Rawls in the Nordic Countries

Abstract:
The impact of Rawls’s work in the Nordic countries has been larger than was expected. Section 1 identifies some legal, political, and cultural features that would lead us to expect little interest in Rawls’s work: Scandinavian Legal Realism, the Social Democratic Welfare state regimes, and pervasive ethnic and cultural homogeneity. Section 2 gives an overview of the reception of Rawls’s work, both in the academy and in public fora, on the basis of extensive but not exhaustive searches. Section 3 offers some conclusions and speculates that Rawls’s contributions – and political philosophy in general – will increase, largely due to Europeanisation. Appendix 1 provides bibliographical information about first translations and presentations of Rawls’s work starting with the 1955 article “Two Concepts of Rules”. Appendix 2 lists appeals to Rawls’s work in the academy and the public sphere, ranging from the substantive principles of Justice as Fairness stated in 1971 through the Law of Peoples (1999). Neither appendix claims to give exhaustive accounts.
Biographical note:
Andreas Follesdal Research Professor at the research programme ARENA - Advanced Research on the Europeanisation of the Nation-State, of the Research Council of Norway, and Professor at the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo.
Follesdal received his Ph.D. 1991 in Philosophy from Harvard University as a Fulbright Fellow. Follesdal publishes in the field of political philosophy with a focus on issues of international political theory, particularly as they arise in the wake of changes in Europe. He is Founding Series Editor, with Johan P. Olsen, of Themes in European Governance, Cambridge University Press, and has written on distributive justice, federalism, minority rights, deliberative democracy, subsidiarity and European citizenship, in such journals as Journal of Political Philosophy, Law and Philosophy, Journal of Peace Research, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, Metaphilosophy, and Global Society. He has published books on democracy in the EU, on the welfare state in Europe, animal ethics, and on Consultancy in Europe. 

Key words: 
Europeanisation, Justice, Legal Realism, Norden, Nordic, Parliamentary sovereignty, 
Rawls, Scandinavia, Social Democratic Welfare State Regime, Welfare state, 
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What has been the impact of John Rawls’s work in the Nordic countries – the Scandinavian countries Denmark, Norway and Sweden, together with Finland and Iceland? 
Many social indicators suggest that these states are very close to Rawlsian egalitarian standards of distributive justice, and this may be reason enough to explore the underlying ideologies, apart from any direct impact of Rawls. Thus, these reflections also seek to assess such appearances, and indicate some challenges facing attempts at “implementing” Rawls’s theory. The Nordic experiences illustrate the complex relationship between such principles and institutions of welfare, the role of public deliberation, and challenges of multicultural accommodation.
Section 1 identifies some legal, political, and cultural features that would lead us to expect little interest in Rawls’s work. Section 2 gives an overview of the reception of Rawls’s work, both in the academy and in public fora. Section 3 offers some conclusions and speculations. Appendix 1 provides bibliographical information about first translations and presentations of Rawls’s work starting with the 1955 article “Two Concepts of Rules”. Appendix 2 lists appeals to Rawls’s work in the academy and the public sphere, ranging from the substantive principles of Justice as Fairness stated in 1971 through the Law of Peoples (1999). Neither appendix claims to give exhaustive accounts.
1 The Nordic countries
The Nordic countries have more in common than their geographical proximity; at least three features are salient for our concerns. In terms of legal tradition they are historical strongholds of Scandinavian Legal Realism. Politically they are egalitarian social democratic welfare state regimes. Culturally, their citizens have regarded themselves as highly homogenous, religiously, culturally and ethnically.
1a Scandinavian Legal Realism: of God and his Prophet
Scandinavian practical philosophy and legal thought has been greatly influenced by two Uppsala philosophers who were facetiously described as God and his Prophet: Axel Hägerström and Vilhelm Lundstedt.
One of Rawls’s earliest publications is a review of Axel Hägerström’s 1953 book Inquiries into the Nature of Law and Morals. Hägerström (1868-1939) and his devoted disciple Vilhelm Lundstedt (1882-1955) founded the “Uppsala School” that was to enjoy great influence in Scandinavia, and started what came to be known as Scandinavian Legal Realism. Hägerström maintained a version of moral non-cognitivism, rejecting the possibility of moral facts and instead endorsing ethical emotivism. His views influenced the Swedish legal scholar Karl Olivecrona (1897-1980) and, in Denmark, Alf Ross (1899-1979). Scandinavian legal realism rejected speculations regarding the metaphysical nature of law, rejected natural law, and held that the only meaningful content of law are those that can be verified. This was not to deny the need for politics and values, but to deny that values could be the subject of scholarly arguments. Thus Alf Ross stated that: 
I reject the idea of an a priori principle of justice as a guide for legal politics (legislation), and discuss the problems of legal politics in a relativistic spirit, that is, in relation to hypothetical values accepted by influential groups in the society.
The effect was to steer legal scholars away from overt debates about political issues, instead placing such topics squarely with legislatures. This tendency was boosted by a long-standing respect for parliamentary sovereignty, at least in the Scandinavian countries. 
Nordic public debates have tended to conflate legitimacy and majoritarian parliamentarianism. Parliament is seen as the site of legitimacy in virtue of its being an arena for the expression of the general will. There are no Constitutional Courts, and the constitutions and constitutional conventions acknowledge wide berth for parliamentary discretion. Thus it is for the Parliaments themselves to decide whether legislation is within the bounds of the constitution. For Norway this is a marked shift from earlier constitutional practice, which was the first in Europe to acknowledge judicial review. In Sweden and Finland the judiciary may still only intervene against legislation that ‘obviously’ violates the constitution. Questions of principle are left to politicians, who seldom choose to tackle fundamental matters of political philosophy. 
I venture that both Scandinavian Legal Realism and the widespread respect for parliamentary sovereignty have contributed to the relative dearth of  “public fora of principle”, fora elsewhere provided by Supreme or Constitutional Courts. These features have also fostered relatively little interest in normative political theory among philosophers and legal scholars, the discipline tending to remain the preserve of theologians and political scientists.
1b  Social democratic Welfare States 
By many standards the Nordic countries form a cluster concerning egalitarianism and modes of public welfare provision. Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark are among the 5 countries with best scores in the UNDP Human Poverty Index, and they score low on standard poverty and inequality measures. 
The Nordic states tend to have both extensive public provision with egalitarian effects, and egalitarian income distributions. They are often said to exemplify one particular Nordic mode of welfare state regime, which the social scientists Walter Korpi and Gøsta Esping-Andersen call social democratic. Korpi and Esping-Andersen’s tripartite taxonomy of welfare state regimes reflect how dependent individuals are on market participation for their standard of living. The liberal regimes rely heavily on private, market schemes for pensions and sickness and unemployment support. The state typically provides means-tested support with low levels of universal transfers. These states include USA, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, and Japan. Conservative regimes grant a major role to the family and characteristically rely on corporatist arrangements for social policies. They include Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Belgium. In Social Democratic regimes the state plays a primary role. The policies have more egalitarian ends, and the arrangements tend to provide universal coverage with high standards. While the Nordic countries are largely social democratic in this sense, the categories are contested -- indeed, some regard it as a mistake to speak of a Nordic model at all.
Although there has been a long-standing commitment to ensure welfare rights, this commitment has not found much expression in de facto constitutional rights. This reluctance may stem from the strong weight given to parliamentary sovereignty.
The causes of this mode of welfare state regime are contested, but are often thought to be long traditions of social democratic party dominance, and corporatist arrangements between state, capital and labor. This heritage may help explain two striking features: the relative robust nature and support of welfare policies even under economic downturns, and the low interest in normative political theory.
The Nordic welfare states have recently been subject to real and perceived crises. Some transfers have been adjusted downward, e.g. in Finland and Sweden, to reduce public expenses. Several countries have increased the use of markets at least for the production, if not the distribution, of services. Some have criticized such shifts as a renunciation of Nordic ideals. Still, some of the “Third way” policies aimed at full employment and high labor market participation have not been perceived as worrisome in Scandinavian countries, for at least two reasons. Active labour market policies to ensure full employment have been long-standing concerns of the social democratic parties in the region, and there has been broad agreement over the need to discourage abuse of generous unemployment benefits. This reflects a view common to Nordic social democrats, to provide public support whilst insisting on “reciprocity” in the sense that the able must contribute. Thus Ernst Wigforss (1881-1977), an influential Swedish economist and Minister of Finance, held that the citizens’ will to work is the most important resource of a nation; Nordic politicians typically seek to avoid policies that give strong disincentives to work. 
Scholars also note that public support for universal coverage at high levels is not waning. Bo Rothstein has suggested that this is partly due to the self-enforcing features of these arrangements. The system generates its own support, thus satisfying Rawls’s stability requirement – a point Rothstein makes. The middle class is co-opted into supporting the taxes that also benefit themselves, and the universal solutions reduce the risks involved in trusting others to comply. To illustrate: In Sweden, many social services have been constructed on the basis of standardised solutions with regards to child care, schools, and old-age care. Citizens can hardly affect the content or allocation of these services A benefit of this decidedly communitarian feature is that fears of defection and fraud are minimized when compared to means-tested arrangements. Universal coverage tends to reduce risks of defection, increasing trust in the state. This may be one explanation for the continued high support for universal programs in Sweden through the 1990s.The second feature worth noting is the apparent lack of public concern for normative political theory, combined with institutions seeking to remove inequality. Indeed, the Nordic countries seems to contradict Rawls’s claim that 
We should recognize, though, that the difference principle is not often expressely endorsed; indeed, it may prove to have little support in our public political culture at the present time.
To illustrate, Ernst Wigforss defended differences in pay on grounds that they benefited the worst off, and the Norwegian Labour politician Hallvard Bakke claims that Norwegians reject neoliberalism and large salary differences because they accept Rawls’s Difference Principle. Wigforss was unusual in the Nordic context in that he also argued for this view. He held that the arguments for political equality also entail economic and social equality – similar to the basic argument of A Theory of Justice:
One who openly accepts a principle of democratic equality cannot later arbitrarily limit its application to only some spheres of life. 
A more egalitarian distribution of power and influence within the economic realm increases freedom there, in the same way that universal and equal suffrage did in the political realm.
Such arguments are unusual, not in their conclusions but rather for being made at all. In political debates in this region equality has largely been unquestioned as a social goal:  
The concept of justice has had little room in Nordic welfare research. .. In our tradition there has been a marked tendency to regard questions concerning how institutions should treat citizens, and concerning principles for allocation and the final distribution of goods, as political value choices researchers should avoid. Rather than trying to define the just society, more attention has been paid to various forms of inequality. 
Several scholars concur that we should not expect Rawls to be invoked in the political debates in the Nordic countries, at least not by those in favor of egalitarian redistribution, because egalitarianism is so ingrained that arguments for it appear superfluous.
However, we should note that Rawls’s theory and the Nordic politicians tend to apply the norms of economic equalization to different subjects. In the Nordic countries, equality is not to be secured among the discounted life earnings of various socially specified segments, modulo the difference principle; rather, claims to economic equality tend to focus on annual pre-tax income. Such a short-term focus leads to discrepancies vis-à-vis Rawls on several counts, for instance by being insensitive to incentive-justified inequalities permitted by the Difference Principle, and to deferred earnings for the highly educated. 
1c Homogeneity
At first glance the populations of the Nordic countries are living in ideal-type unitary nation-states, with ethnically and culturally homogenous populations, largely belonging to Lutheran state churches. This self-understanding has shaped the populations so as to reduce the frequency and perceived salience of deep conflicts regarding political issues, rendering political philosophy less relevant.  
This impression of political and cultural homogeneity is not accurate for most of the Nordic countries, and has not been for a long time. Greenland and the Faroe Islands are self-governing administrative divisions of Denmark. The Swedish-speaking minority in Finland, including inhabitants of Åland island, enjoy extensive self rule, particularly regarding Swedish language and culture. The Saami populations in Finland, Norway and Sweden have suffered from governments’ forced assimilatory policies, and have more recently claimed legal status as an indigenous people. In 1988 the Norwegian Saami were recognised in the Norwegian Constitution, and a – as yet largely advisory - Saami Parliament has been established.
2 The Reception of Rawls 
These legal, political and cultural features of the Nordic states would lead us to suspect that Rawls has had little impact in these states. It therefore comes as somewhat of a surprise that his work has received attention both in the academy and in public debates.
The academic reception of Rawls is cross-disciplinary, in The Nordic countries as elsewhere. His work has been translated or extensively summarised in all these countries, and Justice as Fairness is taught at several universities, at departments of philosophy, political science and economics, as well as at faculties of law, and at Business Schools. His work has also led to several dissertations, and to some debate in Nordic-language journals. The Swedish labour union undertook a major initiative in the early 1990s on Justice (LO:s rättviseutredning). They initiated local debates on the basis of a series of books entitled “Dialogues about Justice” (Samtal om rättvisa), one of which presented Rawls and other theorists.
Literature and web searches indicate that Rawls’s work has also received some attention in public discussions in the Nordic countries. Some examples show the breadth of impact.  The Norwegian historian Hans Fredrik Dahl has argued that Rawls’s work has bolstered the case for the right to freedom of speech.  The principles of Justice as Fairness, including the difference principle, have been referred to in Greenland, where the difference principle was used to criticise what is regarded as excessive pay to politicians. 
A surprising finding is that Rawls has been appealed to against economic egalitarianism. One academic and political debate has concerned whether salaries have become more equal than what the Difference Principle warrants. Thus Rawls’s arguments have been used in support of counter-egalitarian conclusions – a somewhat unusual role for this theory. 
Regarding Rawls’s contractualism and Veil of ignorance-arguments, one common criticism of Rawls concerns the alleged atomism expressed in Original-position arguments. Thus Svensk linje, the magazine of the Swedish conservative free moderate student association, has included discussions of Rawls and his communitarian critics. The prevalence of this sort of criticism may partly be due to a tendency to conflate Rawls’s theory and the rights-focused, adversarial modes of conflict resolution prevalent in the US. Moreover, the communitarian critics of Rawls were available to the Swedish public well before A Theory of Justice was translated. 
In Denmark, member of the Radical Left Party have used Veil of ignorance-arguments to defend the right to protest with face covered. The Danish Council on Ethics, a government-appointed body that provides advice to Parliament and raises public debates, has used the Principle of Fair Play to defend an obligation to donate organs.  The role of merit in Justice as Fairness has been discussed both by Jón Á. Kalmansson on Iceland, and by the Danish Left. In Sweden the appropriateness of the Veil of Ignorance and Maximin under uncertainty were discussed in Skatter och Välfärd. 
Rawls’s contribution to metaethics in the form of Reflective Equilibrium has also been noted. He received the Rolf Schock prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1999. The citation notes that Rawls receives the prize not least for the methodological contribution concerning justification of normative claims, against the value nihilism of Hägerström.
Several scholars have explored Rawls’s contributions regarding overlapping consensus and pluralism, The theologians Svend Andersen at Århus University in Denmark, and Kai Ingolf Johannesen in Oslo, Norway, have worked on Rawls and Political Liberalism. In Sweden Hans Ingvar Roth has brought Rawls and others to bear on the challenges of multiculturalism.
Turning to the relevance of Rawls’s work to substantive policy areas, his contributions have been applied to such issues as sustainable development, immigration, basic income, civil disobedience, animal ethics  and international justice. A pervasive ‘Nordic’ slant to these discussions is difficult to identify, but it might be worth noting that  the leader of the (Agrarian) Center Party Youth in Norway, Cathrine S. Amundsen, used the veil of ignorance to urge responsible use of oil wealth. Oil is a commodity Norway owns due to international agreements concerning ownership of the sea-bed, and many recognise that such regimes could easily have been otherwise.
3 Predictions
I venture that the work of Rawls – and other philosophical contributions inspired by him – will receive more attention in the near future. The legal, political and cultural features of the Nordic countries surveyed in section 1 led us to suspect that academic endorsement of moral non-cognitivism, combined with a weak judiciary, a strong and somewhat anti-intellectual labour movement and the reasonably affluent circumstances of several Nordic states would contribute to the modest need and express desire for political philosophy of the kind offered by Rawls. It thus came as somewhat of a surprise to find that Rawls was cited across a broad range of debates.  
If the history of political philosophy permits extrapolation, we should expect more interest in Rawls and such contributions in the Nordic countries with increased demands for rejuvenation and restructuring of the political order. 
Hilary Putnam notes that Rawls’s A Theory of Justice 
coincided with enormously important debates in American public life about the rightness or wrongness of the welfare state and over the requirements of social justice – ethics became extremely important, and once again large numbers of graduate students began to specialize in it.
Political philosophy is typically called for in times of crises or fundamental social change. I therefore submit that we should expect Rawls’s work to receive increasingly more attention in the Nordic countries. The features characteristic of the Nordic countries are changing, largely due to the multifaceted processes of Europeanisation.
The legal and constitutional culture is changing, for at least three reasons. First, the role of parliament is being rethought. Both Sweden and Norway are reconsidering the role of the courts generally. International human rights courts – especially the European Court on Human Rights -- pose fundamental challenges to the received conception of parliament as the site of legitimacy. Iceland included human rights in the constitution in 1994-95, and the new Finnish constitution includes a broad range of economic and social rights. Second, recent developments in the European Union (for Finland, Denmark and Sweden) and the European Economic Area (for Iceland and Norway) pose fundamental questions regarding sovereignty, due to the transfer and pooling of competences within the European Union. Third, the legal and constitutional ties to the Continent, combined with much scholarly exchange with the US, confront the Scandinavian Legal Realist tradition with other conceptions of constitutional democracy, including the widespread existence of Constitutional Courts. Such conceptions become harder to ignore.
The welfare regimes are faced with new challenges. Increased awareness about ethnic and cultural heterogeneity within state borders has led to conflicts and political debates over multiculturalism. Labour migration within the European Union, combined with immigrants and asylum seekers from Non-Western states, highlight changes in the ethnic and cultural composition of the Nordic countries - particularly in urban areas. The ensuing policy challenges have wrought political conflicts and crises in several Nordic countries. I venture that there are at least two changes to the perceived homogeneity that will increase the demand for political philosophy.
On the one hand, the claims to limited self-rule by indigenous populations, together with the growing ‘visibility’ of ethnic minorities and changes in the European political order, lead to increased public reflection concerning what it should mean to be a Dane, a Swede, and so forth. Answers are needed, both to determine the requisite shared bases for sustaining a decent society among individuals with differing values and traditions; and to determine whether parts of the Nordic political orders are unfair to cultural and religious minorities. 
On the other hand, many scholars note a shift from collectivism to individualism. There appears to be a shift from loyalty to established organisations and common solutions for common problems, to increased demands for personal autonomy over life projects. This individualism should not be confused with egoism: the general support for resource transfers remains quite high. But standard solutions fit a smaller and smaller proportion of the population.
These two features force increased attention to questions central to political philosophy. Three issues concerning the welfare regimes can be mentioned briefly. 
First, public discussions in the Nordic countries often center on whether multiculturalism threatens support for the welfare regimes. The experiences of the Netherlands and Belgium show that states can maintain high levels of universal welfare systems without homogeneity. However, the requisite bases of trust and the appropriate means for fostering such social capital are not yet sufficiently addressed. Moreover, homogeneity makes for simpler social policies, in that the same problems can be resolved by the same measures applied to all. Second, the increased variety of life plans requires renewed attention to how best to operationalise the state’s commitment to equality whilst respecting diversity. Social reporting in the Nordic countries largely focuses on individuals’ objective levels of resources -- the things a person should have – should be secured as equally as possible, rather than for instance asking individuals about their subjective sense of well-being . The focus is on resources necessary to affect the capacity to satisfy one’s basic needs, and that are under social influence.
Regarding the determination of what shall count as basic capabilities, Bo Rothstein notes that "Just what these capabilities should be, and exactly what amount should be deemed sufficient, naturally cannot be answered by political philosophy, but must rather be decided in the political process.” I would deny that one must chose between philosophy and politics is questionable: these political discussions must take place informed by philosophical contributions. Rawls’s reasons on Social Primary Goods contribute to these deliberations.
The third area where political philosophy becomes more salient concerns responses to increased individualism. One political response has been to allow increased differentiation in services in Sweden, since citizens dislike standardised solutions that do not fit their needs. The new modes of service delivery pose new challenges: to what extent can citizens be allowed a choice of producers of services, for instance with voucher systems, without threatening equality? Compared to Sweden, Denmark has allowed vouchers in certain areas such as schooling, allowing less uniformity. Important questions appear, where political philosophy sheds some light, concerning how to combine individual choice with equality, and how to ensure fair provision and the use of markets in service delivery, without letting ability to pay affect the distribution of goods.
The egalitarian political commitments in the Nordic countries match the Difference Principle in some ways, and some political parties may recognise that Justice as Fairness provides a much needed (albeit contested) normative defence of such views. The need for such philosophising becomes more obvious when faced with new forms of governance in the European Union, and with a waning self-perception in the Nordic countries of cultural and ethnic homogeneity.
Conclusion
Reflecting on US political science, Rogers M. Smith holds that in the US, Rawlsian liberal theorists have failed to move beyond the abstract, ideal level, and have not played the role of ‘public philosophers’. Such criticisms do not seem to hold for the Nordic countries. There are academics and public intellectuals, philosophers, legal scholars and social scientists, in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, well acquainted with Rawls’s work. Not only do they publish in international journals, but they also contribute to their domestic political debates, enabling the Nordic publics to bring Rawls’s work to bear on some of the fundamental challenges facing these societies. They explore the institutional and policy implications of Rawls’s work constructively yet critically. In the small Nordic countries, academics are easily granted too much influence and uncritical support, - recall Hägerström and his follower Lundstedt at Uppsala University. 
The main challenge for political theorists in the Nordic countries may well be to maintain their engagement in the political world while becoming neither gods nor prophets.

Appendix 1: Rawls in Nordic Languages
Rawls has been translated or presented in some but not all Nordic languages. The following is not exhaustive.
In Denmark, a brief excerpt of A Theory of Justice was translated in 1984. Rawls and his critics were presented in a 1997 book addressing the ‘equality of what’ debate, by three philosophers at the University of Copenhagen. 
In Finland, Jorma Sipilä discussed Rawls’s 1958 "Justice as Fairness" article as early as 1968. A Theory of Justice was translated into Finnish by Terho Pursiainen in 1988. 
Thorsteinn Gylfason, professor of philosophy at the University of Iceland, introduced Rawls in writing and in a series of radio lectures in 1984. 
In Norway, the first translation of Rawls’s work appeared in 1970 when the philosopher Kai Dramer translated Rawls’s 1955 article “Two Concepts of Rules”. In 1976, Professor of Sociology, later Social Democratic politician Gudmund Hernes presented Rawls in an introductory textbook in sociology. Presentations of Justice as Fairness by Andreas Follesdal appeared in 1993. A translation of  Rawls’s 2001 Justice as Fairness is currently under preparation by Kai Swensen and Andreas Follesdal.
In Sweden, Stefan Björklund discussed Rawls and the game analogy in 1977, Evert Vedung presented parts of Rawls’s principles the same year. An excerpt of Rawls’s appeared in 1983.  Further excerpts of A Theory of Justice were published in 1989, in a book that has been on the curriculum at several universities. Rawls was also presented by Sven Ove Hansson and Svante Nordin in the 1990s. A Theory of Justice was translated in 1999 by Annika Persson, who went on to translate Law of Peoples in 2001.
Appendix 2: Reception
Rawls’s work has been presented and discussed both in academic settings and in political discussions in all Nordic countries. 
In Denmark, Rawls has been discussed in the economics journal Nationaløkonomisk tidsskrift, and the journal Politica has addressed Rawls and contemporary political theory in two recent special issues. The legal scholar Henrik Palmer Olsen and the political scientists Søren Flinch Midtgaard and Per Mouritsen have discussed Rawls’s work in monographs.
In Finland, Rawls has been treated in dissertations by philosophers Juha Räikkä and Sirkku Hellsten, and by the theologian Terho Pursiainen.
In Iceland, philosophers and political scientists discussed Rawls’s thoughts extensively  in the 1990s. Kristján Kristjánsson at the University of Akureyri addressed objections concerning utilitiarianism and Veil of ignorance arguments, Ágúst Hjörtur Ingthórsson discussed the Rawls of Political Liberalism, and Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson has argued against Rawls. The philosophy journal Hugur has several contributions concerning Rawls, including articles by Halldór Gudjónsson, and a criticism by Sigrídur Thorgeirsdóttir concerning Rawls’s views on the family, Árnason defending Rawls. There was also a discussion in 1997-8 about whether the Rawls of Political Liberalism is postmodern – in the sense that these values only hold within Western societies - between Kristján Kristjánsson and Thorsteinn Gylfason in Morgunbladid and Tímarit Máls og menningar. Vilhjálmur Árnason, Róbert H. Haraldsson, and Jón Á. Kalmansson have discussed Rawls in relation to the role of ethics.
In Norway, John Rawls was elected to the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 1992. The earliest references to Rawls in Norwegian journals appear to be in Tidsskrift for samfunnsforskning in the early 1980s In 1994 Stein Ugelvik Larsen edited a special issue of Norsk statsvitenskapelig tidsskrift (Norwegian Journal of Political Science) on Rawls. Several doctoral dissertations have addressed Rawls-related issues, in philosophy, political science and theology. Economists work on topics related to Rawls, addressing issues ranging from the microeconomic  - maximin and indices for interpersonal comparisons – to gender biases in A Theory of Justice. 
In Sweden, discussions about Rawls’s work started in the late 1970. Several Ph.D.s address Rawls-related issues, including reflective equilibrium, international justice, Priorities in health care, and liberalism vs. virtue ethics. Several political scientists write extensively on Rawls, including Jörgen Hermansson, Leif Lewin, Bo Lindensjö, Bo Rothstein; as do the historian of ideal Svante Nordin and the philosopher Torbjörn Tännsjö. Aleksander Peczenik and Joakim Nergelius discuss legal and constitutional perspectives. 
Rawls has also been appealed to in public discussions, for a variety of causes. A marked feature of The Nordic countries is that quite a few academics also participate in public debates. In Denmark, the Radical Left Party Minister of Education, Margrethe Vestager, a political scientist, has argued that welfare is best measured by checking how the worst off fare – also within the school system – arguing against utilitarian calculations. The leader of the Danish liberalistic Left party, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has discussed and criticised Rawls. An official in the Danish administration, Thomas Gregersen, has written about Rawls in the Danish political science journal Politica. Rawls’s veil of ignorance argument was used by the Radical Left party in Parliament to push for better legislation for the handicapped. The prominent newspaper Berlingske Tidende has published several articles referring to Rawls.
In Finland, Prime Minister Lipponen referred to Rawls’s Difference Principle on TV. Rawls’s books are reviewed in the main Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, and his work is mentioned in party programs, both on the left and on the right. Terho Pursiainen at University of Turku, are among those who seeks to apply Rawls’s ideas to such issues as fair wages.
In Iceland, Vilhjálmur Árnason has argued for universal health care by means of a Veil of Ignorance argument, Kristján Kristjánsson arguing against him. Jón Steinsson recommended Rawlsian foundations for left politics 1998 in Iceland’s largest newspaper Morgunbladid.
In 2000, then Norwegian Labour Party Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, referred to Rawls’s principles in denouncing neoliberal threats to the welfare state. Likewise, the prominent Labour politician Hallvard Bakke claims that Rawls’s two principles are strong in Norwegian public opinion, which is why Norwegians reject neoliberalism and large salary differences.
Rawls is mentioned or used in several Norwegian government reports, starting with one on civil disobedience in 1979, just quality of life, considerations of efficiency in public sector, and public transfers to families with children. Statoil, a major oil company, has included an article on Rawls in their newsletter. Gunnar Magnus, a political journalist with the main Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, took his Ph.D. at Stanford in 1977 on Rawls and Political Obligation. Andreas Follesdal draws on Rawls in addressing policy issues ranging from selection of quality of life indicators to obligatory religious instruction in the public schools. 
In Sweden, Rawls’s thoughts have contributed to debates ranging from nuclear power to the ethical treatment of animals. His work is discussed in several Government reports, and in a Swedish democracy study report concerning how to regard animal rights protesters and those who hide refugees. Rawls’s work has been discussed in several journals, including Ord & Bild, Swedens oldest cultural journal has addressed communitarian criticisms; Svensk linje, the magazine of the (conservative) free moderate student association under the editor Fredrik Erixon; and Skatter och Välfärd (Taxes and Welfare), which has discussed the appropriateness of veil of ignorance and maximin under uncertainty. The liberal party Folkpartiet liberalerna refers to Rawls, Dworkin and others on their web site.