website and Norwegian election

Dear members of the Scandinavian Politics mailing list,

Just a quick message on two matters.


1. SCANDINAVIAN POLITICS GROUP WEBSITE (www.psa.ac.uk/spgrp/scandinavia).

This is now up and running, so do give it a quick surf. I hope you like its basic, simple style, which is carefully designed to promote a sense of rawness and edginess.

Can I draw your attention to two things in particular?

* If you'd like your name, institutional details and basic research/teaching interests mentioned on the members page (strictly speaking, the mailing-list recipients page), can you let me know? I thought I'd get people actively to say that they're happy for me to post their details.

* There was talk in the last few months about the possibility of the group's holding a special workshop or seminar some time in 2005. That is now off the agenda – pressure of work, etc, etc. Sorry. But something next spring, some time around the PSA conference (at which I expect us to hold panels as usual), is still a strong possibility.


2. NORWEGIAN ELECTION CAMPAIGN. With less than three weeks to go (the vote is on Monday September 12th), this is now in full swing. With thanks to my colleagues Nick Sitter and Niklas Bolin for their comments, here's a concise summary of the state of play.

* Unusually, two clear alternative governments are on offer to Norwegian
voters: (i) the governing minority coalition of the Christian People's Party (who provide the prime minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik), the Conservatives and the tiny Liberals; and (ii) a centre-left alliance of Labour, the Centre Party and the Socialist Left.

This opposition alliance is a real departure in Norway: wartime apart, Labour has never governed in a coalition, never mind pledged to do so before an election. After getting his fingers badly burnt during a short, unhappy time in government in 2000-1, the Labour leader, Jens Stoltenberg, is determined to have a firmer parliamentary base for his next spell in office.

* The polls, usefully summarised by political scientist Bernt Aardal on his website (http://home.online.no/~b-aardal/), suggest that the left alliance will indeed win a bare majority of the vote, which – if, as predicted, the Liberals fall below the 4 per cent threshold - should be enough for a comfortable parliamentary majority. But precisely how votes will translate into seats remains to be seen. The Norwegian periphery is overrepresented, although this time the seats reserved for making the overall result more proportional has risen from 8 to 19.

* What's more, there's always the great unpredictable player in Norwegian
politics: Carl I. Hagen, leader of the right-wing Progress Party. He implicitly backed the Christian-Conservative-Liberal government when it was formed in 2001, which gave it a parliamentary majority, and has mostly continued to do so in budget deals since then. But in June Hagen threw a grenade into the campaign when he said that Progress would NOT support another Bondevik government.

This has been a big blow to the governing parties' credibility. It's seen as an attempt by Hagen to force the Conservatives into thinking about doing a Schüssel – ie, to risk the condemnation of everyone to their left and bring the radical right into government, as happened in Austria in 2000. But could there possibly be a parliamentary majority that would accept that scenario?
And would Hagen really tolerate a left government in preference to a Christian-led one? (He did topple a centre-right coalition in 1986.) These and many other questions remain tantalisingly open.

* Policy-wise, some say that Labour has moved to the left for this campaign.
True, its foreign policy has pretty much nothing in common with that of the Centre Party, which is against EEA membership, or that of Socialist Left, which is against both EEA and NATO membership. But the three parties have simply agreed not to raise such tricky issues. Indeed, the question of EU membership has not reached the agenda, and is highly unlikely to in the next parliament. With their respective alliances both containing strongly anti-EU parties, Norway's only two pro-EU parties, Labour and the Conservatives, each know that pushing the issue would be political suicide.


Best,

Nick Aylott.

Please feel free to forward this message to anyone who might be interested.
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Dr Nicholas Aylott, research fellow (docent/forskarassistent) | Department of Political Science, Umeå University | SE-901 87, Sweden | www.pol.umu.se