Ideology and Strategy: A Century of Swedish Politics (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions)

This book empirically analyzes how a minority can succeed in having its way in a modern democracy. The author applies modern rational choice theory to examine such paradoxical triumphs in Swedish domestic politics over the past 100 years. Identifying Arrow's paradox, Prisoner's Dilemma, and other famous game-theoretic matrices, eight important issues in Swedish parliamentary history are explained: the tariff issue in the 1880s, the introduction of universal suffrage, the introduction of parliamentary government, the new economic politics during the 1930s, the debate on planned economies, the supplementary pensions issue, the nuclear power issue, and the wage earners' fund issue. For each, the author presents the outcome and its history, and the strategic behavior of the actors. Ideology and Strategy is an analysis of issues in Swedish parliamentary history over the past 100 years. Leif Lewin has chosen eight issues and scrutinized them using traditional analysis and, importantly, game-theoretic reasoning. For each, he presents the outcome and its history and the strategic behaviour of the actors. He gives special attention to the strategy used by the potential loser. The first chapter presents the methodology to be employed in the analysis and introduces concepts and strategies such as voter's paradox, prisoners' dilemma, the Condorcet method, logrolling and others. The final chapter includes a review of the concept of politics as rational action. Lewin's analysis begins with the tariff dispute of the 1880s and ranges from suffrage reform, parliamentary government, the crisis programme of the 1930s, economic planning, the pension system, nuclear energy, to employee investment funds. Ideology and Strategy blends history, substantive issues and potential analysis, and is an important contribution to rational choice theory In more than seventy years, only one political party has succeded in attracting a majority of the Swedish electorate during peacetime: In 1968 the Social Democrats received 50.1 percent of the vote. Leif Lewin ; Translated By Victor Kayfetz. Translation Of: Ideologi Och Strategi. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.