In the global world
Globalization has in many ways been the case in recent decades. Throughout the post-war period, Sweden has been an immigrant country. Large groups of workers immigrated during the good times up to about 1970 from southern and central Europe as well as Finland. Subsequently, immigration has mainly been the nature of refugee reception, first from South America, later from conflict hearings in Africa and Asia. The effects of immigration on Swedish society – both positive and negative – have become a much debated issue, as is the need for an improved integration policy.
Hostile parties were not prominent in the same way as in some other European countries for a long time, even though the immigrant-critical New Democracy had some mandates in the parliament in 1991-94. However, since the nationalist and xenophobic Sweden Democrats (SD) in the 2006 election were represented in a number of municipal councils, this party’s voter support has grown tremendously. SD entered Parliament for the first time in 2010 and became the third largest party in the 2014 and 2018 elections.
In general, however, public opinion and politics have upheld the new cultural diversity; The right of ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities to develop their culture was established in 2002 in the form of government. In 1999, it was also legislated that Sweden has five official national minority languages: Finnish, Tornedal Finnish (Meänkieli), Sami, Romanian (Romani Chib) and Yiddish.
- ABBREVIATIONFINDER: Offers three letter and two letter abbreviations for the country of Sweden. Also covers country profile such as geography, society and economy.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and its system of power in Eastern Europe, Sweden’s international position appeared to have changed. Economic crisis symptoms helped to swing public opinion in favor of the EU. It became the Social Democratic government that came into existence after the 1994 elections under Ingvar Carlssonwhich in 1995 introduced Sweden into the EU. Sweden has since participated in a number of peacekeeping and military operations, in the Balkans and in Asia and Africa, sometimes under NATO leadership, and in official rhetoric, the doctrine no longer applies to Sweden being always neutral. However, the opinion has not been for NATO membership, and the initial very positive attitude to the EU was changed in some skepticism. In 2003, 56 percent of voters voted against joining EMU cooperation and replacing the krona with the euro. The view of the EU has subsequently become more positive in general.
Ingvar Carlsson was succeeded in 1996 as Social Democratic leader and prime minister by Göran Persson. Both Carlsson and Persson supported the Center Party, but following a sharp decline in the 1998 parliamentary election, Persson ensured continued social democratic power holdings by entering into close cooperation with the Environment Party and the Left Party. During this time, a rigorous economic policy was pursued which brought the state budget from large deficits to balance. Prior to the 2006 election, however, the four bourgeois parties succeeded in strengthening their cooperation, under the name Alliance for Sweden (see Alliance), and moderate Fredrik Reinfeldt could form a bourgeois majority coalition. This retained power after the 2010 election, though in a minority since the Swedish Democrats took their seats in the Riksdag.
Already the Social Democrats had, under Carlsson and Persson, pursued a policy of privatization of state activities, and this was continued by the bourgeois government. Similarly, some austerity measures regarding sickness compensation and unemployment policy have been common. Thus, if politics can be said to have had a pervasive right feel in some respects in recent years, at the same time, the bourgeois have left to the extent that they have come to accept the foundations of the Swedish welfare state and also the Swedish labor market model with strong trade union rights. Presumably, the bourgeois electoral victory in 2006 was largely conditional on the moderates presenting themselves as “the new moderates” and clearly declaring that Swedish labor law should be preserved.
Block politics greatly influenced the political landscape following the formation of the Alliance and the parties maintained it despite the fact that neither the bourgeois nor the red-green had a majority in the Riksdag since the 2010 election. With reference to this party’s roots in neo-Nazi organizations, the other parties have agreed that SD should have no influence. Exceptions to this have been made in a few municipalities but not yet at national level.
The 2014 election result meant that the red-green bloc was larger than the Alliance; Social Democrat Stefan Löfven formed a coalition government together with the Environment Party, which for the first time ended up in office. In order to enable minority rule in the current parliamentary situation, in 2014, the so-called December agreement was reached. However, this was put out of play in the fall of 2015. A hitherto generous refugee policy was sharpened sharply due to the refugee crisis in 2015.
In the 2018 election, the Swedish Democrats went further, while the red-green became the largest bloc with only one mandate overweight. Löfven was deposed by the Riksdag and the formation of the government historically took a long time; twice, the president’s proposal for a new prime minister was rejected (first the moderate Ulf Kristersson and then Löfven). In the choice between supporting a government with the Moderates and the Christian Democrats, which would depend on support from the Swedish Democrats as well, and introducing a new red-green government under Löfven’s leadership, the Center Party and the Liberals ultimately chose the latter. A prerequisite for this, however, was an agreement on a comprehensive reform program (the January agreement) with clear liberal elements.
Population 2000
According to COUNTRYAAH, the population of Sweden in 2000 was 8,881,529, ranking number 82 in the world. The population growth rate was 0.100% yearly, and the population density was 21.6446 people per km2.
