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  The German critic Hans Magnus Enzensberger visited Sweden in the autumn of 1982 and reported his observations of the country in Dagens Nyheter, the major daily newspaper. The series of articles was subsequently published in a small volume entitled Swedish Autumn. His discussion of the institutionalization of life and Swedish responses to what Max Weber called "the protective enclosure of institutions" is worth quoting at length:

  Theoretical analysis cannot get at the root of the peculiar character of the strategies one uses in this country to try to ... [gloss] over the fundamental conflict between human beings and their institutions. Both sides meet each other in a state of affairs that would be unthinkable in other countries: in a state of historic innocence.... Swedish citizens are always willing to comply with their authorities with such naiveté and trust as if the benevolence of the authorities were beyond question. To a Spaniard, an Irishman, a Frenchman, such a posture would be incomprehensible. . . . even the Germans, who have always been said to be particularly obedient to authority, can no longer compete with the Swedes in this respect.
  No doubt this blissful credulity has many causes. The most important of these is probably a lack of experience, for which one can only envy the Swedes. Political powers in this country have since time immemorial refrained from a pastime that has been daily fare in other parts of the world: armed persecution of citizens. Swedes therefore embrace the belief that the authorities are concerned only with the good [of the citizenry].
  And the Swedes are probably right in this assumption. The institutions ... embody a distant but always benign power. It is precisely this benevolence that makes it unassailable.
  A kind of moral immunity, which is alien to other societies, envelops these institutions. To wish to curtail, control, or protect oneself against the Forces of Good could interest only knaves. It is therefore not surprising that this power is irresistibly growing, is penetrating all crevices of daily life, and is regulating the affairs of individuals to an extent that is without comparison in free societies.
  So it is that the institutional apparatus has succeeded not only in laying claim to a lion's share of people's incomes but also to their moral universe. It is [the apparatus] that provides for solidarity and equality, for succor and protection, for justice and decency-all of which are altogether too important to be left in the hands of ordinary people.⁵

And by now, the institutions themselves have come to believe in this myth, completing the circle and making it almost inviolable.

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