‘What is it actually about?’ Asymmetric mobilisation and the defeat of wage-earner fund policies in Sweden

‘Wage-earner funds’, an ultimately-defeated idea for union-controlled funds to develop stakes in Swedish companies, dominated Swedish politics in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They are regularly cited as a prominent attempt to introduce economic democracy. However, factors behind the funds’ defeat are often under-analysed, with the sequencing of events particularly neglected. This article corrects for this. It seeks to explain the defeat of wage-earner funds by tracing decision-making processes in the Social Democratic Party. It argues that the funds were defeated due to asymmetries in mobilisation, which were connected to asymmetries in everyday experiences. While capital owners mobilised strongly against wage-earner funds as an existential threat, most Social Democratic leaders, voters and union members saw the issue as detached from their everyday concerns. This points to the importance that asymmetries in experience and mobilisation can have in policy contests, which provides an advantage to capital in contests over investment control.