2025, Vol., No.36

Journal of the Scandinavian Society of Korea 2024 KCI Impact Factor : 0.72

pISSN : 1229-8646
https://journal.kci.go.kr/jssk

The purpose of this study is to identify, within a historical context, the reasons why pension reforms in Finland aimed at securing the sustainability of pension finances have been implemented without triggering social conflict. The analysis reveals that the Finnish pension system evolved into its current earning-related structure through a competitive development process in which the earning-related pension prevailed over the universal basic pension. As ideological orientation and institutional design became firmly intertwined, the key players in the development of the earning-related pension system became labors and employers, while the roles of the government and parliament were diminished. The government’s role was minimized to providing guidelines such as maintaining overall expenditure limits and preserving the characteristics of the system. Measures to ensure sustainability were set primarily by stakeholders, thereby minimizing social conflict. Rather than undergoing large-scale reforms, Finland has maintained its framework through frequent parametric adjustments, creating a path-dependent trajectory that continues to shape its pension reforms today.

Sweden is one of the most representative cases of a universal housing policy in the post–World War II era. Municipal housing companies, owned and controlled by the municipalities, took the lead in supplying public rental housing. In particular, during the Million Homes Programme of 1965–74, they built a large volume of high-quality public rental dwellings. Through this, Sweden sought not only to improve the housing conditions of low-income citizens but also to make public rental housing sufficiently attractive for the middle class and above, thereby preventing the formation of slums and achieving “social mix” in public rental housing areas. However, since the 1990s, the share of public rental housing in the total housing stock has steadily declined, while the proportion of low-income households and immigrants—especially non-European immigrants—among tenants has increased significantly. Public rental housing has thus come to function largely as a marginalized form of housing for the poor. This study seeks to explain the causes of this transformation. It first describes the chronological evolution of Sweden’s public rental housing system and then identifies the key factors behind its marginalization: the peculiarities of housing and housing policy, the right-wing parties’ preferential policies toward owner-occupied and cooperative housing, and the Social Democratic Party's inconsistency in its housing policy line.

This study investigates how the Swedish monarchy has sustained legitimacy in a highly democratic and egalitarian society by analyzing the 200-year historical trajectory of the Bernadotte dynasty. Using the institutional logics framework, the research highlights how Scandinavian cultural values-such as egalitarianism, low power distance, consensus orientation, and strong social trust-have structurally shaped the monarchy’s leadership into symbolic, adaptive, and service-oriented forms. A qualitative case study approach was employed to examine each monarch’s role within the socio-political context of his reign, focusing on how constitutional limitations, societal expectations, and cultural norms interacted with royal behavior. The findings show that the Swedish monarchy maintained public support not through political authority, but through moral credibility, value-based engagement, and symbolic representation that aligned with Scandinavian leadership norms. These insights provide meaningful implications for contemporary organizations operating under dispersed authority, where trust, ethical conduct, and cultural resonance increasingly define effective leadership.