minicurso bengtsson - Renato Perim Colistete

UNIVERSIDADE DE SÃO PAULO
FACULDADE de ECONOMIA, ADMINISTRAÇÃO e CONTABILIDADE
DEPARTAMENTO de ECONOMIA – PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO
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Minicurso
“The Origins and Development of Swedish
Egalitarianism: Historical and Comparative
Perspectives”
Prof. Erik Bengtsson, Lund University/Gothenburg University
Dias: 28, 30 de março e 1 de abril de 2016
Horário: 14 horas
Local: Sala Delfim Netto, FEA 2
Promoção: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Economia, FEA-USP e
Programa CAPES/STINT, Projeto “Polos à Parte: Uma Perspectiva de
Longo Prazo sobre Desigualdade, Industrialização e Instituições do
Mercado de Trabalho no Brasil e Suécia” (USP, Universidade de
Gotemburgo e Universidade de Lund)
PROGRAMA
In international perspective, Sweden is known as a country with a high degree of
economic equality and a large and generous welfare state. To the extent that it is true,
this module explores the history of this state of affairs: why and how did Sweden
become that way? We go back to the mid-to-late 19th century to investigate the
development of Swedish society from the viewpoint of class relations, inequality and
welfare policy.
Literature
Mandatory readings
Alestalo, Matti and Kuhnle, Stein (1987) “The Scandinavian Route: Economic, Social,
and Political Developments in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden”, International
Journal of Sociology 16 (3–4): 3–38.
Bengtsson, Erik, Anna Missiaia, Mats Olsson and Patrick Svensson (2015) “Wealth
Inequality in Sweden, 1750–1900”. Presented at the Economic History Society Annual
Conference in Wolverhampton, March 2015, the XVIIth World Economic History
Congress, Kyoto, August 2015, and the 11th Swedish Economic History Meeting in
Umeå, 8–10 October 2015.
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Optional readings
Bengtsson, Erik (2014) “Labour’s Share in Twentieth Century Sweden: A
Reinterpretation”. Scandinavian Economic History Review, 2014, vol. 62 no. 3, pp.
290–314.
Castles, Francis G. (1973) “Barrington Moore’s Thesis and Swedish Political
Development”, Government and Opposition pp. 313-331.
Lundh, Christer (2004) “Wage Formation and Institutional Change in the Swedish
Labour Market 1850–2000”, in Christer Lundh, Jonas Olofsson, Lennart Schön & Lars
Svensson (Eds.), Wage Formation, Labour Market Institutions and Economic
Transformation in Sweden 1860–2000 (Lund: Lund University), pp. 92–143.
Roine, Jesper and Daniel Waldenström (2008) “The Evolution of Top Incomes in an
Egalitarian Society: Sweden, 1903–2004”, Journal of Public Economics 92(1–2), 366–
387.
Tilton, T. (1974) “The Social Origins of Liberal Democracy: The Swedish Case”,
American Political Science Review 68(2): 561–571.
Plus three short articles from the Economist magazine, from a special report on the
Nordic countries from 2 February 2013. “The Nordic countries are probably the bestgoverned in the world”, “The Nordic countries are reinventing their model of
capitalism“, and “Immigration and growing inequality are making the Nordics less
homogeneous”, all available from http://www.economist.com/printedition/
2013-02-02 .
Comments on the literature
Alestalo and Kuhnle (1987) cover the social and political development of Sweden in
the 19th and 20th centuries from the vantage point of comparative historical sociology.
They are good examples of comparative historical research and put Swedish society in
a thoroughly comparative analytical frame, which I think is helpful.
Bengtsson et al (2015) presents new estimates of wealth inequality in Sweden from
1750 to 1900. The paper argues that Sweden was much more unequal and dominated
by the aristocracy in 1900 than has commonly been understood – so that the decrease
in inequality came late, in the 20th century.
Bengtsson (2014) is inspired by Roine and Waldenström but focuses on the
distribution between labour and capital. Its theoretical perspective is much more
sociological than that of Roine and Waldenström.
Castles (1973) is an interesting application of Barrington Moore’s class-based theory
of modernization on the Swedish case
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Lundh (2004) discusses the development of the labour market from the same
structural-analytical perspective as Schön’s (2012) book.
Roine and Waldenström (2008) is the major Swedish contribution to the currently very
lively top incomes literature (cf. Piketty and Saez).
Tilton (1974), like Castles (1973), applies Barrington Moore’s modernization theory
on Sweden