27 These welfare state clients will defend the specific welfare state programme or service they benefit from. While Pierson used retired people (pensioners) as the best example of a client group that has been very successful in preventing cutbacks in the pension system, there are many other client groups, including pupils and parents, patients, organisations representing people with disabilities, the unemployed and other vulnerable groups. Thus, the welfare state creates new interest groups that did not exist before the welfare state, as opposed to the trade union movement, which helped to create the welfare state. The mobilisation of these new groups is mainly motivated by the members' material interests rather than ideological viewpoints or the general common good. As client groups cut across class borders, they can mobilise large groups of followers and are allegedly more efficient at preventing cutbacks than other societal groups, since they defend a 'narrow' interest (e.g. only pensions or only patients' rights), as opposed to trade unions that usually support the welfare state in general.28 Whereas the trade union movement has ideological reasons for resisting neoliberal ideas and reforms in general, and while pro-business groups are ideologically against a comprehensive state, the mobilisation of client groups is motivated by the perceived threat of cuts in specific welfare services.29 Research on client groups has not focused on their mobilisation during periods other than just before proposed policy changes; however, analysing their organising during the time preceding reforms is essential for a better understanding of how client groups eventually succeed in preventing welfare retrenchment.

<sup>26</sup> Nilsson, "Nyliberalismens Spöke."

<sup>27</sup> Paul Pierson and David Dolowitz, *Dismantling the Welfare State?: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

<sup>28</sup> Pierson and Dolowitz, *Dismantling the Welfare State?*

<sup>29</sup> Magda Bertz Wågström and Jonas Larsson Taghizadeh, "The Welfare State Upholders: Protests against Cuts in Sickness Benefits in Sweden 2006–2019," *Scandinavian Political Studies* 44, no. 3 (2021); Taghizadeh and Lindbom, "Protests Against."

As other actors could also be involved in the contention over the welfare state, our empirical investigation maps all the groups that mobilised protests over the welfare state in Sweden during the 1980s.

#### Defining and Measuring Welfare State Protests

Our analysis uses data from the Swedish Protest Database (SPD), which is based on protest events reported by Swedish newspapers and newswires.30 We define protests as collective actions in which three or more individuals make a claim or express a grievance for a collective outcome—that is, on behalf of some organisation or social category (e.g. the poor, pupils or a neighbourhood). In a few specific cases, however, we have included protests mobilised by less than three people—for example, hunger strikes that raised claims for the common good rather than for individual benefit. The coded events, which are the unit of analysis in the dataset, refer to a specific form of action (i.e. demonstration, strike or letter) reported in a particular geographical location (i.e. city or community) and mobilised by the same group on the same day. For example, if two different organisations presented a petition in the same location on the same day, this counts as two events. However, newspapers often do not specify the location and only note that several demonstrations took place. We coded these as a single event with the location 'whole country'. Hence, it is likely that we generally underestimated the total number of protests. The SPD includes information about events ranging from common strategies such as letter-writing to authorities and newspapers (e.g. letters to the editor) to classical contentious actions such as petitions, demonstrations, manifestations, strikes, acts of civil disobedience and violent attacks.

For the years of interest (1980–1990), the SPD sources of information were microfilm recordings of the two Swedish newspapers: *Dagens Nyheter* (1985–1990) and *Uppsala Nya Tidning* (1980–1985). The first is a newspaper with national coverage, while the second focuses on the Uppsala region and covers events in the eastern part of Sweden (i.e. municipalities such as Uppsala or Enköping). In contrast to many older protest datasets that rely on the newspapers' Monday issues, SPD uses

<sup>30</sup> The database was constructed in the frame of a research project that aimed to study all kinds of protests events that have taken place in Sweden during the period of 1980– 2011. It was financed by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (Forte).

all issues regardless of the day. Unlike many emerging datasets that use automated coding (e.g. the Poldem), SPD is human-coded. This method gives detailed descriptions of the events, including location, organisation, central claims, targets and/or the presence of police. The coders browsed through each daily issue looking for protest events, and found reports were photographed. Another coder then coded the detected events. The team discussed all unclear cases and coded all protest events detected in the two selected newspapers. Thus, SPD includes more protest events than those focusing on the welfare state.

It is also important to note that our data has a clear regional bias; smaller events from northern, western and southern regions are not covered to the same extent as those in the capital (Stockholm) and eastern parts of the country. This regional bias is typical for protest event datasets and results from the media's selection bias—that is, the overrepresentation of large and violent protests in media reporting.31 There is also a description bias based on the problem of inaccurate records of protest size and duration in the news media. Scholars often minimise these biases by triangulating data sources, such as by combining different newspapers, but this was not possible for the data covering the current period of interest. Therefore, these biases set an explicit limitation to our results.

Our analysis not only focuses on contentious actions such as demonstrations, strikes or acts of civil disobedience but also includes symbolic actions and quiet verbal protests (i.e. letters to the editors, public statements in the newspapers and petitions).32 The selection was motivated by our aim to cover all kinds of contention over the welfare state, as any public statement against the welfare state at that time seemed very 'radical'. Furthermore, it is known that, in contrast to many other European countries, the early 1980s in Sweden were not a time of urban riots and

31 David Ortiz et al., "Where Do We Stand with Newspaper Data?" *Mobilisation: An International Quarterly* 10, no. 3 (2005).

32 An example of a symbolic action might be a puppet performance that calls attention to the various problems of people with rheumatism ("Dockteatern som informerar om reumatikerns olika problem," UNT, 25/02/1981) or a collective sign-up at the unemployment agency by childcare personnel in protest against the planned re-organising of the social care system at the municipal level ("Indragna tjänster i Trollhättan: Dagispersonal protesterar," DN, 05/09/1985).

squatting.33 By using a more inclusive approach, we might be able to pick up on early indications of change in the mobilisation strategies. It is also likely that many client groups—such as civil society organisations representing the interests of older people, parents or patients—might opt for less contentious actions rather than protests involving much disruption. More disruptive forms of action are often the repertoire of trade unions and other social movements.

Our definition of *protests over the welfare state* takes as point of departure the redistribution of resources between different groups. What distinguishes welfare states from other forms of state building is the idea that the state should provide services to the citizens. According to Esping-Andersen, the welfare state aims to decrease the risks of losing one's source of income and falling into poverty due to work-related issues (unemployment benefits), parenthood (parental leave, day-care services, etc.), ageing (care services and pensions) and health failure (sickness insurance). Thus, the welfare state has developed social insurance and services to manage these risks through redistribution.34 In addition to the social insurance that addresses these specific risks, the welfare state comprises a broader set of public services such as the education of new generations of citizens, social services and tax collection for redistribution purposes. Following this, we have defined welfare state protests as those protests that make claims about the following issues: unemployment, labour law, work-environment issues, labour market policies, parental leave (*föräldraförsäkringen*), school, childcare, preschool (*dagis/förskola*), youth-related services (*ungdoms/fritidsgårdar*), pensions and elderly care, sickness-related insurance, healthcare, disability-related services, social services (*socialbidrag/bostadsbidrag*), redistribution and public sector housing. The majority of the welfare protests we look at naturally target the local, regional or national authorities, since these are the providers of welfare state services.

In some contexts, wage setting—for instance, legislation on minimum wages—could be defined as a welfare state policy. However, in Sweden, wage bargaining is done between employers and trade unions without the

<sup>33</sup> Jan Jämte and Adrienne Sörbom, "Why Did It Not Happen Here? The Gradual Radicalization of the Anarchist Movement in Sweden 1980–90," in *A European Youth Revolt* (Springer, 2016).

<sup>34</sup> Gösta Esping-Andersen, *The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism* (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990).

state's involvement. When looking at protests that target the state, we do not define these actions as welfare state protests. That said, protests related to wage setting in the *public sector* are tightly connected to redistribution policies and the welfare state services produced by the state. The public sector is financed through taxation, and the wages in the public sector are directly linked to the quality of welfare state services.<sup>35</sup> Thus, we have excluded protests related to wage bargaining in the private sector when defining protests over the welfare state, but we included wage-related conflicts in the public sector.

#### Waves of Contention Over the Welfare State in the 1980s

Before discussing the actors mobilising welfare state protests in the 1980s, we briefly present an overview of the protest trends during this decade. Figure 2.1 shows the number of protest events (i.e. petitions, demonstrations, strikes and civil disobedience) registered in the SPD and the number of these events that were related to the welfare state.

As shown in Fig. 2.1, protests over the welfare state constitute a reasonably large share of the protests registered in the database. The number of these protests increase, along with the total number of protests, after the mid-1980s. Thus, as shown in Fig. 2.2, the total proportion of protests over the welfare state remains relatively stable. On average, 2556 or 36% of the registered 7179 protest events were about welfare state issues, indicating that other issues also resulted in the mobilising of protests (e.g. environmental and energy issues). Compared with other countries, such as Germany or Denmark, Sweden has fewer registered protests for the 1980s; however, if we account for population size, the difference is not significant.36 The welfare-state-related claims never formed a majority of protest claims, but these sometimes (1986, 1989) covered the largest proportion of protest claims.

35 Kristin Linderoth, *Kampen Om Välfärdsarbetets Värde: Fackligt Aktiva Kommunalare Minns Strejken 2003* (Stockholm: Leopard förlag, 2020).

36 Flemming Mikkelsen, "Contention and Social Movements in an International and Transnational Perspective: Denmark 1914–1995," *Journal of Historical Sociology* 12, no. 2 (1999); Dieter Rucht, "The Changing Role of Political Protest Movements," *West European Politics* 26, no. 4 (2003).

**Fig. 2.1** Welfare state protest events and all protests in Sweden, 1980–1990 (monthly data)

**Fig. 2.2** Proportion of protests related to the welfare state out of all protests in Sweden, 1980–1990 (annual data)

One notable trend in the material is that the size of the protest events—that is, the average number of participants reported in the newspapers—increased over time. The most significant event during the 1980s was not related to welfare but to peace. Peace Week involved a million participants all across Sweden in 1983. Peace Week and the related peace demonstrations were part of an extensive campaign against nuclear weapons and for peace in general, mobilised by various religious groups and the Swedish peace movement. The fact that it lasted for a whole week made it possible for the movements organising the protest to mobilise such a large number of people. The First of May manifestations gathered more than 700 000 participants across Sweden in 1986, which may have been an effect of the murder of Olof Palme earlier that year. The largest protest over the welfare state during the 1980s involved about 600 000 participants: it was a strike for higher salaries and better working conditions for public sector workers in 1986.37 The second-largest welfare state protest was a petition with about 500 000 signatures against the wage earners' funds in 1983.38 Still, the average number of participants in the welfare protests was much smaller, about two thousand. The relatively small protest size is a characteristic feature of social movement mobilisation in Sweden.

The typical protest over the welfare state was verbal, a 'quiet mobilisation' in the form of a public letter or announcement (see Fig. 2.3).<sup>39</sup> The increasing proportion of strikes and demonstrations from the mid-1980s onward suggests that mobilisation regarding welfare state issues became stronger, or 'louder', over time. Although several protests during the 1980s involved violence (e.g. protests related to migration and international events), the welfare protests involving violence and property damage emerged during the second half of the decade. Civil disobedience and legal actions are reported as 'other' in Fig. 2.3. Jämte and Sörbom come to similar conclusions in their study focusing on youthrelated protests, which often involve squatting. Our dataset includes a few

38 "Halv miljon protester till Gadd," UNT, 07/12/1983.

39 Regarding strikes, it is essential to recall that we exclude purely wage-related events in the private sector, which were very typical in the early 1980s.

<sup>37 &</sup>quot;620 000 personen dras in lönestriden," DN, 02/10/1986.

**Fig. 2.3** Strategies of protests over the welfare state in Sweden, 1980–1990 (%, annual data)

such events, such as the house occupations in Stockholm for more affordable housing in 1985.40 Chapter 3 in this book gives a more detailed overview of the Swedish squatting movement in the 1980s.

In 1989, there was another example of a disruptive protest. About 10 000 pupils and their parents gathered in Stockholm in reaction to the government's proposal to significantly cut the budget for primary schools. The event also involved a confrontation between protesters and the police.41 Thus, even though no noticeable welfare reforms were adopted during the 1980s, the actual budget cutbacks mobilised significant protests.

Policy changes and austerity plans were also referred to in protest claims. The issues most frequently mentioned during that decade were childcare and schools, labour conditions, healthcare and sickness benefits.

<sup>40</sup> Jämte and Sörbom, "Why Did It."

<sup>41 &</sup>quot;Regeringens sparkrav var för mycket. Tiotusen skolelever protesterade," DN, 12/01/1989.

The activists did not use the term 'neoliberalism' very often. Nevertheless, when the chairman of the trade union SKTF, Björn Rosengren, made a public statement against SAF in 1981, he accused SAF of promoting 'neoliberal' policies.42 The proponents of welfare retrenchment reforms particularly the youth wing of the Moderates (MUF)—described the government's policy as 'plan economy'.43 Thus, concepts that can be directly linked to neoliberalism were explicitly used in some cases.

The typical childcare- and school-related protests targeted local governments that planned to make cutbacks in the budget. At the national level, it was more common for protesters to use petitions addressing the quality of education or the food provided at schools. For example, the organisations for pupils gathered 18,000 signatures for a petition calling for a better quality of school lunches.44 Healthcare and the rights of people with various disabilities were other vital issues that mobilised protest events, particularly during the early 1980s. However, in these cases, the most commonly used repertoire involved letters to newspaper editors, petitions and statements in the media. Over time, the dominance of school-related protests and even the proportion of health-related issues faded. Other topics, such as labour and infrastructure (e.g. public housing), gained more importance (Fig. 2.4).

The most extensive labour campaign of the period was the whitecollar workers' conflict (*tjänstemannakonflikten*) in 1986; in 1988 and 1989, most labour protests focused on working conditions and loss of jobs. Unemployment in Sweden was low during the 1980s and decreased rapidly after the mid-1980s. Nevertheless, the loss of jobs mobilised protests—a finding aligns with prior research indicating that unemployment is an issue that people rally around.45 The most prominent and visible campaign regarding redistribution issues was the so-called Dalauppropet in 1985–1986. This protest movement was formed by local trade unions in the Dalarna region, who criticised both the social democratic government and the Trade Union Confederation (*Landsorganisationen,*

42 "Privatiseringskampanjen har ett dubbelt syfte: Rosengren till attack mot SAF," UNT, 21/05/1981.

43 "Vem avgör?," UNT, 04/06/1981.

44 "Elever kräver nylagad mat," DN 16/01/1986.

45 Donatella della Porta, "Protest on Unemployment: Forms and Opportunities," *Mobilization: An International Quarterly* 13, no. 3 (2008).

**Fig. 2.4** Specific topics of welfare protests in Sweden, 1980–1990 (%, annual data)

LO).46 In general, Dalaupproret made up only a tiny proportion of all protests over the welfare state during the 1980s.

It is also noticeable that most protests were not against inefficiency or the lack of freedom to choose a welfare service provider. Instead, the issues mentioned by the proponents of welfare reforms focused on cuts and retrenchment. Thus, if the citizens at that time were concerned with the efficiency of the welfare state, as shown by previous studies, it did not motivate them to mobilise protest events.<sup>47</sup>

#### Actors Behind Protests Over the Welfare State

We suggested that three distinct groups would likely have mobilised welfare-state-related protests during the 1980s: the trade union movement, the proponents of welfare state reforms and client groups. Our

<sup>46</sup> Kjell Östberg, *Folk I Rörelse: Vår Demokratis Historia* (Stockholm: Ordfront, 2021). 47 Svallfors, *Vem Älskar Välfärdsstaten?*

data includes information on the organisations and various societal groups mobilising or participating in the protest events. We divided these groups into the three categories mentioned above and included a fourth category: 'other' actors that are not close to any of the trade unions, proponents of welfare state reforms or client groups (see Table 2.1). These include political parties, religious groups, organisations representing migrants and women's movements.

The category of 'trade union movement' includes not only trade unions but also all types of employees that acted as a group, such as 'workers' or 'nurses'. These groups of employees are included in this category because the media did not always report that unions were involved in the protests—even though, in Sweden, it is highly likely to be the case. Some of these groups, such as medical doctors, have professional associations that are not unions per se. Still, such associations would act for the benefit of that group, and the difference between professional organisations and trade unions can be vague. Above all, these groups represent different groups of employees.

As shown in Table 2.1, the trade union movement mobilised the most significant proportion of protests over the welfare state: about 42% of the events. Client groups of welfare services accounted for about 37% of

**Table 2.1** Organisers and main participants of welfare protests, 1980–1990

events, and collective contention by proponents of reform was minimal, at about 4% of the protests.

Parents, pupils, students and young people formed the most significant protest groups over welfare issues in the 1980s. Their dominant issues of concern were school, childcare and education. These client groups mainly targeted local governments, which—in contrast to the national government—did propose and implement cuts in their budgets as early as in the 1980s.48 For example, in the autumn of 1986, many protests including rallies, petitions and theatrical symbolic actions were mobilised against proposed cuts in Stockholm's childcare sector.<sup>49</sup>

There were also apparent ideological differences among the group we have labelled as 'clients'. For example, client groups mobilising protests regarding educational issues had different positions regarding the grading system. Although the large pupils' and students' organisations such as Elevförbundet and Sveriges Folkhögskoleelevers förbund protested the grading system by boycotting exams in 1980, other client groups disagreed.50 The main school-related issue mobilising protests was not the right to choose a school (*valfrihet*), which was one argument used in the public debate by advocators of neoliberal reforms. Instead, the most common concern of protests was the closure of specific schools. Although school closures and protests against such decisions became more common in Sweden after the municipalities became responsible for schools' organisation in 1991, 20% of the protests over school and childcare and 7% of all welfare protests in our sample were about school closures (e.g. the proposed closure of the Norra Real, a secondary school, in Stockholm in 1987 mobilised a great deal of contention).51 Like most of the studied events, school-related protests mainly used a 'quiet' repertoire of letters and petitions. Other client groups were less active than parents and pupils,

48 According to a general analysis of welfare costs in the municipalities, there was some decline of costs in relation to childcare during the period of 1980–1990, although much larger retrenchment did take place later, in 1990–2000. Per-Lennart Börjesson, "Välfärdsmysteriet? Kommunsektorns Utveckling 1980–2005," (Stockholm: Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting, 2008).

49 E.g."Protestmöte mot sparplanen," DN, 29/10/1986; "Ockupation i Blå hallen," DN, 19/09/1986.

50 "Moderat skolungdom," UNT, 23/10/1980.

51 Katrin Uba, 'Protest Waves in Sweden since the 1980s', Paper Presented at the Forum for Civil Society and Social Movement Research, Department of Sociology and Work Science, 21 January, 2016.

although individuals representing the interests of patients and people with disabilities mobilised about 7% of the events. Actions by elderly citizens were even fewer; organisations representing the interests of the retired and elderly mobilised only 2% of welfare protests in the 1980s.

As expected, the trade union movement, which in Sweden has the most extensive resources and is well organised, was behind many welfare state protests in the 1980s. According to our dataset, about 20% of the protest events were organised by specified trade unions. Since the media often reported that 'workers' or 'nurses' were participating in a protest and did not specify if and which union was behind a specific protest event, it is likely that this figure was actually higher. The working-class unions affiliated with the LO organised about 200 protests (41% of all events mobilised by unions). The white-collar trade union confederation (TCO) and its affiliated unions mobilised about 140 protests (28%); 75 (15%) of the protests were mobilised by upper-middle-class unions affiliated with Saco; and a small proportion of events (20 events) were mobilised by unions unrelated to any of the three main confederations (e.g. SAC). Considering that most teachers, doctors and nurses belong to one of the public sector unions affiliated with TCO or Saco, public sector unions were expectedly more active in contention over the welfare state than the private sector unions.

In contrast to the public opinion surveys that reported on the general public's concern over the bureaucratisation of the welfare state in the 1980s, we observed only a few such protests. Although this issue might have been an indirect trigger for mobilisation, no explicit claims regarding the matter were formulated during the protests under study. The character of welfare services or the lack of a citizen's perspective, the right to choose a specific service or the inefficiency of the welfare state—all common arguments in the public debate—were not directly mentioned by protesters. These arguments mainly came from the political elite; above all, from business sector representatives. Those who favoured welfare state reforms such as cutbacks and retrenchments mobilised a few quiet yet noteworthy protests using letters and public statements. For example, Industriförbundet announced in 1980 that the growth of the public sector must be stopped, and the youth wing of the Moderates (MUF) complained over the queues and ineffectiveness of the welfare system in May 1981 and urged for more privatisation.52 A small proportion of pro-business group protests were directly related to lobbying in favour of private ownership<sup>53</sup> and investments, arguing for example in favour of the Bromma airport, but almost all these actions used a 'quiet' repertoire.<sup>54</sup>

The most famous example of a visible protest mobilisation by proponents for neoliberal reforms in Sweden is the Fourth of October demonstrations against the wage earners' funds.55 Although the wage earners' funds did not directly refer to welfare state services or social insurance, they were part of the state's redistribution policies. Dissatisfied with the proposal to introduce wage earners' funds in the early 1980s, the Employers' Organisation mobilised a mass demonstration on October 4, 1983. Some newspapers called it 'the largest demonstration in Swedish history', as it involved about 75,000–100,000 participants.56 The mobilisation against the funds was not surprising, since there was generally high public opposition against the wage earners' funds, especially among the electorate of the centre-right parties.57 However, even though the Employers' Organisation and its supporters had the skills, resources and motivation to mobilise visible protest events in the 1980s, they had seldom done so prior to the Fourth of October demonstrations, nor have they done so since.

Finally, although our three groups of interest mobilised the great majority of the welfare protests in the 1980s, 16.6% of such protests

52 "Nasbeth: Hejda offentliga sektorns tillväxt," UNT, 31/03/1980; "Offentliga sidan bör privatiseras," UNT, 29/05/1981.

53 It must be acknowledged that even companies with public ownership are coded here as enterprises. Hence, when the municipal company in Lysekil was opposed to the closure of the hospital in that region in 1987, the event is coded as a private actor supporting a public cause (see more about the events in "Landstinget vill lägga ner sjukhuset," DN, 30/06/1987).

54 "Företagare vill bevara Bromma," DN, 22/04/1990.

55 Jonas Pontusson and Sarosh Kuruvilla, "Swedish Wage-Earner Funds: An Experiment in Economic Democracy," *ILR Review* 45, no. 4 (1992).

56 The number differs depending on the source, Per-Olof Edin, Leif Hägg, and Bertil Jonsson, *Så Tänkte Vi På Lo - Och Så Tänker Vi Nu* (Stockholm: Hjalmarson & Högberg, 2012); UNT, "Största Manifestation I Svensk Historia: 100 000 I Marsch Mot Fonder," 05/10/1983.

57 Mikael Gilljam, *Svenska Folket Och Löntagarfonderna: En Studie I Politisk Åsiktsbildning* (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1988).

were organised by other organisations and actors, among which political parties constituted a large share (7.4%). Of the political parties, the youth wing of the conservative party was a force promoting privatisation and neoliberal reforms and opposing the size of the public sector. The youth wings of other political parties were not as active in welfare state protests. Instead, their mobilisation focused primarily on foreign policy issues (i.e. the acknowledgement of Palestine and solidarity with Poland and Afghanistan). During the second half of the decade, the political parties and their youth wings also raised their voices concerning youth and housing policies. For instance, the Swedish Communist Youth League mobilised a demonstration in Uppsala against housing policies in April 1987.<sup>58</sup>

In sum, the trade union movement and client groups mobilised protests related to the welfare state – mainly against reforms and cutbacks. Only rarely did anyone organise protests in favour of decreasing the public sector or privatising it. However, we did not find evidence of cooperation between client groups and trade unions. According to a growing number of studies on anti-austerity protests, trade unions and client groups are expected to seek support from one another while organising protests. Such cross-movement mobilisation and joint actions were widespread after the Great Recession in 2008.59 Our data shows almost no collaborative efforts across movements and cooperation between different organisations in the 1980s. One explanation could be that these actors (i.e. trade unions and client groups) perceived the threat to the welfare state differently and thus did not find the mutual grounds necessary for joint action.

### Conclusion

The 1980s has been described as a time in which there was a 'neoliberal turn' in public and political debate. Many of these new ideas focused on the size and organisation of the welfare state. The considerable discussion about the need to reform the welfare state for different reasons—to

<sup>58 &</sup>quot;Demonstration utanför bostadsförmedlingen: Ge unga bra bostäder" DN, 11/04/1987.

<sup>59</sup> Hanspeter Kriesi et al., *Contention in Times of Crisis: Recession and Political Protest in Thirty European Countries* (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

make it more efficient, to increase citizens' voice or democratise it, and to make it less bureaucratic—resulted in few actual reforms. Still, the change in the political agenda—from a modest critique of the welfare state in the 1970s to open discussions in the 1980s mobilised significant protests over the welfare state during the 1980s. The events described in this chapter did not follow the political debate. The protests did not make any claims about the inefficiency and bureaucracy of the welfare state or the need to privatise and increase individual citizens' power to choose between welfare state services. Instead, most protests were about retrenchment, cutbacks and change. The discrepancy between the political debate about the welfare state and the contentious actions that were taken indicates that collective actors in the field—particularly the unions and client groups—interpreted the debate as a threat to the welfare state and aimed to defend it.