Ideological and pragmatic transformations: the adoption of neoliberal ideas by Finnish and Swedish conservative parties since the 1970s

The article examines the extent to which Finnish and Swedish conservative parties adopted neoliberal ideas from 1970s onwards. It does so by comparing their published programmes contextualizing them politically economically. Neoliberalism is understood as an intellectual tradition centred around objective of increasing role market mechanism in society. Concrete programmatic include critiques public sector taxes, especially progressive taxation, promoting marketization liberalization other sectors society, such finance labour markets. shows that conservatives considerably earlier than counterparts were more ideological pursuing them. Both have traditionally called for tax cuts, but only a deregulation financial markets services already late 1970s. ‘breakthrough’ took place among 1990s, though they justified most reforms pragmatic necessities rather desirable standpoint. These differences are explained Finland’s different geopolitical position during Cold War its shifting coalition governments, led milder contestation bloc politics.