No matter what we do, it seems like the world wants to hug us. We build a welfare state and the world loves it. Try to reduce it, like the present government, and Roger Cohen in the New York Times says it’s funky.

But, ok, it is funky, moderately funky. The four center-right parties that make up the Swedish government since a year ago are influenced by market-liberal ideas from authors and think tanks, and some of the ministers wrote those books themselves. Three of the parties have fairly influential libertarian factions, and the leader of the fourth has said that he has Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged on his bedside table. So expect more tax cuts, privatisation of state companies, an entrenched school voucher system, more private providers and competition in health care and a strong emphasis on deregulation and free trade.

But don’t expect labor market deregulation. When the trade unions organize 80 percent of the workers you don’t pick a fight. And don’t expect a real reduction in public spending. When everybody lives on everybody else’s expense, no one wants to be the first to try to quit.

Above all, the government will act moderately. The biggest coalition party is actually called “the moderates”, and its ideology is called liberal-conservative – where liberal means liberal (it always confuses Americans), but conservative means that you shouldn’t be too serious, rapid or radical about your liberal ideals.

So in the end, the government will just tip the balance in an intact Swedish middle way between Anglo-Saxon and Continental. Open up and deregulate (after all, this is the country where the social democrats praise free trade) but also tax and spend (after all, this is the country where the new center-right prime minister says that “We don’t want to take away anything, we just want to add.”)