I wrote> My hypothesis is that the general rise of progressiveness from 1952 to 1975-6 is a result of the cold war and two major hot wars (the need to legitimate the system in the eyes of the troops) plus the relatively non-globalized status of the US economy at the time (international competition was less important, making a welfare state easier).< Marsh asks: >>Were any of the social democracies (e.g., in Scandinavia) ever so self-contained that they didn't face international competition? I don't think a purely "economic" explanation will cut it.<< I wasn't looking for any purely economic explanation. Further, I was looking at the US over time rather than comparing it with other nations. (I was doing time-series rather than cross-sectional analysis.) Anyway, on Sweden, its social welfare state arose for a different reasons: rather than being the result of war, there was a strong & relatively class-conscious working class organized in a unifed federation (very different from the US). Given a centralized organization of the employers, labor could come to a compromise that was much more real than the "labor accord" that the SSA school says applied in the US during the "golden age." (I would say that this "accord" was more of a _truce_.) Given Sweden's strength in manufacturing (an advantage that the US also had after WW II), the capitalists there could afford a compromise, could afford concessions. After that, the economy was consciously managed to not only allow a welfare state but also to help exports, to help with international competition. So the welfare state could persist for quite a while. Of course, I could be naive in my interpretation of the Swedish experience. in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ. 7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950 "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
