2009-11-18

Scandinavian Politics: Danish local elections

Yesterday, Denmark held elections to municipal and regional councils.
Here's a quick resumé from Flemming Juul Christiansen of Aarhus University.

---------

The final result of the municipality election was as follows: percentage
vote, comparison with previous local election (and parliamentary
election 2007):


Social Democrats: 30,7% -3,7 (25,5)

Social Liberal: 3,7 -1,5 (5,1)

Conservatives: 11,0 +0,7 (10,4)

Socialist People's Party: 14,5 +7,1 (13,0)

Danish People's Party: 8,1 +2,2 (13,8)

Liberals: 24,8 -2,7 (26,5)

Liberal Alliance: 0,3 +0,3 (2,8)

Red-Green Alliance: 2,3 -0,4 (2,2)

Local lists and other: 4,6 -2,0 (0,9)

Electoral participation: 65,8 -4,1

(www.berlingske.dk/kommunalvalg-2009/saadan-blev-det-endelige-landsresultat)


The clearest result of the election was the gains for the Socialist
People's Party (SF). It is now represented almost everywhere, and also
secured a few mayors. At the previous election, the party only held one.
In most cases, however, SF supports the Social Democrats, who, despite
their own losses, will gain more mayors and probably win the leadership
of KL, an association of municipalities that bargains over the economy
with the government. The Social Democrats now control all the major
towns: Copenhagen, Århus, Aalborg and Odense. In the latter case, a
previous mayor was reinstated, though with very low personal support.

The Liberal/Conservative government lost some ground, and even more so
when counting the number of mayors. The Liberals stand to lose nine such
positions. However, the party did win Kolding, a traditional social
democratic stronghold. The Conservatives enjoyed small gains. They kept
traditional strongholds Frederiksberg and Gentofte, lost some other
positions, while winning some others. The Danish People's Party also
gained and is now also represented in most areas, but will hold no
executive positions anywhere. In percentages, the government side
actually gained a little, unless you count the local lists as
centre-right, which is in most cases the adequate description.

Due to the success of the middle-sized parties, fewer municipalities
have absolute majorities for one party. However, some Social Democrats,
especially near Copenhagen, and also two Conservatives in the same area,
enjoy this privilege. The same is the case for the Liberals in Western
Jutland, also a traditional stronghold. In the Social Liberals' usual
stronghold, Holbæk, where they held their only post as mayor outside
Copenhagen (which has a special Swiss-like system with seven mayors),
the party collapsed from five seats to one.

The low turn-out could be a result of more centralized control by the
state of the municipalities, which therefore have less political impact
on decision-making.

This is especially so concerning the regional councils. Social Democrats
won three, the Liberals one, and one council depends on the position of
a single Social Liberal.

----------


Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap

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/scandinavia.aspx

2009-10-26

Scandinavian Politics: extremists in the media

A quick message on a tricky issue: how should parties, newspapers, other
media and society in general handle extremists, particularly right-wing
extremists?

This is a hot topic in Britain, of course, after the BBC invited the
leader of the British National Party to appear on its flagship
political-debate programme last week. Coincidentally, a very comparable
discussion has blown up here in Sweden. A week ago, the newspaper
Aftonbladet - left-leaning and part-owned by the blue-collar trade-union
confederation - surprised everyone by publishing an article by Jimmie
Åkesson, leader of the country's BNP-equivalent, the Sweden Democrats.
The contents of the article, entitled "Muslims are our greatest foreign
threat", has been furiously condemned by everyone else. The decision to
publish it has also been attacked, but not so broadly.

The BNP and the Sweden Democrats have a lot in common. Neither has seats
in the national parliament. Both have a few percent in the opinion
polls, which was enough for the BNP, but not the Sweden Democrats, to
win MEPs in June's European election. Both have roots in openly racist
organisations, which distinguishes them sharply from the Progress Party
in Norway, and even from the crude scaremongering of the Danish People's
Party.

Still, that latter Danish party has clearly inspired Åkesson. His
Aftonbladet article did not mention the sort of biological-racist and
fantasy-history stuff that the BNP still seems keen on. Instead, and as
the title suggests, Islam was the main target. This makes it harder for
mainstream politicians and media to handle - perhaps especially in Sweden.

Åkesson's article was in many ways a clever gambit. It contained a long
list of assertions about the alleged malign influence of Islam on
Sweden. Several newspapers dissected the list in minute detail, often
referring to expert opinion. "Wrong, wrong, wrong, Åkesson" was the
headline to such an analysis in Aftonbladet the next day.

The trouble is, not all of Åkesson's arguments WERE entirely wrong - or,
rather, they were not provably wrong, or they were just not considered
terribly important by the experts. For example, Åkesson's reference to
"Swedish artists who criticise or mock Islam [who live] under constant
death threats" was dismissed in Svenska Dagbladet on Wednesday by one of
those experts, a retired professor of history. "A very large number of
death threats have occurred during the last four years that don't have
anything at all to do with Islam," he pointed out, as if that made such
threats entirely trivial. Åkesson's references to sharia-law advocates
and segregated school-swimming lessons were treated in a similar fashion.

Thus, Åkesson's list was doubly provocative. First, its accusations -
vague and selective enough to be criticised, but not always demonstrably
false - cunningly persuaded Swedish newspapers to devote a lot of space
to him and his party, which doubtless delighted them.

It also illustrated the huge difficulty that the Swedish media - at
least beyond some cautious leader-columns - and mainstream politicians
have with the issues of immigration and ethnic integration. Whereas the
debate in Denmark appears almost unable to discuss anything else, in
Sweden there seems sometimes to be a blanket denial that immigration and
cultural diversity have brought any problems whatsoever. Dagens
Nyheter's reporting about, in particular, crime and violence in
immigrant-dominated Swedish suburbs contorts itself almost comically to
avoid mentioning explicitly any ethnic component.

This sort of broad, consensual support for "thinking right" (to
paraphrase one of Uppsala University's mottos) in Sweden has probably
contributed to the far right being much weaker here than it has been in
many other Scandinavian and European countries. But, at some point, it
seems plausible that a reluctance to discuss issues in a more complex
way, to "think freely", becomes politically counter-productive. That
point might just have been passed in both Britain and Sweden.

Of course, one major difference between the two countries is that
whereas the BNP have no chance of winning any seats in the national
election next year, the Sweden Democrats might. What's more, if they did
so, there is every chance that they would deprive both the left and
right blocs of a majority, and thus hold the balance of power.

Last week, the government parties were already musing about such a
scenario. Their idea is to tempt the Greens out of their red-green
alliance to secure a majority-based centre-right government. The Greens
responded with hints that, instead, the Centre or Liberal parties should
defect from their Alliance and support a centre-left government. Dagens
Nyheter proposed yesterday that each bloc should agree that the other
should form a government if it wins more seats. That would keep the
Sweden Democrats out of the government-formation process, but it might
not do much for parliamentary stability over the rest of the parliament.

Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap

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/scandinavia.aspx

2009-10-09

Scandinavian Politics: PSA conference in spring

The deadline for panel proposals for the PSA annual conference in
March-April 2010 is close to us - it's on Thursday (October 15th), to be
precise. (See www.psa.ac.uk/2010/call.html.)

If anyone has a Nordic-flavoured idea for a panel or a paper that might be
looking for a panel, do let me know.

Nick.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap

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/scandinavia.aspx

2009-09-15

Scandinavian Politics: Norwegian election outcome

For the first time since 1993, a sitting Norwegian government has
retained power after an election. After a desperately close race, which
culminated last night, the coalition of the Labour, Centre and Socialist
Left parties defied some (but not all) poll predictions to win another
parliamentary majority. The four opposition parties of the right were
left disappointed - and utterly split.

The undisputed winner was Labour, the party of the prime minister, Jens
Stoltenberg, which increased its vote significantly. Its coalition
partners both lost votes. The two main parties on the right, the
Conservatives and the Progress Party, both increased their scores, yet
failed to shift the government. Progress, yet again, achieved its
best-ever result, cementing its status as Norway's second-biggest party.
What let the right down was the disastrous performance of the Liberals,
who lost all their gains from 2005 and were left with just a couple of
seats. Their fall below the threshold for getting additional mandates
probably cost the right the election; the four opposition parties
actually won more votes than the left-of-centre trio. The Liberals'
leader, Lars Sponheim, who lost his parliamentary seat, tearfully resigned.

However, even if it had won two more seats, and thus a parliamentary
majority, it is not clear that the right could have formed a government.

Two parties had bound their own future behaviour very tightly with
self-proclaimed, and incompatible, "guarantees". Progress said that it
would not support any government from which it was excluded. The
Liberals (with only slightly less unequivocal backing from the Christian
Democrats) said that they would not support a government that had any
sort of reliance on Progress. Neither Progress nor the the Liberals will
now have to partake in a chicken game, to see which (if either of them)
would back down. But, if we assume that voters like to know what
government they are voting for, the price in votes that the right paid
for these games was surely steep. The Conservatives' attempts to keep
alive the possibility of governing with the Liberals to their left,
and/or Progress to their right, only added to the uncertainty. In the
last week of the campaign, these efforts pretty much collapsed into chaos.

Here are those near-final results in full.


Socialist Left 6.1% of the vote (-2.7% compared to 2005), 11 seats (-4)
Labour 35.5% (+2.8%), 64 (+3)
Centre 6.2% (-0.3%), 11 (+/-)

Liberals 3.8% (-2.1), 2 (-8)
Christian Democrats 5.6% (-1.2%), 10 (-1)
Conservatives 17.2% (+3.1), 30 (+7)
Progress 22.9% (+0.9), 41 (+3)

turnout 73.7% (-3.7% - the lowest since 1927)


More analysis will follow in the coming days.

Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap

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/scandinavia.aspx

2009-09-07

Scandinavian Politics: news and conference idea

Brief news about Nordic Politics and Nordic-flavoured political science
follows.


1. POLITICS LATEST. Election fever is gripping NORWAY in the run-up to
the parliamentary election a week today. All sorts of outcomes still
seem possible, but it's looking less likely that the right will win back
power. Furthest out on that flank, the Conservatives have kept open the
possibility of some sort of deal with the Progress Party. But, on the
centre-right, the Christians and Liberals have ruled out anything of the
sort.

Some polls have suggested that the sitting coaltion of Labour, the
Centre and the Socialist Left might yet retain their majority. If those
parties collectively fall short, however, some observers reckon that
Labour might well prefer to govern alone as a single-party minority
government, rather than in a minority coalition.

In SWEDEN, the red-green alliance of Social Democrats, Greens and the
Left, which was inspired by its Norwegian counterpart, stepped up its
efforts yesterday with the publication of a joint article, resembling a
basic seven-point common platform. Interestingly, the red-greens have
edged ahead of the governing coalition in the polls recently, a
development that, as quite often in Sweden, seems to have no obvious,
immediate political cause. Perhaps growing unemployment is finally
taking its toll on the government's support.

Talking of party alliances, and in the words of Flemming Juul
Christiansen of Aarhus University, "a new pre-electoral coalition [was]
definitely born" in DENMARK at the end of August. It comprises the
Social Democrats, whose own poll figures continue to look anemic, and
the seemingly unstoppably rising Socialist People Party.

On August 28th, the two opposition parties presented themselves as a
common alternative to the present government, based on four joint policy
statements, most notably one on tax (introducing, among other elements,
a special tax for people earning more than DKr1m a year), all captured
under the name "Fair Forandring" (Fair Change - an intersting use of the
English word). Posters featuring the two party leaders have also been
printed.

Flemming asks: "Where does this leave the Social Liberals, the
traditional kingmakers of Danish politics, who, with 7-8 seats, gained
significant influence in the governments of the 1990s?" He reckons that
the two allies assume that the Social Liberals will support them, "and
they are probably right". Still, while the Social Liberals do clearly
advocate a change of government, they are currently against the
"symbolic politics" of the "millionaire's tax", as well as the
alliance's decision not to challenge the government on its tough
immigration and enthnic-integration policies.

Many will have heard about the party-finance "scandal" in FINLAND, which
unfolded over the summer. As at least one Finnish colleague has pointed
out to me, it is not exactly extraordinary that trade unions have funded
left-wing parties and big business has funded right-wing parties, even
if such finance has been kept from the public eye. On the other hand,
that public companies have donated significantly to parties across the
spectrum does raise serious questions about what they hoped to get out
of it. If anyone on the list would like to write a fuller account of
this affair, do let me know.

Finally, in ICELAND, the government of the Social Democratic Alliance
and the People's Movement has just about held together, despite the
latter being much less happy than the former with the terms of the
country's deal with Britain and the Netherlands .


2. Then there's the PSA CONFERENCE in Edinburgh at the end of March
2010. I've received the following letter from the convenor.

----------
PSA SPECIALIST GROUPS AT PSA 2010, EDINBURGH
SCANDINAVIAN POLITICS

I am writing to you as convenor of the PSA 60th Anniversary Annual
Conference in Edinburgh in 2010. You will no doubt have seen the call
for papers circulated, along with other preliminary information about
the conference, which runs from 29 March to 1 April 2010.

In 2010 the conference will be entirely city centre-based, with all the
venues for registration, meeting rooms, book exhibition, conference
receptions and the annual dinner in and around George Street in
Edinburgh. This is close to the main railway station and the airport bus
link, with a vast choice of coffee bars and restaurants on hand. I think
it will be one of the most vibrant locations the PSA has ever had.

We have also introduced some innovations to the conference format. In
addition to the usual stand-alone panels, we are offering two
possibilities for workshops for more in-depth discussion and perhaps for
developing ideas and content for books or special issues of journals. We
thought these formats would be especially useful for the PSA's
Specialist Groups:

1. one-day workshops on Monday 29 March, the day preceding the main
conference (Tuesday 30 March to Thursday 1 April). We have a number of
venues available for such workshops and would be able to offer them at a
cost of £75 per participant, including lunch, and

2. workshops loosely modelled on those of ECPR which would run as
sequence of sessions through the main part of the conference. Many
specialist groups have already moved in this direction with three or
four panels organised around a particular theme. We would like to extend
this model and encourage proposals for between six and eight linked
sessions, to which we would allocate a meeting room for the whole
sequence of sessions. As part of the main conference, these workshops
would fall within the standard conference fee/day rates.

Additionally we have extended the Specialist Groups speaker competition
to help support workshops proposals, and increased its budget.

I would like to encourage you to think of these new formats when
developing your programme for PSA 2010. The general deadline for
submission of proposals (online only) is 25 September. If you would need
a little more time to arrange your sessions/workshops that will be
acceptable, but I would appreciate it if you would let me know.

Finally, it would be good to know as soon as possible if your Specialist
Group would like to convene a business meeting during the conference,
and an indication of when you would like this to take place. It is not
possible to guarantee your preference, but we will do our best to
accommodate you.

Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you need any more information.
Further details, guidance and booking forms are available at
http://www.psa.ac.uk/2010/.

With best wishes

Charlie Jeffery
PSA 2010 Convenor
----------

Please let me know if anyone likes the sound of any of these formats and
would like to propose something Nordic-orientated.

Something similar can be said of the following, which I've also received.

----------
CALL FOR PAPERS: PSA 60TH ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE, EDINBURGH, 29 MARCH –
1 APRIL 2010

Deadline for paper proposals: 15 September 2009

Title: Party leadership in Western Europe: Strictly Personal?
Convenors: Duncan McDonnell (Turin) and James Newell (Salford)

The Italian Politics Specialist Group and the French Politics and Policy
Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association envisage
sponsoring a workshop on the above topic at the Association's annual
conference to be held in Edinburgh in March/April 2010.

For several years there has in most western European democracies been a
growing 'personalization' of political leadership as a result of
well-known processes of change having to do with

• the role of the mass media in rendering the lives of the individuals
who walk on the public stage 'much more visible than they ever were in
the past' (Thompson, 2000: 6) and allowing politicians to present
themselves not just as leaders, but as 'one of us';

• the switch from 'party-' to 'candidate-centred' campaigning –
declining ideological conflict having shifted attention from position to
valence issues and thus to candidates' competence; television and other
electronic media, by allowing candidates to appeal directly to voters,
having diminished the requirement for good party organisation and thus
the attention to party itself in campaigns;

• the role of declining ideological conflict in shifting the political
battleground to the terrain of morality – with parties increasingly
attempting to compete by fomenting scandal – and thus a growing focus on
matters of personal integrity;

• the rise of 'personal parties' (Calise, 2000), founded (or
re-launched) and led by individuals, with political communication
strategies being almost entirely focussed on these leaders.

But while the causes and concomitants of personal leadership have been
much explored, much less attention has been paid to its possible effects
in terms of the significance of individual leaders. Consequently,
fundamental questions remain unanswered – not least the question of
whether the heightened focus – in political competition – on leaders and
their personal qualities has been accompanied by any growth in their
actual power. This raises a range of closely related questions, such as:
If their power has increased, to what extent, in seeking to understand
political processes and processes of political change, must we now pay
greater attention than we once did to matters of political agency as
compared to matters of structure? What are the factors that account for
the emergence and growth of unusually powerful party leaders? That is,
what are the factors that obstruct and enhance their efforts to act as
significant agents of change?

We invite papers exploring, from a single-country or a cross-national
perspective, any of these themes. We are especially interested in
studies of personal party leadership which could shed light on the
Italian experience and the extent to which the role of an unusually
powerful leader like Silvio Berlusconi represents a uniquely Italian
phenomenon as opposed to being merely a rather extreme example of a more
widespread, cross-national phenomenon. However, papers that explore the
foregoing themes by drawing on alternative comparisons in Western Europe
are equally welcome.

Paper abstracts (circa 250 words) should be e-mailed by 15 September to:
Duncan McDonnell (duncan.mcdonnell@unito.it ) and Jim Newell
(j.l.newell@salford.ac.uk)

For more information, please visit the conference website at:
http://www.psa.ac.uk/2010/
----------


Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap

2009-09-01

[Fwd: Call for applications: mobility fellowships for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers]

Perhaps of interest for some members of our list.

Nick.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap

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/scandinavia.aspx


-------- Ursprungligt meddelande --------
Ämne: Call for applications: mobility fellowships for PhD students and
postdoctoral researchers
Datum: Wed, 26 Aug 2009 11:02:57 +0300
Från: Heidi Haggrén <heidi.haggren@helsinki.fi>

Dear recipient,

Please circulate this mail among your colleagues and networks.

Best wishes,
Heidi Haggrén

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Nordic Centre of Excellence: The Nordic Welfare State - Historical
foundations and Future Challenges (NordWel) announces mobility
fellowships for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers working
within the research themes of the Centre.

The mobility fellowship covers a 2 - 12 months visit in one of the
institutions participating in the Centre in the time period between
1 January 2010 - 30 July 2011.

For more information see the attachments or the link below:
http://blogs.helsinki.fi/nord-wel/mobility/mobility-fellowships/


--
Heidi Haggrén, M.Soc.Sc.
Coordinator
NCoE NordWel
Nordic Centre of Excellence: The Nordic Welfare State - Historical
Foundations and Future Challenges

Dept. of Social Science History
P.O. Box 54 (Snellmaninkatu 14A)
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki

Tel +358 (0)9 191 249 58
Fax +358 (0)9 191 249 42
E-mail heidi.haggren@helsinki.fi
Www: http://blogs.helsinki.fi/nord-wel/


----- End forwarded message -----

2009-08-05

Scandinavian Politics: latest

Here's some news from four Nordic countries, as their party politics
awakes from summer-induced catatonia.


* In DENMARK, Sven Auken has died. He was vice-chairman of parliament
and had at various times been minister of the environment, energy and
labour, and Social Democratic leader, but never prime minister.

As my colleague Flemming Juul Christiansen (Aarhus University) has
noted, "he was one of the first Danish cand.scient.pols. here from the
Department of Political Science in Aarhus, where he also held his only
employed position in the beginning of the 1970s before getting elected
to parliament in 1971, always from Aarhus." Jacob Christensen
(University of Southern Denmark), meanwhile, has a typically thoughtful
piece on Auken's career on his blog (http://jacobchristensen.name).


* In NORWAY, the campaign before the election on September 14th kicked
off yesterday with a joint press conference by the leaders of the three
government parties, Labour, the Centre and the Socialist Left. They
specified seven pledges, some of them fairly uncontroversial (jobs,
public services, law and order, "international solidarity"), one or two
a bit livelier (no to privatising schools). Rather more interesting was
the comment of the Centre's leader. This is the first time that her
party has held office together with the left-wing parties, and she
underlined its commitment to the coalition by saying that the Centre had
achieved more with them than it had in previous alliances.

Polls suggest that the government has every chance of retaining power,
but without its current parliamentary majority. The parties to its right
could well win a collective majority - but they are split. Easily the
biggest of them is the Progress Party, but it is persona non grata to
the Christian Democrats and the Liberals. The latter have indicated that
they would prefer a left-wing government to one that included Progress;
and, for its part, Progress has said it will oppose any government that
it is left out of.


* In FINLAND, meanwhile, an MP for the opposition Social Democrats,
Antti Kalliomäki, has caused a bit of a stir by suggesting that his
party abandon the system, which some call the "triangle drama", in which
two of the three big parties gang up in government while the third leads
the opposition. Kalliomäki reckons that the current government is too
far removed ideologically from his own Social Democrats for his party to
consider joining either of the government's main components, the Centre
and the Conservatives, in a future coalition.

Another step towards the sort of right-left, two-bloc system that has
become increasingly rigid in Denmark, Norway and Sweden? Perhaps not.
Kalliomäki's alternative is to include all six opposition parties in an
alternative coalition. As these six include the Christian Democrats and
even the right-populist True Finns, the scenario is scarcely realistic,
even in Finland. But it has got people talking.


* Finally, in SWEDEN, a rare thing happened yesterday: a political
resignation. Marianne Samuelsson was not a front-line politician,
although she had previously been co-leader of the Greens. Instead, she
was a regional governor, of Gotland. Such government-appointed positions
are usually shared out between figures from all the parties.

Samuelsson's fall was caused by her being secretly recorded by a
subordinate. She was caught saying that a businessman, with a lot of
local employees, should be exempted from the planning-permission laws
that he had breached in extending his home. Gotland can't just live on
tourism, she said, clearly implying that individual employers had to be
kept sweet so that their operations would remain on the island. It was
hard to see how she could continue after so flagrantly breaching the
principle of equality before the law. She had apparently wanted to do
so, however, until she was bluntly told to resign yesterday by the
municipalities minister (a Christian Democrat).

Maybe special treatment for influential individuals is actually
commonplace, as Samuelsson also implied in her unwitting broadcast.
Still, there's no need to feel too sorry for her. She won't be
unemployed. Instead, she'll be given other duties in the government
offices, though it hasn't been decided exactly what they will be.


Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap

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/scandinavia.aspx

2009-07-28

Scandinavian Politics: Iceland's EU application

Two items for members of the Scandinavian Politics list.


1. ICELAND AND THE EU. Yesterday Iceland's prime minister, Johanna
Sigurdardottir, handed in her country's application for EU membership.
Although the Union's Council of Ministers denied that Iceland will get
special treatment, it did agree to pass the application straight to the
Commission, which might produce its opinion in as little as six months.
Iceland thus speeds past Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey in the queue for
membership. Only then, however, will the real bargaining about terms of
membership start. And then there's an advisory referendum in Iceland on
those terms. Accession might happen two years from now at the very earliest.

The negotiations, and the referendum, may not be at all easy for the
government - not least because it is far from united in its
Euro-enthusiasm. Getting a mandate from parliament for the application
was a close-run affair.

The Independence Party, booted into opposition in April's election,
proposed that there should be two referendums, one on the application
itself, another on the terms of membership. That idea won public backing
prior to the vote from MPs representing the Left-Green Movement - which
is in government in coalition with Sigurdardottir's Social Democratic
Alliance. That wasn't so surprising: the coalition parties had agreed to
exempt the EU issue from their parliamentary alliance. But the
double-referendum plan also won support from MPs from the hitherto
pro-EU Citizens Movement. There was speculation that, despite their
agreement, the coalition between the Alliance and the Left-Greens might
be wrecked by a negative vote.

In the end, though, the government's resolution was passed by 33 votes
to 28, with two abstentions. Party discipline was generally weak: MPs
from all five parliamentary parties voted for the application.

As for the public, enthusiasm for EU membership has apparently been
falling, and the polls suggest that supporters and opponents are about
level. With fishing likely to be as contentious an issue as ever,
Iceland's accession is far from certain. Still, the Norwegian
Conservatives, that country's most EU-positive party, has already
sounded keen to use the application to get the issue back on the
political agenda there. They have accused the Labour Party, whose top
figures are nearly all pro-EU, of meekly submitting to its much smaller
coalition partners' Euroscepticism. Pressure has also been put on the
Progress Party to come off the fence on the issue, which the party is
very keen to avoid. Were Iceland to join the Union, the European
Economic Area - the foundation of Norway's relationship to the Union and
its market - would comprise only the EU, Norway and Liechtenstein.


2. PSA CONFERENCE 2009. The call is now out for panel proposals for the
conference in Edinburgh on March 29th to April 1st 2010
(www.psa.ac.uk/2010).

An interesting suggestion has come in from the Italian Politics
Specialist Group and the French Politics and Policy Specialist Group,
which "envisage sponsoring a workshop" on the topic of "Party Leadership
in Western Europe: Strictly Personal?"

Any interest in offering a paper for such a panel (or maybe panels)? Or
any ideas for other, Nordic-related panels? Let me have your thoughts or
requests for more information.


Meanwhile, summer may be winding down in the Nordic countries, but it's
just getting going elsewhere. Whatever, I hope you're enjoying it.

Nick.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap

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/scandinavia.aspx

2009-07-03

Scandinavian Politics: latest

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

Three notices.


1. EUROPEAN ELECTIONS. You may have noted that not a word has been heard
from me about these, which took place nearly a month ago. Let me
belatedly put that right.

* FINLAND. Tapio Raunio of Tampere University was quickly out with his
report for the Sussex-based European Parties Elections and Referendums
Network (EPERN). His paper can be read on the network's website
(www.sussex.ac.uk/sei/1-4-2-2.html).

* SWEDEN. The authors of the EPERN report on Sweden - namely, me and
Malena Rosén Sundström, who works at Lund University - were out of the
blocks rather more slowly. But I attach a draft of our report.

* DENMARK. This, too, will appear in due course on the EPERN site.
Meanwhile, let me refer you (as usual) to Jacob Christensen's blog
(http://jacobchristensen.name/tag/europe-2009/).


2. NORWAY AND EUROPE. For anyone who's interested in this topic (and who
wouldn't be?), and who can read Norwegian, you might be interested in an
informative new blog on the subject, run by several journalists. It's
called Europabloggen.no.


3. THE SWEDISH PRESIDENCY. The day before yesterday, Sweden took over
the presidency of the EU Council of Ministers. High on the list of
priorities will be getting the Lisbon treaty through, building up to the
big climate-change conference in Copenhagen in December, EU-level
financial-market regulation, and the "Stockholm programme" of
justice-and-home-affairs co-operation.


Otherwise, have a fine summer.


Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap

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/scandinavia.aspx

2009-05-29

Scandinavian Politics: more on the future

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

* ICELAND. You'll know by now that the Icelandic coalition between the
social democratic Alliance and the Left-Greens has been formally
renewed. As I understand it, the issue of seeking EU membership, which
divides the coalition partners, will be handled through relaxing
coalition discipline when the issue is debated in parliament. This
appears to be quite a concession by the Left-Greens, because a pro-EU
majority in parliament looks quite likely.

* OUR GROUP'S FUTURE. You'll recall that I wrote previously about the
new demands that the PSA will make of its specialist groups, including a
requirement that "all specialist groups charge membership fees".

I listed a number of ways in which we might want to respond. Many thanks
to all of you who offered suggestions on these various scenarios. One of
them (number 2), in which "someone else - ideally, but not absolutely
necessarily, based in Britain - takes over the job of convenor (and
announcement maker, and constitution drafter, and membership-fee
administrator)" - now looks likely to be implemented. In other words,
someone else has volunteered to take over the management of our group,
and I am favourably disposed to the suggestion.

Now, our group is a very loose institution and entirely undemocratic in
character (though that will have to change, at the PSA's behest). But I
thought it best to float this prospect among list members anyway, just
to keep everyone informed. Do let me know if anyone has any thoughts on
the issue.

More news as and when.

Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap

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/scandinavia/

2009-05-20

Scandinavian Politics: Lectureship in European Politics

Claudio Radaelli at the University of Exeter has alerted me to the
vacancy detailed below, which he reckons might be of interest to
Scandinavian Politics group members.

Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/samhallsvetenskaper

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/scandinavia/


The Department of Politics at the University of Exeter seeks to appoint
a full time fixed-term lecturer for three-years, to support its
research-led strategy for growth. Since 2002, the Department of Politics
doubled in size to 31 members staff and it has established itself as a
centre for leading international research in Politics and International
Relations and is among the top 10 departments in the UK based on RAE
2008 - 6th for world leading research (scored 4), 9th for research of
international excellence (scored 3 or better) and 10th on GPA across all
elements.

Detailed information about the Department and our research/teaching can
be found at: http://www.huss.ex.ac.uk/politics/index.htm

Fixed-term full-time Lecturer (three years) in the Department of Politics

We invite applications for a 3 year lecturer post in any subfield of
political science and international relations but are particularly
interested in areas were the department would like to expand such as
international political economy (critical, quantitative or
qualitative-comparative), comparative politics, organizational studies,
and political psychology. The successful candidate will be expected to
contribute to the teaching of core modules on EU institutions at the UG
and MA level and to take part in the implementation of the activities of
the Centre for European Governance by taking responsibility for the
organization of a seminar series during term-time. The latter is a
university-recognized centre and a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence,
hosting two Jean Monnet Chairs.

Applicants should have a completed PhD, in political science or related
field, and have a proven record of, or clear potential to produce,
published research of international excellence and generate research
income. The successful candidates will also be expected to develop
research grant applications, individually or in departmental teams. We
have a pro-active mentoring system in the department and a collegial
approach to developing research projects and planning publications.

The department is committed to research skills training at all levels of
teaching and candidates with advanced training and experience in
research methods are highly desirable.

The starting salary will be in the range £31,513 - £35,469 pa.

This post is available from 1 September 2009

Informal enquires to Professor Susan Banducci, Head of Politics: Tel 00
44 (0)1392 263170; email s.a.banducci@exeter.ac.uk.

Application packs are available from
http://www.admin.ex.ac.uk/personnel/jobs/T11N2033.pdf

e-mail hradmin@exeter.ac.uk; quoting reference number T11N2033.

The closing date for completed applications is 12 noon 3 June 2009.

The University of Exeter is an equal opportunity employer and promotes
diversity in its workforce and, whilst all applicants will be judged on
merit alone, is particularly keen to consider applications from groups
currently underrepresented in the workforce.

Please contact: hradmin@exeter.ac.uk <mailto:hradmin@exeter.ac.uk>

2009-05-19

[Fwd: Call for applications: mobility fellowships]

This may be of interest to some members of the list.

Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap

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/scandinavia/


-------- Ursprungligt meddelande --------
Ämne: Call for applications: mobility fellowships
Datum: Fri, 15 May 2009 12:20:57 +0300
Från: Anna Alanko <anna.alanko@helsinki.fi>

Dear recipients,

please forward the below message and attachment to suitable mailing
lists. Thank you for your co-operation.

With best wishes,
Anna Alanko
Coordinator,
NCoE NordWel


**
Dear recipients,

The Nordic Centre of Excellence: The Nordic Welfare State - Historical
Foundations and Future Challenges (NordWel) announces mobility fellowships
for postdoctoral researchers working within the research themes of the
Centre.

The mobility fellowship covers a 2 - 12 months visit in one of the
institutions participating in the Centre in the time period between 1
January 2010-30 July 2011 (please see the attachments for details).

For more information see the attachment or the link below:
http://blogs.helsinki.fi/nord-wel/mobility/mobility-fellowships/

With best regards,

Anna Alanko

--
Anna Alanko
Coordinator
NCoE NordWel
Nordic Centre of Excellence: The Nordic Welfare State - Historical
Foundations and Future Challenges

Dept. of Social Science History
P.O. Box 54 (Snellmaninkatu 14A)
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki

Tel +358 (0)9 191 249 58
Fax +358 (0)9 191 249 42
E-mail anna.alanko@helsinki.fi
Www: http://blogs.helsinki.fi/nord-wel/

----- Välitetty viesti päättyy -----

2009-04-26

Scandinavian Politics: Icelandic election

Greetings to all on the Scandinavian Politics list.

Yesterday there was an early parliamentary election in Iceland,
occasioned by the collapse in January of the previous government after
extraordinary public demonstrations. Here are some background and some
key points.

* From 1995 the Independence Party, which spans the broad ideological
right in a rather un-Nordic way, had governed in coalition with the
agrarian flavoured Progressive Party. The latter secured the prime
minister's job in 2004.

The Progressive Party did badly in the 2007 election, however.
Afterwards, the social democratic Alliance (the result of a merger in
1999-2000) stepped in to replace it as the Independence Party's
coalition partner. (Such ostensibly "unconnected" coalitions are not
that unusual in Iceland.)

* Then came last autumn's economic catastrophe. The Independence Party
seemed to take most of the popular flak for it, having been in power so
long and having, allegedly, formed unhealthily intimate ties to the
discredited banking elite. (David Oddsson, the party's leader and prime
minister from 1991 to 2004, went straight to being head of the central
bank.)

* After the government's resignation nearly three months ago, an
Alliance minister, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir - or, minus the Icelandic
letters, Johanna Sigurdardottir - took over as prime minister, after
bringing the Left-Green Movement (originally refuseniks from the parties
that formed the Alliance) into government to replace the Independence Party.

* Yesterday the two government parties won the combined left's first
ever parliamentary majority. Predictably, the Independence Party got
hammered, getting its worst-ever score, although it didn't fall behind
the Left-Greens, as some polls had predicted. The Progressive Party did
well, too.

* So too did one new party, the Citizens Movement, formed by people
involved in the protests that saw off the previous government. Its
hastily concocted platform seems to constitute an intriguing sort of
populism, with the sort of demands for more direct democratic mechanisms
(referendums, personal-preference voting, fewer parliamentary seats,
term limits for MPs) that we might recognise from right-wing populists,
but combined with demands for higher taxes rather than public-spending
cuts to pay back Iceland's loan from the IMF. Obervers seem to see the
party as more inclined to the left than to the right. (Source: the
Swedish-language Islandsbloggen.) The right-populist-tinged Liberals, on
the other hand, lost all their seats.

* Of the 63 MPs in the new parliament, 27 are themselves new and 26 are
women. (Source: IceNews.)

* Here are those results in full (plus comparison with the 2007
performance).

Left-Green Movement - 14 seats (+5), 21.7% (+7.4%)
Alliance - 20 seats (+2), 29.8% (+3%)

Citizens Movement - 4 seats (-), 7.2% (-)

Progressive Party - 9 seats (+2), 14.8% (+3.1%)
Liberals - 0 seats (-4), 2.2% (-5.1%)
Independence Party - 16 seats (-9), 23.7% (-12.9%).

turnout: 85.1% (+1.5%)

(Sources: Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, RUV; Parties and
Elections in Europe.)

* Despite their success, it is not absolutely certain that the two
government parties will continue their coalition. For one major issue
divides them: whether Iceland should apply for EU membership. The
Alliance is now strongly in favour of an application, subject to a
referendum; the Left-Greens' opposition to EU membership hardened during
the campaign. The Progressive Party and (in another interesting policy
twist) the Citizens Movement are both pro-EU, meanwhile. With those two
parties jointly holding just one seat fewer than the Left-Greens, the
Alliance might just consider a majority coalition with them instead.
(See a very interesting article on the issue in the Iceland Review Online.)

Once more, we see the EU having a funny effect on Nordic party politics.

* If people with genuine knowledge of Icelandic politics would like to
correct any of the above "analysis", please feel very free to do so.

Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap

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/scandinavia/

2009-04-24

Scandinavian Politics: our group's future

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

I don't think anything massively important has happened in Nordic
politics since I last wrote. But I have three notices of a more
administrative character. NOTE: the last one is especially important.


* JOB. Nick Sitter informs me of a job in political economy that's going
at one of his places of work, the Central European University in
Budapest. I attach more details. The deadline for applications is May 16th.


* FUNDING. I've been informed that the PSA will grant us £600 this year
for our activity. This isn't a bad outcome. Please let me know of any
event - workshop, seminar, etc - that you think might deserve some of
these resources.

However, this leads directly on to the third point.


* PSA RELATIONSHIP. I've also been informed by the PSA that three new
demands are to be made by the association of its specialist groups, like
ours. The first, that "all...groups receiving funding [are] to place at
least one announcement in the PSA Newsletter", is unproblematic. The
second, that "all...groups [must] adopt a constitution", is also one we
could live with quite easily.

The third is more awkward, however. "[T]he PSA", we are told, "will now
require that all specialist groups charge membership fees -- and there
must be a discount for current PSA members...Groups may charge whatever
they want. Some may even choose to charge every two years or so. This is
all perfectly acceptable. However, there must be membership fees in
place by 15th April 2010."

I can understand why the PSA might want to insist on membership fees.
Presumably, it wants to make sure that its specialist groups are
sufficiently active to have the capacity to charge fees. It probably
also wants its subsidy to the groups to go largely to PSA members,
rather than to what it might see as free-riders, who benefit from its
munificence without contributing to the association's upkeep.

But I personally am unenthusiastic, to put it very mildly, about the
prospect of changing the Scandinavian Politics group's current structure
into something more formal. The simple reason is that I don't feel I
have the time to administer such a organisation - particularly when I
suspect that the resources that it would generate through fees would be
completely trivial.

So I reckon that the following are the options we have.

1. We bite together, as the Swedes say, and just comply with the PSA's
requirement for membership fees. As I say, though, I really don't want
to do this.

2. We comply, but someone else - ideally, but not absolutely
necessarily, based in Britain - takes over the job of convenor (and
announcement maker, and constitution drafter, and membership-fee
administrator). I would retire as convenor extremely graciously.

3. We ask for some sort of exemption, on the grounds that, as an
area-studies specialist group with members (I use the term loosely) in
lots of different countries, the administrative burden would be
unreasonable (think of all those currencies, for one thing).

4. We resign our formal status as a PSA specialist group and carry on as
we are - that is, basically a list of newsletter authors and recipients,
who occasionally organise panels at the PSA annual conference and other
academic events. Except, of course, that it wouldn't be as we are now,
for the obvious reason that we would lose our annual funding from the
association. Does that really matter? Would anyone really care?

5. We agree that, yes, of course, it's been fun; but things change, etc,
etc; and it's just time that we pursued our interests in Nordic politics
in our own separate ways.

I'm keen to get list members' reactions to these various scenarios. I'll
then make a suggestion to the group about what I think we should do.


Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap

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/scandinavia/

2009-04-05

Scandinavian Politics. Danish PM, Swedish opposition

Hej to all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

Apologies for the absence of messages recently. Here's one about
developments in Danish and Swedish politics.


1. Probably by the time you read this, DENMARK WILL HAVE A NEW PRIME
MINISTER.

Finance minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen will meet the queen today to
formalise his appointment, minutes after the incumbent since 2001,
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has popped in to submit his resignation. The
reason, as you'll doubtless know, is that Fogh Rasmussen is going to
become NATO's secretary-general. His new job had been thrown into doubt
at the last minute my Turkey's opposition to his candidacy (which,
reportedly, had prompted the German chancellor to threaten Turkey's EU
membership prospects if it wasn't dropped). But after months of rumours
and rather tiresomely unconvincing denials, Fogh Rasmussen's belated
admission late last week of his interest in the NATO job made it clear
that his time at the summit of Danish politics was over.

Løkke Rasmussen, who will also ascend to leadership of the Liberals, is
assured of the support of the other coalition party, the Conservatives,
and of the Danish People's Party, whose backing gives the government a
parliamentary majority.

But the opposition has the wind in its sails. Ten days ago the Social
Liberals, in a fairly historic statement, announced that they hoped to
govern not only with the Social Democrats, as they have often done
before, but also with the Socialist People's Party, which has taken some
hefty strides towards the political mainstream in the last couple of
years. Narrowly ahead in the polls, it will be further emboldened by
Løkke Rasmussen's being less than wildly popular among voters. He's a
more colourful character than his predecessor: he's a smoker who likes a
drink, too - and the latter trait has featured in at least one of the
less than flattering stories about his expense claims.

No election is necessary until late 2011, so Løkke Rasmussen will have
time to make his mark. The resignation on Friday of another colourful
character, welfare minister Karen Jespersen, gives him an early chance
to reshape the cabinet.


2. Meanwhile, things are not going nearly so well for the left-of-centre
OPPOSITION PARTIES IN SWEDEN.

Six months ago, polls put them up to 20 points ahead of the four
centre-right government parties. Since then, that lead has consistently
shrivelled. Yesterday one poll not only put the governing quartet ahead,
it even gave the Moderates, the dominant party in the coalition, a
significant lead over the Social Democrats, whose support has seemingly
collapsed. The economic situation, meanwhile, is disastrous. So what's
going on?

One short-term cause, which the Social Democrats' new secretary-general
has acknowledged, is a desperately embarrassing twist to a controversial
issue that will be familiar in lots of countries - namely, the excessive
rewards claimed by corporate executives. The left-wing parties were
preparing to make hay with the eyebrow-raising pay rises and other
benefits that various bosses, including those of banks in precarious
financial positions, had obtained. But then it emerged that one
particularly grotesque act of self-aggrandisement had occurred in a big
pensions provider, AMF - on whose board sits Wanja Lundby-Wedin, chair
of the trade-union confederation LO and member of the Social Democrats'
executive committee. Her furious protests that she had been mislead by
others in the company over the issue have not won widespread sympathy in
the Swedish media.

But there may be other, longer-term causes of this remarkable turnaround
in political fortunes. One is that it's hard to blame the government for
the main cause of the economic downturn, which is the drastic fall in
demand in Sweden's' main export markets. Unlike in Britain, for example,
the Swedish government's finances were in robust shape when the
recession started to bite. It may be that these considerations have
reinforced Swedish voters' tendency to rally behind their current
leaders in times of crisis.

But yesterday's opinion poll also marks the culmination of a dreadful
period for the Social Democrats' leader, Mona Sahlin.

For a year and a half after the 2006 election, she could do little wrong
- mainly because she hardly did anything at all, at least publicly.
Instead, she kept her head down and concentrated on renewing her party's
policy platform, a task that she delegated to several party commissions.
Then, however, she made her only really big decision so far - and it
looks like it might prove to be a huge mistake.

As I wrote to the list in December, Sahlin stumbled badly when her own
party forced her to include the Left Party in the pre-electoral alliance
that she wanted to form with the Greens. Her initial reason for
excluding the Left was its reluctance to commit itself to existing and
quite restrictive rules on budget finance. That tactic proved
unfortunately timed once nearly all Western governments had decided that
budget discipline is now, as one columnist put it, all very 1990s.

More fundamental, however, is the fact that the three members of this
nascent red-green alliance are - in marked contrast the centre-right
four when they formed their Alliance for Sweden - still quite far apart
ideologically. This was cunningly exposed by the governing parties in
February, when they announced a major policy turn towards nuclear power.
To the dismay of many in her party, but presumably at the behest of her
deeply anti-nuclear alliance partners, Sahlin immediately declared her
continued support for decommissioning the industry, which is not popular
these days among voters. (All three parties have since rowed back from
this a bit.)

Perhaps above all, it has also become increasingly clear that the Social
Democrats have had little to say about the economic crisis. The party's
policy commissions are due to finalise their work only in the run-up to
this autumn's party congress. As the economic context has changed, what
seemed a year ago like patience now looks like paralysis. And now, even
before the party has decided what it thinks about major issues, it needs
to co-ordinate with two other parties with some very different positions.

No wonder Sahlin has cut an unhappy figure recently. The argument that
the party should stick to its traditional strategy of running its own
election campaign and trying to form a government after the vote, rather
than making pre-electoral commitments to govern with other parties, may
just have been right all along.


Have a good Easter.


Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/statsvetenskap

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/scandinavia/

2009-02-24

Scandinavian Politics: new Danish PM?

Hej to all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

While the fate of its car-making industry is the hottest story in Sweden
(and it looks pretty grim), the following - courtesy of my colleague
Flemming Juul Christiansen of the University of Aarhus - is what's
happening, and what might be about to happen, in Denmark.

-----

The Danish government today presented its tax reform proposal. It will
reduce taxation, especially for people with high incomes. The stated
purpose is to create incentives for work. The reform is underfinanced to
begin with, in order to help the economy. But in the long run – there
are in-built effects until 2019 - it is financed by increased taxation
on fat in foods, pollution, tobacco and soft water, as well as reduced
value of deductions. A proposal to cut student subsidies did not become
part of the proposal. The government is almost certain to have the
support of the Danish People's Party for a proposal very close to the
one presented.

At the same time, rumours abound as to why the prime minister, Anders
Fogh Rasmussen, has announced that he himself tomorrow will take
questions in the Folketing and thereby have a reason to make 'a special
announcement'. The speculation is that he will resign to become general
secretary of NATO. In that case, his successor would be elected at the
beginning of April. But that is not completely certain. If Fogh
Rasmussen does depart, there is no doubt that it will be the finance
minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who is also vice chairman of the Liberal
Party, who will take over. He would be the third consecutive prime
minister with the name Rasmussen.

-----

Nick Aylott.
--
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

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/scandinavia/

2009-02-05

Scandinavian Politics: 2008 report, Nordic politics latest

Hej to all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

This is primarily to let you know that our group's annual report and
application for further funding from the PSA has now been submitted. It
can be found at our group's website - which, incidentally, has been
revamped somewhat, with what I hope are much better archives of previous
messages and files (Google apps really are fantastically useful), and a
new URL, too (see below).

Remember that this PSA funding is dependent on our maintaining activity.
So if you have an idea for a Nordic-politics-related seminar or workshop
during 2009, several hundred pounds from our specialist group might be
available.

Moreover, even though we won't formally have a panel there, around £150
is available to postgraduate students (and possibly others, too)
attending the PSA conference in Manchester in April 2008, to help with
travel and the conference fee. All they need to be doing is presenting a
Nordic-politics-related paper. Those interested should get in touch with
me as soon as possible.

Now just a few extra words about politics in the Nordic countries - and
for once it isn't Denmark where the most interesting things are happening.

In SWEDEN, trouble is brewing in two of the government parties, the
Christian Democrats and the Centre, on the subject of energy policy. A
few days ago, the Christian Democrats' leader announced that it was
reversing its opposition to the construction of new nuclear power
plants. Now it sounds likely that the Centre could do the same - which,
given the party's profound historical opposition to nuclear power, would
be a huge policy turn, guaranteed to spark deep internal opposition.
(The other two coalition parties, the Liberals and the Moderates, are
both keen on nuclear energy.)

More intra-coalition difficulties, though of a somewhat different type,
have emerged in NORWAY. In revising the country's blasphemy laws, the
Centre Party leader wanted to extend the prohibition of racially
offensive language to include a ban on (and this could be a dodgy
translation) "sigificant attacks on religion or perspectives on life".
Naturally, this proposal was coldly received by defenders of free
expression in (nearly) all parties.

For the sake of coalition unity, Labour leader and prime minister, Jens
Stoltenberg, promised not only to back the plan, but even to enforce his
party whip in parliament to get it through - which provoked more
ill-feeling, voiced publicly by, among others, former party leader
Thorbjørn Jagland. Even as Stoltenberg stuck to his position, however,
the Centre's leader was deciding that the proposal was politically
untenable, and she then withdrew it. Embarrassment all round.

But, of course, ICELAND remains the centre of attention. Its new
minority government, comprising the social democratic Alliance and the
Left-Green Movement, took office at the start of the week. New elections
are planned for April 25th. The new prime minister is the Alliance
leader, Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir, and one of her first moves was firmly to
encourage the three governers of the central bank to resign. (For what
it's worth, Sigurdardóttir is apparently the world's first openly gay
head of government.)

Incidentally, thanks to Mary Hilson for reminding me that a good source
of news from Iceland is the Iceland Review (www.icelandreview.com). (Its
RSS feed stopped abruptly just the Iceland banks collapsed, so I'd
assumed that it too had gone under. But the feed's address had just
changed.)

Nick Aylott.
--
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

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/scandinavia/

2009-01-27

Scandinavian Politics: Iceland's government falls

Hej to all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

Just a very brief note, in a very busy week, on developments in Nordic
politics.

In FINLAND and SWEDEN, the parties are putting together their candidate
lists for the European elections in June. This is a fascinating process,
but I won't go into it here (except to mention that the Swedish
Christian Democrats have got themselves into a right pickle in trying to
keep one of their more conservative figures away from proceedings).

The same thing is happening is DENMARK, but this has been rather
overshadowed by the opening of parliamentary hearings (in which my
compatriot, Ian Manners of the Danish Institute for International
Studies, has been centrally involved) into Denmark's relationship with
the European single currency. The pegged exchange-rate between the krone
and euro has forced the Danish central bank to raise interest rates in
the middle of a recession, à la 1992, which is not very desirable.

The prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has said that a new
referendum on the subject would require support from all the pro-EU
parties, which excludes his government's usual supporters in the Danish
People's Party, but which these days includes the Socialist People's
Party. It's leader, the wily Villy Søvndahl, sounds sceptical; but his
conditions for his party's support for a referendum don't seem
insurmountable. Agreeing to a referendum would remove another obstacle
to the Socialist People's Party's cementing a Norwegian- and
Swedish-style alliance with the Social Democrats (Søvndahl's party has
also been outlining its plans for government, which confirm its move
towards the centre).

But it's ICELAND where, as you've probably heard, it's all happening.

Pressure had been steadily building on the governing coalition of the
broad right-wing Independence Party and the social democratic Alliance.
Protests at the govermnent's and the central bank's handling of the
country's economic catastrophe have been escalating, and, remarkably for
Iceland, turning increasingly violent. On Friday the Independence prime
minister, Geir Haarde, conceded that an early election could be held, in
May (as well as announcing that he was suffering from cancer). On Sunday
the Social Democratic minister of commerce resigned, and called for the
head of the financial regulator to do the same. His party leader,
foreign minister Ingibjorg Gisladottir (herself recovering from the
removal of a brain tumour), called for the head of the central bank -
long-serving former Independence prime minister David Oddsson - to
resign, too. Yesterday the government collapsed.

President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson has asked Gisladottir to try to form a
government, and she's currently negotiating with the Left-Green Movement
over a minority administration. One possible consequence is a quick move
to start an Icelandic application for EU membership, something that's
taken up in this week's Economist
(www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12972641). The
FT's coverage of Iceland's crisis is also good (www.ft.com/iceland).

Nick Aylott.
--
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

2009-01-14

Scandinavian Politics: Review of 2008

Hej to all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

Mary Hilson of University College London (m.hilson@ucl.ac.uk) has kindly
offered members of the list an exclusive preview of her summary of
Nordic politics in 2007, which she's compiled for the Annual Register (a
journal that, according to its website, "began publication in
1758...[and]...is now published by Longmans").

Mary writes that the Register's editor "has agreed that I can circulate
this to the list, as long as it is made clear that this is appearing in
the Annual Register and that it should not be quoted or cited without
permission." Mary also says that she would welcome "any comments on
content, accuracy, etc".

I attach the entry.

Best,

Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/samhallsvetenskaper

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/scandinavia/

2009-01-07

Scandinavian Politics: Danish parties

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

A happy new year to you all.

And the good news with which to kick off 2009 is that Danish party politics is as entertaining and fascinating as ever. The following account of this week's events was written mainly by Flemming Juul Christiansen of Aarhus University, with contributions from Jacob Christensen, now based at the University of Southern Denmark, and me.

-----

On Monday the leader and co-founder of New Alliance, Naser Khader, left his own party.

This originally centrist party was founded only 18 months ago. Its founding members were Khader and Anders Samuelsen, who both left the Social Liberal Party, and Gitte Seeberg, who left the Conservatives; two Liberals soon joined, too. At first the new party attracted broad support, up to 18 per cent. But after a mismanaged election campaign, it barely managed to cross the two percent threshold in the November 2007 election, and entered parliament with just five seats. Soon after, the party began to fall apart, with several MPs leaving the party, Gitte Seeberg among them. At one point, only Naser Khader and Anders Samuelsen were left, but they later they got a third seat when Seeberg resigned her parliamentary seat. The party restarted its party organisation, and later it changed its name to Liberal Alliance, with a new political programme that stressed traditional economic liberalism (especially low taxes).

In his resignation statement, Khader argued that Liberal Alliance had become to "liberalist" instead of "liberal". But it appeared that, had he not quit, Khader would have been unseated as party leader, with Samuelsen taking over. Liberal Alliance retains the right to run for the next election but it is not thought to have much chance of winning seats, even though the party now has a clear leadership – Samuelsen - and a pretty clear political programme. What you can say is that his Alliance is a record-breaker in Danish politics - losing its name, platform and four out of five MPs (including two of the party's three founders) in little over a year.

There is speculation that Khader may at some point join the Liberals or Conservatives. He has pledged, however, that he won't be forming any new parties - not least because, as he rather endearingly acknowledged, he isn't a very good party leader.

But there's more. Also on Monday, another former Social Liberal member, Simon Emil Amnitzbøll, took the initiative to form a new party, "Borgerligt centrum" ("Bourgeois Centre" is a direct rather unsatisfactory translation; note that the party itself doesn't offer any translation of its name). Its website (borgerligtcentrum.dk), which went live today, declares it to be "a new centre right party founded on liberal and humanistic values". Unlike Khader, Amnitzbøll was elected with very few personal votes. The new party will need to collect signatures to run for the next election, and this may turn out to be hard.

-----

Nick Aylott.
--
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

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