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Abstract

The historical-comparative study of social democracy and cooperative organization are the
foster children of historical sociology. This article offers a first account of systematic ideological
differences in social-democratic ideology regarding private ownership and different cooperative
traditions in the housing sphere of Northern European and continental German-speaking
countries. The long-run trajectory of housing welfare regimes in these two country groups has
been one of divergence: Nordic countries have moved to Anglo-Saxon levels of high homeownership,
high levels of mortgage indebtedness, and house price increases, whereas private
tenancy, lower indebtedness, and lower price increases still characterize their German counterparts.
Based on historical case studies of Germany and Norway, we argue that the divergence in
these two countries can be understood by the different social-democratic and cooperative solutions
to the urban housing question from the 1920s onward. Supported by a pro-ownership
social democracy, Norway started to develop housing cooperatives of the owner cooperative
type, whereas German social democracy was in favor of associations of the tenant cooperative
type. The differential growth of these two types of cooperatives and disparities in social democratic
party ideology contributed to the urban housing divergence between the two country
groups that has been observed ever since. We argue, more generally, that varieties of social
democracy and welfare-anticipating cooperative organizations are important in helping us
understand the welfare differences between countries.