Capitalists Against Markets: The Making of Labor Markets and Welfare States in the United States and Sweden

by Peter A. Swenson

Overview

Conventional wisdom argues that welfare state builders in the US and Sweden in the 1930s took their cues from labor and labor movements. Swenson makes the startling argument that pragmatic social reformers looked for support not only from below but also from above, taking into account capitalist interests and preferences. Juxtaposing two widely recognized extremes of welfare, the US and Sweden, Swenson shows that employer interests played a role in welfare state development in both countries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195142969
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/26/2002
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	9.21(w) x 6.14(h) x 1.00(d)
Lexile:	1580L (what's this?)

About the Author

Northwestern University

Editorial Reviews

"Capitalists Against Markets highlights the important role played by employers in the creation of the American and Swedish welfare states. In a brilliant and original analysis, Swenson show how employer strategies—solidarism in Sweden and segmentalism in the U.S.—were rooted in each country's economic development and gave rise to distinctive public programs. Adroitly blending theory, history, and politics, Swenson has created a masterpiece of comparative scholarship." —Sanford M. Jacoby, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA

"Capitalists Against Markets is a magnificent follow-up on the author's much acclaimed Fair Shares. In this new book, Peter Swenson proposes a much needed correction to the mainstream—and myopic—focus on the role of labor movements in the making of welfare politics. He offers both rich history and strong analysis of how capitalists helped give shape and form to the welfare state and to labor market policies in Sweden and the United States, two countries that exemplify the welfare state extremes. It is both impressive and path-breaking scholarship, and it will no doubt provoke controversy. It certainly should, as it forces us social scientists to take the politics of capitalists far more seriously than has been our want." —Gosta Esping-Anderson, Universidad Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

"This is a book of great importance. Marshalling detailed historical evidence, Swenson persuasively challenges the view that employers were uniformly hostile to the creation of the welfare state by showing that this was untrue even in the United States. As an added bonus, it is quite gripping a read." —David Soskice, Research Professor of Political Science, Duke University

From the Publisher