This book History, Policies, and Institutions 1884–1988 is an updated and enlarged edition of Sven Hort’s well-known and wide-ranging dissertation Social Policy and Welfare State in Sweden, published under the author’s birth name Sven E. Olsson in 1990. This book contains the original four essays from 1990 and covers the formation and evolution of the Swedish welfare state. By now minor classics in welfare state literature, the essays have both inspired and started lively polemics among researchers of the field.