Welfare state and sustainable development: The Nordic model

Socio-economic inequalities, which can be seen in the whole history, became a great problem between working class-employers with the effect of the Industrial Revolution's on production and consumption dynamics. This problem leaped to a different dimension through the working class' organized efforts to demands of social welfare rights. And the meaning of the state authority has changed against this demand motivated by people. In this process, because of the havocs of both World Wars and the Great Depression obliged to change the paradigm from "laissez faire" to "Keynesian". And the state intervention to the economy was started to perceived as legitimate. Thus, the concept of the Welfare State became institutionalized and it has lived its Golden Era between 1950-1973 in the Keynesian economic framework. Yet, in the 1970's through the effects of both economic and political crisis, neo-liberal approach has become the prevailing paradigm and states aligned themselves with neo-liberalism. Therefore, the concept of the Welfare State has changed and transformed. However, Nordic countries stood adhere to their deeply-rooted and institutionalized welfare model. Moreover, they succeed to reconcile sustainability and basic values of the Welfare State in their distinctive characteristics. In this respect, the Nordic Model achieved to blend the logic of free market economy and the basic principles of the Welfare State. Nevertheless, there are differences in terms of socio-economic and cultural structure between Nordic countries and developing countries like Turkey. Other Western especially Southern European countries have more similar profiles with developing countries than Nordics. Yet, equality, social justice and equity are not essential elements for sharing of welfare in these countries. And this is the most important difference between Nordics and other developed countries. In this context, in this thesis, the concept of the Nordic Model is analyzed to grasp both how it accomplished to blend the Welfare State understanding and sustainable development approach and its logic and whether or not it will be an example for developing countries' development strategies through data which was obtained by literature review and comparison methodology. Keywords: Welfare, Sustainability, the Welfare State, Sustainable Development, the Nordic Model, the Scandinavian Model, Swedish Model