The housing regime of Sweden: Concurrent challenges Part A: Aims, effects and interpretations

Introduction:

In economic research, two traditions may be distinguished. Mainstream economics adhere to the so-called formalist approach where the study of rational decision-making and the consideration of individuals is placed in focus. In this tradition, housing would typically be discussed in terms of consumers’ choices. Alternatively, there is to be found a broader scope labelled the substantivize approach: economy is viewed in the context of relationships and material acts of making a living. In this latter school of thought, the society and its institutions are consequently placed in focus. Housing would accordingly be viewed in terms of institutions and traditions, in order to connect factual market mechanisms to the various ways they have emerged in history, and to how they reflect diverse interests and politics.

The study at hand certainly reflects less a formalist than a substantivize approach. This is not to say that one way would be better or more fruitful than the other as any chosen approach depends on matter under scrutiny. Here, the subject of investigation is the Swedish housing regime, which of course is a broader concept than that of housing market. As a rule, housing is a phenomenon, which involves other societal institutions than markets only. It includes reciprocity across society as a general kind of helping and sharing, in particular among family members and relatives. In return for housing, remuneration would typically take the form of various services, which do not necessarily have to be instant or even be directed to the initial benefactor, but may rather constitute a general pattern of assistance and gratification. Another form of distribution of goods is redistribution, indicating a central authority who collects and redistributes resources.

In trying to understand the housing regime of any particular country, one has to realize core determinants of that country in the context of political history. Sweden is a particular case in Europe as it is often referred to as being an example of a corporatist society, together with the Netherlands and Austria.

Conclusion:

Maybe the scrutiny of the Swedish housing regime in this report is truthful and pertinent. All the same, this does not indicate an assessment of the executed policy or an evaluation of the quality of the Swedish housing regime. In order to do that, we should apply standards with regard to how it could have been (in the best of worlds). That would however mean to apply a counterfactual type of argumentation, and then we would apart ourselves from scientific research. We only know (some of ) what happened, not how it could have been made in a better way. What we can criticize, however, is how housing issues have been studied.
It is both absurd and sad that those researchers who have delivered critique against the alleged liberalization of housing in Sweden, in fact attend to the neoliberal notion of markets as a force of nature to be tamed, and not as an outcome of more or less conscious acts, a societal construct – by the elite and for the elite – over a considerable period of time. The notion of beneficial public regulation in the face of the haunting market is underpinned by a Hobbesian view on the nature of society and legitimate government. In the Swedish discourse on housing, markets are as a rule viewed as the monstrous Leviathan by the proponents of the existing system. The Hobbesian view implies a legitimate government based on civil society, placed under the auspices of a sovereign authority and framed by a social contract and total submission to authority.

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