Meticulously researched and eloquently written, Carly Elizabeth Schall’s book documents the history of the Swedish welfare state, from its twentieth-century origins to its twenty-first-century challenges. The Rise and Fall of the Miraculous Welfare Machine contributes to a number of literatures in political science, sociology, and history and will interest scholars of nationalism, immigration, ethnic relations, social policy, political economy, and political party dynamics.

Schall’s overarching research question, however, addresses work in political science and political sociology that examines the impact of racial and ethnic heterogeneity on welfare state institutions. One research area investigates whether immigration-generated ethnic diversity undermines national solidarity, thereby decreasing support for redistribution, inhibiting welfare state development, and depressing social expenditure. A second, related research area asks if social democratic values embedded in institutions generate national solidarity and, in the process, sustain native-born tolerance of immigration and support for the welfare state. Schall seemingly pits these accounts against each other. Will contemporary immigration to Sweden erode national solidarity and undermine the welfare state? Or will social democratic institutions foster solidarity across ethnic lines? Ultimately, her analysis implies that both outcomes are possible, but not necessarily because of demographic or institutional effects. Instead, she concludes that “homogeneity and heterogeneity matter for the welfare state because elites make it matter” (p. 13).

While previous research has focused primarily on the impact of ethnic heterogeneity, Schall’s analysis emphasizes the role that ethnic homogeneity plays in welfare state development. Central to her crisp and compelling account are the architects of the Swedish welfare state, the political elites from the Social Democratic Workers’ Party (SAP). Beginning with Per Albin Hansson and his late 1920s use of a familial concept, the “People’s Home” (folkhem), to describe the welfare state and nation, SAP party leaders and party elites worked to link social democratic values to Swedish national identity. According to Schall, SAP elites used cultural tools available to them, specifically an ethnic nationalism with civic features. By doing so, these political actors successfully transformed a working-class party into a national party with widespread, cross-class appeal and, ultimately, hegemonic influence.

Indeed, the SAP ruled uninterrupted between 1932 and 1976 and then for 21 of the next 30 years. Over time, the party developed new cultural notions of what it means to be Swedish and built the most egalitarian and universal welfare state in the world. In recent decades, however, SAP’s dominance has been challenged not only by a center-right coalition but also by the anti-immigrant, welfare chauvinistic, nationalist party, the Sweden Democrats (SD). In the face of increasing ethnic diversity, SAP has “lost the ability they had in the early twentieth century for making a case for equality” (p. 199). This, suggests Schall, is the greatest risk to social democracy.

Using comparative-historical methods, Schall focuses on five historical periods that she describes as moments of crisis in the Nordic country: 1928–32, 1945–50, 1968–75, 1991–95 and 2006–14. In each of these periods, ethnic homogeneity or heterogeneity is salient and the welfare state either expands or contracts. According to the author, it is in such moments that we can gain insight into “the relationship between the national community as a membership community and as a codification of the welfare state” (p. 12). In other words, in each of these periods, who is considered a part of the nation and which social policies are appropriate are renegotiated.

In the earliest period, this includes a discussion of conceptions of ethnic minorities within Sweden, such as the Sami, the indigenous population in the north. In later periods, evolving conceptions of national identity and changes in social policy are examined through discussions of immigrant groups, including Jews and Finns during and after World War II; labor migrants from Southern Europe; refugees from Chile, Yugoslavia, and the Middle East; and immigrants from other Nordic countries as well. For her analysis, Schall relies on four mainstream newspapers with large readerships. In the majority of time periods analyzed, these papers had organizational links to political parties. Schall argues that these newspapers are important sources of information about “cultural and political hegemony in that they act as speech that links between the public and the political” (p. 25). For the first three periods, Schall manually examines every eighth issue as well as specific dates of interest, like elections. For the last two periods, she makes use of a Swedish newspaper database. A list of search terms in Swedish is included in the introductory chapter, and she uses parliamentary debates as robustness checks.

Throughout her narrative, Schall reveals important weaknesses in traditional theories of welfare state development. According to the power-resource model, the welfare state is the outcome of working-class political mobilization and distributive conflicts among class-based actors. The relative power of these actors determines policy outcomes (see Walter Korpi, “Social Policy and Distributional Conflict in the Capitalist Democracies: A Preliminary Comparative Framework,” West European Politics, 3(3), 1980). Schall points out that this account does not explain how working-class parties become powerful in the first place. She argues that “conceiving of these [class-based] actors’ ascendance as solely or even primarily a result of successful class mobilization ignores the crucial role that the broader national bases for SAP’s ideology played in their electoral and legislative successes” (p. 17). She demonstrates how a working-class party actually de-emphasized class differences in order to advance working-class interests. While the author is not the first to note that the SAP sought to build a national party with cross-class appeal, her case study provides evidence counter to the most dominant theories of welfare state development that emphasize intraclass solidarity and interclass politics.

The book’s contribution, which is substantial, lies in its ability to show how ethnic homogeneity contributed to the development of the Swedish welfare state and widespread societal acceptance of social democratic values. Further, Schall shows how different political responses to recent immigration have contributed to the decline of social democracy and the resurgence of ethnic nationalism in Sweden. With each chapter, she convincingly builds the case that elites were critical in translating Sweden’s ethnic homogeneity into broad support for social democracy, while simultaneously providing significant contributions to the diverse literatures mentioned at the outset of this review. For example, scholars of nationalism will appreciate her analysis of 1928–32, where she shows how SAP elites emphasized an ethnic conception of national identity but one with a civic component (i.e., Swedes as an ethnic group predisposed to democracy). Further, scholars of social policy will appreciate the author’s analysis of 1968–75, where political parties translate three social democratic values into specific social policies for natives and for immigrants.

Despite the book’s many contributions, Schall errs in the way in which she initially motivates the project, implying that her analysis has the potential to challenge a growing body of cross-disciplinary research on diversity and solidarity. This is neither necessary nor productive; it entails a misrepresentation of previous research and muddles the nature of her contribution.

Schall critiques most scholars for accepting as “self-evident truth” (p. 3) the notion that the solidarity upon which welfare states theoretically rely is easier to achieve in homogeneous communities and more difficult in heterogeneous ones. This characterization, however, disregards the diverse theoretical work and large body of empirical research from psychology, economics, sociology, and political science that demonstrates the tension between diversity and solidarity, using a variety of methods and data sources.

The author reasons that general conclusions about the relationship between diversity and welfare should not be drawn from the exceptional case of the United States, arguing specifically against “invert[ing] the more nuanced explanations of the stunted American welfare state to explain Sweden” (p. 5). Further, she claims that the literature on diversity and European welfare states is neither conclusive nor comprehensive enough to draw conclusions about the precise nature of the relationship. This critique, however, is undermined by a thin and slightly dated review of the literature. While it is true that cross-national studies of immigration and European welfare state attitudes have produced contradictory findings, studies of immigration and social expenditure reveal a negative relationship (see Liza Steele, “Ethnic Diversity and Support for Redistributive Social Policies.” Social Forces, 94(4), 2016). Further, quantitative case studies of European countries, including Sweden, reveal a negative relationship between immigration and support for welfare (e.g., see Maureen A. Eger, “Even in Sweden: The Effect of Immigration on Support for Welfare State Spending,” European Sociological Review, 26(2), 2010; Holger Stichnoth, “Does Immigration Weaken Natives’ Support for the Unemployed? Evidence from Germany,” Public Choice, 151(3), 2012; and Alexander W. Schmidt-Catran and Dennis C. Spies, “Immigration and Welfare Support in Germany,” American Sociological Review, 81(2), 2016).

A deeper survey of relevant research might have led Schall to more consistently highlight the true nature of her contribution. Her case study is not a corrective to the literature. It is complementary, providing a compelling and nuanced account of an important mechanism by which homo/heterogeneity matters for the welfare state. Considering the growing evidence of this relationship, The Rise and Fall of the Miraculous Welfare Machine is an important step in understanding the mechanisms involved. Moreover, it could not be more timely, given the increasing salience of immigration in twenty-first-century electoral politics.