Unitary Housing Regimes in Transition: Comparing Denmark and Sweden in a Perspective of Path Dependence and Change

Path dependence is strong in housing institutions and policy. In both Denmark and Sweden, today’s universal and ‘unitary’ (Kemeny) housing regimes can be traced back to institutions that were introduced fifty years back in history or more. Recently, universal and unitary housing systems in Scandinavia, and elsewhere, are under challenge from strong political and economic forces. These challenges can be summarized as economic cutbacks, privatization and Europeanization.
Although both the Danish and the Swedish housing system are universal and unitary in character, they differ considerably in institutional detail. Both systems have corporatist features, however in Denmark public housing is based on local tenant democracy and control, and in Sweden on companies owned and controlled by the municipalities, combined with a centralized system of rent negotiations.
In the paper the present challenges to the Danish and Swedish housing regimes are analysed and the responses and outcomes in terms of policy change and/or institutional continuity (path dependence) are compared. Overall, the more decentralized Danish housing regime seems to have resisted pressures for change and retrenchment better so far than the more centralized Swedish regime.