Abstract. Since the turn of the 1980–90s the Swedish society has undergone fundamental changes. It has altered the vector of the socioeconomic development. The social democrats have lost their position as the dominant party. They changed the course of the governmental policy from social-state to liberal one that was taken over and strengthened by the government of center-right parties after their victory in the 2006 and 2010 general elections. The social democrats have found themselves in the unprecedented since 1917 long opposition. All of this means that, despite keeping predominance of the institutional-redistributive principle of social policy, the former model of societal development has in essence consigned to history.