A troubled continuity: Agencies and path dependence in interwar Swedish railway policy

Abstract

This article deals with the abortive attempt by the Swedish Socialisation Commission to reform the Swedish State Railways (SJ) after World War I. It is argued that the decisive opposition to this proposal from SJ and the Swedish Federation of Industries may be related to the fact that railway policy in Sweden, as in many other countries, included a number of conditions that predisposed these agencies to established policy and budgets. In this regard, the article demonstrates how existing railway policy constrained the involved actors to such an extent that they persisted with the established arrangements, even if that decision implied a continued inability to deal with the financial imbalances that gradually undermined the railway sector.