The Nordic countries are often portrayed as belonging to a separate welfare regime, characterized by “institutional” welfare arrangements crowding out private welfare. However, a closer look reveals important differences in the public/private welfare mix. By focusing on pension politics in particular, the article argues that these policy differences stem from institutional differences which have shaped the pension-political game differently in the various Nordic countries. It then uses an account of political developments there as a stepping stone in order to discuss a general problem in political science: how to explain political change without losing sight of the connection between the micro and macro levels of analysis.
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