I thought the issue was one of the degree of maneuvre, not of the basic rules of the capitalist game.
Sweden is interesting because it suggests that the basic rules of the capitalist game may not be as debilitating/constraining as may have been thought -- given the right political-institutional (and demographic?) context -- but also the limits of staying with those basic rules and how they shape the political culture.
But perhaps that right political-institutional context included that of the existence of the former Soviet Union? Or perhaps not, in view of the problems they were running into by the 1980s.
Still, the link posted suggested that the "failure" was a political-institutional one, rather than straightforwardly economic. And perhaps that includes the simultaneous collapse of the former SU and the corresponding rise of neo-liberalism? Would it then be possible to say that, yes, the world imperial order shapes and constrains all before it, including not just small, third world nations, but also larger first world ones, including France, Germany, etc.?
But re Sweden and exports -- I believe Sweden has always had a higher export/gdp ratio than the average for what the World Bank calls "high income group". So, in the early 1980s, exports were more than 30% of GDP, at a time when it was in the low teens for the US and in the mid-20s for Britain.
Finally, I think there's a need to put the Swedish "failure" in some perspective. Just as it's easy to mock Great Britain as the "former Great Britain". Sure the gloss has come off, it's become the gurkhas for the American empire, but it's -- what -- still among the top 25 economies in the world measured by gdp/capita.
Would we have had a Swedish "failure"!
kj khoo