Sweden’s recent trajectory conforms to a historical law. It is late to catch up with events in other Western countries, before then embracing the spirit of the times in its harshest form. Sunday’s general election, in which the far-right Sweden Democrats captured 17.6 percent of the vote, conforms to this law.

We first saw this law at work during the neoliberal counterrevolution, which set the stage for today’s shifts. Even as Reagan and Thatcher rose to power in the United States and Britain, the right-wing coalition governing Sweden was reinforcing the pillars of social democracy. This was a time of state support for fledgling industries, all-encompassing welfare systems, and centralized negotiations between employers and still-powerful unions. In the 1980s, even as the United States crushed the PATCO strikers and Thatcher the British miners, Sweden’s working-class enjoyed an Indian summer, pulling off a final wave of wildcat strikes forcing spectacular wage hikes across the board.

But in the 1990s the hammer fell. A right-wing coalition implemented an epochal systemskifte, or “system change.” After decades of pent-up aggression, the Swedish capitalist class assaulted the welfare state, tore deep holes in its safety nets, outsourced factories to low-wage economies, and broke the back of labor through skyrocketing unemployment.