Comments on the paper by Professor Olof Ruin

The paper presented by Olof Ruin invites comment on very diverse aspects of Swedish and Latin American political development. I would like to concentrate on the question of the initial political conditions which made the transformation of the Swedish economy and society possible. This transformation, which began in the 1920s, is of special interest in that it managed to combine economic development, equity and democracy right from the start, without sacrificing any one of these objectives in favour of the other.