Sweden has long been viewed as a beacon for democratic government and progressive social policies. In this witty and insightful book, journalist and writer Claudia Wallin takes a fascinating look at the Swedish model of government, its commitment to transparency and openness, and its deep-seated aversion to politicians, judges and public servants enjoying any special privileges or advantages. Welcome to the Swedish reality of members of Parliament commuting by bus, living in studio apartments in the capital and working from 10-square-metre offices. No one in public life earns an obscene multiple-digit salary. At the local level, Swedish councillors are not even paid, nor do they have the right to an office - they work from home. Cabinet ministers do not live in luxury either: elected by the Financial Times as the best European Finance Minister of 2011, Anders Borg lived in a 25-square-metre state-owned apartment in Stockholm during the week. Politicians who dare pay for a taxi ride with taxpayers' money, instead of riding the train, end up on news headlines. And in some cases, are forced to step down. Without official cars or private drivers, Swedish politicians travel in crowded buses and trains, just like the citizens they represent. Without any right to parliamentary immunity, they can be tried like any other citizen. With no private secretaries at the door or private bathrooms and breakfast bars, their bare-bones parliamentary offices are spartan and tiny like a public clerk's office. Claudia Wallin also focuses on how the triple pillars of the Swedish system - transparency (Sweden has the world's oldest transparency law), social equality and a well-educated population - combine to create a high degree of social trust. In virtually every area of public life, incidences of corruption or profiting from public office are relatively rare and, when transgressions occur, politicians and officials are swiftly brought to account, aided by an ever-vigilant media. Not even celebrities are immune. Under suspicion of tax fraud, the legendary Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman was once arrested inside a theatre and taken to a police station. In little over 100 years, Sweden has transformed itself from an impoverished, agricultural society into one of the wealthiest, most socially just and least corrupt countries in the world, where nobody is above anybody else. The Swedish experience demonstrates perhaps more than any other how change is possible. Sweden - The Untold Story is a best-seller in Brazil, where it was originally published.
Claudia Wallin is a Brazilian journalist and author based in Sweden since 2003. Prior to moving to Stockholm, she worked for ten years in London as the bureau chief of TV Globo in Europe, director at International Herald Tribune TV and producer at the BBC World Service, for whom she still contributes as a permanent stringer correspondent. She holds a bachelor´s degree in Journalism from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), a masters degree in Russian and Eastern European Studies from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, where she held a Chevening Foreign and Commonwealth Office scholarship, and a certificate in Swedish language from the University of Stockholm.
