Ivar Kreuger Social Democrats Per Albin Hansson interventionist welfare state Prime Minister Axel Pehrsson-Bramstorp pl
By the 1930s, Sweden had what America's Life magazine called in 1938 the "world's highest standard of living". Sweden was also the first country worldwide to recover completely from the Great Depression. Taking place amid a short-lived government and a less-than-a-decade old Swedish democracy, events such as those surrounding Ivar Kreuger (who eventually committed suicide) remain infamous in Swedish history. The Social Democrats under Per Albin Hansson formed their first long-lived government in 1932 based on strong interventionist and welfare state policies, monopolizing the office of Prime Minister until 1976 with the sole and short-lived exception of Axel Pehrsson-Bramstorp's "summer cabinet" in 1936. During forty years of hegemony, it was the most successful political party in the history of Western liberal democracy.
