the nordic way Ð global crossroads and ...not giants that manage best on our own. instead, our...

THE NORDIC WAY – GLOBAL CROSSROADS

AND CAPABILITY TO CHANGE

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THE NORDIC WAY stands at a crossroads both at home and abroad. Globalisation was predicted to bring about the end of the Nordic way, but instead it confirmed the Nordic countries’ capability to undertake structural reforms and increase competitiveness. The Nordics’ unusual combination of a strong state and extreme indi-vidualism provided the basis for high levels of social trust, which in turn paved the way for an efficient market economy and an inclusive wel-fare state. An open mind and a will to include people in a common social contract was the key to attracting and gaining global competitiveness.

While the first publication “The Nordic Way – equality, individuality and social trust” provided some plausible explanations of the relative suc-cess of these societies, this second publication aims at taking a deeper look at the roads that shaped the Nordic Way and the capacity to face tomorrow’s challenges. The key political ability to implement tough reforms was based on the social trust in the Nordic societies. Therefore it is not further globalisation that is the threat. The problem is that social trust is being eroded – how we manage our own capacity to change.

The Nordic economies have proven to be resil-ient in the face of economic crises of the past decades. But at the same time, the Nordic wel-

fare systems have, since the 1990’s continued to undergo substantial and often rapid reforms. The question of how these changes will impact the level of trust in society is currently a top-ic under debate. Internationally, there is still strong demand for lessons learned from the development of the Nordic economies and their welfare systems.

Today, nationalist and populist movements across Europe, and in the Nordic, are once again attempting to create a society of “us and them”. This threatens to destabilise the political systems and their capacity to reform, and also turns soci-eties inwards and decreases openness for eco-nomic development.

The crossroads is about whether the Nordic capability to undertake change and to interact globally will prevail or not.

Tove Lifvendahl (political editor-in-chief at Svenska Dagbladet) questions today’s Nordic curiousness about the rest of the world and our willingness to be influenced by others. Tomorrow’s compet-itive advantage rests in the capacity to develop and capitalise human capital. If that is what once made the Nordic countries successful, why are we today hesitating?

Katrine Marçal (writer and columnist at Afton-bladet) asks why the world’s most family friendly

labor market automatically does not translate to the most women friendly? The gap in income between women and men remains and few women are found in executive positions.

For the world’s most gender equal societies, equality is still far away.

Mats Svegfors (publicist and former County-governor) addresses the high-degree of social trust and how this has enabled economic development. But the social trust that was the key to development may be tomorrow’s obstacle. As internationalisation of the labor market and individuals continues, social trust that is directed towards yesterday’s institutions can be a conserving, instead of driving factor. Social trust is today on decline and if the general political course is not changed, much needed reforms may be impossible to implement.

Stefan Edman (writer and biologist) makes the argument that the Nordic region with its high- climate profile, political environmental ambitions and green-technology business community can be a forerunner in making a circular economy, green jobs and a more stable and sustainable economy and welfare possible. The Nordic market is large enough to impact Europe and Europe’s is large enough to impact the world. The question is if the Nordics dare to take the lead?

Dagfinn Høybråten (Secretary-general of the Council of Nordic Ministers) points out that the Nordic region is better placed than most others to carry out the reforms that globalization fosters – as long as we move ahead together. The model is challenged but capable of reform and a reinvented Nordic Way could to an even larger extent than before inspire to long-term macro-regional collaborations.

We hope that this publication will contribute to a much needed debate about challenges which in many ways are as relevant in other parts of the world as they are in the Nordic countries.

Annika Rembe DIRECTOR-GENERAL, SWEDISH INSTITUTE

Johan HasselDIRECTOR, GLOBAL UTMANING

Bo Andersson SECRETARY-GENERAL THE NORDIC ASSOCIATION

THE NORDIC REGION AT A CROSSROADS

TITEL PÅ RAPPORT PÅ VARJE SIDA RIORE LATQUE

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WITH HINDSIGHT, IT COULD be considered a bless-ing that so many people from the Nordic coun-tries felt compelled to emigrate, mainly to North America, in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Similarly, surely it is a blessing that long after the Nordic countries have become wealthy and less inclined to religious persecution, so many of us out of curiosity have continued to travel and live in other parts of the world. Because other-wise, how could we have brought home so much new knowledge?

Looking ahead, our current challenge seems obvious:

We need to keep up this level curiosity and will-ingness to learn, if we are to mentally shift from having been a Nordic great power to becoming a global region.

When analysing how the Nordic countries be-came so prosperous, one critical factor is rarely

mentioned: The importance of other parts of the world as a source of knowledge and inspiration.

Swedish companies have been the corner-stones in decades of uninterrupted growth ex-perienced in Sweden, something we could nev-er have achieved in isolation. Take for instance Sandvikens Jernverks AB, founded in 1862. Göran Fredrik Eriksson may have been the first person in the world to use the Bessemer method to produce steel on an industrial scale but he was not its´ inventor. He imported and refined some-one else’s idea.

People from the Nordic countries being pres-ent at the Chicago’s World’s Fair of 1893 certainly helped, where the forerunner of the world’s first standardised automobile was on display. When the company Volvo submitted an application to the Swedish Patent and Registration Office to register its brand, it clearly had benefited from

THE NORDICS TOPPING ALL CHARTS – but aren´t we missing something?

BY TOVE L IFVENDAHL

THE NORDICS TOPPING ALL CHARTS – BUT AREN´T WE MISSING SOMETHING?THE NORDICS TOPPING ALL CHARTS – BUT AREN´T WE MISSING SOMETHING?

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the experience developed around the Benz Velo. And inventor Lars Magnus Ericsson can thank Alexander Graham Bell for not registering his telephone patent in the Nordic countries; mak-ing it possible for Ericsson to start manufacturing telephones in 1877.

“Openness” is a term often associated with the Nordic model. I would argue that the aspect of openness that has been most vital to its suc-cess can best be described as a driven curiosity. This phenomenon is well documented in the correspondence between emigrants from the Nordic countries and the North American con-tinent, demonstrating how a person who is in one place gains knowledge he or she can share with people elsewhere.

THERE IS A RELATED lesson to be learnt from this spirit of treasure hunting and from the political reforms enabling even more exchanges: We are not giants that manage best on our own. Instead, our prosperity is based on relatively small coun-tries like us being able of sustaining a vibrant, productive exchange with others.

Swedish exports today account for 45 per cent of GDP, our imports account for about 40 per cent. The export of goods is greater than the export of services, but the trade in services has grown more rapidly than the trade in goods.1

Norway is certainly our biggest trade partner, while Finland and Denmark also represent a considera-ble share of our trade in goods, but we all depend on relations and trade with non-Nordic countries.

Our success cannot be explained only by the flow of ideas, goods, services and capital; mobil-ity of people has also played a large role.

After the Second World War and up to the late 1960s, immigrants were recruited to work in Sweden when manufacturing demanded more people. In 1967, the Social Democratic govern-ment then in power sharply limited immigration opportunities for non-Nordic applicants – a move that strengthened intra-Nordic migration. In 1970, Finnish immigration to Sweden set a record, with 90,000 new arrivals.

But again since 2008, Sweden has one of the more liberal systems in the world for labour immigration. The regulations in place are based on the labour market’s need for workers.

Having looked at the “hard” pieces of the puzzle in understanding Nordic economic suc-cess, what are the “soft” ones?

We Nordic countries are a bit of an oddity. In the World Values Survey, all the Nordic countries are found in the corner of the values chart char-acterised by secular-rational and emancipatory self-expression values. Similarly, when general trust is measured, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland top the list. This tendency of trust has grown rather than declined in recent decades.2

This is something we tend to be proud of. We like to talk about “the Nordic Way” (or to be honest, in Sweden “the Swedish system”) and it is easy to believe that the high degree of

well functioning institutions, extensive welfare systems and social trust have interacted with growing commerce, contributing to a healthy business climate as well as citizens´ confidence to invest, take out loans and sign agreements.

ON THE SAME topic, we like to think of ourselves as being – or aspiring to be – international and modern. We do seem to be quick to adopt new trends and new technology as well as influences in food, music and fashion.

It is a paradox that, at the same time, we appear to find it difficult to appreciate the experiences, the new knowledge and networks of our return-ing compatriots or of immigrants.

We risk a high price for this contradictory behav-iour, which of course does not tally at all with our preference for praising diversity and difference.

What determines if a country or a region will succeed in today´s world? Since we are living in a knowledge and network economy, the answer will be the ability to attract, develop and capital-ise on the country’s human capital.

”Since 2008, Sweden has one of the more liberal systems in the world for labour immigration”


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TALENT IS, IN FACT, becoming the key factor for competition. However, this realisation does not yet seem to have reached the cold Nordic countries.

The Global Agenda Council on Migration recently described the transformation that is under way and how countries and companies are positioning themselves to succeed in attracting the right talents in the rapidly changing work environment.3

“If your surname is McNamara and you live outside Ireland, expect a letter” was the lead of an article in The Economist that examined the ways different countries try to access the brain power of their compatriots residing abroad.

There were no Nordic countries among the

countries whose efforts were illustrated.4 I do not think this was by chance.

Some years ago, I was invited by the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce to make a lecture tour along the US west coast. It dawned on me on that trip that the tone of conversations was quite different from what I was used to in Sweden; Swedes in the US seemed to find it natural to compare Sweden with other countries, to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of their home country.

In Sweden, a defensive tone will instead often creep into the conversation when someone talks about success elsewhere. Instead of curious ques-tions, the conversation will usually be punctuated

with pointed statements about how we should be content with how good things are, not complain – and be thankful that things are not as bad as in the US.

Back from my American tour, I realised that Swedes who have left the country tend to be in-visible in debates about Swedish society.

A SEARCH IN the press archives confirmed this view. Swedes abroad were generally depicted as exotic birds. An article would typically be about a middle class family selling off all their belong-ings to sail around the world – or else about Swedish Hollywood wives. The exception, of course, were major export successes like foot-baller Zlatan Ibrahimovic and singer Robyn. I found little about more mundane emigration.

I proceeded to interview friends having lived abroad, asking questions that I had for some reason never asked. What was it like? Did they have a good time, and what were the lessons they learnt, the experiences and the challenges? How did life in another country work? How did the children manage the adjustment and what peo-ple did they socialise with? I asked how living abroad had changed their view of Sweden and how their move back had worked out.

A pattern emerged. Regardless of their age, sex, education, profession, interests or geo-

graphic location, the Swedes who had emigrat-ed described a common experience: They had all encountered an almost active disinterest in their experience from abroad and in any new knowledge they may had gained. Moving back to Sweden was almost always difficult. Both socially and professionally, distance or even fric-tion was experienced in relations with old friends and colleagues.5

And I realised that I too had acted in this way, asking standard questions with no real interest of finding out more.

No matter how anecdotal my story is, herein lies, in a nutshell, the big challenge for us – mentally shifting from being a Nordic great power to becoming a global region.

It seems as though Sweden, and possibly just as much the other Nordic countries, systemati-cally neglects its far-flung diaspora, missing the fact that these people constitutes hard currency in terms of talent; they are part of our community while holding knowledge that we do not have.

In the same way as emigrants to America in the old days were living go-betweens conveying knowledge, today’s emigrants can offer so much more to their home countries than we let them.

There is a reason why many countries have detailed strategies for maintaining contact with compatriots studying abroad, the same reason Deng Xiaoping encouraged his fellow citizens

The world´s most attractive countries, ranked according to economy and pay level, experiences of travelling, working and socializing as well as raising children. Top countries Switzerland (no 1) and Germany (no 4) only lose out on the difficulties of making new friends, China (no 3) makes travelling difficult, United Kingdom (33) offers low level of pay and little free time while the Nordic countries don´t figure at all when expatriates are doing the rating. Source: HSBC, 2014

”… the big challenge for us – mentally shifting from being a Nordic great power to becoming a global region”

CHDE

GB NLBEIEFR

ES

US

MX

ZA

BR

SAKW

EG

TRIT

MY

JP

RU

INQAAE

OMAU

TWHKVN

CA

BH CN

TH

SGNZ

TOP

MIDDLE

LOW


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to travel the world and obtain new knowledge: “When our thousands of Chinese students abroad return home, you will see how China will transform itself.”6

The naive disregard of potential talents demonstrated by Nordic countries probably explains why our countries seldom are to be found on the global maps now being drawn, showing which countries are the most attractive7 or have the highest quality as a destination for work abroad.8 These rankings matter to people planning a career.

Sylvia Schwaag Serger, adjunct professor at Lund University School of Economics and Management, guest professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Policy and Management, and director of international strategy at Vinnova, Sweden’s innovation agency, carried out some 50 in-depth interviews with students in China between 2004 and 2008. An indicative remark that tended to recur in

these interviews was: “If we look at a Swedish company, we see only Swedes at the top – why should we apply to a company like that?”9

OF THE HUNDRED largest companies in Sweden in 2012, 96 were founded by Swedes.10 The other four were founded by people born in Denmark. In the US in 2010, 18 per cent of the 500 largest companies were founded by immigrants, 40 per cent including second-generation immigrants.11

Moreover, Sweden, Norway Denmark, Finland and Iceland can all be found in the rather unfortunate upper half of the OECD’s list of unemployment rates for people born abroad compared to those for native citizens.12

There are obviously many explanations for this, one being Sweden’s sizeable influx of refugees. But in Sweden contributes to this fact the rigid labour market law making it difficult to hire and lay off people, so that even a low degree of prejudice against foreigners carries more significance than it should. When each hire constitutes a great risk, employers understandably fall back on choices considered “safe” and superficial factors as ethnic origins become more important.13

However, we must not underestimate the importance of informal barriers, harder to meas-ure and put into words. The social culture of the Nordic countries tends to be reproduced rather than challenged by new arrivals, wanting to fit in and be accepted. Thus, there are many immigrants and Nordic people returning home, who can provide painfully numerous examples of how their experience is not taken into account

” When each hire constitutes a great risk, employers understandablyfall back on choices considered ‘safe’and superficial factors as ethnic origins become more important”

or is even seen as a disadvantage, since they may have “missed” something during their absence.14

This oversight characterises Swedish academe as well, which compared to world-leading uni-versities in some aspects shows highly inbred recruitment. In my discipline, history, at Stanford only 7 per cent of employees earned their PhD from the same university, and at Berkeley 14 per cent. The corresponding figures for Lund and Uppsala are 88 and 74 per cent, respectively.15

IT IS NOT EASY to weigh the costs for business, academe, public administration and the social climate in maintaining a culture that is not suf-ficiently curious or does not value international competence. What long-term price do students pay because their university teacher, who has returned to his or her university after teaching abroad, when trying to adopt different, better examination methods is met with icy silence? What is the cost to a company of not using an employee’s increased competence and experi-ences? What is the loss of not benefiting from the crucial knowledge an EU civil servant has gained by working several years in Brussels?

The Swedish and Nordic weakness for simi-larity and consensus is a competitive disadvan-tage in a world increasingly characterised by diversity and mobility. The temptation of going

by the “Jante Rule” (a closed community cut-ting down to size anybody that stands out, as described in Aksel Sandemose’s novel from 1933) must be reigned in.

As the Chilean-born professor of economic his-tory Mauricio Rojas noted as early as the 1990s, we can´t afford to base our identity and success henceforth on ethnic belonging or judgemental self-righteousness:

“The alternative to strong growth and active participation in the global market’s rapid devel-opment [is not] any kind of splendid isolation in a state of prosperous unchangeability, but rather an ever poorer and unfree life”.16

Going forward, the Nordic Way must be driven by curiosity, not indifference. If we are blind to the possibilities of learning from people that know things we do not, we will very quickly be overtaken by people who understand to take advantage of this new capital – the talents and the competence they carry with them.

Not to do so, could be the kiss of death to the Nordic success story. }

”Going forward, the Nordic Way must be driven by curiosity, not indifference”


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HEARD THE STORY about an American tourist in Stockholm? After strolling around the city for a few hours, she exclaims to her Swedish hosts, “What’s the deal with all the gay nannies?”

This is not a true story, but it does play on something that surprises many visitors to the Nordic countries – the number of fathers push-ing prams. Almost 90 per cent of all Swedish fathers take parental leave.1

In 2015, Swedish fathers took 25.5 per cent of the allowed days for parental leave, and in Iceland the figure is even higher, 28.5 per cent. In every Nordic country, men’s use of parental leave has increased since the turn of the millennium.

This leads not just to surprised tourists staring at men walking around with babies in the middle of the day. It also generates credulous articles in the international press about what this is doing to the role of the Nordic man, usually positive. Nordic men are big, strong feminists, it is said. Visit Sweden (Sweden’s national tourism organ-isation) likes to depict men as “Alexander Skars-gård with a baby on each arm”.

This may be an image effective in attracting tourists but is also an exaggeration. In reality, the Nordic model is rather family-friendly than women-friendly.

Sometimes that is the same thing. But not always. Nordic societies have created institutions that

help families combine working life with rais-ing children where other countries are stuck in a debate about different lifestyles for women. Career women with babies in their briefcase are pitted against ardent cookie-baking housewives

HOW EQUALITY HELPED ECONOMIC GROWTH – AND THEN LOST PRIORITY

BY KATRINE MARÇAL

”Almost 90 per cent of all Swedish fathers take parental leave”

HOW EQUALITY HELPED ECONOMIC GROWTH – AND THEN LOST PRIORITYHOW EQUALITY HELPED ECONOMIC GROWTH – AND THEN LOST PRIORITY

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in the so-called “mommy wars”, full of accusa-tions and guilty feelings. The discussion tend to be about who is living “the right way” and whether women “can have it all”.

In the Nordic region, society and the labour market have long recognised that these are not individual problems but common concerns.

The Nordic countries are undeniably ahead in that sense.

Among the Nordic countries, Sweden pro-vides the longest paid parental leave, enabling parents to receive income-based benefits for up to 68 weeks. Finland has 44, Denmark 52, Norway 51 and Iceland 39. Denmark is the only Nordic country that has not earmarked some of these months for the child’s father.2

SIMPLY EARMARKING MONTHS seems to be the most effective way to convince fathers to take parental leave. Sweden was the first country in the world to introduce gender-neutral parental leave more than 40 years ago. A parent could be on leave for 180 days and receive 90 per cent of his or her salary. In theory, this could be either the mother or the father.

In theory, that is. In the first year, men took only 0.5 per cent of

the days. Rumour has it this was mostly during the moose hunting season.

In 1995, the Swedish government introduced the first so-called “daddy month”. Families in which the father took at least one month off were given an additional month of parental leave. In 2002, this was expanded to two months. Today

the Swedish debate is about whether the entire parental leave period should be individualised – half given to the mother and half to the father.

It is a controversial issue. In Norway, both parents get two weeks to-

gether with their newborn baby and then can divide between themselves 46 weeks with full pay or 56 weeks with 80 per cent of their salary.

Ten weeks of parental leave are reserved solely for the father which are lost to the family if un-used. As a result, 90 per cent of Norwegian fathers now take at least 12 weeks of parental leave as opposed to only 3 per cent before this law was introduced in 1993.

Iceland earmarks the most time to each parent. A third of the days go to the mother, a third to the father and the final third can be divided however the family wants.

The Nordic countries have a higher percent-age of gainfully employed women than the rest of Europe. In EU27, average employment rate for women 15– 64 years of age was 58 per cent in 2013. Every Nordic country has a higher employ-ment rate for women.

What makes the Nordic labour market stand out is, in fact, that it is women with children that work to a higher degree.

For women with no children, there is no differ-ence in women’s rate of gainful employment, for instance, between Sweden and Germany. The gap opens up only after having children and even more so for women with several children.3

In today’s world, older people live increasingly longer but while the number of pensioners is on the rise, fewer children are being born. Many welfare states face economic problems related to this demographic development. An ever smaller number of people must support an ever larger number.

The Nordic countries, however, have managed to combine a high percentage of women gainfully

employed with high fertility rates, so making the future for the Nordic welfare states look sustain-able. Not many other countries have successfully managed this equation.

USING FAMILY POLICIES as a political tool to bol-ster fertility has a long tradition in the Nordic countries. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Sweden had extremely low birth rates when the sociologist Alva Myrdal and economist Gunnar Myrdal wrote their best-selling book Crisis in the Population Question. Their revo-lutionary idea was that, if society wanted more

”Using family policies as a political tool to bolster fertility has a long tradition in the Nordic countries”

HOW EQUALITY HELPED ECONOMIC GROWTH – AND THEN LOST PRIORITYHOW EQUALITY HELPED ECONOMIC GROWTH – AND THEN LOST PRIORITY

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children born, it had to ensure that women could combine children and gainful employment.

They argued that while children were a funda-mental resource to society the financial burden was shouldered by individual families. Thus, if society wants to see more children, it would have to transfer resources to families and to children.

In times of demographic crisis these ideas have attracted growing attention in countries such as Austria, Germany, Russia and a number of economies in south east Asia.4 Allocating four per cent of GDP to help families (the same proportion that the US allocates to its military) may seem utopian in times of economic crisis but the experience in the Nordic countries shows that society gets a return on this investment. Do not forget that with more women on the labour market, tax revenues will increase.

The high rate of Nordic women working also has its specific historical roots. In the growth years of the 20th century, a labour market like Great Brit-

ain’s could expand by taking in workers from its colonies and did not have to resort to encourag-ing women to work.

When Sweden needed more labour in the post-war period, the strategy was twofold, a guest worker programme enticing immigrants to come as well as encouraging women to work outside the home (mainly in the public sector which was undergoing expansion at that time).

Finland, which had lost parts of its territory to the Soviet Union during the war, closed its bor-ders to a greater extent than Sweden and almost all of Finland’s economic growth depended on women entering the labour market.5

THE NORDIC COUNTRIES were basically forced to develop child care more from an economic necessity rather than as a feminist conviction.

In the Nordic countries, child care is publicly financed and available to all children. Also, it has a remarkably high level of quality.

In many countries, employees in child care have a low level of education, earn low wages and are seen as easily replaceable. That is not the case in the Nordic countries where, to a great extent, day care is viewed as an important part of a child’s development.

This accords well with new research on how crucial the first four years of life are for a child’s ability to learn.

Economists such as James J Heckman, from the University of Chicago, have noted the lack of logic in a society that will invest significant money in a child’s schooling while providing scarcely any

resources during its first few years.6 “The later in life we attempt to repair early deficits, the costlier the re-mediation becomes.”

When it comes to child care, it is safe to say that the Nordic countries are far ahead.

Moreover, as a result of these family oriented policies, a whole different work ethic has devel-oped. People in the Nordic countries work far fewer hours per year than the OECD average, a fact that tends to surprise.

Nordic men and women highly value their lei-sure time and family life. It is perfectly normal to leave work at five o’clock, at the latest, and even

earlier for parents with small children. Anyone trying to do business with Nordic countries in July will be well aware that enjoying five, even six weeks of (paid) summer holiday, is an almost sacred thing.

Also unusual would be the great freedom given every individual to choose his/hers work-ing hours, a system that requires a great deal in terms of personal responsibility and productivity, but naturally helps combine work and family life.

At the same time, these Nordic countries have managed to become some of the most successful economies in the world with a high productivity.

”In many countries, employees in child care have a low level of education, earn low wages and are seen as easily replaceable. That is not the case in the Nordic countries”

80 85 90 95 100 105 110 115 120

The material well-being of children, an OECD overview Each country has been placed on a scale determined by the average score for the group as a whole. The unit used is the standard deviation(the average deviation from the average). To ease interpretation, the results are presented on a scale with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 10. Source: OECD, Child Poverty in Perspective, An overview of child well-being in rich countries, 2007

SwedenNorwayFinland

DenmarkSwitzerland

CanadaBelgiumAustriaFrance

NetherlandsCzech Republic

SpainAustraliaGermany

ItalyNew Zealand

GreeceJapan

PortugalUnited States

United KingdomIreland

HungaryPoland

HOW EQUALITY HELPED ECONOMIC GROWTH – AND THEN LOST PRIORITYTITEL PÅ RAPPORT PÅ VARJE SIDA RIORE LATQUE

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Is this the perfectly equal society, then? Here is a paradox: Despite investing heavily on women´s opportunities in the labour market, the wage dif-ferential between Nordic women and men has remained just as big here as elsewhere.

In Sweden, it is around 15 per cent, in Denmark 7.8 and in Norway 7.1. This compares to Italy with 11 per cent, or Belgium with 6. The OECD average is near 15 per cent.

So, the world’s most family-friendly labour markets are not automatically the world’s most woman-friendly.

Another thing, most countries that demonstrate a high percentage of women in politics tend also to have a high percentage of women in top posi-tions in business. This is not true of the Nordic countries. They have the lowest percentage of women directors and chief executives in Europe. In Bulgaria for instance, almost half of all execu-tives are women. In Sweden and Denmark only one in ten is.

The famed glass ceiling seems to be lower in the Nordic countries than elsewhere.7

The Nordic labour markets are paradise for

people who want to work and raise a family but not for women who want to pursue a career.

There are many hypotheses as to why this is. Some researchers have highlighted as a possible explanation the sharp gender segregation in the Nordic labour markets. Nordic women to a great extent tend to work in the public sector where salaries are relatively lower and career opportu-nities limited.

Others argue that it is the family-friendly policies holding women back. A French or an American woman pursuing a career will be back at work within a few weeks after giving birth. A Nordic woman will disappear from the work-force for at least a year, thanks to the generous parental leave.

This may be good for children but it makes it riskier for companies to promote a young woman rather than a young man. The woman will likely take more time away from work, raising children.

That brings us back to where we started, to the subject of men on parental leave.

It would appear that generous systems for combining a career and a family can reinforce or even lower the glass ceiling for women.

That is, unless men take advantage of them to the same extent as women. And they do not.

Not even in the Nordic countries. }

”The Nordic labour markets are paradise for people who want to work and raise a family but not for women who want to pursue a career.”

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GOOD INSTITUTIONS AND well-balanced policies drive welfare in society. This view has long pre-vailed in western Europe. No matter whether people’s heads and hearts are to the right or the left, there has been general agreement that poli-cies are crucial to work and well-being.

Somewhat contradictory to this view, in recent years several researchers have proposed a thesis concerning the importance of social trust. One could say that a kind of cultural explanatory model has been set against a more traditional political explanatory model.

Thus, the Swedish political scientist Bo Rothstein1, 2 argues that trust in society is one of several factors with the strongest correlation to citizens’ experience of “happiness”, which in turn relies on the smooth functioning of society. In 2009, theories on the importance of trust for

the economy rendered the US political scientist Elinor Ostrom the Nobel Prize (the Swedish Riksbank’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences)3. How social trust has made possible a strong individualism in the Nordic countries was described by Henrik Berggren and Lars Trägårdh in the first edition of The Nordic Way in 2010.4

Put simply, a high level of trust promotes trustworthy interaction between people and thus the smooth exchange of goods and services. A high level of trust means that all different kind of contracts include tacit assumptions that do not need to be specified and do not need to be monitored for compliance. (Interestingly, Swedish law includes what is known as the doctrine of assumptions, which was developed by the German legal scholar Windscheid and is rooted in Roman law.5 This theory holds that

TRUST AND WELFARE – A HAPPY COUPLE?

BY MATS SVEGFORS

TRUST AND WELFARE – A HAPPY COUPLE?TRUST AND WELFARE – A HAPPY COUPLE?

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contracts contain unwritten clauses of a sort. This theory is rather complex and cannot be briefly summarised.)

Economic development benefits from a high level of trust between individual citizens; one could call this “civil trust”. But there is also “polit-ical trust”. It is easier, for instance, to establish effective tax collection and thus a functioning public sector, if citizens feel confident that the money paid in taxes will be allocated to welfare that is widespread and fair. The opposite holds if citizens assume that tax revenues will be used to promote the particular interests of politicians and civil servants.

Trust is therefore important to promote rela-tions in civil society and to ensure that the public sector works well.

As is evident, this view is closely linked to a tradition in philosophy and political science that is rooted in Plato and especially Aristotle: that virtue is essential for a good society. Aristotle did not explicitly mention justice (dikaiosunê) as one such virtue. Still, dikaiosunê was a core value in his ethics and in his political theory.

PARTICULARLY IN THE Nordic countries, political scientists and economists tend to look for expla-nations as to why these societies have functioned well in terms of their policies but also their political institutions. One could say that there is a kind of “faith in politics” in the Nordic tradition. Structural or cultural explanations, such as trust in society, have been assigned less importance.

One of the most extensive series of surveys on

trust in western Europe can be found in the Euro- barometer, that is, the European Commission’s recurring interviews of citizens of EU member countries and countries that are candidates for EU membership. Using these figures, we can get a general European picture of trust but also com-pare conditions in the EU’s 28 member countries.

I worked with data from Eurobarometer 82, which was compiled from interviews carried out in late 2014. Nonetheless, it should be noted that these recurring surveys concern citizens’ trust in various institutions, not trust directly between citizens; more about this below.

There are striking differences between north and south in terms of trust in the democratic in-stitutions of one’s own country. The average score for EU member countries is 28 per cent; this is the percentage of people who say they tend to trust the democratic institutions of their own country. Three Nordic countries rank at the top: Sweden, 57 per cent, followed by Denmark, 54 per cent

”It is easier, for instance, to establish effective tax collection and thus a functioning public sector, if citizens feel confident that the money paid in taxes will be allocated to welfare that is widespread and fair”

and Finland, 50 per cent. At the bottom of the list are the southern European countries of Spain, 11 per cent, Greece, 14 per cent, Croatia 16 per cent and Italy, 17 per cent. The countries in the middle consist of Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Luxembourg, all with scores just below 50 per cent.

The covariance with trust in EU institutions is striking. Here too, Sweden, Finland and Denmark are very high,54, 59 and 58 per cent respectively. Not surprisingly, Greece, at that time in the midst of a crisis in which EU institutions have played a key role and been sharply criticised, demon-strated exceptionally low trust in EU institutions. (However, that does not prevent the Greeks’ trust

in their own democratic institutions from being even lower.)

Noteworthy is that with some rare exceptions (Germany and Sweden), European citizens’ trust in EU institutions overall tend to be greater than their trust in their own democratic institutions. (UK also breaks this pattern, one third of citizens trust their own institutions but just one in four trust EU institutions.)

Interestingly, there is also covariance between trust in institutions and trust in other people. However the figures in the Eurobarometer for this area are less recent, from the spring of 1997 (Eurobarometer 46).

Trust in institutionsThe value of trust in their country’s democratic institutions on the horizontal axis is the average value of the trust in local/regional bodies, the national parliament, the government and the political parties. The value of trust in the EU bodies on the vertical axisconsists of the average of trust in: Parliament, the Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB). Origin is not a zero value but theaverage values of the EU’s 28 member countries. Source: Eurobarometer no 82, 2015

National institutions

x: 29

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y: 38EU 28

Belgium Estonia

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Luxembourg Netherlands

Austria

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United Kingdom

Czech RepublicSloveniaSlovakia

Portugal

IrelandGreece

SpainFrance

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As for trust in other citizens of one’s own country, Finns topped the list, closely followed by Danes and Swedes. On a four-point scale, the score for Finland was 3.7. That is an extremely high score, equivalent to seven in ten citizens responding that they had “great trust” and three in ten Finns responding that they had “some trust”.

The lowest level of trust in citizens of one’s own country was once again found in southern Europe: Italians had the least trust (average score 2.87), far lower than for the French, who reported the second lowest level of trust in the citizens of their own country (3.24).

Trust is a general phenomenon. In countries where there is great trust in one’s own citizens, there is also a relatively high level of trust in citi-zens of other countries. There is also a connection between the different aspects of trust, that is, trust in other people and trust in institutions, both at the national and international level.

It is easy to see that, when the state is weak, the

society must in some sense be strong. The extremes are weak states, clan societies, where immediate and extended family are forced to fill the safety and welfare functions that are provided in developed states either by the welfare state or advanced social welfare solutions. In the Nordic countries, we have developed very strong states, where it has been possible to relieve the family of responsibility for taking care of people in need. The trend in other European countries is in the same direction but at a far slower pace.

Especially in recent years, the emphasis of polit-ical debate in many countries has thus been on the difference and even contradiction between the state and society. Leading liberal ideologues have depicted the state as a threat to civil society. But as Bo Rothstein in particular has noted, the opposite is true. The conditions for building strong public welfare institutions are fostered if there is great trust in society, that is, if civil society is strong. It can also be assumed that the reverse holds: civil trust increases if the state functions well.

If one is to understand the growth of the Nordic welfare states, it is not enough simply to look for direct political explanations. One must also un-derstand the cultural and social context in which

the welfare state developed. Historically, mutual dependence in small local communities paved the way for a strong civil society. That, in turn, paved the way for the development of strong welfare institutions at the central and local level.

THERE IS REASON to still ask whether a high level of trust, too much trust, could become a problem in itself. It is not an especially bold statement to say that the social models characterised by great trust and advanced welfare solutions that developed in northern Europe have gone hand in hand with industrial society. But, is it really just as obvious that these social models will equally

be in tune with an internationalised service society that is thus far more individualised, among other things? Could this great, not to mention extreme, trust in existing institutions represent an obstacle to development?

The Swedes have an expression: “lagom”, meaning not too much and not too little. Inter-estingly, Sweden is lagom in hardly any respect. As shown in the diagram above, Sweden and the other Nordic countries position themselves at the extreme end of the scale.

This extreme position is interesting. An extremely high level of trust between citizens as well as between citizens and social institutions has led to a society that functions very well.

”Could this great, not to mention extreme, trust in existing institutions represent an obstacle to development?”

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Trust in institutions Source: Eurobarometer no 82, 2015

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How does such a society handle its own need to change? Does trust help make change possible? Or can trust in what is be so great that it stands in the way of what should be?

Our Nordic welfare model faces a number of challenges that are linked to changes in both in-ternal and external conditions.

Productivity growth in the production of ser-vices is typically lower than in the production of goods. This means that, in relative terms, services continuously become more expensive than goods. This phenomenon is known as Baumol’s dilemma or Baumol’s cost disease.8

With welfare services funded by taxes, it means that the tax burden should gradually increase even with no change, in quality or quantity, in the services on offer.

WITH ECONOMIC GROWTH, resources available for use increase. Once we have satisfied basic material needs, our demand for services increases, especially those that the state and local authority provide us in the Nordic societies: health care, child and elderly care, continuing education.

Medical research in particular furnishes health care with continuously new methods for caring, alleviating pain and curing patients. Clearly, knowledge growth also means that opportuni-ties to streamline health care and make it more efficient increase. But it is still quite likely that, overall, knowledge growth will lead to greater demands on resources for health care.

In the Nordic societies, citizens assume that every available health care option will always

be provided to everyone, and everywhere. Given the migration that internationalisation entails, particularly in Sweden, it means that the popula-tion is becoming increasingly less homogeneous. This subjects the great standardised systems in the welfare sector and in the labour market to challenges. It increases demands for public resources, at least during a transitional phase. But it also means that aspects of differentiation will increase in these standardised systems. Elsewhere in this publication, Tove Lifvendahl discusses the need to learn from other countries and other cultures.

All these changes entails ever greater demands on resources for public sector activities. These demands can be met in various ways:

Through increased taxes: Given the under-standing that taxes in practice are compulsory in-surance premiums and collective fees for services that are in ever greater demand, it is reasonable to increase the tax burden. A well-functioning pub-lic sector is a competitive advantage for individual countries even if taxes there are high.

Through increased fee-based funding: Fee-based funding is increasing both because of fiscal prudence and because it generates funds. Low fees in emergency care, for instance, cre-ate unwarranted high demands for access to emergency care. It is important to realise that increased fee-based funding does not consti-tute an option to today’s tax-funded welfare but rather a necessary complement to and develop-ment of the welfare model.

Through increased differentiation of services: As a complement to increased fee-based funding, public sector services are being differentiated. Someone who is prepared to pay for a higher lev-el of service in health or elderly care, for instance, can do this. Fees can also be an important part of the social insurance system.

Already today, Swedish unemployment insur-ance provides basic protection and nothing more, which is why various groups pay for additional insurance. In the long term, it is hardly sustaina-ble to prevent someone who wants to consume more advanced welfare services produced by the state and local authority from doing so.

Through expenditure frameworks: The meas-ures to increase resources for public sector activ-ities noted above are politically awkward and ideologically inopportune. The only option, to avoid economic imbalance, is to continue carry-ing out current policy: Absolute limits are set on the costs of tax-financed activities through gen-eral expenditure frameworks that are in practice “blind” as to what activity is affected.

This has happened in Sweden but is even more pronounced in the euro zone economies in crisis. Existing activities will be increasingly squeezed

and forced to make constant cuts and improve efficiency. Quality will decline. New demands for expenditures will have a hard time gaining approval in the public budget.

Expenditure frameworks may be fairly “blind” in how they affect activities but are effective from a funding perspective. So it is easy to imagine that expenditure frameworks are a kind of “policy of necessity”. But to intellectually be ready for action when a given policy is presented as unavoidable or necessary. Usually, it is an “ought” that has been translated as an “is” for purely ideological reasons.

IN THE SHORT term, trust can thus probably be both an advantage and a disadvantage when what has thus far been a very successful welfare policy must be adapted to changed conditions.

But as was noted previously, there is a mutual relation between trust and a well-functioning welfare state, which Berggren and Trägårdh have developed in their article “Social trust and radical individualism” (The Nordic Way, 2010). Trust in society creates conditions for develop-ing compulsory and collective welfare systems.

But the reverse is also true. The essential con-dition for trust is that the welfare system in the broad sense of the term really works well. Because of the policy now being carried out in large parts of the world, as well as in the Nordic countries, public sector activities are delivering fewer of the services that citizens are demanding.

In the long term, trust will not remain unaf-fected by this. }

”The essential condition for trust is that the welfare system in the broad sense of the term really works well”


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THE NORDIC COUNTRIES have managed to com-bine good economic growth with successful efforts to prevent resource depletion and mini-mise environmental impact. If humankind is to survive on earth, this is something that will have to be replicated throughout the world.

What needs to be done is a transformation into a circular economy, characterised by smart resource management, innovations, more jobs and more secure and sustainable economic and social well-being.

Could the Nordic countries, individually and together, function as a catalyst in developing such a new industrial revolution?

This chapter will consider these questions. Let me first describe the situation the world is in today.

More than sixty years ago, Georg Borgström, a Swedish professor of food sciences, attracted international attention when he warned of the risk of general world hunger, including in Sweden, by around the year 2000.

Borgström was not the only doomsday prophet of this sort. Lord John Boyd-Orr, director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in the 1960s, believed that two thirds of humanity would be affected by malnu-trition and hunger. The so-called Club of Rome’s report “The Limits to Growth” predicted global economic collapse since the world would run out of natural resources: oil, natural gas, silver, tin, uranium, copper, aluminium, lead and zinc.

With the benefit of hindsight, we know that these predictions came to nought. Nor will the world population reach 15 billion by 2050, as many commentators feared. The reason for this is that the birth rate stopped rising as early as 1990, quite simply because many people had more secure living conditions and no longer needed a large family to offset infant mortality, ward off poverty and care for them in their old age.

The global population will still rise by more than two billion by mid-century, but this is

GREEN GROWTH – WILL THE NORDIC COUNTRIES TAKE THE LEAD?

BY STEFAN EDMAN

GREEN GROWTH – WILL THE NORDIC COUNTRIES TAKE THE LEAD?GREEN GROWTH – WILL THE NORDIC COUNTRIES TAKE THE LEAD?

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largely because more and more people are liv-ing longer thanks to better food, health, housing and education.

Happily, it is possible to draw up a list of pos-itive global trends, based on the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)’s reports:

Hundreds of millions of people over the past ten years have been lifted out of poverty, mostly in Asia. The Human Development Index (HDI, measuring health, average life span and educa-tion) rose by more than 80 per cent in the period 1970–2010 for the quarter of the world’s popu-lation with the lowest HDI in 1970.

Infant mortality was reduced by more than half in the period 1990–2005 (from 5.3 to 2.3 per 1,000 live births), and the trend continues although not at as fast a pace.

Birth rates are falling. For instance, in Bangla-desh, in the past women gave birth to 6 children on average. Today the average is 2.5 children.

More than 90 per cent of all children go to school now, with as many girls attending as boys.

89 per cent of all people have access to clean water.

Of course, there are a great many reasons for these positive trends but essentially they require economic growth, growth that is distributed based on people’s social needs.

In its reports and analyses, the UNDP warns

that these promising trends could come to an abrupt end if the world cannot stop climate change and bring a close to the drawn-out wars in the Middle East and Africa, with their extreme poverty and millions of destitute refugees.

A KEY QUESTION, now as well as fifty years ago, is how many people earth can sustain given the planetary limits. Researchers are able to define these with ever greater certainty (the climate, nitrogen turnover, the ozone layer etc.).

Among the researchers attempting to calcu-late this are Canadian human ecologist William Rees and his team. They base their calculations on current resource use per person and the demand for materials, energy and welfare that can be expected going forward. This is then compared to the planet’s current and potential capacity in terms of food, water, fibres, metals, energy etc.

Based on the best current technology for con-verting natural resources into wealth, Rees and his colleagues have come up with the following rough figures:

The earth could hold 15 billion people – if everyone lived like the average Indian.

”The planet can hold no more than 2.5 billion people – based on the living standards of the average European”

In the long term, the planet can hold no more than 2.5 billion people – based on the living standards of the average European.

There can really only be 1.5 billion people – based on the lifestyle of the average American.

THE WORLD HAS been undergoing a dramatic change over the past few decades. Some 4–5 billion people are moving more or less steadily toward a far higher level of material well-being. Small-scale energy and water purification tech-nology and especially electronics help the world to create well-being using ever lower quantities of materials and energy. The share of renewa-ble, non-fossil energy is rapidly increasing.

Despite these promising global trends, there are at least three alarming general problems which indicate that current development is com-pletely unsustainable.

Water scarcity: Only 2.5 per cent of the world consists of fresh water, and only 1 per cent of this is accessible. One billion people lack clean water. Different regions around the world are chronical-ly drought-prone, with falling groundwater levels. One in three people lacks access to a toilet.

Soil: Available land is decreasing, especially since a lot of soil is deteriorating due to the cli-mate crisis, through drought, erosion and water-logging, while prime arable land lies fallow.

The climate crisis: Many climate researchers

believe that, in order not to harm life-sustaining systems, greenhouse gas emissions must be cut to an average of 1–2 tonnes per world citizen per year.

That translates into the whole world reducing emissions to the current average level of an average Indian (1.3 tonnes per person and year). The US must therefore cut its emissions from 18, China from 5 and Sweden from 6 tonnes per person and year. Such climate targets would require sweeping transformations – technological, social and political.

ECONOMIC GROWTH IS the main political mantra across the globe, in order to wipe out poverty but also because everyone naturally wants to increase their well-being. In the past ten or twenty years economic growth played a key role towards this, combined with good governance –

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that is, with governments and authorities allo-cating the benefits of growth to the health and well-being of the majority of people.

As formerly underprivileged people improve their finances, their demands for material well- being also increase.

Meanwhile, as an already prosperous middle class – no longer not just in the US and Europe but also in many countries in the east and south – continues to increase its consumption, the result is also that ecological problems are becoming worse. The positive effects of econo-mising on resources and helping the environ-ment with resource-efficient and fossil-free technology – “green growth” – are being can-celled out, in full or in part.

People have long known about this rebound effect, but only recently has it attracted political attention. The conclusion is clear – if “green tech-

nology” is to be beneficial to the full extent, it must become part of a so-called circular economy and supplemented with some new features (see below) as well as accompanied by basic life style changes.

We must sharply reduce our draining effects on ecosystems – locally, nationally, globally.

We need to row as effectively using both oars in the boat: a) new resource-efficient technology and b) a more prudent way of life.

A general systemic problem in this respect is that our welfare societies still rely to a large extent on linear as opposed to circular flows of energy and raw materials. A product moves from cradle to grave, after which – in the best case – it is recycled as material or energy. This is a flow economy that requires continuous growth in consumption – essentially a consumerist economy with ever clearer drawbacks for growth, employment and well-being, and thus for the basic ecosystems

and the planet’s supply of materials and energy resources.

This linear economy risk preventing a solution to climate change but also that it would “push” the planet beyond the scientifically determined sustainability limits.

What therefore needs to happen, locally and globally, is a gradual but urgent transition to a more circular market economy, where profita-bility and success would be based on revenue from use instead of consumption, where today’s “cradle to grave” consumption is replaced by the “cradle to cradle” principle.

We are talking about nothing less than a new industrial revolution for the 21st century, in which Europe – with the Nordic countries as the driver – can and must play a key role.

Businesses and all of society would need to pro-mote “de-materialisation” through circular flows – closed cycles – combined with superefficient management of the natural resources needed in each situation.

This would benefit the economy and well- being but also entail a uniquely important and especially welcome injection of engineering and social creativity.

Other key features of green growth incorpo-rated in a circular economy would be:

Eco-designHow much material and energy a product, for instance a car, will consume is determined on the drawing board, when the car’s entire life-cycle is calculated. Eco-design is very promising as one solution to our devastating waste.

Miniaturisation is also part of the eco-design arsenal – making a product as efficient in material use as possible while maintaining its function.

NanotechnologyCan technology imitate nature and form the materials we need at the molecular level in order to develop our well-being in a sustainable way? That has long been a dream in research. Nano- technology can be seen in part as a radical dimension of miniaturisation and holds poten-tial for extremely material-efficient production and consumption.

Leasing and buying functionsAn important strategy in a circular economy is for consumers to rent instead of own – washing machines, refrigerators/freezers, cars, perhaps even furniture, toys, art. This strategy extends the user period of a product and thus contributes to super efficient resource use.

THE EU IS a large enough market to be able to launch this transformation into a circular economy in earnest, with cradle-to-cradle man-agement of resource flows. That requires imple-mentation of a number of changes in the mar-ket, something the European Commission has already begun.

The cross-disciplinary think tank the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has tested the concepts of circular economy and resource minimisation in three key segments of well-being – food, transport and housing. The report shows the sub-optimal


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use of resources in today’s predominantly linear market, both in economic and environmental terms. A typical car in Europe is used for driving during only 5 per cent of its useful life: 1.6 per cent of the time, it is used to find a parking space; 92 per cent of the time, the car is unused.

TO TEST WHAT a circular economy could mean for jobs and the climate in a Swedish context, Anders Wijkman and Kristian Skånberg, in collaboration with the Club of Rome, compiled an interim report in May 2015: “The Circular Economy and Benefits for Society”. They found that likely about 100,000 new jobs would be created if energy efficiency were increased by 25 per cent for each Swedish krona of revenue, if the share of renewable energy were increased so that it was used throughout society, and if material use in manufacturing were 25 per cent more efficient, combined with replacing half of virgin materials with recycled materials to double the useful life of consumer goods.

The Nordic countries, with a total of some 25 million residents, are small, open and adaptable economies. Together, they constitute the eleventh largest economy in the world, one characterised by high productivity and high education and in-come levels.

Since the 1950s, this region – and Sweden in particular – has been a pioneer in a number of environmental fields. In the 1960s and 1970s, agriculture was detoxified of chemicals such as DDT, PCBs and mercury. Lakes are cleaner and have far lower oxygen depletion levels today than thirty or forty years ago. Cities have cleaner

air. The clear-cutting of forests and use of Agent Orange in the 1970s have been replaced by far more sustainable forestry. The acidification of land and water is a far less serious problem now than during the second half of the 20th century. The threatened Baltic cod is recovering.

Up until the 1980s, Swedes dumped sizeable quantities of household waste. Today that figure is only 1.4 per cent; 98.6 per cent of household waste is recycled. The burning of waste generates 25 per cent of Sweden’s district heating (equiva-lent to heating 820,000 houses/apartments and the annual electricity consumption of 250,000 houses).

The recycling of materials is also world-class. At least 90 per cent of all glass containers and 90 per cent of all newspaper are used in new products.

In forty years, Sweden has cut its oil-based heating of homes and commercial premises from 70 to only 8 per cent. All electricity is produced using climate-smart methods, with renewable energy carriers and nuclear power. 50 per cent of all energy consumption is renewable – hydro power, wind power and bio power (wood fuel and organic by-products). Despite increased private car use (measured as person-kilometres driven), carbon dioxide emissions fell by about 16 per cent from 2010 to 2015.

These decades of green progress have laid the foundation for green businesses that can sell technology and management both in the domestic market and, to a significant extent, as exports to other countries. These companies produce treated drinking and waste water, material recycling, renewable energy, energy-efficient construction, climate-smart logistics, electronics, consulting activities etc. Their operations provide benefits to the environment and the climate around the world, improve Sweden’s trade balance, create jobs and inspire more intensive research on sustainable development.

Sweden serves as an example here of what all the Nordic countries have in common. The other countries in the region show, to varying degrees, similar successes, environmental policy decisions and frameworks which have resulted in consid-erable benefits to well-being. These countries

also share experiences with each other, in part through extensive Nordic cooperation on policies and in non-profit organisations.

The Nordic countries have inspired one another to introduce green government measures such as energy taxes, support for renewable energy (invest-ment funds, green electricity certificates etc.), car-bon emissions trading, energy efficiency standards, national targets for material recycling etc.

THE NORDIC TRADITION of popular movements and local democracy, which is in many ways unique to the Nordic countries, has played a significant role in this context for the progress we have made. Citizens resistance of clear-cut-ting of forests, poor city air, lakes contaminated by mercury and toxins in food have both pushed and encouraged governments and local political

”In forty years, Sweden has cut its oil-based heating of homes and commercial premises from 70 to only 8 per cent”


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leaders to take far-sighted decisions and meas-ures that later proved to also promote economic growth and jobs.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the Nordic countries succeeded in reducing their damage to the environment and the climate while the region’s economic growth has been on a par with or even higher than the OECD average – a win-win for both well-being and a long-term sustainable future.

At a meeting in 2010 in Reykjavik, the Nordic prime ministers decided to appoint a working group with the vision “The Nordic region – leading in green growth”. The Nordic countries possess a number of strengths in environmental technology, with excellent potential to enhance green growth. Denmark is a leader in wind power, Iceland in geothermal energy, Sweden and Norway in bio energy, and Norway and Sweden in hydro power.

There are at least four strong reasons for the Nordic countries to create synergies so as to, together, increase their share of green growth:

A larger market In a combined Nordic market with similar requirement specifications for green technology, market demand and the impact these countries have can increase significantly.

Influence the EU/EES agenda By using the political platform of Nordic coop-eration, the Nordic countries can expand the scope of green growth in Europe, which in turn can help make Europe a world leader.

Common infrastructureThe energy and transport markets depend on a common infrastructure – roads, railways, electric-ity grids, gas networks and optical fibre networks.

Critical massIn order to develop specialised green niches, a minimum size is needed for players to have any impact on the global market. On their own, the Nordic countries are small, but their cooperation makes them an attractive region for both green investments and eco tourism.

The project “The Nordic region – leading in green growth” and the concrete work program constituted a strong expression of the political will of the Nordic governments.

So much for the beautiful ambitions – but how did it go? A comparison of developments in the Nordic countries can teach us a fair amount about what works well and not so well.

Denmark for example, ranks number one in the world in The Global Innovation Index (measuring the success of research in a country as well as to what extent this leads to new companies and

”On their own, the Nordic countries are small, but their cooperation makes them an attractive region for both green investments and ecotourism”

economic growth), on the entire value chain from research to commercialisation. As for the commercialisation of environmental technology, the index for that country is twice as high as Sweden’s.

Sweden is among the best countries in the world for research but has fallen out of the top ten to eighteenth place when it comes to con-verting research results into industrial production and development.

The Danish environmental technology sector had total revenue of 290 billion Swedish kronor in 2013, which means the figure was more than twice that of Sweden, both in per capita and GDP terms. Sweden’s environmental technology exports generated 39 billion Swedish crowns in revenue, whereas Denmark’s generated 90 billion Swedish kronor.

In Denmark (with just over half of Sweden’s population), 106,000 people work with environ-mental technology; in Sweden that number is 69,000. If Sweden maintained Denmark’s high development rate in green manufacturing, it is estimated that Sweden could generate green busi-ness worth 250 billion Swedish kronor and about 116,000 new jobs.

According to the Global Cleantech Innovation Index, which specifically monitors the environ-mental technology sector, Denmark tops the list. Sweden ranks behind China, India, Germany, Ireland and Canada. These countries invest less per capita in research and development than Sweden does but are better at commercialising new environmental innovations.

The difference between Denmark and Sweden is sometimes explained by Sweden being weighed down by an ageing industrial structure, whereas Denmark’s is far younger. Another explanation is that Denmark has introduced more effective stimulus policy measures to fight climate change and set clear, explicit environmental targets while making laws more stringent gradually and at a faster rate than the rest of the world.

Backed by a broad political majority, the Danish parliament adopted a decision that 100 per cent of the country’s energy supply is to be renewable by 2050. Carbon dioxide emissions are to be cut by 34 per cent by 2020; the same year, half of the country’s electricity supply is to come from wind power, with facilities set up offshore to a large extent.

GDP growth and reduction of CO2 parallell in time. Source: IEA-rapport Nordic Energy, 2013

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Nissan) has risen rapidly. In April 2015, the 50,000th electric car was registered, which, by the way, is twenty times more than the number in Sweden at the time.

Granted, the bulk of economic benefits from the sale of electric cars go to manufacturers, including Tesla in the US. But the growing Norwegian market – the largest in the world alongside Canada, the US and Germany – also generates green growth in Norway in repairs, service and trade.

Finland has managed to assemble the largest concentration of energy technology know-how in the Nordic countries, it is found in the Vasa region of Österbotten. Over 10,000 people work here in an energy cluster, with 70 per cent of the products and services exported. This region, with just 2 per cent of the country’s population,

accounts for 12 per cent of Finland’s total tech-nology exports.

In Finland, revenues for the clean tech sec-tor in 2014 totalled EUR 24.6 billion and are expected to climb to EUR 50 billion by 2020. One success factor for the clean tech sector in Finland is a functioning domestic market, which increases demand.

In Finland there is growing debate about the need for blue growth, focused on the maritime sector – shipping, fishing, fish farming and off-shore wind power. The EU has great expecta-tions for the Baltic Sea region as a pilot area for blue growth. In shipping, more environmentally friendly fuels, including liquid natural gas (LNG), and technology to clean sulphur dioxide emis-sions are being introduced.

The Åland cruise vessel Viking Grace is often

”A number of years ago, Norway decided to become a world leader in super- environmental cars”

Denmark today already has half the level of Sweden’s electricity consumption per capita and has decided to cut energy use in buildings and manufacturing by half.

Another difference between Denmark and Sweden is that Swedish green electricity cer-tificates are technology-neutral and have thus led primarily to an expansion of the cheapest technology, such as land-based wind power and bio energy. Denmark, like Germany and Britain, has certificate systems that stimulate the growth of new climate-smart technology, which is more expensive initially but has potential to put Denmark at the cutting edge of climate change solutions in five or ten years.

SOLAR ENERGY OFFERS another instructive exam-ple. In 2012, Denmark installed as many solar panels every two weeks as Sweden has over the past ten years. Investment accelerated through advantageous tax deductions, a guaranteed pro-duction price and so-called net debiting, which allows producers to deliver surplus energy to the electrical grid and net this against consumption at another time.

In Sweden, such systems have been studied and discussed for many years, but only recently has it been possible to put them in effect.

Sweden is then number one in research and innovation, but the absence of a domestic development market for new energy technology has meant world-leading Swedish inventions have not managed to attract venture capital for investment in Sweden. One example is the pioneering technology for more efficient batteries. When the innovators could not get venture capital in Sweden, they had a factory built in the US by Boston-Power, with Chinese owners, a billion Swedish kronor in venture capital and government stimulus funding.

Sweden’s environmental technology research is highly successful in terms of bio energy, solar energy, wave power, wind power, energy storage, recycling, energy efficiency improvements and smart electricity grids. But in order for research to lead to patents and Swedish production, the Swedish government and parliament must quickly set ambitious environmental and climate targets and hasten this transformation. Only in this way is a domestic market created that can attract the capital needed.

Norway also shows the way: A number of years ago, Norway decided to become a world leader in super-environmental cars. They have succeeded: in August 2014, one in seven new passenger cars in Norway produced no emissions at all.

The government’s means to achieve this have been powerful and common-sense: no tax, no road tolls, free parking and recharging in municipal parking facilities, permission to drive in bus lanes, free transport on some road ferries and a 50 per cent tax assessment reduction.

The sale of electric cars (mainly by Tesla and


4140

spotlighted as a Baltic Sea flagship with respect to environmentally friendly solutions. A number of harbours in the Baltic Sea region are equipped with technology to take waste water from passenger vessels, a green growth sector that is driven by a forthcoming ban on emptying waste water in the Baltic Sea, which is expected to enter into force by 2018 at the latest. Equipment to fight oil spills and ensure safe shipping in icy conditions is another sector considered to be profitable, especially given the effects of global warming in the Arctic.

THE NORDIC COUNTRIES together, have since the late 1990s, had a pooled electricity market with a strong, linked electrical exchange, Nord Pool. This makes the Nordic market significantly dif-ferent from the rest of the European electricity market, which is divided into national systems. The Nordic countries have succeeded in creat-ing a market in which they can use each other’s energy resources in a smart way. Hydro power represents a stable, stored form of energy that supplements wind power, which fluctuates more. Because of this electricity trading model,

the cheapest resources are consumed first, and the countries help one another with delivery assurance. Also, it is worth noting, it ensures lower electricity prices for Nordic customers.

Meanwhile, the electricity system is a key component in the fight against climate change. The Nordic countries are far ahead of the rest of Europe when it comes to producing electric-ity and heating with very low carbon dioxide emissions. Some 67 per cent of Nordic elec-tricity comes from renewable energy sources, compared to 30 per cent for the rest of Europe; by 2020, 70 per cent of electricity in the Nordic countries is to be renewable.

Renewable electricity production in a flexible Nordic system, combined with exports to the rest of Europe, could perhaps be said to be one of the most concrete joint investments in green growth in the Nordic countries. However, this can only be fully realised if a robust internal EU market for energy is also created and the EU fulfils its green objectives. The EU target in this case is a 40 per cent overall reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030.

There are more examples of joint projects. The Nordic Council of Ministers has identified the

Norwegian region of Fredrikstad/Sarpsborg as being highly attractive for developing bio-chemistry, sustainable production and natural resource use. A Nordic bank for green growth has been proposed – a financial institution that can offer broad competence and the crucial venture capital that is all too often lacking but which is required for research and pilot projects to be commercialised.

The Nordic countries offer natural environ-ments that continental Europeans in particular consider to be uniquely beautiful, clean and varied. This is one reason why the tourism industry in the Nordic countries has seen strong revenue growth.

Today sustainability issues are important for the tourism industry – for instance, organic food, environmentally adapted transport and the pro-vision of restaurants, hotels and camp sites with a clear environmental profile. Going forward, the Nordic countries must change their tourism industry so that it becomes a distinctly green growth sector.

Concluding, some points to retain:1. The Nordic countries have pursued active and often successful policies for sustainable develop-ment/environment/energy/climate change. Pub-lic involvement, training, grass roots democracy and a high level of awareness – thanks in particu-lar to the unique Nordic modelof popular move-ments – have helped create conditions for this.

2. All of the countries, with Sweden in the lead, produce advanced research in green technology and economics.

3. All of the countries can show examples of how research has led to commercialisation of products and services (water, energy and recycling tech-nology, energy-efficient construction, logistics etc.) for both their domestic and export markets. Denmark is a leader not just among the Nordic countries but also globally. Green growth has created or bolstered companies and employment, in many cases resulting in substantial export earnings and, ultimately, enhanced well-being in these countries.

4. The Nordic countries, which comprise the eleventh largest economic region in the world, have competence, opportunities and other good reasons to take the lead in the EU when it comes to green technology and green growth.

5. In policy terms, the Nordic governments have expressed a clear intention to expand and expe-dite development toward green growth. The com-parative advantages of the Nordic countries – the unique abundance of forests and hydro power per capita, excellent locations for wind power, geo- thermic energy, good conditions for agriculture and thus green raw materials alongside food – are to be taken advantage of in shared strategies.

6. The Nordic countries, together with Germany, should be able to influence the rest of the EU/EES countries in their ambitions to increase the share of green growth. This in turn would mean that the EU enhances its potential to contribute to a transformation of the global economic order toward a more sustainable, circular economy. }

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NOPresent

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DKPresent

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Fossil Fuels (incl. CCS)

Biomass and other RES

Wind

Nuclear

Hydro

In 2050 the power will be generated by hydro, coal and gas plants with CCS, nuclear plants, wind (on shore and off shore), biomass and minor contributions from waves, solar and geothermal plants. Note 1: For Norway a share of the electricity production in 2050 is wind, but the share is not showed in the figure. Note 2: For Finland numbers for 2050 are middle of two scenarios. Source: Nordenergi, 2010

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CREATING THE NORDIC WAY TO THE FUTURE

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THE GREATEST THREAT to the Nordic model would be to take it for granted. If the model is to last for five, ten or fifty years into the future, we must continue to work actively here in the Nordic region to create the path we wish to travel toget-her. For social models are not static and cannot be preserved intact; they can only be renewed.

In recent years, the Nordic countries have attracted a great deal of favourable attention inter-nationally. The Economist’s 2013 cover story proclaiming us “the next super model” was widely read. Nordic literature, films and TV series are being exported as never before, and

have boosted interest abroad both in our region and in our way of life.

The Nordic countries score consistently high marks in international surveys. Some proclaim us the happiest people in the world, others that we are among the least corrupt, while still others praise us for our stable, democratic and efficient welfare societies.

Moreover, the region seems to have been more or less spared the economic slump that many other parts of the world have suffered. In a Europe dogged by unemployment and welfare cuts, the Nordic region appears to outsiders almost idyllic by comparison. At times of recession, the Nordic countries and Nordic cooperation stand in mar-ked contrast to the rest of Europe, and people often look to us in the hope of finding a “Nordic way” through the crisis.

In Norway we have an expression that says: ”The path is created as you walk”. I believe this expression is indicative of the Nordic model, a path to generous social welfare, a robust economy


BY DAGFINN HøYBRÅTEN

”In a Europe dogged by unemployment and welfare cuts, the Nordic region appears to outsiders almost idyllic by comparison”

and perhaps even happiness. The Nordic model is not a static phenomenon but rather a process that changes in both character and expression, in step with the times we live in. The model is not something we have but something we do in the Nordic region, and it is something we do toget-her, since it is precisely the synergy between our countries that brings such unique results.

Actually, the individual components of the Nordic model are no longer particularly unique; they can be found in many other countries. The fact that the model is being copied in other parts of the world can be seen as evidence of its at-tractiveness and strength, but at the same time it reveals the model’s vulnerability, since it is made obvious that the various parts are dependent on one another in order to function optimally. We

can see that separately, these components do not work in the same way.

Furthermore, countries choosing to follow in the Nordic region’s footsteps may lack the kind of binding cooperation and trust that is to be found in our region and which has contributed signifi-cantly to our success.

THE WAY I SEE it, the Nordic model is not particu-larly threatened by global crises or recessions. These are challenges that our region, just like the rest of the world, must find solutions to and we are better equipped to overcome such challenges than most other regions. Over the past 200 years the Nordic countries have lived in peace with one another. Our system of regional cooperation

CREATING THE NORDIC WAY TO THE FUTURECREATING THE NORDIC WAY TO THE FUTURE

4544

is one of the oldest and most comprehensive in the world. We share the same basic values and place the same trust in the state, the region and the world around us. Our common ground in terms of politics, geography, history, culture and language means we are well equipped to con-front a challenging future together.

However, what might truly jeopardise the Nordic model is if we were to take it for granted. The positive interest being shown by the outside world should not be interpreted as a sign that we are at the end of our journey; that our wel-fare societies will always endure in their present shape. Losing sight of the fact that the Nordic model is a series of choices and actions that we undertake together would not necessarily spell the end of the model, but we would risk losing the synergies and being left with only pieces of what was once a whole.

If we want the Nordic model to still be in place five, ten or fifty years into the future – and there is broad political agreement to this end – we must take active steps here in our region to establish the path we wish to travel together. For social models are dynamic, not static, and as such they cannot be preserved but only renewed.

Nordic cooperation aims to promote the kind of dynamic development that strengthens the

region’s competence and competitiveness. The partnership is well-developed in such areas as the free movement of citizens, education, research, environmental affairs, employment and social welfare. By strengthening and renewing Nordic cooperation, we also strengthen and renew the Nordic social model.

IN BRIEF, THE distinguishing features of the Nordic model are a relatively high level of tax-funded welfare benefits, healthy public finances, aspirations of social equality and a levelling of political and economic power. The Nordic labour market is characterised by a relatively high employment rate, and it is women and older citizens in particular who are contributing positively in this respect.

The level of education is generally high and income differentials generally low in comparison with other countries, and finally there is a social safety net that generally works well for those who fall by the wayside for one reason or another.

The Nordic model is given much of the credit for the fact that the Nordic countries have come through times of crisis relatively unscathed, but paradoxically it is precisely during slumps that our model is most vulnerable. A thorough analysis of the model’s future prospects, commissioned by the Nordic Council of Ministers and undertaken by the ETLA institute in Finland, shows how the Nordic countries have been affected by the economic crisis, and also describes what specific challenges we face for the Nordic model to remain sustainable in the future.

”By strengthening and renewing Nordic cooperation, we also strengthen and renew the Nordic social model.”

THE REPORT CONCLUDES that factors such as the digital revolution, globalisation and our ageing populations pose a substantial threat to employ-ment and welfare in the region. Both ETLA and other economists are agreed on what is required: constant reform and renewal of the welfare mod-el. The title of the report is worth noting: The Nordic model – challenged but capable of reform.

The digital revolution will mean loss of jobs. In several Nordic countries, a high rate of unem-ployment among young people and among the low educated is already seen. However, the limi-ted size of each individual Nordic country ma-kes it difficult to create markets offering strong competition and high efficiency, which is somet-hing of an Achilles heel in the global arena. Also, ageing populations means higher health and social welfare costs.

Economists and political scientists note the need for a greater emphasis on knowledge, inno-vation, streamlining of the public sector and mea-sures to persuade people to extend their working lives. These are familiar but important issues on the Nordic governments’ agenda. If the Nordic region is to continue attracting positive interest, we must focus anew on the question of how we make our model sustainable and thereby keep the welfare societies of which we are justly proud across national and party political boundaries.

The Nordic labour market is one of the corner-stones of Nordic cooperation. A partnership aim-ing at a more closely integrated Nordic market, with lower barriers for people and enterprises wishing to operate across Nordic borders, could offset the disadvantages that stem from the lim-

ited size of our countries and populations. We are already seeing how in a number of sectors in the region strong enterprises are emerging that have the Nordic market as both their base and their domestic market. Banking is one such sector.

This year, the Nordic employment ministers asked the Nordic Council of Ministers to

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1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012

} Sweden } Finland } Iceland } Denmark } EU 15 } Norway } Germany

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1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012

} Sweden } Finland } Iceland } Denmark } EU 15 } Norway

GDP per employed person

Tax revenues, per cent of GDP

Source: Nordic Council of Ministers´ report: ”The Nordic Model – challenged

but capable of reform” , 2014

46

commission a strategic review of the labour market sector, and this is being undertaken by Poul Nielson, the former Danish cabinet minis-ter and EU commissioner. The review will help us to become more competitive by presenting specific proposals concerning opportunities for Nordic cooperation in relation to the EU/EEA.

The chief purpose of the review is to improve the chances of achieving the Nordic Council of Minis-ters’ goals of higher employment, stronger triparti-te cooperation and a more inclusive labour market. I am certain that in the future we will use Nordic cooperation – and the results of this review – as a means of sustaining and developing the Nordic model in the employment sector.

The Nordic prime ministers clearly intend to make more active use of Nordic cooperation in the coming years in pursuit of an even more dynamic and robust region that will bring results in the five countries, in EU cooperation and in the global arena.

In 2014, the ministers for Nordic cooperation adopted a four-point vision for the future under the slogan ‘We are stronger together”. This vision will determine the course of cooperation between the Nordic governments in the years ahead. The four points are:

A borderless Nordic region, in which citizens and enterprises have every opportunity to move freely between the Nordic countries.

An innovative Nordic region, where we jointly confront practical challenges in areas such as social welfare, education, sustainability and

research – and improve both quality and effi-ciency by working together.

A visible Nordic region, which involves raising the Nordic profile globally and promoting the Nordic brand in the outside world – while at the same time seeking to heighten awareness about Nordic cooperation among our own citizens in the region.

An outward looking Nordic region, where we continue to exert our combined leverage in the international cooperation field. Separately we are small but together, with our 25 million inhabit-ants, we have the world’s tenth largest economy – which clearly gives us a much greater say in international affairs.

The Nordic region must constantly adopt a long-term, visionary approach, but we must also be specific and practical if we want to continue playing an important role on the European and international scene. The above vision shows that there is a clear political will – regardless of party affiliation – to identify the priority areas in which cooperation is of the greatest benefit and rele-vance to Nordic citizens.

There is broad agreement in the Nordic countries that steps must be taken to further develop and strengthen the Nordic model. The model has given rise to a regional success story that is totally unique in the world, and my feeling is that the time is ripe to focus more on progress than on the past.

The Nordic model will only become history when we no longer move forward together. }

REFERENCES

Chapter 1: The Nordics topping all charts – but aren´t we missing something?

1. Ekonomifakta.se, “Export och import över tid” (2015)2. Trägårdh, Wallman Lundåsen, Wollebæk & Svedberg,

”Den svala svenska tilliten” (2013)3. Global Agenda Council on Migration, “Annual report

2011–12” (2012)4. The Economist, “Gone but not forgotten” (June, 2015)5. Lifvendahl, Tove, ”Från sagoland till framtidsland.

Om svensk identitet, utveckling och emigration (2012)6. Forbes, “The China Hand” (Oct, 2005)7. BBC, “BBC Poll: Germany most popular country in

the world” (2013)8. HSBC Expat Explorer Survey,

“How countries compare” (2015)9. Lifvendahl, Lindahl von Sydow & Schwaag Serger,

”Jakten på det nya kapitalet” (2014)10. Lifvendahl et al, ”Jakten på det nya kapitalet” (2014)11. The Economist, ”Fixing the capitalist machine” (Sep, 2012)12. OECD, “Indicators of immigrant integration 2015” (2015)13. Carlsson, Magnus & Per Skedinger, ”Reglering eller

diskriminering – vad hindrar etablering?” (2011)14. Lifvendahl et al, ”Jakten på det nya kapitalet” (2014)15. Bienenstock et al, ”Combining excellence in education,

research and impact” (2014)16. Rojas, Mauricio, ”Efter folkhemmet – en agenda för

Sveriges förnyelse” (1999)

Chapter 2: How equality helped economic growth – and then lost priority

1. The Economist, ”Why Swedish men take so much paternity leave” (July, 2014)

2. Valdimarsdóttir, Fríða Rós, ”Nordiska erfarenheter av föräldraledigheter och dess inverkan på jämställdhet mellan kvinnor och män” (2005)

3. Gustafsson et al. “Women’s labor force transitions in connection with childbirth”, Journal of Population Economics (1996)

4. Kramer, Stephen Philip, Baby Gap ”How to Boost Birthrates and Avoid Demographic Decline” Foreign Affairs (May/June, 2012).

5. Gordon, Tuula, ”The Nordic Approach to the Promotion of Equality, Scottish Affairs” (2006)

6. Heckman and Masterov, “The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children” (Apr, 2007)

7. Sanandaji, Nima, ”Att spräcka glastaket: Hur främjar vi kvinnors företagande och karriärer?” (2013)

Chapter 3: Trust and welfare – a happy couple?

1. Rothstein Bo, ”Social Traps and the Problem of Trust: Theories of Institutional Design” (2005)

2. Rothstein Bo, ”Social tillit, lycka, korruption och välfärdsstat i Sören Holmberg, Lennart Weibull & Henrik Oscarsson (red) Lycksalighetens ö”, Göteborgs universitet (2011)

3. Ostrom, Elinor (2009) ”Beyond Markets and States, Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic System”, Prize Lecture (Dec 8, 2009)

4. Berggren, Henrik och Trägårdh, Lars “Social Trust and Radical Individualism: The Paradox at the Heart of Nordic Capitalism”, ”The Nordic Way”, Global Utmaning (2010)

5. Windscheid, Bernhard, ”Die Lehre des römischen Rechts von der Voraussetzung” (1850)

6. Baumol, William, ”Performing Arts, The Economic Dilemma: a study of problems common to theater, opera, music, and dance” New York: Twentieth Century Fund (1966)


© 2015 Global Utmaning Graphic design: Jeanette Friman, Sthlm Kommunikation ABPhotographers: portraits p. 5: Thron Ullberg, p. 13: Anna-Lena Ahlström, p. 21: Sveriges Radio, p. 29: Britt-Inger Edman, p. 44: Anna Gran. Other photos: Yadid Levy/Norden org. pages: 12, 15, 18, 20. Michael Funck/Norden.org p. 25. Jeanette Friman p. 28. Shutterstock, pages: cover, 4, 7, 32. Fotolia, pages: 35, 39, 43Print: Text & Bildproduktion ABHyltetryck, Hyltebybruk 2015ISBN: 978-91-980053-9-4

The Swedish Institute (SI) is a public agency that promotes interest and confidence in Sweden around the world. SI seeks to establish cooperation and lasting relations with other countries through strategic communication and exchange in the fields of culture, education, science and business. SI works closely with Swedish embassies and consulates around the world.

Global Utmaning is an independent think tank that promotes soltions to global chellenges relating to the economy, environment and democracy.

The Norden is an NGO founded in 1919 with the aim to support the development of the cooperation between the Nordic countries. With its wide network members organized in local branches all over the region it has major impact on the well developed cross-border cooperation in the Nordic region.

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