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Conventional wisdom argues that welfare state builders in the US and Sweden in the 1930s took their cues from labor and labor movements. "Capitalists Against Markets" makes the startling argument that pragmatic social reformers looked for support not only from below but also from above, taking into account capitalist interests and preferences. Juxtaposing two widely recognized extremes of welfare, the US and Sweden, Peter Swenson shows that employer interests played a role in welfare state development in both countries. This broad-ranging comparative analysis begins with theory about employer interests under varying economic and institutional conditions, especially in labor markets shaped to a considerable degree by employers themselves. It then moves on to in-depth historical evidence, starting from very early in the 1900s. The historical narrative reveals striking variations within and across the behavior of their capitalist classes. It gives reason to believe that capitalists were among essential allies of the American welfare state in the 1930s and beyond, not just forces for containing its expansion. It also shows that Social Democrats in Sweden were kicking in capitalists' open doors as they installed and expanded the various pieces of their world-renowned welfare state through the 1960s. A concluding chapter surveys labor market and social policy changes in both countries since the 1970s in light of the theory and historical analysis of cross-class alliance politics. Provocative in its challenge to conventional thinking and theory, "Capitalists Against Markets" illuminates the political conditions for greater economic and social security in capitalist societies.

Peter A. Swenson is Yale’s C.M. Saden Professor of Political Science. He specializes in the comparative political economy of labor markets and social welfare in Europe and the United States. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on the economic, political and social foundations of social policy and market regulation in developed capitalist democracies.

Among other things, Swenson is the author of two books, Fair Shares: Unions, Pay and Politics in Sweden and West Germany (1989) and Capitalists against Markets: The Making of Labor Markets and Welfare States in the United States and Sweden (2002), which received honorable mention for the APSA Luebbert Prize for best book in Comparative Politics. He was awarded the APSA’s Follett Prize for best article in politics and history for “Varieties of Capitalist Interests: Power, Institutions, and the Regulatory Welfare State in the United States and Sweden” (Studies in American Political Development, 2004).

Swenson’s current project, The American Medical Disorder: A Century of Health Politics, turns to the history and political economy of medical reform and medical progress. It covers subjects like medical education and research, public health, pharmaceutical regulation, the financing, organization, and control of health care delivery through private and social insurance, and the movement for evidence-based medical decisions for cost-effective health care. This is part of a larger long-term comparative research project analyzing the shifting interests and coalitions of organized provider, business, and labor groups in the evolution of national health care systems. A piece of the comparative work has been published as “Good Distribution, Bad Delivery, and Ugly Politics: The Traumatic Beginnings of Germany’s Health Care System,” in Shapiro, Swenson, and Donno, eds., Divide and Deal: The Politics of Distribution in Democracies (2008).