Could the Scandinavian model work for others?

Scandinavian Institute of Maritime Law, University of Oslo, Oslo

And in Scandinavian countries, fathers' income is much less important.

The third option is the Scandinavian way. Here government demand for labor keeps wages high.

It has led to a partnership with Scandinavian broadcasters, who are now conducting a similar experiment.

Pain and Survival. Human Rights Violations and Mental Health (Lavik, Sveaass, Nygard, Fannemel) Scandinavian University Press (1994).

Psychological aspects of human rights violation The importance of justice and reconciliation Scandinavian Journal of International Law (2000).

Moreover the influence of the country's Scandinavian neighbours was now much stronger than it had been in the recent past.

This pattern was followed by Scandinavian TNCs expanding abroad in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries (Johanson and Vahlne 1977).

The main difference between the failing French model and the more successful Scandinavian approach lies not in welfare outputs (many public services in France, such as the health care system, remain among the best in the world), but in how they are financed. The Scandinavian social compact rests on the understanding that citizens must pay high taxes in exchange for public services.

The first is cultural to protect and strengthen the identity of the Scottish people. The second is ideological to move Scotland toward a Scandinavian style social democracy.

They are wrong. The Swedish Scandinavian model that has emerged over the last 20 years has provided the only viable route to sustained growth that Europe has seen in decades.

As the past decade shows, they have served the Scandinavian countries well during a period of extreme internationalization. Instead of giving in to conventional wisdom, we have exploited the possibilities that globalization and technological change offer.

In the Scandinavian countries, as in the US, foreign competition intensified sharply during the past decade. China and India gained considerable economic power, and close neighbors in previously isolated communist states were rapidly integrated in the European economy.

In the 2005 rankings, Iceland scored as the least corrupt country, with the Scandinavian countries, New Zealand, and Singapore close behind. The US ranked seventeenth from the top, a not so glorious position for the world s leading power.

For example, in high inequality societies, where poor households are deprived of economic and educational opportunities, economic growth is depressed. Then there are the Scandinavian countries, where egalitarian policies evidently have not stood in the way of economic prosperity.

Several friends of mine in the Conservative party s parliamentary group have long been engaged in supporting a free Taiwan. Over the past ten years, we have held Scandinavian conferences on Taiwan in the parliaments in Copenhagen, Oslo, and Stockholm.

In the 1980 s, Scandinavian countries stood for chronic budget deficits, high inflation, and repeated devaluations. In 1999, The Economist labeled Germany the sick man of the euro a monument of European sclerosis, with low growth and high unemployment.

In the Scandinavian countries, as opposed to, say, Germany and the US, the government, not individual companies, are responsible for most social benefits. That way, economically irrational lock in effects, whereby workers simply cannot afford to change jobs, are avoided.

At the very least, the Scandinavian example shows that politicians have more than one option to choose from when considering how to handle globalization. Intense foreign competition and rapid technological change does not have to be a race to the bottom.

Then came East Asia, which had high savings rates, so the new explanation was governance. But this, too, made little sense, given that the Scandinavian countries which have the most transparent governance in the world had suffered a crisis a few years earlier.

Then came East Asia, which had high savings rates, so the new explanation was governance. 160 But this, too, made little sense, given that the Scandinavian countries which have the most transparent governance in the world had suffered a crisis a few years earlier.

Moreover, Italy spends around 4.5 of GDP on education, while the Scandinavian countries spend more than 6 of GDP. As a result, Italian students scores in the Program for International Student Assessment are significantly lower than those of their counterparts in many other OECD countries.

By designing educational and social protection policies that strengthen the individual, Scandinavian politicians have sought to promote change rather than prevent it. The positive public opinion in Sweden is not a symptom of brainwashing, but a rational response to people s experience during the last decade.

Poland may find that it has security and other interests in common with some states of a similar size in the current EU. The three Baltic states will most likely cooperate much more closely with the Scandinavian countries than with the other new members.

In parallel with the Scandinavian crisis, communism collapsed in Eastern Europe in 1989 and in 1991 in the Baltic states. Poland s first post communist finance minister, Leszek Balcerowicz, showed an amazed world how communism could be abolished and a market economy built almost instantly.

While French public spending which stood at 56 of GDP in 2011 is at or above Scandinavian levels, French households pay lower tax rates on consumption and personal income. The gap is bridged by a mixture of deficit spending and high taxation on employment.

This November, Nord Stream was given a surprising go ahead by three Scandinavian countries that will lend their seabed to the project Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. They seem to regard the case as a technical issue, and are now satisfied because environmental guarantees have been given.

Because of the multiplier effect, small governments and states, and even large cities, can successfully sponsor the kind of demand that fosters a world class innovation epicenter. Certain Scandinavian countries, Chinese provinces, and the city state of Singapore, for example, are ideally positioned to try this approach.

Criticism of this anti business approach is usually dismissed in France as ultra liberal flailing against the social model that the French nation has embraced. But the example set by Scandinavian countries, which combine a generous welfare state with pro business policies and traditions, repudiates such claims.

Given the fact that the current ECB vice president is from southern Europe (Portugal), the next head of the ECB must come from northern Europe. Only someone from Germany, the Netherlands, or a Scandinavian euro country like Finland can count on support from Germans, which is crucial.

In Sweden, it amounts to 33.5 of dependent employment (total employment excluding the self employed), and 32.9 in Denmark. On average the share of state employment in the workforce across Scandinavia is 32.7 , compared to only 18.5 on average in the non Scandinavian countries of the EU 15.

A Scandinavian level of taxes would be bearable if public services did not remain inferior to those offered in Scandinavia. For example, per capita health care spending in Sweden, Denmark, and Finland exceeds 3,000, compared to only 2,300 in Italy, where households must contribute roughly 20 of total health care spending.

The key point is that France and Germany, and many other European countries including the Scandinavian countries, with their considerable wind and hydropower potential are all recognizing that the world as a whole will have to move away from a fossil fuel based energy system. That is the right calculation.

While many economists judge Germany s strategy the worst and America s the best, the Scandinavian strategy can be considered a second best strategy. Indeed, it is better to let people clean public parks, nurse children, and take care of the old in government facilities than have them do nothing, as in Germany.

In fact, many of the federalist arguments look dubious in particular, there is no single European social model. The differences for instance between the Scandinavian countries, the Mediterranean countries, and the liberal Atlantic countries like Ireland and the UK are sometimes more pronounced than those between Europe as a whole and the US.

Many critics of Europe, particularly in the US, link the euro crisis to the outsize role of government there, though the Scandinavian countries are doing well, despite high public spending. In France, the new center left government faces the challenge of delivering on its promise of strengthening social solidarity while substantially reducing the budget deficit.

Employers naturally tend to hire the most educated workers on offer, and so as the number of graduates increase, so does the number of graduate jobs. However, every study I know of whether British, Scandinavian, or American agrees that large numbers of these graduate jobs require no more than they did when non graduates performed them perfectly well.

Numerous tasks in scientific and public administration, e.g. Member of the Scandinavian Research Council for Criminology, 1983 2000 Head of the Department of Criminal Law and Judicial Procedure, University of Helsinki, 1989 1998 Member of the Research Council for Culture and Society, Academy of Finland, 1995 1997 Member of the National Advisory Board in Health Care Ethics, 1998 2002

But both Stiglitz and Piketty do not think that it must be so. First of all, the Scandinavian countries, which have the greatest equality, are also among the fastest growing advanced economies, and take the example of Japan, which has experienced deflation for about 20 years but successfully maintained a decent level of equality and standard of living, Stiglitz argues.

Professor Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland and I systematically compared the run up to the US sub prime crisis with the run up to the 19 worst financial crises in the industrialized world over the past 60 years. These include epic crises in the Scandinavian countries, Spain, and Japan, along with lesser events such as the US savings and loan crises of the 1980 s.

Nevertheless, it might be better to let the market decide what kinds of products the low skilled and less motivated part of the workforce should and could reasonably produce, which speaks for the American way of subsidizing wages. Thus, the Scandinavian way is more than a mere accounting trick, but it is also less than a truly recommendable strategy for coping with the challenges of globalization.

The Scandinavian countries know that women around the world look to them as pioneers of social and economic policies that enable women to be mothers and successful career professionals, and that encourage and expect men to play an equal parenting role. But they are not producing as many women managers in the private sector as the United States is, much less at the top ranks.

The design process was really tough, almost like a struggle for survival, but gradually an idea evolved this sort of idea of a rational tower that melts together with the surrounding city, sort of expanding the public space onto what we refer to as a Scandinavian version of the Spanish Steps in Rome, but sort of public on the outside, as well as on the inside, with the library.

The Great Depression of the 1930s, which followed the Wall Street crash of 1929, is the most obvious and worrying example that comes to mind, but the trend can be observed even in the Scandinavian countries, following banking crises there in the early 1990s. So seeking to explain, say, the rise of the National Front in France in terms of President François Hollande s personal and political unpopularity is not sensible.