Peter Swenson

Charlotte Marion Saden Professor of Political Science

Peter Swenson, BA, Princeton University; PhD, Yale University; faculty member at Yale since 2003: You are a political scientist specializing in the comparative political economy of labor markets, social welfare, healthcare, and environmental politics in Europe and the United States and an acclaimed author of articles and books on distributive and healthcare politics. You transformed the study of modern welfare states by showing conclusively that they were the product of cross-class coalitions between business and labor interests, rather than the result of pressure from below or bureaucratic design.

Much lauded for your articles as well as your books, you were twice awarded the American Political Science Association’s Mary Parker Follett Prize for the best article in politics and history. Your first two books made your reputation as a scholar. Fair Shares: Unions, Pay, and Politics in Sweden and West Germany is a comparative analysis of union centralization and collective bargaining in two European nations since the turn of the twentieth century, which developed an innovative approach to labor politics. Capitalists against Markets: The Making of Labor Markets and Welfare States in the United States and Sweden illuminates the political conditions for greater economic equality and social security in capitalist societies and won an honorable mention for the 2004 American Political Science Association’s Luebbert Award for best book in comparative politics.

Your 2021 book, Disorder: A History of Reform, Reaction, and Money in American Medicine, has galvanized widespread attention from those who seek a better understanding of American healthcare, its origins, its failures, and its future. Acclaimed by social scientists, historians, and medical professionals, it has been described as “a triumph of scholarship,” “engaging, sweeping, and meticulously researched,” and the “definitive account of the politics and societal underpinnings of U.S. health policy during the Progressive Era.” It explores the history of American politics from the nineteenth century to the present, chronicling the reversal of the role of medical progressives, the American Medical Association’s reactionary beginning in the 1920s, and its evolution and role until the institution of Obamacare.

At a time when the issues of health care are front and center on the American agenda, your book’s epic story has clarified the past and pointed to possible directions for future reform. Its widespread acclaim has made you a popular reviewer and commentator on health care around the nation.

At Yale, you have taught graduate students and a wide range of courses of great interest to undergraduates, including The Politics of the Environment and The Political Economy of Health Care. You have done more than your share of administration, chairing the Department of Political Science, serving as director of undergraduate studies, and acting as the director of undergraduate studies for the Program in Ethics, Politics and Economics from 2015–2022.

As you retire at the pinnacle of your career, your colleagues thank you for devoting yourself to writing so illuminatingly about the complex challenges facing contemporary democracies. Your Yale teachers and mentors, Bob Dahl and Charles Lindblom, would be proud of all you have accomplished.