Comparative political economy has been dominated in recent years by the issue of globalisation. Within that literature, the Nordic economies are routinely presented as special cases. Their social democratic traditions are thought to provide the test of the claim that globalisation will lead to the homogenisation of national models of capitalism. Some commentators have concluded that the Nordic model must bow to the neoliberalising tendencies of globalisation. Others have argued that it can continue to serve as a viable alternative within a generally neoliberal world. This project will contribute to the debate by providing new comparative evidence. Redressing the imbalance of previous research by comparing the neglected cases of Norway and Finland with the more familiar Swedish case, the project analyses the reasons behind the surprising resilience of the Nordic cases in combining uniquely generous welfare provision with economic competitiveness. The project will offer a new approach to evaluating this resilience by looking at the relationship between welfare institutions and the social ideals and practices of citizenship. The project will ask whether the future of the welfare state could be evaluated in terms of its constitution of the national citizen and its defence of the ideals of citizenship.

Semi-structured interviews with 38 elites (representatives of major political parties, government departments, NGOs, employer organisations and trade unions). In addition to the historical sociological analysis, my primary research was focused on semi--‐structured elite interviews with both politicians and civil society actors in order to map the national discourses on welfare state and social citizenship. I conducted semi--‐structured elite interviews with parliamentarians; in a representative democracy they, it can be argued, mirror the views and values of contemporary society. In order to test the claim that the values of the welfare state in the Nordic countries stretch beyond social democratic party politics, I interviewed parliamentarians from all major parties. While the Nordic countries are strong representative democracies, their political traditions are also rooted in civil society activism and social movements. As such, in order to supplement the interviews with parliamentarians, I interviewed central trade union and employer organisation representatives and national level NGO actors. Interviewing representatives from central organisations was important for my research, as they are located at the level of organisation where the policy agendas are formulated. Interview schedule: Interviews in Finland 23 March-8 April 2009 and 22-30 June 2009; Interviews in Sweden 23 April-19 May 2009 and 28 September-9 October 2009; Interviews in Norway 12 October-6 November 2009.