The Worldview of the Corporate Welfare Elite
The Case of Sweden
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24225666 |
|---|---|
| Authors | M Holmqvist (0000-0003-4725-8757, Stockholm University), Max Persson (0000-0002-0666-038X, Stockholm University) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-10-08 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Sociological Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00380261261489880 |
| OpenAlex | W7221111351 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 43 |
This article examines how neoliberal restructuring of the Swedish welfare state has given rise to a new elite group that we conceptualize as the corporate welfare elite: actors who occupy critical command positions within the private welfare sector through ownership, management, and representation of significant welfare corporations and employer organizations. Since the 1990s, Sweden has undergone extensive market-oriented reforms enabling for-profit corporations to deliver publicly funded welfare services. Drawing on 22 qualitative interviews, we examine how these actors understand and legitimate their roles. We identify three recurring figures through which the corporate welfare elite articulate a shared worldview: the welfare leader, who presents corporate actors as necessary to safeguard welfare amid demographic and fiscal crisis; the rational corporate manager, who claims business-economic knowledge and management expertise as legitimate forms of welfare authority; and the innovative welfare entrepreneur, who presents corporate actors as agents of innovation, freedom, and renewal within an outdated and bureaucratic public welfare system. We argue that the corporate welfare elite can be understood as a carrier group of a particular mode of understanding welfare, rooted in educational and professional trajectories in economics, corporate management, and entrepreneurship. This worldview connects economic efficiency, managerial rationality, innovation, and freedom of choice, enabling corporate actors to legitimate their authority within publicly funded welfare. The article shows how elite power operates not only through ownership and organizational control, but also through shaping how welfare and legitimate authority within it are understood.
employers' associations · legitimacy of authority · managerial rationality · Neoliberalism · Swedish welfare state · welfare state restructuring · Elite Sociology and Global Capitalism · Management and Organizational Studies · Social Policy and Reform Studies
Power
Education plc
Capital without Borders
Bureaucracy
Making Markets in the Welfare State
Elites in an Egalitarian Society
The State Nobility
Educational marketization the Swedish way
Modes of reproduction in the Swedish economic elite
Politics as organised combat – New players and new rules of the game in Sweden
From national policy-making to global edu-business
The politics of profit in Swedish welfare services
The Choice Revolution
Elite outsiders? Power and merit in the biographical narratives of highly successful tech entrepreneurs in Germany
Quasi-Markets and Social Policy
Brief History of Neoliberalism
Introduction
Financialized accumulation, neoliberal hegemony, and the transformation of the Swedish Welfare Model, 1980-2020
Theoretical and methodological pathways for research on elites
Resilient privatization
Neoliberalism, Economization and the Paradox of the New Welfare State
Pathways to the power elite
Vanguard fantasies
Creating and upholding an elite community
Undoing the Demos
The Past and Present Influence of World Views
Outsourcing the State
Elite Power under Advanced Neoliberalism
The winners of marketisation
New Professionalism and New Public Management
| Highly cited | No |
|---|