Diagnosing Structural Failure in the Swedish Labour Market

This working paper develops a scope-bound structural diagnostic for distinguishing incentive failure, coordination failure, and participation-viability failure in labour-market policy. Using Axiomatic and Synthetic Theory (AST), the paper specifies three analytically distinct structures: employment realisation, institutional coordination, and participation viability. It derives a conditional structural-misattribution theorem showing that, where coordination capacity or participation viability is the binding constraint, interventions acting primarily through individual incentive pressure cannot by themselves restore stable employment. The paper does not estimate the prevalence of these mechanisms in Sweden, propose a complete theory of unemployment, or prescribe specific policies. Its contribution is a diagnostic architecture for identifying which intervention classes are structurally relevant under different conditions and for distinguishing stable employment from administrative movement, short-run placement, or programme compliance. The first conceptual version was developed in 2025. This substantially revised 2026 version forms part of the Society, Democracy, Organisation, and Education Research Programme.