A new discourse coalition in the Swedish transport infrastructure debate 2016–2021

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Transportation Research Part D 116 (2023) 103611
Available online 23 January 2023
1361-9209/© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
A new discourse coalition in the Swedish transport infrastructure
debate 2016–2021
Johan Niskanen
*
, Jonas Anshelm, Simon Haikola
Link¨
oping University, Department of Thematic Studies – Technology and Social Change, Sweden
ARTICLE INFO
Keywords:
Transport infrastructure
Ecological modernisation
Sweden
Industrial policy
ABSTRACT
Sweden has set itself aspirational climate goals to reduce its fossil fuel dependence, and has the
ambition of being a global climate transition leader. These goals have proven difcult to achieve
in the transport system. In this paper we describe the development since 2016 of a broad and
heterogeneous discourse coalition in favour of more strategic governance in Swedish transport
planning, encompassing business, trade unions, environmental experts and green-left politicians.
We rst analyse their claims for a radical reorientation of Swedish transport planning, which are
shown to focus on scal rules, a lack of political courage, and slow-moving environmental
legislation processes, as three main reasons why the transport system is slow to transition. We
then discuss whether these claims constitute a politicisation of the climate policy discourse, or
rather a new iteration of the previously depoliticised discourse.
1. Introduction
Emissions from domestic transport account for a third of Sweden’s total greenhouse gas emissions (Swedish EPA, 2022a). Over 85
percent of passenger cars are petrol-powered, while light and heavy lorries are powered by 96 and 97 percent fossil fuels, respectively
(Trakanalys, 2022). Buses are powered by 74 percent of fossil fuels and otherwise by biogas (20 percent) and electricity (6 percent).
This heavy reliance on fossil fuels, as well as their harmful effect on environment and health (Trakverket, 2022), make a transition of
the transport sector a priority area in Swedish environmental politics.
In the mid-2010s, the red-green Swedish Government of the Social Democrats and the Green Party claimed to represent the world’s
most ambitious environmental policy (Swedish Government, 2017): Sweden was to become an international climate frontrunner
(Statens Offentliga Utredningar, 2016:47). Tasked with proposing a climate policy framework and a strategy for a comprehensive and
long-term climate policy, the Swedish Environmental Objectives Committee submitted its nal report in 2016, ambitiously proposing
that emissions would be reduced by 85 percent by 2045 compared to 1990, and identifying transport as an area where comprehensive
measures were particularly necessary. In 2017, following the Committee report, the Swedish Parliament decided on a Climate Policy
Framework that included a Climate Law (2017:720), the establishment of a Swedish Climate Policy Council, and the objective that the
country shall achieve net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2045. The ambition was to become “the world’s rst fossil-free welfare
state”, as announced by Prime Minister Stefan L¨
ofven (Swedish Government, 2017; L¨
ofven et al., 2016). For the transport system, this
meant that greenhouse gas emissions must decrease by at least 70 percent by 2030 compared to 2010. In 2016–2017, there was great
condence that the transport system in Sweden could be transitioned.
* Corresponding author at: Link¨
oping University, Department of Thematic Studies – Technology and Social Change, 581 83 Link¨
oping, Sweden.
E-mail address: johan.niskanen@liu.se (J. Niskanen).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Transportation Research Part D
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/trd
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2023.103611
Received 6 October 2022; Received in revised form 13 December 2022; Accepted 8 January 2023

Transportation Research Part D 116 (2023) 103611
2
Against this background, Sweden’s limited success in restructuring the transport system is remarkable: while the country has made
great progress in reducing its fossil fuel dependence in its electricity and heating systems, the transport system has had particular
difculties in achieving a sufciently fast pace of transition to achieve set climate goals (Statens Offentliga Utredningar, 2021:21).
Despite the Climate Policy Framework, and despite being committed to a complete phase-out of fossil fuels from the country’s eet of
vehicles (Swedish Government, 2009), the Government has yet to present a coherent strategy for achieving this aim (SCPC, 2021).
While showing a slight decrease in greenhouse gas emissions from the transport system in 2019 and 2020 (Trakverket, 2020; 2021),
in the pre-Covid year of 2018 emissions actually increased (Trakverket, 2019). In total, since 1990, greenhouse gas emissions from
transports have decreased by 21 percent (see Fig. 1).
The continued reliance on fossil fuels in the transport system therefore poses a signicant obstacle to Sweden’s ambitions of
achieving a ‘climate neutral’ energy system. As Haikola & Anshelm (2022) argue, Swedish transport decarbonization should be un-
derstood as a particularly complex problem, with institutional, material and cultural path-dependencies being intertwined through a
post-war history where the fossil fuel car was both symbolically and literally a driver of modernization. Furthermore, successive
governments – and especially the neoliberal coalition government of 2006–2014 – have been reluctant to enforce strict regulations, or
present investments in alternative transport modes (Haikola & Anshelm, forthcoming). Throughout the period leading up to the
governmental shift in 2014, widespread criticism from environmental organisations, political parties and government authorities, for
insufcient state investments in the transport system transition fell on deaf ears (Axelsson & Lindgren, 2014; Eriksson & Olsen, 2008;
Skog¨
o et al., 2007). However – as we will present in this paper – after 2016 we see a discursive shift whereby such critique gains
impetus. We argue that the key reason for this shift is the emergence of a new ‘discourse coalition’, encompassing both environmental
experts, green and left politicians, trade unions and leaders of large Swedish companies. According to Hajer (1995), a discourse
coalition emerges when disparate interests are able to merge following a simple storyline. Such a storyline must hold enough substance
to mobilise political energy, but also be vague enough to allow for differences between actor groups’ interests.
Against the background of the Climate Policy Framework, the Climate Law (2017:720), and the objective of decreasing greenhouse
gas emission from the transportation sector by at least 70 percent by 2030, the purpose of the study is to analyse the Swedish transport
infrastructure debate between the years 2016 and 2021 in the major Swedish printed newspapers. The question we ask in the paper is
how the discursive shift we identied amounts to a reorientation of Swedish climate politics. By analysing how the new discourse
coalition explains the failures of Swedish transport policy in regard to decarbonisation, we critically evaluate their claims in the light of
perspectives on politicisation and depoliticisation. The theorisation of postpolitics, while meriting substantial criticism on several
points (e.g. Anshelm & Haikola, 2018; Metzger, 2017), has a value in identifying neoliberal environmental politics as predicated on a
lack of fundamental, societal conict (Swyngedouw, 2009). As long as decarbonisation is envisioned as being driven by market forces
and voluntary actions by individuals, radical societal shifts are unlikely to occur in line with climate targets decided by governments.
By positing vacuous phrases like “sustainable development” as political goals, argues theoreticians of postpolitics, incumbent interests
are able to maintain a primary commitment to business as usual, i.e. sustained economic growth without fundamental alterations to the
ordering of society (Allmendinger & Haughton, 2012).
Hajer’s concept of discourse coalition is well suited for an analysis of this kind, since the disavowal of conict is, in a sense, central
to how disparate actor groups are able to unite for a common political purpose. What reason do we have to believe that large Swedish
companies, only recently outspoken sceptics of state action on climate issues (Anshelm & Hultman, 2015) are in fact repoliticising
Swedish transport and climate discourse, when they now call the state back to the political scene? This is the question we shall return to
in the concluding discussion (Section 5), having analysed the arguments put forward by the new discourse coalition as reasons for the
failure of Swedish transport decarbonisation policy (Section 4). First, however, we must provide some historical context of the political
landscape of the Swedish transport system (Section 2), and explain our methodological approach (Section 3).
2. Background: The political landscape of the Swedish transport system
In the great part of the 20th century, under the strongly Keynesian Social Democratic party, Sweden weas turned to an industrial
welfare society, a society maintained over time with increasing attention to sustainable processes and products well into the rst
0.00
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25.00
1990
1991
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Millions of tonnes of carbon
dioxide equivalents
Domestic transport, total emissions of greenhouse gases per
year
Fig. 1. Domestic transport, total emissions of greenhouse gases per year expressed in millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents (EPA, 2022b).
J. Niskanen et al.

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3
decades of the 21st century. In the 1990′s, Social Democrat Prime Minister G¨
oran Persson adopted aspects of ‘ecological modern-
isation’– i.e., environmental readaptation of economic growth and industrial development (Hajer, 1995; Mol & Sonnenfeld, 2000) – as
a policy strategy, and launched the vision of the ‘the green folkhem’ (‘the green people’s home’). This made ecological modernisation
the dominant environmental policy discourse in Sweden. One ideological core idea was that a sustainable industrial nation could
ourish, delivering employment and economic growth, through green exports in a global market. To achieve this, comparatively strict
environmental regulations, strategic economic and scal management, and active employment policy were key. In later decades,
political power has alternated between Social Democratic-led governments and liberal-conservative governments. According to
Swedish liberal-conservative parties, sound environmental politics can be achieved by developing green technologies driven by
consumer demand, lower taxes on work, and conditions favouring business interests over labour (Anshelm, 2012).
Following the 1990–1994 nancial crisis, Swedish governments pursued a distinct new course promising to deliver annual budget
surpluses in the public sector (Brenton & Pierre, 2017). This radical implementation of New Public Management (aiming to make the
public sector protable) has since been pursued by governments of all party colours: the minority Social Democratic governments of
1994–1996 and 1996–2006; the liberal-conservative majority coalition of 2006–2010; the liberal-conservative minority coalition of
2010–2014; and the red-green minority coalitions of 2014–2019, 2019–2020 and 2020–2021.
In terms of transport planning, municipalities have thus been tasked with responsibilities that formerly belonged to the state:
increased competition between regions and municipalities for private capital and state funds, increased differences between
geographical regions, and, to some extent, a more fragmented geography that complicates the prospect of capital intensive, interre-
gional infrastructure planning (Barnett, 2003, 2011; Blücher & Graninger, 2006; Gray & Barford, 2018; Lobao et al., 2018). In this
environment, a national strategy for transport politics has been hard to pursue.
The planning of large-scale infrastructure projects, such as transportation, is determined by specic social, political and cultural
contexts (Altsthuler & Luberoff, 2003; Boholm, 2011, 2013; Flyvbjerg et al., 2003; Kaijser 1994; Mayntz & Hughes, 2019; Mazzucato,
2013). The recent decades of neoliberal deregulation, decentralisation and liberalisation have served to circumscribe the role of the
state in infrastructure planning (Hajer, 2003; Noman & Stiglitz, 2016; Perry, 2003; Pike et al., 2019; Skelcher, 2000). Notions of the
virtues of limited state involvement have come to the fore in economic shocks such as the nancial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent
Euro crisis. Especially in European “frugal” nations, including Sweden, nancial downturns have, perversely from a classic Keynesian
perspective, made heavy state investments with long pay-off times more, not less, difcult to justify (Tooze, 2018).
Today, however, politics is in a phase of transformation due to global technological, geopolitical and macroeconomic shifts
(McCann & Ortega-Argil´
es, 2021). In the light of e.g., the global nancial crisis of 2008, China’s rapid growth, Covid-19, and of the
growing geopolitical importance of climate change, the view of industrial policy is changing and new infrastructure investments are
considered both possible and desirable (Aiginger & Rodrik, 2020; European Union, 2021). Since the 2008 nancial crisis, belief in
industrial policy has regained momentum both within and outside Sweden (Tienhaara, 2018; Henrekson et al., 2021), and Keynesian
visions of strategic industrial large-scale restructuring have been presented widely (Barbier, 2010; Bridge & Gailing, 2020; European
Commission, 2021). In France, for example, president Macron recently argued for “a Marshall plan for the re-industrialisation of areas
where the economy has collapsed” (Mallet & Abboud, 2022). Since the mid-2010s, large Swedish companies, their interest groups and
the leaders of the major liberal Swedish newspapers have also highlighted the great need for an urgent transition of Swedish infra-
structure, and that the state has an active role to play in this transition (SCPC, 2021; Fossilfritt Sverige, 2021).
Historically, however, Swedish industry and business have not expressed much support for state intervention and state regulation
in the name of the environment and the climate (Anshelm & Hultman, 2015). Since the 1980s, Swedish transport policy has been
accompanied by an environmental policy where the state’s role is primarily to administer away market barriers and environmental
problems (Anshelm, 2002; Sundqvist, 2021). This is an anti-political position that is based on the idea that ours is a post-political era
beyond struggles for alternative futures, in which market-solutions, participatory planning practices and consensus-building can
guarantee smooth planning processes (Metzger, 2017). In stark contrast to this idea, the controversial reality of extraction and industry
projects in Sweden during this same period reminds us that environmental conict is central to industrial society (Anshelm et al., 2018;
Haikola & Anshelm, 2016; Persson et al., 2017; Anshelm and Haikola, 2016; Niskanen et al., 2020). In these conicts, local and
national representatives from political parties and government authorities, environmental organisations and businesses take differing
sides and positions in varying temporary coalitions, depending on local issues and interests.
In sum, for the last three decades – regardless of which parties have been in power – the political landscape in Sweden has been
dominated by neoliberal policy focused on market solutions, deregulation and privatisation, framed by ‘green’ economic growth and
industrial development, and this has partly hidden local environmental conicts from the national view. In the last ten years, more
strategic, ‘Keynesian’ political visions have slowly gained momentum in some political areas, coming increasingly to the fore since
2016.
3. Method: studying press material through discourse analysis
The main methodology in this study is discourse analysis, a qualitative research methodology with the purpose of revealing how
different actors present specic topics. The analysis in this study is based on printed press material between 2016 and 2021, with a
focus on opinion pieces and editorials published in Sweden’s ve largest daily newspapers: Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet,
Aftonbladet, Expressen and Dagens Industri. This focus was chosen as these media are – historically and currently – where transport
debate takes place in Sweden. We have read news articles, editorial pieces written by representatives of the newspapers, as well as
opinion pieces attributed to business representatives, public authorities, politicians, trade unions and other interest groups and
opinion-makers.
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4
This paper focuses on identifying and understanding the different meanings, interpretations and denitions of problems and so-
lutions presented by these actors in the public debate on transport system transition in Sweden, in order to gain deeper insight into
barriers to a climate transition. To do this, we use Foucault’s discourse concept (Foucault, 2002), where ‘discourse’ is understood as the
many statements, ideas, fears and hopes that various actors raise about a certain topic (B¨
ohm & Sullivan, 2021). It is a system of
meanings that surrounds a certain phenomenon, and where the relationships between opinions and practices determine how phe-
nomena can (and cannot) be described; consequently, this shapes what is politically possible (Hajer, 1995; Dryzek, 2021; Caprotti,
2016).
Discourse analysis is a qualitative social science method used to identify how different types of language construct meaning (Hajer,
1995; Foucault, 2002; Dryzek, 2021; Davies & Harr´
e, 1990). The main purpose of the method is to understand how and why specic
understandings of problem denitions and solutions gain legitimacy, and why alternative interpretations do not (Hajer, 1995).
Through this method, we not only analyse the conversation about transport system transition as a phenomenon but also examine the
institutional environment in which the debate takes place (Hajer, 1995). Our analytical framework identies central objectives, actors
and issues, as well as relations between these, and the metaphors used to shape the discourse (Hajer, 1995; Dryzek, 2021). In discourse
analysis, power is understood from a relational perspective: society and its institutions are continuously structured through various
discursive practices, such as government documents or public debates. Different understandings of the world struggle for dominance,
and the winning discourses function as ‘structuring’ by enabling or limiting behaviours. It is important to understand these discourses
in a political context, and a focus of the method is to study actor coalitions (Hajer, 1995): that is, to study not only how actors
reproduce the discourses in their interaction with existing structures, but also how actors together defend or dismiss descriptions of
specic phenomena and shape new structures (Hajer, 1995; Dryzek, 2021). Using this method, we can identify which discourse co-
alitions are formed, which issues dominate the debate, and which narratives and rhetorical tools actors mobilise to shape their realities
(Foucault, 2002; Hajer, 1995; Dryzek, 2021).
It is through the relationships between different actors in the discourse that problems and solutions can be dened, different
positions can be formed or reshaped, and we can understand the political possibilities and challenges facing the transport system. We
specically study patterns in the discourse and try to understand the social background to what is being said and what effects this can
have. These patterns, or storylines (Hajer 1995; Davies & Harr´
e, 1990), create meaning and order among different discourses con-
cerning a specic phenomenon, and are thus stories that generate specic opportunities for different players to act. We thereby reveal
actor coalitions formed around different positions on the transition of the Swedish transport system in relation to national environ-
mental and climate strategies, and perspectives on state and nancing, etc.
In concrete terms, the method used in this paper consists of three steps: (1) identication of relevant material, (2) coding of the
material, and (3) presentation of the material. In the rst step, opinion pieces were collected using the Retriever online database, which
is the main digital news archive in the Nordic region, bring together four decades of print and digital news media material (Retriever,
2020). We searched the selected newspapers for mentions of the terms ‘transport’, ‘climate’ and ‘transition’ (‘transport’, ‘klimat’ and
‘omst¨
allning’ in Swedish), or combinations thereof. The study period was set up until the research date in 2021, beginning from the
nancial crisis of 2008, on the assumption that the crisis had enabled a renegotiation of neoliberal hegemony, especially among the
Social Democrats (Manwaring & Holloway, 2021). However, we found the most prominent discursive shift to occur from 2016, and for
this reason we have chosen the 2016–2021 period for our analysis. We identied around 600 relevant articles for analysis, and we read
all articles in order to understand discursive patterns and identify articles that either constitute or problematize (Fairclough, 1992) the
Swedish transportation policy. From these we have cited 34 representative articles (see Appendix A for a detailed description).
In the second step, we coded the material. This involved synthesising material on relevant and recurring topics – such as ‘budget
surplus’, ‘environmental legislation’ or ‘political strategies’ – into coherent storylines. The rst and second steps make up an analytical
and iterative process which requires re-readings of selected materials in order to identify recurring patterns, and to identify repre-
sentative opinion pieces and quotations to illustrate the storylines. In the third and nal step, these storylines are rewritten into a
narrative as presented and discussed below in this paper. Quotations are used to illustrate specic storylines; thus, we do not present all
the identied quotations exhaustively, as this is not a quantitative study. In order to ensure validity, the material has been studied
individually by all three contributing authors before synthesising the results in this paper. We occasionally also refer to certain policy
documents, reports, etc., as they are mentioned in cited newspapers articles. In these cases, we refer to the newspaper article directly,
and not the original document. In the more reective sections (Section 4.4 and onwards) we then bring in secondary material to
support our arguments.
The studied period covers the years 2016 to 2021, a temporal limitation that allows us to focus on responses in the public debate to
the 2016/2017 Climate Policy Framework, Climate Law, and the goal of decreasing transportation sector greenhouse gas emission by
2030. The preceding period of transport infrastructure debate has previously been identied as a period of a market-liberal hegemony
(Haikola & Anshelm, forthcoming). Thus, we can identify the period from 2016 as a departure from the market-liberal discourse, even
though we don’t focus the analysis on the shift itself.
We cannot say anything about the relations between actors or reasons behind actor statements in the public debate beyond what is
presented in the newspaper articles. Nor can we claim that voices in the public debate are representative of all individuals within the
given organisations but it should be noted that opinion pieces in Swedish newspapers are written by managerial staff and organiza-
tional leaders when signed in the name of an organization. Thus, it is reasonable to assume the views given in such pieces are the
ofcially sanctioned organizational stance in regard to particular issues.
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5
4. Results
The results of the study are presented below in four subchapters. First, we turn to the discourses surrounding the recurring criticism
of the role of budget surpluses and scal planning in Swedish national politics. Second we turn to a key debate over the role of political
planning and the means by which industry and transportation are understood to change and develop. Third, we highlight different
discourses in the debate on environmental legislation processes. Finally, we summarize, and reect on the positions taken by key actors
and how this presents a previously unseen “discourse coalition” in the Swedish transportation debate.
4.1. Budget surpluses and scal planning
During the second half of the 2010s, there has been recurring and insistent criticism of the budget surplus target, a foundation stone
of Swedish scal policy since the 1990s. After 2014, when the red-green government took ofce, parliamentarians from the Left Party,
the Green Party and the Centre Party demanded government investments and loan nancing, and specically called for extensive
investments in green infrastructure (Ros´
en, 2015; L¨
o¨
of et al., 2017; Skog et al., 2017). This found wide support from transport system
representatives, commerce representatives and regional politicians from both sides of the aisle (Westerberg et al., 2018). The Social
Democrats held the post of Minister of Finance, and guarded the surplus target and refused to take government loans in order to invest
in high-speed railways and electried highways (Karlsson, 2017). The Minister of Finance at the time, Magdalena Andersson, clearly
stated that “I think we [the state] should invest, but we have to pay for it of course. I will be an equally strict and stingy Minister of
Finance in the future”; while claiming that “public funding in areas such as infrastructure has been far too anorexic”, she held the
position that all investments need to be tax funded ( ¨
Ojemar 2020). Importantly, Andersson continued that “the target for public
savings can be changed”, but that she saw no support for this expansive strategy in the Swedish Parliament other than from the Left
Party (¨
Ojemar 2020).
At the same time, internal opposition emerged amongst social democrats against the Government’s restrictive budget policy. Trade
unions emphasised the need for the Government to abandon the surplus target, take advantage of the good scal situation, and invest
in loan-nanced infrastructure projects in order to promote a climate transition (Jeppsson, 2018). Similar advances came from the
social democratic think tank Katalys and the social democratic association the Reformists. The latter emphatically argued that the
surplus target must be abandoned, and that the state should borrow SEK 100 billion every year for 20 years to nance investments in
transport infrastructure (among other things), and thereby full the promised climate transition. It was deemed unreasonable for the
Government to make do with “a collapsing infrastructure” and show “paralysis of action in the face of the climate threat”, simply
because it imposed a scal policy framework that prevented active government action (Kallifatides & Suhonen, 2019).
The favourable scal status should instead be used to achieve a “state-driven green transformation of society”, a “Green New Deal
for Sweden”, and thereby achieve sharply reduced greenhouse gas emissions in the long run (Kallifatides et al., 2019). To make this
possible, the Reformists proposed the creation of a state investment bank, and a division of the state budget into an operating part and
an investment part, to be nanced through long-term borrowing. Their vision was one of “climate Keynesianism”, which meant that
climate change was made a collective – not individual – matter, with an active state-led industrial, infrastructure and employment
policy at its centre. According to the Reformists, the climate crisis was the great existential challenge of our time, and the reason why
the pace of change was not at all in line with set climate goals was a weak climate policy hampered by self-imposed budget restrictions.
The Confederation of Swedish Enterprises and leading economists at the country’s four major banks also claimed from the mid-
2010s onwards that it was time to drop the surplus target and instead invest in climate-friendly infrastructure (Broman & Wall-
str¨
om, 2019). Swedbank’s chief economists argued that an “expansive green scal policy is needed when a recession threatens”
(Broman & Wallstr¨
om, 2019). While disagreeing on nancial policy fundamentals (and on almost all other political matters), they
agreed with the Reformists on the need for state investments and expansionary nancial policies to achieve a transition of transport
and infrastructure.
A similar position was taken by a broad coalition of labour and business interests in favour of investments in high-speed trains and
repairing the existing railway system, led by Sweden’s state railway company SJ and the Association of Swedish Train Operating
Companies:
“Now that the Swedish economy is doing well, the scal policy framework should not put an end to ambitious policy. Rather, sound
and balanced nances create a unique position for pursuing an active scal policy and investments for the good of future generations.
There are several proposals for how we can nance the high-speed railway through loans or other means” (Fritzson and Lejon, 2018).
The Swedish Climate Policy Council took the argument one step further when, in its third annual report early in 2021, it proposed a
review of the entire scal policy framework so that the state budget could be used as a more effective ‘transition instrument’ (Ros´
en,
2021; SCPC, 2021). The Council found it remarkable that the fundamental elements of economic policy were not permeated by climate
goals. According to the Council, the recovery policy after the coronavirus pandemic needed to be clearly linked to the Government’s
climate action plan if it were to be possible to implement. Investments in public transport, electric vehicle charging infrastructure,
sustainable fuels and power networks were among the things emphasised by the Council as particularly important, but the main
message was that the Government had to borrow more money as early as the spring budget of 2021 to be able to take the necessary
measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with national climate goals.
In contrast, there were inuential defenders of the established scal policy framework during this period. The majority of the
members of the Swedish Parliament and a number of prominent economists (however not all, as previously stated) opposed the
abolition of the surplus target, claiming that it was politically irresponsible to run a permanent budget decit (Eriksson, 2020). It was
also claimed that loan nancing of infrastructure projects such as high-speed trains was a way of deviating from the standard nancial
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Transportation Research Part D 116 (2023) 103611
6
assessment of projects; and this assessment was presented as an unconditional demand set by the existing scal policy framework
(B¨
orjesson et al., 2019). Throughout the studied period, a majority of the Parliament safeguarded the surplus target, despite the de-
mands for change that came from the multivocal discourse coalition favouring more expansive scal policies.
4.2. A call for political courage
In the 2010′s, market mechanisms and individual changes in life patterns and consumption behaviours were the dominating
climate mitigation strategies expressed in the political debate (Anshelm & Hultman, 2015). In the political debate, politicians were
mainly considered to be responsible for designing incentives for companies and citizens to make climate-friendly decisions. By
contrast, in the debate on the climate transition of the transport system presented in this paper, few actors advocated such an apolitical
approach. Instead, a pro-investment discourse coalition was united by the fact that they did not nd market-based mechanisms suf-
cient, and argued that fundamental structural changes were necessary, and that a lack of political courage to make far-reaching
decisions delayed, jeopardised and, in the worst case, prevented the large-scale transition of the transport system necessitated by
the severity of climate change. It was not even on the agenda that individual consumers, through their personal choices in the market,
would be able to achieve the rapid change that had become necessary.
Most noticeably, several major Swedish multinational companies repeatedly called for ‘political courage and action’ on climate
change. For example, Scania’s CEO Henrik Henriksson, when arguing for infrastructure investments and the electrication of mo-
torways, claimed that politicians must “dare to make decisions within one or two years”, and that “something like a Marshall Plan is
needed, and almost a little bit of ministerial governance
1
as well. What we lack, but need in Sweden, is someone who points out the
direction with authority” (Stiernstedt, 2019).
Against this background, Henriksson and Volvo’s CEO Martin Lundstedt suggested that it was time to introduce new forms of
cooperation between political decision-makers and company representatives in order to accelerate the climate work. What was needed
was politicians who had the courage to take decisive decisions (Henriksson et al., 2019). Northvolt’s CEO Peter Carlsson fully shared
this view, arguing for a comprehensive green industrial policy, and concluded that “the most important thing now is that Swedish
politicians act powerfully on a large scale to implement effective reforms” (Carlsson, 2020). In the same spirit, Fredrik Ekstr¨
om, CEO of
the Stockholm Stock Exchange (Nasdaq Stockholm), called on the Government to act:
“Take this opportunity to invest in a transition to sustainable infrastructure. The state should borrow money and make investments
so that we can stimulate the economy and create jobs, which in the long run will also lead to a more sustainable society” (Westergård,
2020).
Most business leaders had strong economic interests in speeding up the electrication of motorways and expanding transmission
networks, but they all linked these interests to the global climate threat and saw themselves as crucial change agents. Other Swedish
companies with nancial interests in the expansion of a high-speed railway reasoned in a similar way (Westerberg & Engstrand, 2017).
Major companies such as H&M, Ericsson and LKAB also highlighted the lack of political action as an obstacle to a transition of the
transport system, which had become increasingly urgent due to the climate crisis (Ekholm et al., 2020; Wass´
en, 2018).
Perhaps the most forceful claim for a new approach to industrial policy came from Volvo’s and Scania’s managers, the Swedish
Society for Nature Conservation’s former chairman Svante Axelsson, and internationally renowned climate researcher Johan Rock-
str¨
om. In a co-authored opinion piece, they called for Sweden to become “a permanent world exhibition for fossil-free transport so-
lutions and thereby contribute to the export of new technology” (Axelsson et al., 2018).
In a similar way, Sweden’s largest trade unions called on leading politicians to invest more in infrastructure (Thorwaldsson et al.,
2020). In turn, the Reformists’ called for ambitious ‘climate Keynesianism’, which had obvious similarities to Henriksson’s call for a
Marshall Plan. According to the Reformists, it was time to stop “blaming individuals” and instead start building transport infrastructure
and stimulate “the growth of a transition industry” (Suhonen & Sundin, 2020). Taken together, these actors formed a heterogeneous
discourse coalition, called for strong political leadership and highlighted a lack of political courage as one of the biggest obstacles to
change.
They all made similar assessments of the situation, and – united by their support for massive investments in infrastructure –
demanded greater political vision and action. It is worth noting that environmental organisation raised the very same arguments
(Sandahl, 2019), as did leading editorial writers in the country’s most inuential liberal newspapers. According to the them, it was no
longer the consumption behaviour of individuals but wide political action that decided whether a climate transition of the transport
system could be carried out within the set time frame (Wolodarski, 2020; Nilsson, 2020, 2021). They called on the Government to stop
hesitating and stop blaming technology or the economy, and instead start building, above all, a high-speed railway. They claimed that
the coronavirus pandemic was a crisis that had opened a window of opportunity for political action, making it possible – with the help
of massive state investments – to shift the transport system in a climate-friendly direction.
Regarding the role of the state, there has been a remarkably large shift in the debate in the last decade. The re-establishment of the
importance of industrial policy in the debate seems to have taken place gradually, but during the coronavirus pandemic this has been
markedly strengthened. Suddenly, political action and direct state investment are demanded by actors who previously did not engage
in political debate when neoliberalism was hegemonic (Haikola & Anshelm, forthcoming; also Anshelm & Hultman, 2015).
1
I.e. the steering of government agencies by individual ministers. This is not allowed in the Swedish political system, as decisions concerning the
state agencies must be made by the Government as a collective according to the Instrument of Government (1974:152). As an exception, in war or in
a time of crisis, a shorter chain of command can be implemented.
J. Niskanen et al.

Transportation Research Part D 116 (2023) 103611
7
Consequently, a lack of political courage and a lack of bold political visions are presented by these actors as threats and obstacles to
achieving climate objectives in the Swedish transport system.
4.3. Slow-moving environmental legislation processes
According to a number of actors, another obstacle to the transition was to be found in a slow environmental permit process. For
many years, major industrial companies had complained about the slow legal process of obtaining environmental permits for their
operations in Sweden, and had emphasised this as a competitive disadvantage. During the coronavirus pandemic, more and more
actors came to argue that the permit processes must be transformed in order to support a climate transition of the transport system.
Managers of the power companies E:on and Vattenfall and representatives from major industries such as LKAB, SSAB, Volvo and
Scania argued that the current permit processes – which could take up to ten years to complete – were incompatible with reaching
Sweden’s 2030 climate goals (Mostr¨
om et al., 2020; Viklund & M¨
ornstam, 2020; Henriksson et al., 2019). If it took up to ten years to
obtain environmental permits and electricity network concessions, the climate goals were completely out of reach. The acute climate
crisis meant that such slow permit processes were both impossible and irresponsible. Therefore, climate considerations must be given
priority and processes accelerated. The board of LO (one of the largest associations of trade unions in Sweden) expressed similar
thoughts, arguing that the permit and planning processes needed to be sped up to “shorten the starting distance for infrastructure
projects” (Thorwaldsson et al., 2020).
The social democratic think tank Katalys also emphasised that environmental assessments needed to be sped up in order to facilitate
change; the transition must not be “slowed down by unpredictable and slow environmental assessment processes” (Suhonen & Sundin,
2020). If goal conicts arose between projects that promoted climate change and local environmental concerns, it was necessary that
these could be dealt with urgently so that delays in the transition work would not occur. Examples of such work were the expansion of
electricity networks and wind power, as well as the mining of ‘transition metals’ used in new energy technologies. Both LO and Katalys
expressed views on this point that were completely in line with the position of the large power companies and energy-intensive
industries.
The Swedish Climate Policy Council’s experts unreservedly joined this discourse coalition and demanded “much more efcient
permit processes” (Ros´
en & Ålestig, 2021). The expertise of the Coronavirus Restart Commission (a commission bringing together
leading industry, economists and academia) also shared this view, but added that ‘free zones’ should be established, where new
sustainable technology could be tested in exible forms and without bureaucratic regulation (Ackum et al., 2020a, 2020b; Eklund,
2020). As an example of such technologies, the Commission cited methods for producing and utilising hydrogen, biogas and fossil-free
steel. According to this view, climate change simply required companies that developed new climate-friendly technology to be allowed
to test it quickly and on a large scale, under exible conditions and without concern for local environmental issues.
There was thus a broad consensus that the Swedish environmental permit processes needed to be adapted in relation to the urgent
nature of the climate crisis. Although these actors had different motives for their stances and completely different ideological points of
departure, they were united in their criticism of the inertia experienced in the legal system. At worst, they claimed, this inertia pre-
vented a climate transition of the transport system.
4.4. Reections on the new discourse coalition
Powerful coalitions can shape the political context in which transport policy is made, and several of the actors we have identied in
this paper call for such a transformation. Since 2016, Keynesian strategies have become widely embraced by economists, business
leaders, trade unions, liberal debaters, environmental experts and some left-green politicians. Before this period, it would be difcult to
nd any CEO of large Swedish business enterprises expressing support for a state enforced climate transition (Anshelm & Hultman,
2015). After 2016, however, major multinational companies have come to express, rather loudly, that the climate crisis is severe and
that a transition to a fossil-free transport infrastructure is acutely needed. Especially since 2018, industry representatives have
repeatedly stated that climate considerations necessitate extensive state investments in the electrication of roads and vehicles, as well
as in conventional and high-speed railways (Henriksson et al., 2019; Brodin & Figueres, 2020; Carlsson, 2020). Active and strategic
climate policies were no longer just a matter for certain political parties; they had become a matter for actors who had not previously
paid much attention to them or who even regarded them as disrupting their operations. Ecological modernisation had reached into the
boardrooms and the calculations of major companies, while more and more economists argued for the relevance of state governance.
Historically, even in face of mounting climate pressure, industry have supported soft measures such as taxes and emissions trading
schemes. Such measures have had little impact on companies’ main operations as, for example, a carbon tax “does not require radical
social or political transformation of the economy” (Andrew et al., 2010:611). By contrast, the new discourse coalition demand a
repoliticization through active state involvement to alter the path-dependencies that suffuse the transport system. It does so, however,
not on the premise that a new social order is needed but rather the reverse: that a radically new approach to regulation and nancial
policy is needed to maintain the current order.
Dissatisfaction with the depoliticised situation in the transport area come from multinational Swedish companies, banks, and
business organisations, in a discourse coalition with the political left, environmental organisations, government agencies, economic
experts, trade unions, the business press, climate grassroots and liberal newspapers. The association of business interests with envi-
ronmental organisations means that the key question how to reconcile climate mitigation solutions with care for natural habitats
remains unaddressed in the discourse. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental
Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, dealing with the dual crises of climate change and biodiversity loss is
J. Niskanen et al.

Transportation Research Part D 116 (2023) 103611
8
“essential to support human wellbeing” and “the mutual reinforcing of climate change and biodiversity loss means that satisfactorily
resolving either issue requires consideration of the other” (P¨
ortner et al., 2021:14-15). There is, however, a remarkable silence at the
centre of the Swedish transition debate on the relationship between climate and biodiversity. This silence might be broken in the
future, as major environmental developments is undergoing in Sweden: e.g., increased wind power development and mining for
‘transition metals’. Also, against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and increased fossil fuel prices, a potential call for
increased domestically produced biofuels could further emphasise how different environmental values are at stake in this transition.
What that would mean for the coherence of the discourse coalition remains to be seen.
Furthermore, it should be stressed that the new discourse coalition is faced with a formidable resistance from established in-
stitutions in favour of the dominant scal policy regime. The establishment and maintenance of a surplus scal regime was originally
possible as all major political parties in Sweden supported such consolidation measures after the nancial crisis of the 1990s, and
thereby set the long-term conditions for public expenditure (Haffert & Mehrtens, 2015). The discourse coalition we have identied in
this paper is seemingly powerful with its broad support from leading economists, major businesses and political and labour leaders,
etc., but heretofore insufcient to achieve a majority support in the Swedish Parliament in favour of a new scal policy regime.
While our empirical material does reveal the Social Democrat commitment to scal discipline (see 4.1), we need to widen the
perspective to the broader economic debate to get a better grasp of how entrenched the scally austere view is across the political scale
in the Swedish Parliament. In the run-up to the parliamentary elections 2022, the Social Democratic Party framed its campaign by a
narrative of scal responsibility and promoted then Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson’s credentials as an austere steward of the
public nances. As Minister of Finance, Andersson’s reliance on orthodox neoclassical economic analysis was often revealed in
statements that posited a low public debt as a prerequisite for scal expansion, an idea also repeated by her successor Mikael Damberg
(Olsson, 2021; Damberg; 2022). The new, conservative Minister of Finance has made equally clear that any new political initiative
must be nanced by reducing expenditure elsewhere in the public budget; notably, on the area of climate policy (Nilsson, 2022).
Discursive hegemony resides not only in the political programs that are developed, but equally in the absence or marginalization of
ideas. Ideas that are too far removed from the ideological and political mainstream are simply not allowed to take discursive shape (see
Bachrach & Baratz, 1963; Lukes, 1986). In this perspective, we can see the hegemony of the scally restrictive stance in Swedish
economic policy evidenced also by how proponents of nancial expansion argue from a thoroughly neoclassical economic perspective.
Several of the prominent economic experts that argued for an increase in public investments during the pandemic did so on the grounds
that the Swedish state enjoyed the condence of the nancial markets, a condence that was usually assumed to be a direct conse-
quence of its low public debt. Fiscal expansion was conditioned by the existence of low borrowing rates, with the implicit assumption
that it would be impossible to conduct such a policy in an economic environment with higher rates (see Hartman, 2022; Magnusson,
2021; Wallstr¨
om et al, 2020). Since global ination re-emerged as the key concern for policymakers in 2022, the calls from Swedish
economic experts to reform the scal policy framework have consequently ceased.
Developments in the Swedish transport system have historically been a precursor to many political strategies and practices that
have since spread to other public systems, such as public procurement, market adaptation and the introduction of New Public Man-
agement (Portinson Hylander, 2022). The debate on the transition of the transport system might thus be an early sign of a change of
direction in Swedish climate politics writ large. However, as just noted in the preceding reections, there are two strong counter-
tendencies that rather indicate that business as usual will prevail: one, the disavowal of a potential conict between biodiversity and
increased use of natural resources; two, the entrenched view on the merits of scal austerity that remains a discursive block to a fully
developed Keynesian approach to decarbonisation (Mason, 2022). We devote the following, concluding section to a discussion of
whether its likely to assume the new discourse coalition we have identied is a harbinger of a permanent shift in Swedish climate
policy, or rather just a part of business as usual.
5. Concluding discussion – Politicisation or business as usual?
Despite a decrease by 21 percent of total emissions of greenhouse gases from Swedish domestic transports since 1990 (see Fig. 1),
the sector still relies on fossil fuels. The new discourse coalition we have identied argues the lack of decarbonization progress must be
sought in the absence of a committed politics. The state must show the way for business to follow – both through regulation and public
investment in transport infrastructure. It would require a radical reorientation of the economic policy, but not – crucially – a change of
the economic system.
Whether one understands Swedish environmental policy history as driven by conict (cf. Anshelm & Galis, 2009; Anshelm, 1992,
2006; Anshelm & Hultman, 2015) or collaboration (e.g., Lundqvist, 1980) between industry, trade unions and state, one should
interrogate the role of business interests.
When seen in the light of the postpolitical critique of environmental politics, this role would be understood as an impediment rather
than driver of progressive environmental regulation (Kenis & Lievens, 2014; also Metzger 2017). The postpolitical critique is premised
on the skeptical argument that progress in environmental regulation in Western capitalist societies has often been a matter of
greenwashing, where political and economic elites promote hollow concepts such as “sustainability” and “green growth” without
fundamentally challenging the environmentally damaging economic and industrial processes that drive capitalism. To what extent,
then, can we indeed speak of the calls from Swedish business for the state to step forward as a matter of politicization, and to what
extent is it only a matter of skirting responsibility to preserve status quo?
There is a consensual streak to the emerging discourse coalition that gives credence to a more cynical interpretation of the events
we have analysed. The agreement of all actors in the discourse coalition that green growth is not only possible but a prerequisite for
transport decarbonisation could be taken as indication that preservation of the capitalistic system is given priority over the climate
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9
transition paradigm (see Oosterlynck & Swyngedouw, 2010). The way certain industrial actors have suddenly adopted a transition
rhetoric for extractive industrial projects that were previously motivated on purely economic grounds is further ground to argue the
new discourse invites greenwashing (see Yttergren, 2022). The silence at the centre of the discourse that we identied above could be
understood as a disavowal of conict typical of post-political planning (Swyngedouw, 2009).
On the other hand, the very fact that industrial actors forcefully, even vehemently, call out the state to take charge of transport
decarbonisation should in itself be considered a politicisation of the planning discourse. When they demand “political courage” to look
beyond arbitrary budgetary constraints in transport planning, it is obvious they are acting in their own material interest. However, the
political implication of this self-interested, but nevertheless dramatic, turnaround in industrial actors’ rhetoric should not be
underestimated. For as economic historian Adam Tooze argues (2021), when state spending is acknowledged as the prerogative of
politicians rather than accountants, any excuse for not dealing with fundamental questions of democracy, equity and distributional
fairness goes up in smoke.
Indeed, the issue of distribution of mitigation costs was at the centre of the campaign for Parliamentary elections in the fall of 2022,
after the end of our analysis. Assisted by the turmoil on the energy markets, the right-wing parliamentary coalition that emerged
victorious managed to successfully argue that the red-green governments had overreached in their attempts to decarbonize the
transport system, unjustly burdening households and individuals dependent on the fossil fuel car. Instead, the new right-wing gov-
ernment has proposed a radical reversal of the key policies for transport decarbonization instated by the previous government: tax
deduction for work travel will be rebalanced to (again) favour car travel over collective transport modes, subsidies for electric cars will
be removed, a planned high-speed rail network will be cancelled, the mandatory quota for biofuels in gasoline in diesel will be reduced,
and the national infrastructure budget for maintenance work will be shifted from railroads to roads.
The dramatic turnaround on the Swedish climate policy scene since the 2022 elections highlights the structural inertia in the
Swedish transport system. By reverting to market-based solutions for the transport system transition, the new government has proved
Financial Times columnist Rana Foroohar’s proclamation that”we’ve left the age of neoliberalism behind” to be premature in a
Swedish context (Foroohar, 2022). However, this is not the neoliberalism of the early 2000s, but rather a market-based model born out
of necessity. It is premised on the assumption that the state simply cannot afford to pursue an ambitious climate agenda while also
supporting households through an energy crisis. While the priorities are fundamentally different, the commitment to sound public
nances is therefore something that unites the new right-wing government with the previous ones.
The reversal of the main policies for transport system decarbonization reveals the fragility in a climate program that relies on
reform of fossil fuel taxes and subsidies, without an accompanying massive subsidization of renewable energy (Martinez-Alvarez et al.,
2022). The state budget surplus target could be seen as a discursively institutionalized norm that is exceedingly hard to shift (Schmidt,
2010), and which will increase the likelihood of such policies being reversed in times of economic turmoil. The new discourse coalition
that we have analyzed here should be seen as an attempt by some – not all – actors to break the discursive lock-in by expanding the
horizon of possibilities for state investment beyond the limits set by the scal policy framework. Notably, the rightwing government’s
accession to power has also revealed the strength of the new discourse coalition. In the run-up and the wake of the elections, a plethora
of large corporations – among them the interest organization for Swedish fuel producers – raised their concern that a shift in gov-
ernment would entail reduced decarbonization ambitions, thereby creating uncertainty around their planned investments (Mellin,
2022; Nilsson & Lindolm, 2022; Rentzhog, et al, 2022; Sveriges Radio, 2022). The response clearly indicates the emergence of the new
discourse coalition amounted to a permanent shift in the discourse and was not merely a case of lip-service by industry and business to
placate the red-green governments.
Even though the new discourse coalition has been silent on certain key political issues related to natural resource exploitation and
societal conicts, and even though the election results have seemingly put the brakes on the political program it tried to enforce, we
would argue its embrace of industrial policy at the very least harbours a political potential that was disavowed by the previous
neoliberal planning regime. Indeed, the election results reveals the structural impasse created through decades of neoliberally oriented
transport planning: the reluctance by the red-green governments to embrace a more expansive scal policy has left its decarbonization
efforts vulnerable to the kind distributional injustice arguments voiced by the right-wing parties.
Two lessons could thus be derived from this analysis. First, as a correlate to the observation that adherence to economic growth in
environmental policy is often associated with depoliticization (e.g. Allmendinger & Haughton, 2012) we argue that it might equally
have the opposite effect. Second, that if it is true, as we believe our study shows, that Swedish industry and business have shifted their
stance to embrace industrial policy, it will create a permanent conict with governments of any political colour that remains
committed to scal discipline.
It bears stressing that when the Swedish captains of industry join with environmental experts to call for making Sweden a”per-
manent world exhibition” for green transport, they go beyond the established export-focused discourse centred on competitive
advantage. By using this particular metaphor they evoke one of the preeminent symbols of technological optimism and industrial
progress. They propose that Sweden not only join the green innovation race, but become the model for a bright, green future. In effect,
they up the stakes of the political discourse.
Genuine political commitment to such a daring vision would obviously render the neoliberal governance regime inadequate, as it
would mean to enforce stricter regulations and direct state investments to alternative transport modes. It would open a whole new
discursive terrain of political questions that may currently be deected under the scal policy framework, as it dictates rm limits to
the transformative ambitions of the state. Who should benet from discretionary state spending? How should responsibility for
transformative decisions be distributed within the transport planning system? And what limits does the climate transition impose on
our use of natural resources and transportation?
Such questions are not necessarily welcomed by all groups in the emerging discourse coalition. Nevertheless, if their calls for a new
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10
approach to Swedish transport planning are heeded, they cannot be averted.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing nancial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
inuence the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
The data used in this reserach is publically available through database presented in the paper.
Acknowledgement
This work is funded by the Swedish Energy Agency, project no. 48746-1.
Appendix A. Supplementary material
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2023.103611.
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