Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,
Two items for your attention - one administrative, one political.
1. First, some bad news. Very reluctantly, I've decided to withdraw our panel from the PSA conference in Manchester in April. The composition of the panel was more or less in place. But the problem really lies with me. I've recently agreed to a couple of fairly weighty commitments, which I felt I couldn't really say no to, and my schedule for the new year was looking untenable.
I feel really bad about reneging on this. Apologies.
2. Meanwhile, in Sweden, amid the gathering gloom (meteorological and economic), a new pre-electoral alliance was formed this week. Nearly two months after they had announced a would-be coalition between themselves and themselves only, the Social Democrats and the Greens held a joint press conference with the Left, the party they had so publicly excluded from their original plans. Exactly as the four parties of the "Alliance for Sweden" did before their victory in 2006, the three newly allied parties on the centre-left have appointed working groups to thrash out what will, supposedly, become a joint platform in the 2010 campaign (although the Left's most recent congress ruled that out).
The price of its admission was concessions from the Left on economic, especially fiscal, policy. "We're not happy about them", said Lars Ohly, the Left's leader, about the rules on, inter alia, budget procedure, "but we accept them. We've made a big sacrifice to get this co-operation going," he said (DN 8/12). Yet, by all accounts, he was much the chirpiest of the four party leaders (including the Greens' duo) who announced the new, expanded alliance. What's going on?
The Greens' leaders are highly pragmatic, and they've barely disguised their contempt for what they see as the deeply conservative and oppositional instincts of Ohly's Left Party. By contrast, they get on like a house on fire with the Social Democrats' leader, Mona Sahlin. Her dilemma, though, must have been acute.
(1) The new alliance's working parties have their work cut out if they are to agree on common policies when the Left is far more radical than its two partners. It's hard to see how any common line on foreign and security policy, which is especially important to the Left, can be found. And any association with the Left is bound to cost the Social Democrats the support of some centrist parts of the electorate. No wonder Sahlin wasn't exploding with glee at the press conference.
(2) She could have gone to the election alone, without commitments to any other party and ready to negotiate with all others afterwards, as the Social Democrats have always done (and as some in the previous leading clique, including her predecessor as leader, want it to continue doing). But that may well have cost it a lot of votes. The lesson Sahlin draws from 2006 is that voters like to know what government constellation they're voting for. An unattached Social Democratic Party could not have given a convincing answer this "government question".
(3) The original two-party alliance with the Greens had two major flaws. First, even if, between them, the two parties had won back the median position in parliament, they would still almost certainly have relied for their majority on the Left, which would not have been a happy situation for them. (The prospect of this outcome would probably also cost the Social Democrats votes.) Second, and even more seriously, major parts of Sahlin's own party have shown themselves to be deeply hostile to an exclusive arrangement with the Greens. Indeed, it was opposition with the labour movement, the extent of which she had failed to anticipate, that forced her to withdraw this original plan.
What Sahlin and the Greens' would very probably prefer is a deal with one or two of the centre-right parties currently committed to the governing coalition. But only one thing could conceivably bring that about. If the far-right Sweden Democrats break through into parliament in 2010, thus very possibly depriving both blocks of a majority, it's likely that both alliances would crumble and some cross-block majority would be constructed to marginalise the extremists. Yet Sahlin and the Greens would, at the same time, certainly be appalled if Swedes were to elect these "idiots", as one of the Greens' leaders recently described the Sweden Democrats. Such are the dilemmas that politicians face.
And what are the Left's calculations in all this? That is a good question. Their top figures rarely give the impression that they are really that keen to get into government. So why compromise now?
Although a radical, unattached position might be expected to maximise their votes and preserve their ideological purity, the Left's leaders may have made another analysis. In what is likely to be a really miserable couple of years for the Swedish economy, they may have guessed that Swedish voters - or a good deal of them, anyway - will by 2010 prefer a party, even a radical party, to show that it is prepared to shoulder responsibility and make compromises with others when necessary, rather than standing in glorious isolation. Still, I detect little appetite in the party to make further policy sacrifices beyond those Ohly made such a big deal of at this week's launch of the new alliance.
Anyway, happy Christmas and new year to all on the list.
Nick Aylott.
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Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/samhallsvetenskaper
