The Almost Nearly Perfect People
Journalistic, but the Denmark chapters on debt, tax and the flexicurity bargain are substantive.
Summary
Booth, an English journalist living in Denmark, wrote a sceptical travel book about the five Nordic countries, examining the gap between their international reputation and what he observed living there.
The organisation is by country. The Danish sections examine the high tax burden, the concept of hygge and its enforcement of conformity, the level of household debt, the declining productivity relative to reputation, and the Jante Law norm discouraging individual distinction. Iceland covers the banking collapse and the small-society dynamics that permitted it. Norway examines the oil fund, the effect of resource wealth on work incentives and on political discussion, and the country's discomfort with its own wealth. Finland covers the education system, the historical relationship with Russia and Sweden, and social isolation. Sweden receives the longest treatment, covering the consensus culture, immigration policy and the difficulty of discussing it, the historical eugenics programme, and the state's relationship with the individual.
Booth's argument is not that the Nordic model fails but that its international admirers describe something that does not exist, ignoring the costs, the trade-offs and the specific historical and demographic conditions that produced these societies. He takes seriously the genuine achievements in equality, trust and institutional quality while arguing that they cannot be understood separately from homogeneity, from historical accident and from constraints on individual deviation.
The book is journalism and personal observation rather than social science. Booth generalises from encounters and from selected data, and specialists on any of the five countries would find the treatment thin. It was published in 2014 and the migration and political developments since have changed several of the discussions substantially, particularly in Sweden and Denmark.
Key takeaways 7
- International admiration for Nordic societies describes an idealised version that residents of those countries do not recognise.
- Danish social cohesion is maintained partly through norms that discourage individual distinction and deviation.
- Norway's oil wealth has changed work incentives and political discussion in ways the country finds difficult to discuss.
- Iceland's banking collapse was enabled by the social dynamics of a very small society where everyone knows everyone.
- High social trust in these countries rests on historical homogeneity, which makes the model difficult to transplant.
- Swedish consensus culture makes some policy questions, particularly on immigration, difficult to debate publicly.
- Aggregate happiness rankings measure something different from what readers assume, and the underlying survey questions matter.
Who should read it
Readers who want a sceptical corrective to Nordic policy admiration, treating it as informed journalism rather than as research.
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Where it sits in the reference 3
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