Swedish Social Democratic Party

The Swedish social democratic party, founded in 1889, which governed Sweden for most of the twentieth century.

Overview

SAP was founded in 1889 and built the folkhemmet, the people home, through decades of near unbroken governance: universal welfare, the Meidner wage solidarity model, nuclear family policy, and neutrality. Olof Palme defined its internationalist profile until his 1986 assassination. Defeats in 1976, 1991, 2006, and 2022 alternated with Goran Persson and Stefan Lofven and Magdalena Andersson premierships. The party still anchors the labor movement with union density the highest in the world and holds power in most municipalities. Its record, from pension reform to crisis management of the 1990s banking collapse, makes it the longest governing social democratic party in history.