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Lisa Pelling

Lisa Pelling (lisa.pelling@arenagruppen.se) is a political scientist and head of the Stockholm-based think tank Arena Idé. She regularly contributes to the daily digital newspaper Dagens Arena and has a background as a political adviser and speechwriter at the Swedish foreign ministry.

How Sweden’s Welfare Experiment Became a Warning to Europe

Lisa Pelling

Sweden pioneered welfare privatisation, and its controversial model is now being exported across the continent.

small town in river valley amid forest

Climate capabilities: realising the green transition

Lisa Pelling

People are not unaware of climate change, Lisa Pelling writes. But they find it difficult to imagine the green transition.

Mining for critical materials cannot undermine trust

Lisa Pelling

The climate transition must benefit local communities, Lisa Pelling writes, if it is not to exhaust their patience.

saving the planet,saving the world,inequality,climate

Saving the planet means saving the world

Lisa Pelling

Inequality and the climate crisis go hand in hand, Lisa Pelling writes. So do the alternatives.

Sweden,climate,green

Sweden’s climate policy—off the rails

Lisa Pelling

A government beholden to the radical right, Lisa Pelling writes, is a warning to Europe the green transition can go into reverse.

social care,unions,pandemic

Elevating the Cinderellas of social care

Lisa Pelling

The pandemic put care workers under terrible pressure, Lisa Pelling writes. Yet unions have been able to win greater recognition for them.

The myth of meritocracy and the populist threat

Lisa Pelling

Social democrats, Lisa Pelling writes, should abandon the idea of meritocracy if they are to reconnect with les classes populaires.

Nicaragua,Ortega

Nicaragua: from liberation to a new dictatorship

Lisa Pelling

Lisa Pelling’s parents moved to Nicaragua to support the revolution. Its leader, she writes, has turned it into a tyranny.

migration,Kristersson,Swedish government,Sweden Democrats,nationalist,neo-Nazi,radical-right,integration,immigrants,refugees

Government by finger-pointing

Lisa Pelling

The new Swedish government, Lisa Pelling writes, is obsessed with stigmatising immigrants and refugees.

Paving the way for radicalised violence

Lisa Pelling

Mainstream politicians, Lisa Pelling writes, must recognise that their words have consequences.

schools,Sweden,Swedish,voucher,choice

Sweden’s schools: Milton Friedman’s wet dream

Lisa Pelling

Lisa Pelling explains how ‘freedom of choice’ has wrought a vicious circle of inequality and underperformance.

How to welcome Ukrainian refugees

Lisa Pelling

Lisa Pelling begins a new Social Europe column with lessons for integration—especially from Sweden.

Andersson’s agenda

Lisa Pelling

Magdalena Andersson has been elected the first female prime minister of Sweden. Again.

Stefan Löfven—welding progressives together and keeping the far right at bay

Lisa Pelling

The Swedish social-democrat leader, shortly to step down, didn’t buckle under pressure despite a slender parliamentary hold.

Sweden, the pandemic and precarious working conditions

Lisa Pelling

Most commentary on the Covid-19 death toll in Sweden has been on the absence of lockdown, yet privatisation and precarity in eldercare should really be in the spotlight.

Next

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WSI Report

WSI Minimum Wage Report 2025

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