This thesis considers the position of the British financial sector in the economic strategy of social democracy during the 1960s and 1970s. In doing so it attempts to shed light on a broader question – what caused the collapse of the postwar social democratic project in Britain during the final quarter of the twentieth century? It contends that the social democratic project faced a variety of challenges to its principles, assumptions, and practices in the two decades prior to the election of Margaret Thatcher as a result of changes to the financial system. These challenges offered opportunities for the advance of social democracy beyond the norms established following the Second World War, but the capacity to pursue these was constrained in a number of ways. The emergence of institutional investment, and the breakdown of the postwar banking settlement, undermined the social democratic methods for managing and controlling credit and investment, yet also offered the opportunity to advance the State’s capacity to intervene in the economy. However the ability of the left to renew and rebuild the social democratic economic project along more advanced, interventionist lines was limited by new material constraints which made extensive reform of the financial system and the domestic economy extremely difficult. Structural changes to the international financial system following the breakdown of the Bretton Woods settlement, combined with the severe economic crisis of the 1970s, imposed new limits on the freedom of governments to engage in domestic-focused macroeconomic management. As the methods and techniques of social democratic economic strategy became less effective, the ideal of developing an advanced industrial economy through State coordination faded. In its place a new conception of the British economy was promoted which sought to revive its historic liberal and internationalist role in which the City of London was at its heart.

Thesis (MA (Political Science))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010 / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Since the advent of independence in 1968, Mauritius’ economic trajectory evolved from the one of a monocrop sugar economy, with the latter noticeably being the backbone of the country’s economy, to one that progressed into being the custodian of a dynamic and sophisticated garment-dominated manufacturing industry. Condemned with the misfortune of not being endowed with natural resources, relative to her mainland African counterparts, Mauritius, nonetheless, was able to break the shackles of limited economic options and one of being the ‘basket-case’ to gradually evolving into being the upper-middle-income country - thus depicting it to be one of the most encouraging economies within the developing world. Indeed it is captivating that the fruits of the island’s prosperous sugar industry went a long way in meeting the island’s diversification agenda. Moreover, the ‘Mauritian miracle’ is glorified by the emergence and sustenance of a comprehensive welfare state which was able to withstand the harshest economic challenges the country ever faced. This thesis seeks to provide a broad historical over-view of the factors which aided the construction of the social democratic regime in Mauritius. It is of the premise that the social consciousness of the post-colonial leadership in Mauritius laid the foundation for the entrenchment of ideals of social justice into the Mauritian polity. Instead of letting market forces operate in their pure form, the state was propelled instead, to take the driver’s seat into the running of the economy so as to ensure the market and labour become partners in a bid to help the state meet its social development ideals. It is no wonder that current day welfare state in Mauritius is the one which is inextricably linked to elections, not just as tool to duck socio-ethnic disharmony. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Sedert onafhanklikheidswording in 1968 het Mauritius se ekonomiese ontwikkeling gevorder van die van ’n enkel kommoditeit suiker uitvoerder as die basis van die ekonomie tot een met ’n dinamiese en gesofistikeerde tekstiel vervaardigingingssektor. Verdoem weens ’n tekort aan natuurlike hulpbronne in vergelyking met ander state in Afrika, het Mauritius nogtans daarin geslaag om sy tekortkominge te bowe te kom en geleidelik te ontwikkel tot ’n opper-middel inkomste staat. Suiker uitvoere het inderdaad ’n sleutelrol gespeel in die diversifikasie van die ekonomie. Die sukses van die ‘Mauritius wonderwerk’ is verder stukrag gegee deur die inwerkingstelling en voortbestaan van ’n omvattende welvaart staat wat gehelp het om die ergste ekonomiese uitdagings die hoof te bied. Hierdie tesis poog om ’n breë historiese oorsig te bied van die faktore wat die konstruksie van ’n sosiale demokratiese orde in Mauritius aangehelp het. Daar word gewerk van die premis dat die sosiale bewussyn van die na-koloniale leierskap in Mauritius die grondleggers was vir die vestiging van ideale van sosiale geregtigheid in die staat se politieke kultuur. In plaas van ’n ongebreidelde vrye mark ekonomie het die staat egter ’n sleutel rigtinggewende rol in die ontwikkeling van die ekonomie gespeel en om seker te maak dat die privaatsektor en arbeid vennote word om sleutel sosiale ekonomiese doelwitte te bereik. Dit is dus geen wonder dat die bestaande welvaartstaat in Mauritius nou verweef is met plaaslike verkiesingsverwagtinge nie en nie bloot ’n manier is om sosio-etniese onstabiliteit te verminder nie.

Dominant market theories analyze markets as ahistorical entities without the need for professional groups that manage crucial functions within them. This thesis, in contrast, approaches markets as historical systems that develop over time and that can be constituted in many different ways because of different historical trajectories. Different professional groups managing market routines, further, are seen as a crucial part of markets. Two concepts are introduced: “market architecture”, the specific way a market is constituted at a given time; and “market technocrats”, the seemingly disinterested third party functionaries that manage routines in markets and advocate changes in market architecture. The thesis argues that market technocrats exist because of uncertainty and lack of trust between market actors, and that they are an important part of how market architectures develop over time. It presents an analytical framework for understanding market technocrats and how they interact with and develop markets. Four different aspects of market technocrats are explored: the process of establishing market technocrats in market routines; the capture of the authority of market technocrats by other market actors; the expansionistic behavior of market technocrats; and the way changes in economic theory, as an important part of how economists with technocratic authority advocate market change, can help to explain changes in markets. These aspects are explored through four empirical papers: The Market Technocracy of Import Substitution: The Role of Asymmetric Information and The Swedish Seed Association 1880–1935; Limits of Market Technocracy: Swedish Fertilizer Research and the Crisis of Objectivity 1945–1960; Central Banks, and the Pursuit of Influence, Prestige, and Legitimacy: The Creation of the Nobel Memorial Prize; and From Market Engineering to Institutional Engineering: Reform Economics in Sweden 1950–2000. The results of the papers form the basis of a hypothetical narrative of how the role of market technocrats has changed during the 20th century. This provides a roadmap for further research in the development of markets and the role of market technocrats.

This master thesis focuses on the development of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) between the years 1990 and 2005. At the beginning of this period, Germany was reunited. At the end, the coalition government of the SPD and the Greens came to its end and the SPD lost the office of the Chancellor. The first chapter of this thesis summarizes the post- war development of the SPD, which is crucial for better understanding of the events after the year 1990. The following chapters are, in accordance with the election period focused on the period of 1990 - 2005. The main focus of this thesis are the important phenomena which were linked to the SPD during the analysed period. Attention is paid to the debates within the party regarding economic, social and foreign policy or personnel issues. The main program documents of the SPD from the years 1990 - 2005 are analysed. All the mentioned information is summarised and interpreted.

For all but thirteen years of the decades from 1952 to 2017, British Columbia was electorally dominated by the Social Credit Party and its ideological successor, the BC Liberal Party. These organizations represented the interests of business in opposition to the social democratic NDP, which has drawn a core support base from organized labour and the public sector middle class. This thesis frames the Social Credit-BC Liberal political formation as a ruling class bloc that maintained hegemony by switching between distinct rhetorical modes as the political situation required or allowed, with economic austerity, framed as objective necessity, on one hand, and populism, employing overt moralism and down-to-earth posturing, on the other. I posit that both modes operated to mask the class conflict at the heart of the neoliberal project of free markets, public sector reduction, and social atomization that has attained the status of political and economic “common sense” since its policies began to be widely adopted around the world in the late 1970s. After providing a background for the rise of Social Credit in British Columbia under W.A.C. Bennett (premier from 1952-1972), this thesis tracks the continuities and changes of the province’s hegemonic bloc, using welfare policies and poverty discourses as a focus. I consider the party’s transition from a populist one that appealed to the province’s evangelical Christian population to a modernized, neoliberal party under Bill Bennett’s leadership (1975-1986). Exploring the rationales surrounding the cuts to welfare funding enacted under the Social Credit governments of Bill Bennett and Bill Vander Zalm and the BC Liberal government of Gordon Campbell (2001-2011), I analyze how neoliberal and populist styles were employed, what the relationship between the two was, and the extent to which moralism was part of both styles/discourses regarding poverty. I also look at the extent to which the collective solidarity of anti-poverty activists and progressive religious groups was able to push back against neoliberal and populist policies, resisting the individualism that neoliberalism attempts to enforce. In these ways, this thesis seeks to contribute to making neoliberalism a topic of critical political analysis and deliberation at a time when its policies are often framed as non-ideological. / Graduate

<p>In the 1930s the Swedish homes were modernized through a series of social reforms. As a result of this, time was expected to be released from the housewife’s daily domestic duties and the question was what to do with this time. In this dissertation the concept of time is used in the sense of free time as time for free thinking. The time issue during the thirties is an underlying question throughout the study. The magazine Morgonbris (1904-), a political campaign journal published by the social democratic women’s association (in Swedish: Socialdemokratiska kvinnoförbundet, SSKF) was the public arena for political issues of this kind.</p><p>The aim of the study is to scrutinize the magazine, its shape (typography and layout) and content, the editors´ journalism as well as the relationship to the SSKF and the circle of readers during the decade, in order to describe the dramatic changes of this political and public arena with special focus on the editorship of Kaj Andersson (1931-1936).</p><p>Methodologically this study draws on Hannah Arendt’s “storytelling” or “fragmented historiography”. Theoretically the concepts “public sphere” and “proletarian experiences” are adopted and Jürgen Habermas, Oscar Negt & Alexander Kluge as well as Pierre Bourdieu, are referred to. The gender perspectives of Joan F. Scott and Yvonne Hirdman are also adopted.</p><p>Kaj Andersson’s ”active journalism” in Morgonbris exhibits two distinguishing characteristics during the thirties, it was clearly socialist and critical towards nazism and fascism and it was the most salient vehicle of modernity within the Swedish press at the time. She re-styled the magazine, gave it a new outfit and introduced a new kind of modern, photojournalism. The result was an economic upswing for the magazine. The heritage of Ellen Key´s aesthetics came forward in a consumer campaign, “The best of the industry to the needs of the homes” (Fabrikernas bästa till hemmens behov), which bears similarities to the “Better Homes of America” campaign, launched in the 1920s in the USA. The political path in both campaigns coincided partly with the agenda of Alva Myrdal. Also the “Housewife Holiday” campaign that Kaj Andersson initiated in Morgonbris was in line with the modernization of women’s life throughout the country. The exhausted housewives’ yearning for rest and temporary release from domestic duties was reflected in several articles, in which their grass-root initiatives were acknowledged as political action.</p><p>Until Kaj Anderson left Morgonbris, after several schisms with the committee about her creative – her backbiters would say self-indulgent – style to run the editorial office, she balanced on the border between commercialism and socialism. Her background in the party press, the social democratic newspaper Social Demokraten, influenced her ideas, but her initiatives to turn to the fields of production and consumption also drove a wedge into the field of journalism, as an involuntary beginning to separate it from the field of politics.</p>

<p>The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze the political thought of Hinke Bergegren (1861-1936), Gustaf Henriksson-Holmberg (1864-1929) and Einar Håkansson (1883-1907), by focusing particularly on their articulation of anarchist ideas. The disseration follows these three Swedish left-wing thinkers closely, while specifically tracing ideological patterns in their published material, public discussions, speeches and other political activities. The study attempts to combine the perspective of intellectual biography with a contextualising approach on ideological analysis. Bergegren, Henriksson-Holmberg and Håkansson stand as illuminating examples of how anarchist ideas could take form at the advent of the twentieth century in Sweden. They were all connected to the working class movement, and participated actively in the public debate about anarchism and its various aspects. This larger political and cultural context is also presented, and put in relation to Bergegren's, Henriksson-Holmberg's and Håkanssons' actions and ideas. Thereby, the study examines certain lines of thought connected to the anarchist ideology, and at the same time find traits in the history of libertarian socialism in Sweden, as reflected in the ideas embraced by the three aforementioned historical actors. From the start Henrik "Hinke" Bergegren - the agitator, writer and journalist who is the principal character in the dissertations first major part - was highly controversial within the social democratic movement. From the early 1890's and up to his final exclusion from the Social Democratic Party in 1908, he was constantly being accused of leading and informal anarchist subdivision, which recommended acts of terror and strived for a social revolution. However, this study confronts and modifies that notion. It concludes that Hinke Bergegren's ideological position during the 1890's cannot be equaled to a clear anarchist conviction; rather, he criticized the party's strong focus on parliamentary tactics from a revolutionary socialist viewpoint. Einar Håkansson, on the other hand, based his critique of authorities, military power, parliamentary governance and private property upon anarchist principles. In several poems and short stories, Håkansson stated his anti-authoritarianism. He was also an early advocate for anarcho-syndicalism. Gustaf Henriksson-Holmberg, the anarchist theoretician, was always anxious to emphasize the importance of avoiding all forms of large-scale political and economical solutions. This position, along with a deep-rooted individualism and a willingness to integrate social theory and political propaganda, characterized Holmberg's political thought from the 1890's and onward. His antipathy against brutal revolutionary tendencies was as solid as his critique of ideological dogmatism. In conclusion, the anarchist lines of thought articulated by the three principal characters in the thesis intersects at several points. They all agreed that private property and capitalism must be abolished and replaced by voluntary forms of cooperation. Furthermore, they expressed a similar disbelief in parliamentary tactics, the military and party bureaucracy.</p>

One of the most controversial debates in contemporary Swedish history centred on a proposal to create “wage-earner” funds. The main institutional actors of Swedish society were involved in this debate during the 1970s and 1980s. The aim of this thesis is to analyze how the most important institutional actors in Sweden, namely LO, the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) and the Swedish Employer Confederation (SAF), participated in and defined themselves in the wage-earner funds debate, against the background of the crisis of the Swedish Fordism, i.e. the mass production society. Chapter 2 consists of an analysis of those inherent features of Swedish Fordism that potentially could imply dissolution of the Fordist society in Sweden after the 1960s. Chapter 3 investigates debates about wage solidarity policy and the concentration of power and ownership in the Swedish economy that resulted in the LO wage-earner funds proposal from 1975. Chapter 4 discusses the opinions of active members in LO regarding the wage-earner funds proposals from 1975 and 1978. Chapter 5 investigates the Social Democratic Party's relationship to wage-earner funds. The chapter surmises that SAP leaders took a pragmatic attitude towards funds. This pragmatism differed from the opinion expressed by the radical activists in the party. Chapter 6 deals with the reaction of the Swedish Employer Confederation to the wage-earner funds proposal. The SAF anti-fund campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s are investigated in detail in the context of a neoliberal ideological offensive in Sweden. The chapter argues that the decision to abandon the centralized wage bargaining model influenced SAF's strategy in the debate over wage-earner funds. The dissertation’s main conclusion is that the radical wings of LO and SAP as well as the SAP leaders and the Swedish employers all used the mobilization around wage-earner funds for their own political purposes to solve problems resulting from the crisis of Swedish Fordism.

In the 1930s the Swedish homes were modernized through a series of social reforms. As a result of this, time was expected to be released from the housewife’s daily domestic duties and the question was what to do with this time. In this dissertation the concept of time is used in the sense of free time as time for free thinking. The time issue during the thirties is an underlying question throughout the study. The magazine Morgonbris (1904-), a political campaign journal published by the social democratic women’s association (in Swedish: Socialdemokratiska kvinnoförbundet, SSKF) was the public arena for political issues of this kind. The aim of the study is to scrutinize the magazine, its shape (typography and layout) and content, the editors´ journalism as well as the relationship to the SSKF and the circle of readers during the decade, in order to describe the dramatic changes of this political and public arena with special focus on the editorship of Kaj Andersson (1931-1936). Methodologically this study draws on Hannah Arendt’s “storytelling” or “fragmented historiography”. Theoretically the concepts “public sphere” and “proletarian experiences” are adopted and Jürgen Habermas, Oscar Negt &amp; Alexander Kluge as well as Pierre Bourdieu, are referred to. The gender perspectives of Joan F. Scott and Yvonne Hirdman are also adopted. Kaj Andersson’s ”active journalism” in Morgonbris exhibits two distinguishing characteristics during the thirties, it was clearly socialist and critical towards nazism and fascism and it was the most salient vehicle of modernity within the Swedish press at the time. She re-styled the magazine, gave it a new outfit and introduced a new kind of modern, photojournalism. The result was an economic upswing for the magazine. The heritage of Ellen Key´s aesthetics came forward in a consumer campaign, “The best of the industry to the needs of the homes” (Fabrikernas bästa till hemmens behov), which bears similarities to the “Better Homes of America” campaign, launched in the 1920s in the USA. The political path in both campaigns coincided partly with the agenda of Alva Myrdal. Also the “Housewife Holiday” campaign that Kaj Andersson initiated in Morgonbris was in line with the modernization of women’s life throughout the country. The exhausted housewives’ yearning for rest and temporary release from domestic duties was reflected in several articles, in which their grass-root initiatives were acknowledged as political action. Until Kaj Anderson left Morgonbris, after several schisms with the committee about her creative – her backbiters would say self-indulgent – style to run the editorial office, she balanced on the border between commercialism and socialism. Her background in the party press, the social democratic newspaper Social Demokraten, influenced her ideas, but her initiatives to turn to the fields of production and consumption also drove a wedge into the field of journalism, as an involuntary beginning to separate it from the field of politics.

The aim of this thesis is to analyse the conceptualisation of the social relations of class and gender within the Social Democratic Women’s Association during the period 1972 – 1993, on the basis of their programmes for action. The analysis of the concepts is based on an ideology critical study focusing on the manifest ideology. The study is based upon the theoretical concepts of class and gender,  The class analysis is based upon the broadened concepts of class by Erik Olin Wright and Ira Katznelson. The gender analysis is mainly based upon a Marxist understanding and a critical point of view of Marxism and feminism in the context of patriarchy and capitalism. The period of the study is where the social democracy is challenged, both by radical socialism and feminist ideology and the economic crisis during the 1980’s, as well as the possible threat of an organised women’s party in Sweden. It is also a period with major changes in the Swedish class structure, especially in the change when married women become a part of the female labour force rather than being housewives. The results indicate that the use of the concepts of class and gender is mainly sparsely used. The concepts are often paraphrased in varied terms of social equality. Class is clearly more used, and more often implied, than gender. Gender policies are formed from a latent ideology to a more practically oriented policy, without any real progress concerning power and equality, when Sweden at the same time forms policies for gender equality, from which the women’s association could benefit, even though they may not have been the actors of this change. The analysis also indicates that some of the ideological changes within the women’s association are a result of both outside influences from more radical groups as well as ideological crises within the social democracy. In this struggle between class and gender the Social Democratic Women's Association positions itself in between.