Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

the Scandinavian ‘model’ reflected these origins, emphasizing universality and equality—universal social rights, equalized incomes, flat-rate benefits paid from steeply progressive taxation. They thus stood in marked contrast to the typical continental European version in which the state transferred or returned income to families and individuals, enabling them to pay in cash for what were, in essence, subsidized private services (insurance and medicine in particular). But except for education, which was already universal and comprehensive before 1914, the Scandinavian system of welfare was not conceived and implemented all at once. It came about incrementally. Health care in particular lagged behind: in Denmark, universal health coverage was achieved only in 1971, twenty-three years after Aneurin Bevan’s National Health Service was inaugurated across the North Sea in the United Kingdom. Moreover, what looked from the outside like a single Nordic system was in reality quite varied by country. Denmark was the least ‘Scandinavian’. Not only was it critically dependent upon an overseas market for farm produce (dairy and pork products especially) and thus more sensitive to policies and political developments elsewhere in Europe; but its skilled work force was much more divided by traditional craft-based loyalties and organisations. In this respect it resembled Britain more than, say, Norway; indeed, Denmark’s Social Democrats were constrained on more than one occasion in the Si...