ABSTRACT
Half a century ago, Herbert Tingsten described the Nordic countries as ‘the happy democracies’ (Tingsten 1966). For decades, their democratic systems were generally viewed as stable, characterized by social consensus, compromise politics, corporatism, political trust, active participation and egalitarianism. At the same time, the Nordic countries developed some of the most ambitious welfare states in the world (Bengtsson et al. 2014). A combination of democracy, market solutions and high state expenditure came to characterize all five Nordic countries. In Sweden, Norway and Denmark, the Social Democratic parties were on the forefront in moulding this societal mix; while the Social Democrats were much weaker in Finland and Iceland, similar kinds of developments also took place there.
