1. The Swedish campaign has entered its last few days. Most polls give the
bourgeois Alliance a very small lead, but basically the rival blocs are
neck and neck.
The hacking scandal rumbles on. (Some are suggesting that the former
Liberal party secretary, who resigned last week, has not been entirely
straight about how he reacted when he heard in March about the intrusion
into the Social Democrats' intranet.) But while the Liberals have clearly
lost support, their decline hasn't (so far) been quite as catastrophic as
some predicted; and most of that supoprt seems to have gone to other
Alliance parties.
Otherwise, the tightness of the contest has been reflected by the
unusually harsh words that have been exchanged by the prime minister and
the Alliance leader in their most recent debates. It really could go
either way on Sunday.
Members of the list might be interested in a longish article about the
election and the Swedish model in general that's in this week's Economist.
It's available free via the magazine's website
(economist.com/world/europe). The Economist's liberal view on things is,
as usual, fairly apparent; and there are a few slightly irritating factual
errors. But it's not a bad discussion.
2. For rather mysterious technical reasons, I'm having trouble updating
the group's website. But I can at least inform you via this message that I
have new co-ordinates (see below), effective from now.
Best,
Nick.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University College
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se
nicholas.aylott@sh.se
Please feel free to forward this message to anyone who might be
interested. To join the Scandinavian politics mailing list, send a message
to me, the convenor (nicholas.aylott@sh.se). If you want to send something
to the list, or if you don't want to receive these occasional messages,
just let me know. See also www.psa.ac.uk/spgrp/scandinavia/
