Scandinavian Politics latest

Hej to members of the Scandinavian Politics Specialist Group's mailing list,

There have been several interesting and/or entertaining developments in Scandinavian politics recently, and I thought I'd send a brief summary to the list.


- In NORWAY, unprecedented coalition talks between the parties of the "red-green" alliance that won a majority of seats (though not votes) in last month's election have concluded successfully. The new government was announced yesterday.

* Labour's leader, Jens Stoltenberg, will of course be the new prime minister. Including his, Labour gets ten of the 19 cabinet seats. One of those is the new foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, described by Aftenposten as "a cosmopolitan, a European [he studied political science in France, apparently] and a red flag for the EU opponents" in the two other coalition parties (although the "suicide clause", by which the coalition agrees to dissolve if one of its number mentions EU membership, remains).

* The Socialist Left gets its first five cabinet positions. More notable is that its leader, Kristin Halvorsen, gets the finance minister's job.

* The Centre Party gets the four remaining places. They include the regional-government portfolio, taken by party leader Åslaug Haga, and the oil-and-energy job, which goes (surprisingly) to an ex-leader, the splendidly named Odd Roger Enoksen.


- In SWEDEN, with less than a year to go now before the election, the field has become even more crowded and even more interesting.

* Two weeks ago, the June List (www.junilistan.se), which did so well in last year's European election, decided that it would contest the national election, too. A recent poll gave it nearly 5 per cent support, which would take it into parliament.

In addition to its soft Euroscepticism ("Yes to Europe, No to an EU state"), the party's preliminary platform has two other pillars: decentralisation ("Shift power into the country") and employment ("A people in work"). The mix could be described as modestly economic liberal, with things like tax rebates for work to improve incentives. But there are a few classic populist crowd-pleasers – decisive referendums on citizens' initiatives, a big cut in the number of MPs – thrown in.

It is far from clear how the coalition of cross-spectrum Eurosceptics that the List attracted so successfully last year will be maintained on the basis of even this fairly parsimonious policy stance. A selection of issues on which the June List's candidates will be expected to set out their "own platforms" implies that a very wide range of opinions among its candidates is envisaged – yet it seems unlikely that many away from the centre-right would sign up to the core platform.

Then there's the organisational challenge. Party leader Nils Lundgren is already talking of "democratising" the List's entirely elite-led internal structure; as yet, it doesn't even have members. How he attempts that will be fascinating to watch.

* What's more, there may be yet more competition in that part of the spectrum. On Sunday a conference of numerous regional "healthcare parties" decided on a basic platform of their own. This, too, looks cautiously to the right. It expresses opposition, for instance, to the government's attempts to stop the engagement of more private companies in delivering healthcare. Still, some of the regional parties are against forming a "Swedish Healthcare Party" to run in the national election. The big decision on whether to do so will be taken on December 3rd.

* Last but certainly not least, Feminist Initiative (www.feministisktinitiativ.se) has had more than its fair share of attention in the Swedish media recently. Just over a month ago, its founding conference confirmed that it would stand in the 2006 election. Even before that congress, however, and certainly since, Feminist Initiative has tested sternly the old dictum that there's no such thing as bad publicity.

For some time, three broad ideological elements have been observable in Feminist Initiative's ranks. There are the "old feminists", associated with earlier political movements and concerned primarily about basic distributional issues. Then there are the radical feminists, who share a sweeping view of the structural oppression of women by men. They have probably been most visibly represented by one of the three "spokespeople" elected by the congress, the former Left Party leader, Gudrun Schyman. Third, there are the "gender feminists", who push "HBT" (homosexual, bisexual, transsexual) interests, and who are often academics associated with post-modern or "queer" theories of gender-construction.

The trouble is, the first and the third of those groups have been in increasingly acrimonious conflict. Last week some astonishingly bitter personal attacks appeared in the media. Several traditional feminists have resigned from their executive positions in Feminist Initiative in protest at the influence exercised by the gender-feminist element. Last week, a central figure in that element - a professor of gender studies and, by all accounts, a rather abrasive personality - had accusations of academic plagiarism thrown at her. She too then resigned from Feminist Initiative's national executive, declaring that, with her subject under such "systematic" attack, she had decided to prioritise its defence over her political engagement.

It will be quite a task for Schyman to lead Feminist Initiative over this disastrous period of infighting. In stark contrast to its profile in the headlines, the new party is currently invisible in the opinion polls.


- Finally, DENMARK has also seen some colourful politics recently. Three weeks ago, the minister of social affairs, Eva Kjer Hansen, declared that inequality can be a dynamic force in society. This, of course, is a scandalous assertion in Scandinavia, and she was forced to retract immediately.

But some of her party colleagues have been less prepared to avoid controversy. A couple of weeks ago, Liberals frustrated at the ultra-pragmatism of Anders Fogh Rasmussen's government launched a new party, which seeks the sort drastic tax-reductions and scaling back of the welfare state that Fogh Rasmussen himself, in his youth, used to advocate. The new party's name in Danish, Liberalisterne (www.liberalisterne.dk), I think is best translated as "Libertarians". But I'm open to alternative suggestions.


Best,

Nick Aylott.
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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

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