Hej to members of the Scandinavian Politics list (and a few others),
Yesterday were the Danish local and regional elections, the first in that country's radically new administrative landscape. My colleague here in Umeå, Jacob Christensen, has written the following commentary.
(Incidentally, members of the list may well be interested in Jacob's shrewd observations on, inter alia, Scandinavian and European politics. Most of his blog is in Danish. A fair bit, though, is in English: see http://homepage.mac.com/jacob_christensen/english_blog/index.html.)
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THE BACKGROUND
The elections were part of the wholesale reform of Danish local and regional government, which will take effect from January 1st 2007.
As a consequence of the reform the existing 271 municipalities will be merged to
98 larger units – 32 municipalities will stay unchanged while the other 239 municipalities merge to 66 new municipalities.
The existing 14 counties will be abolished and replaced by 5 regions. The regions will have fewer competences than the counties had and, in particular, the regions will not have the power to raise taxes. On the other hand, the cities of Copenhagen and Frederiksberg, which until now have not belonged to a county, will be part of the new Metropolitan Region.
In the new municipalities and regions, the newly elected local and regional councils will act as transitional councils during 2006 while the existing local and county councils have had their terms prolonged until December 31st 2006.
One thing that the reforms will not change is the ”Swiss” style of local government: municipalities and regions will continue to be led by a mayor who is elected by the council for the entire term. The larger cites (Copenhagen, Århus, Ålborg and Odense) have several mayors or councillors, and these posts are distributed on a roughly proportional basis. In the smaller municipalities and the regions, the posts of chairmen of committees are important political spoils.
Unlike in national elections, parties can form electoral alliances. The parties present individual lists, but votes are counted as votes on one common list in the first instance, and only distributed among individual party lists in the second round of counting.
THE CAMPAIGN
The campaign has generally been described as unusually dull, with very few interesting themes. One reason may be that the financing of the new bodies hasn’t been settled yet, so it has been difficult for the candidates to make clear promises.
The national parties kept a relatively low profile. The Social Democrats declared that their aim was to win the posts of mayor in all four big cities (Copenhagen, Århus, Ålborg and Odense), or at least in ”three of the four big cities”. The Liberals declared that their aim was to win ”a plurality” of mayoral posts.
The campaign in Copenhagen attracted some national interest. The Social Democrats in Copenhagen failed to recruit a mayoral candidate from their own ranks. Instead, they chose to field the 64-year-old veteran Ritt Bjerregaard – who first entered national politics in 1971, and has been a minister and a European commissioner – as their candidate for the post of "first mayor" and successor to Jens Kramer Mikkelsen (who left office in late 2004 and was replaced by interim candidate Lars Engberg).
Two other politicians presented themselves as candidates for the office of first mayor. One was Søren Pind (Liberal), who had been "housing and infrastructure mayor" since 1997 and who is generally seen as belonging to the hard-line faction of his party. Pind’s relationship with the leadership of his party is notoriously bad. A dirty campaign between Pind and his ally Martin Geertsen, on the one hand, and the party leadership and Jens Rohde, on the other about, a safe parliamentary seat in the run-up to the 2005 national elections was the high – or low – point.
Pind ran a hard-line campaign focusing on law-and-order (in itself not an issue for local government) and integration policy. He announced tough measures against young immigrants who committed crimes. The campaign turned out to be a complete failure both in terms of choice of issue and stance.
The other main candidate was Klaus Bondam (Social Liberal), who is best known as an actor (in the last episode of the popular crime series Rejseholdet/Mordkommissionen he played a justice minister who may have murdered an African prostitute) and a successful theatre manager. He also succeeded in easing out long-time party faithful Inger Marie Bruun Vierø as the party’s local political leader. Bondam is also one of the few openly gay politicians in Denmark.
Finally, the main candidate of the Danish People’s Party, Louise Frevert, caused a scandal when articles posted on her homepage were criticised for being racist. Frevert managed to survive this by blaming her webmaster for the postings.
The campaign in Århus, attracted some interest as incumbent Louise Gade (Liberal), who broke 82 years of Social Democrat rule, tried to win re-election as mayor against the new Social Democratic candidate, Nicolai Wammen.
In Odense, incumbent Anker Boye (Social Democrat) had problems with a number of minor scandals – mostly related to the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the writer H.C. Andersen – and was challenged in the local elections by the outgoing Conservative county mayor, Jens Boye. (The two are not related.)
In both Århus and Odense, it was predicted that the Social Liberals would hold the balance. That party’s national leadership decided to take a demonstratively neutral stance.
The merger of municipalities meant that the relationship between old towns and countryside and suburban municipalities attracted some attention. As it turned out, the mergers did hold some surprises for established politicians in many municipalities.
Comic relief was provided by the campaign in Rudersdal, which is a merger of Søllerød and Birkerød municipalities – both among the most affluent suburbs of Copenhagen. The Conservative Party decided to choose industrialist and socialite Christian Kjær as the party’s front candidate. This led the Conservative mayor of Birkerød to leave his party, while the Liberal mayor of Søllerød ridiculed Kjær as a “National Enquirer”-kind of candidate. (Verbatim: “En ugebladskandidat” and “en Se-og-Hør-figur”.)
THE RESULTS
National trends
The turnout stayed at the level from 1997, which is slightly surprising, given the lack-lustre campaign and uncertainties about the new administrative bodies. Turnout was reported as 69.4% against 70.1% in 1997 and 85% in 2001. The unusually high turnout in 2001 was due to the fact that local, regional and national elections were held on the same day.
The results on a national level have not been announced yet, but the Social Democrats may have won some votes compared to 2001, while Venstre also increased its share of the vote. On the other hand the Social Democrats can still claim to be Denmark’s largest party in local government. The movements for most of the other parties seem to be neglible on a national level.
Some interesting results
* Copenhagen. The Social Democrats under Ritt Bjerregaard won a convincing victory, with nearly 38% of the votes cast. This is a massive increase in the party’s share of the vote. The Social Liberal Party also increased its share even though their gains were smaller than expected.
On the other hand, the Liberal Party under Søren Pind lost votes and Pind announced that he would retire from local politics.
In a surprising move, Bjerregaard is expected to make an agreement on mayoral posts with the Social Liberal Party, while not including the Socialist People's Party and the Red-Green Alliance.
* Århus. Even though the Liberals under Louise Gade recorded gains, it was not enough to keep her in office. Nicolai Wammen will be the new mayor supported by the left wing.
* Odense. Incumbent Anker Boye suffered massive losses and will be replaced by Jens Boye, despite a desperate late-night offer to the Social Liberal Party, in which the Social Democrats offered the post of mayor to that party.
* Vejle. Vejle is being merged with three minor suburban and rural municipalities. Here Socialist Flemming Christensen (no relative) who has been mayor since 1993, lost office to an unusual coalition of Social Democrats, Liberals and Danish People’s Party.
Leif Skov (Social Democrat), who is the incumbent mayor in the suburban municipality of Børkop, will be the new mayor, with Arne Sækkenbjerggaard (Liberal and mayor of Jelling) as deputy mayor and Kristian Thulesen Dahl (Danish People's Party, an MP and member of Give local council) as second deputy.
Back in 1993 Flemming Christensen became mayor in this otherwise traditionally Social Democratic town by securing the support of Liberals and Conservatives. In 2001 local business magnate Olaf Haahr created his own Citizens’ List to secure Christensen’s re-election.
* Horsens. Horsens is another new municipality where a town is being merged with a number of smaller rural municipalities. Here former minister Jan Trøjborg (SD) somewhat surprisingly cruised to victory.
* Åbenrå. Åbenrå is included for good measure. Here the incumbent mayor of Rødekro Tove Larsen (Social Democrat) won a convincing victory in all parts of the new Åbenrå municipality and will command an own majority in the new local council.
POLITICAL EFFECTS ON THE NATIONAL LEVEL
The effects on the national level are hard to gauge today. The Social Democrats may take some comfort in their relatively good results, which broke a string of blunders on the national level. On the other hand, the Liberal Party cannot be said to have suffered significant losses.
Maybe the loser of these elections are the Conservative Party, which is still feeling the competition from the Liberal Party in the major cities and which is finding it hard to maintain its share of the vote.
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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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