Monitoring the Public-Private Divide? The Use of Cost-Benefit Analyses During the Expansion of the Swedish Icebreaker Fleet, 1970–1975

This chapter examines the use of cost-benefit analyses during three decision-making processes concerning icebreaker investments in Sweden between 1970 and 1975. It is demonstrated that while the 1963 transport act recommended that all government-funded transport and infrastructure investments should be preceded by cost-benefit analyses, it was difficult to implement this ambition. During the examined investment processes, actors such as economists, agencies, and interest groups presented available and potential calculations of benefits and costs for society from the proposed icebreakers. However, those proposals were only partly taken into consideration and were not decisive for the investment decisions which instead had a strong anchorage in an institutional context dominated by prominent goals within macroeconomic policy, regional cohesion policy, and industrial policy. The examined decisions reflected a general view held by the government and industrial leaders that investments in new icebreakers were necessary to support ongoing and planned investments in the heavy manufacturing industries located in northern Sweden. Such views regarding the role of the icebreaker service as a catalyst for industrial investments had also been established in a corporatist network between the State Maritime Administration and a group of firms in the heavy manufacturing industrial sector concerned by icebreaking.