![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
Today both Denmark and Sweden are successful fashion exporters due to the re-export of clothing designed in Scandinavia and produced in low-wage countries, while domestic clothing manufacturing has become almost non-existent over the past 20 years. This article compares the strategies of Danish and Swedish trade associations in clothing manufacturing and discusses whether or not the associations encouraged the abandonment of local manufacturing and adoption of global value chains. The analysis is carried out on the basis of interest group theory as developed by Mancur Olson and others, and the findings confirm that interest group influence can entail long-term negative effects, but also that variations in institutional settings are decisive.
Acknowledgements
The authors express their gratitude for having been granted full access to the archives of Beklædningsindustriens Sammenslutning at the Danish Business Archives and Konfektionsindustriföreningen at TEKO – Sveriges Textil & Modeföretag. This work has partly been funded by Torsten och Ragnar Söderbergs stiftelser (Sweden).
Notes
1. Falk, Det Svenska Modeundret; Melchior, ‘Dansk på Mode!’
2. The difficulties of transforming individual companies are further explored in Jensen, ‘Successful Strategy Leading to Lock-in’, and the adoption of global value chains by Danish firms is the focus of Jensen and Poulsen, ‘Fibres of History’.
3. Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations.
4. Olson, The Logic of Collective Action; Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations.
5. Some minutes of BS Board meetings are missing from the material preserved at the Danish Business Archives, which is why this material has been supplemented with the archives of Ebbe Herluf Sahlertz, the former CEO of BS, located at the National Archives.
6. McLean, ‘The Divided Legacy of Mancur Olson’.
7. Heckelman, ‘Explaining the Rain’.
8. Doner and Schneider, ‘Business Associations and Economic Development’; Ville, ‘Rent Seeking or Market Strengthening?’; Park, ‘Cooperation between Business Associations and the Government’; Reveley and Ville, ‘Enhancing Industry Association Theory’.
9. Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations, 46–47.
10. Lanzalaco, ‘Business Interest Associations’, 297.
11. Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations, 69.
12. Ibid., 47.
13. Ibid., 90.
14. Gråbacke, ‘Möten med Marknaden’; Olson, ‘The Varieties of Eurosclerosis’.
15. Fellman and Sjögren, ‘Conclusion’, 559–60.
16. Ibid., 563.
17. Gustavsson, ‘The Politics of Foreign Policy Change’.
18. Dohlman, National Welfare and Economic Interdependence.
19. Svensson and Öberg, Korporatismen i det nya millenniet.
20. Öberg et al., ‘Disrupted Exchange and Declining Corporatism’.
21. TEX, Annual Report 1972/73, 4.
22. For a good account of the development of the MFA until the late 1980s, consult Dohlman, National Welfare and Economic Interdependence, while Lane and Probert, National Capitalisms, Global Production Networks, will provide good insight into subsequent years.
23. TEX, Annual Report 1975/76, 6. This quote, like the following ones, was not originally in English and has been translated by the authors.
24. Nørregaard, ‘Lavprisimporten – hvad gør vi ved den?’.
25. BS board meeting, 25 May 1972. Danish Business Archives, Beklædningsindustriens Sammenslutning, box no. 1.
26. According to discussions that took place at a meeting held at BS on 5 June 1973. Danish Business Archives, Beklædningsindustriens Sammenslutning, box no. 1.
27. BS annual general meeting, 25 March 1974. Danish Business Archives, Beklædningsindustriens Sammenslutning, box no. 1.
28. BS board meetings held on 22 and 23 June 1978. Danish National Archives, the archive of Ebbe Herluf Sahlertz's, box no. 27.
29. BS annual general meeting held on 9 May 1979. Danish National Archives, the archive of Ebbe Herluf Sahlertz's, box no. 27.
30. Letter from Skou to Galbraith, 17 June 1982. Danish Business Archives, Beklædningsindustriens Sammenslutning, box no. 21.
31. Letter from Galbraith to Skou, 28 June 1982. Danish Business Archives, Beklædningsindustriens Sammenslutning, box no. 21.
32. Letter from Sahlertz to Skou, 6 September 1982. Danish Business Archives, Beklædningsindustriens Sammenslutning, box no. 21.
33. Danish Business Archives, Beklædningsindustriens Sammenslutning, box no. 21.
34. BS board meeting, 1 December 1987. Danish National Archives, the archive of Ebbe Herluf Sahlertz's, box no. 27.
35. BS, Annual Report 1989–90, 4.
36. TEX, Annual Report 1989–90, 11.
37. Textil og Beklædningsindustrien, Annual Report 1993, 14.
38. Cele, Tekoindustrierna 1907–2007, 37.
39. Ibid.
40. Swedish Government Official Reports 1970, 59.
41. Weidung, ‘Frihandelns Dilemma’, 53; Gråbacke, ‘Möten med Marknaden’, 124 ff.
42. Weidung, ‘Frihandelns Dilemma’, 55, 67.
43. It is, of course, always difficult to judge the degree to which interest groups can be given the responsibility for actual politics, but Dohlman concludes that KIF and the labour unions representing seamstresses exerted a substantial influence on Swedish policies. Dohlman, National Welfare and Economic Interdependence, 163. Regarding Sweden and the MFA, attention should be drawn to Dohlman, National Welfare and Economic Interdependence, 189 ff.
44. Weidung, ‘Frihandelns Dilemma’, 88.
45. Response to a government proposal for a new textile and clothing policy dated 16 March 1982. The response was written in collaboration with other stakeholder groups in the field and it can be found in the archives of Sveriges Textil & Modeföretag, Karlavägen 115, Stockholm, box: ‘Utredningar om läget i industrin 1966–1982’.
46. Cele, Tekoindustrierna 1907–2007, 43.
47. Weidung, ‘Frihandelns Dilemma’, 111.
48. Response to a government proposal for a new textile and clothing policy dated 16 March 1982. The archives of Sveriges Textil & Modeföretag, Karlavägen 115, Stockholm, box: ‘Utredningar om läget i industrin 1966–1982’.
49. Weidung, ‘Frihandelns Dilemma’, 120.
50. Letter from KIF to the government dated 30 November 1988. Letter in the archives of Sveriges Textil & Modeföretag, Karlavägen 115, Stockholm, box: ‘Uppvaktningar och skrivelser ang. tekoindustrins läge 1988–1991’.
51. E.g. Press release from KIF dated 5 July 1985 in the archives of Sveriges Textil & Modeföretag, Karlavägen 115, Stockholm, box: ‘Egna pressmeddelanden 1983–1991’.
52. Press release from KIF dated 10 January 1989 in the archives of Sveriges Textil & Modeföretag, Karlavägen 115, Stockholm, box: ‘Egna pressmeddelanden 1983–1991’.
53. Press release from KIF dated 12 October 1990 in the archives of Sveriges Textil & Modeföretag, Karlavägen 115, Stockholm, box: ‘Egna pressmeddelanden 1983–1991’.
54. Press release from KIF dated 14 September 1990 in the archives of Sveriges Textil & Modeföretag, Karlavägen 115, Stockholm, box: ‘Egna pressmeddelanden 1983–1991’.
55. The second part of the argument was kept internal, but can, for instance, be traced in the minutes of the Board meeting held on 15 October 1992. The archives of Sveriges Textil & Modeföretag, Storgatan 5, Stockholm, ‘Tekoindustrierna – styrelseprotokoll 1991–1992’.
56. Letter from Sven Cele to the Board of Tekoindustrierna (which KIF merged into in 1990) dated 30 September 1992, and minutes from the Board meeting held on 20 May 1992. The archives of Sveriges Textil & Modeföretag, Storgatan 5, Stockholm, ‘Tekoindustrierna – styrelseprotokoll 1991–1992’.
57. TEKO Board meeting minutes, 1998. The archives of Sveriges Textil & Modeföretag, Storgatan 5, Stockholm, ‘Tekoindustrierna – styrelseprotokoll 1998’.
58. Ville, ‘Rent Seeking or Market Strengthening?’, 299.
59. Melchior has demonstrated how design came to play an inferior role in the publications of the Danish trade associations during the 1970s and early 1980s, Melchior, ‘Dansk på Mode!’, 97. The orientation towards rational production is also evident in the preamble to BS regulations, which stated, in 1988, that the objective of BS was to strengthen ‘the garment industry’s productivity, profitability, reputation, and international competitive capability’. Beklædningsindustriens Sammenslutning, box no. 27. See Jensen, ‘Da Beklædningsindustri blev Modeindustri’, 104–10 for further details on the work of BS for member companies.
60. An example of the long-term negative effects of the lack of a focus on design, as a consequence of concentrating on rationalisation, can be seen in Jensen, ‘Successful Strategy Leading to Lock-in’.
61. Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations, 53ff.
62. The archives of Sveriges Textil & Modeföretag, Karlavägen 115, Stockholm, ‘Nordiska Konfektionsrådet 1975–1986’.