Last January David Cameron organised the UK Nordic Baltic summit, at which his personal friendship with the Swedish prime minister and fellow Conservative leader, Fredrik Reinfeldt, was clearly matched by a growing interest in that favourite of left-leaning thinkers, the Swedish model. This week, the same group of leaders met once again, this time under the title Northern Future Forum.
What are we to make of Cameron's interest in Sweden, given its historical association with social democracy and a vaguely socialist "cradle-to-grave" welfare safety net? The simple answer is that, in recent years, Sweden has received just as much attention for successfully handling its economy through the global crisis. The country is at the top of international ranking lists both in terms of economic clout and quality of life. This has led to a shift in focus, underlined by enthusiastic talk about Nordic tiger economies at Davos and in pro-business organs such as the Economist and the Financial Times.
But behind the appealing robustness of an "economy as strong as Pippi Longstocking", as the OECD secretary general José Angel Gurría said, is a social contract and moral logic that, one imagines, would startle most rank-and-file UK British Conservatives.
The linchpin of the Swedish model is an alliance between the state and the individual that contrasts sharply with Anglo-Saxon suspicion of the state and preference for family- and civil society-based solutions to welfare. In Sweden, a high-trust society, the state is viewed more as friend than foe. Indeed, it is welcomed as a liberator from traditional, unequal forms of community, including the family, charities and churches.
At the heart of this social compact lies what I like to call a Swedish theory of love: authentic human relationships are possible only between autonomous and equal individuals. This is, of course, shocking news to many non-Swedes, who believe that interdependency is the very stuff of love.
Be that as it may; in Sweden this ethos informs society as a whole. Despite its traditional image as a collectivist social democracy, comparative data from the World Values Survey suggests that Sweden is the most individualistic society in the world. Individual taxation of spouses has promoted female labour participation; universal daycare makes it possible for all parents – read women – to work; student loans are offered to everyone without means-testing; a strong emphasis on children's rights have given children a more independent status; the elderly do not depend on the goodwill of children.
It is precisely this harmony between the Swedish model and the principles of the market – that the basic unit of society is the individual and a central purpose of policy should be to invest in human capital and maximize individual autonomy – that is key to the vitality of the country's economy. This emphasis on individualism and free enterprise is also what makes the Swedish model so attractive to conservatives like Reinfeldt – it even makes the large role afforded to the state palatable, especially as the rhetorical focus shifts from the social welfare state to the individual investment society.
Of course, what works for the Swedish centre right might not sit as well with British Conservatives. Cameron surely agrees on the goal of combining social security with free enterprise. But when it comes to embracing Swedish-style statist individualism at the expense of family values and communitarian "big society" ideals – there might be a limit.
Indeed, when I debated with Phillip Blond last year, pitting the Swedish model against his big society idea, I suggested that what makes Sweden work would be his worst nightmare. A large state and rampant individualism are antithetical to his civil society idealism. But it's also the case that, while we know that Sweden actually works, the big society remains a distant dream.
By Lars Tragardh, a Swedish historian who until recently lived in the US.