Social Democracy and the Creation of the Public Interest

Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 23 (3):237-256 (2011)
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Abstract

ABSTRACT The Swedish case bears out Lewin's contention, in Self-Interest and Public Interest in Western Politics, that public spiritedness is much more important than is suggested by public-choice theories positing the universal dominance of self-interestedness. However, in Sweden we find that public spiritedness on the part of the public—as evidenced, for example, in sociotropic voting—was cultivated by political institutions, policies, and rhetoric that transformed a divided, conflictual society into one in which the “public interest” was both coherent and desirable. In turn, this cultivation was the result of decisions by politicians that were, in the most simplistic sense, self-interested, because they secured the politicians’ election and re-election. But the goal of election and re-election was to create a just society. In short, the politicians, too, were public spirited.

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Citations of this work

Cooperation for the Common Good: Reply to the Symposium.Leif Lewin - 2011 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 23 (3):359-370.
Cooperation for the Common Good: Reply to the Symposium.Leif Lewin - 2011 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 23 (3):359-370.

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