About the project
The project was hosted by ESOP, a research center funded by the Norwegian Research Council as a center of excellence at the Department of Economics, but it aims at combining research in history, political science, and economics.
Questions addressed included
- To what extent did the Nordic countries actually follow an egalitarian, security-led, path to affluence, and if they did, can it be repeated in one way or another in developing countries today?
- What brings about social change?
- To what extent do new economic conditions increase social consciousness and political participation?
- Does modernization lead to social organization for better health and social protection?
The project investigated how social experiments, similar to the Nordic ones, have worked and sometimes failed in developing countries. A systematic exploration of these issues can teach us more about the role of alternative development models in poor countries and about the role of historical preconditions, cultural factors and persistent institutions, and thus whether the Scandinavian model should be viewed as a development strategy rather than as an end state.