PSA Scandinavian Politics Group archive

New leader (again) for the Swedish Social Democrats

2012-01-29T11:33:00.005+01:00

Sweden's long-dominant Social Democratic Party will be hoping desperately that the appointment of a new leader, Stefan Löfven, last Friday marks the end of probably worst fortnight in the party's 123-year history. After needing just seven party leaders until 2007, it now has its third in a year.

Very briefly, the background is this. After she lost the 2010 election rather badly, a slow-motion revolt forced Mona Sahlin to resign from the Social Democratic leadership. Ten months ago, the party chose an outsider, Håkan Juholt, as her successor.

Juholt was a disaster. There was soon scandal over excessive accommodation-allowance claims. Worse was his inability to maintain coherent and consistent policy positions. Still worse was his management of Social Democrats' parliamentary group. The last straw was when, apparently rejuvenated after a month-long Christmas holiday in Mexico, Juholt appeared at an annual defence-policy conference and performed his usual trick of saying things that he then had to recant quickly. That seemed to persuade a lot of Social Democrats that things were not going to get better.

Even then, Juholt wanted to stay. But when, on January 20th, three regional branches demanded his resignation, it was finally too much. According to media reports, three members of the executive committee still backed him. Nine wanted him to go.

Then the saga became even more bizarre.

From odd to odder

The party's secretary-general, Carin Jämtin, explained on television that same Friday evening that the executive had full confidence in Juholt. Almost immediately, it became clear that she meant: "...because he has agreed to resign tomorrow". The next day he duly announced his departure - at a press conference held in a shopping mall in his home town. The secretary-general then declared, with a straight face, that his resignation had not been expected by the executive.

Except for one columnist in the left-leaning newspaper Aftonbladet, no one seems to have taken any great offence at being so blatantly lied to. (I suppose that everyone soon knew what was happening, and Jämtin obviously understood that they would.) Indeed, Jämtin's reputation has been enhanced during the crisis. The reasoning seems to have been that, if Juholt pretended to go of his own volition, the intra-party recriminations would be somehow reduced.

If anything, the next few days were even worse for the party. Fairly credible newspaper reports suggested that the executive committee, meeting in almost round-the-clock session, offered the leadership to one, two or even three former Social Democratic ministers, none of whom had been party-politically active for at least five years. Their merits seemed to be, first, their experience and, second, their lack of involvement in the poisonous personal and ideological battles that surrounded the appointments and removals of Sahlin and Juholt. In other words, and if you believe the papers, the Social Democrats - for decades Sweden's natural party of government - were actively seeking a leader with no known views on the most contentious political issues of the day. This felt like a surreal situation.

In that context, Löfven's appointment may seem like a welcome step back towards political reality. True, he backed Juholt until the end, according to the papers. That might indicate poor political judgement. It might also indicate brilliant political judgement. Juholt's supporters, some of whom have been blaming the media for his fall, can have nothing against Löfven now.

The new leader

Internal party feuds aside, Löfven is widely respected, both within the labour movement and beyond it. He has a reputation for intelligence, competence and pragmatism. In his acceptance speech, he emphasised above all the need for a credible Social Democratic policy on employment, the absence of which has been glaring for years - with dire electoral consequences.

Still, he is - or was - hardly a household name. Indeed, he is entirely untried in frontline politics. In praising the speech in which Löfven accepted the party leadership, a Social Democratic MP and party-board member conceded that he had never heard the new leader speak publicly before.

Löfven has the serious disadvantage of not being an MP. Parliamentary debates will have to be someone else's responsibility. His trade-union background - until now, he was leader of the metalworkers union - may not immediately appeal to the prosperous urban voters whom the Social Democrats desperately need to recover. As for his policy views, he is not known as much of a feminist (although he tried to scotch that reputation in his acceptance speech), and he is for nuclear power and European integration. That puts him at odds with the other left-of-centre parties, the Left and the Greens. Their new leaders, who have made strong starts, may see Löfven as someone they can take even more votes off. His positions on other central issues are opaque.

Perhaps above all, Löfven has a big weakness. Irrespective of where he wants to take the Social Democrats, he has no mandate to do it. This is because of the way he got the job. I think it illuminates a big part of how the party ended up in such a chaotic state.

Delegation, or the absence of it

Swedish organisations, including political parties, have a funny way of appointing people to leadership positions. Open competition between candidates is often frowned upon. Instead, a selection committee receives nominations, sounds out the constituency and eventually nominates a single candidate. The Social Democrats take this custom a step further. There remains a taboo against anyone actually expressing leadership ambitions. Instead, you are supposed to deny interest until the selection committee asks you. The actual election, by congress delegates, is then just a rubber stamp.

This norm has presumably evolved in order to maintain the subordination of personal ambition to the collective interest of the party and the labour movement. Yet such was the total failure of the procedure last time that there were widespread calls - within the party (especially in the youth wing), in the media and among academic commentators - for a more open process, with candidates presenting their platforms and a congress choosing between them. Three other Swedish parties have recently adopted exactly this procedure, albeit still with an election committee that eventually recommended one candidate. This weekend, the Christian Democrats' leader saw off an open challenge at a special party congress - a highly unusual event in Swedish politics.

The Social Democratic leadership, however, ignored calls for more openness (although Jämtin stated that she would ideally have preferred such a path, and pledged an inquiry into how this might be achieved in the future). For reasons that are by no means obvious, given that the next parliamentary election is not much less than three years away, it insisted that a new leader be found as quickly as possible. Its sense of urgency was apparently shared by most of the party's regional branches, whose enduring power within the organisation is illuminated during the selection of the party leader. Perhaps the leaderships of those regional branches were aware that their power would diminish if the process was conducted via competition rather than negotiation.

Whatever the motives of those involved, the executive committee quickly decided that it would nominate an acting leader for approval by the party board. That person would then be confirmed by the next ordinary party congress in 2013. There would be no special congress, nor even any selection committee.

There are various normative objections to this closed, elitest selection mechanism. Whatever your views on that, the bigger problem with it may be that it is ineffective in promoting the party's electoral objectives. The Social Democrats' underlying weakness has for years been a lack of ideas. Its failure to address employment policy is only the most visible aspect of this stagnation.

Regardless of whether Löfven, entirely untried as a politician, has the personal qualities that his predecessor lacked, his mandate for now is simply to unite the party. As far as policy is concerned, it remains unclear what the party and its new leader actually want, or even if they know what they want.

Nicholas Aylott
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm
www.sh.se/nicholasaylott

An up-date regarding the Swedish Social Democratic Party

2011-10-17T13:01:00.001+02:00

On behalf of Dr Aylott:

The agony of the Swedish Social Democratic Party just gets worse. Until a year ago, the party had managed with just six leaders since the 1930s. Soon it is likely to be looking for its third within a few months. The latest incumbent, Håkan Juholt, put on a brave performance at Wednesday's party-leaders debate in parliament. But he surely cannot recover sufficient authority to retain his job for long.

The immediate cause of Juholt's predicament might induce déjà vu in British observers. Late last week, the left-leaning tabloid Aftonbladet revealed that he had over-claimed the accommodation expenses to which a member of parliament is entitled – an eerily similar offence to that which snared so many MPs at Westminster two years ago. He confesses to no more than severe carelessness. But when exactly he became aware of the discrepancy is now – to his party's excruciating embarrassment – the subject of a preliminary investigation by the Prosecution Authority.

What all but seals Juholt's fate, though, is that his expenses are only the latest in a remarkable series of blunders since he became party leader only last spring.

His tendency to make hasty, ill-considered policy soon became all too apparent. His position on Sweden's contribution to the Western intervention in Libya over the summer changed frequently and wildly. Within the last fortnight, his draft shadow-budget caused uproar in his parliamentary group when it turned out to have little in common with his earlier left-wing signals. Party statements on the ultra-sensitive topic of immigration were spectacularly bungled. A television debate between party leaders was boycotted on flimsy grounds. Media commentators speculate that leading Social Democrats may have leaked the expenses stories, calculating that short-term calamity might be worth enduring if it ends Juholt's disastrously misjudged leadership.

The question for a political scientist has to be: how did it come to this? How did what is still Sweden's biggest party, which nearly monopolised government for so long, end up in such chaos?

European social democracy faces all sorts of long-term challenges. But I think that the Swedish party's travails have a lot to do with its own institutions, and particularly how it chooses it leaders.

Swedish parties, like many Swedish organisations, are wary of internal competition for leadership positions. When a vacancy arises, the task of filling it is usually delegated to a selection committee (valberedning), which, having conferred and consulted, will frequently recommend only a single candidate for broader confirmation. This can be a perfectly effective method of choosing leaders. But the Social Democrats have persisted with it, and in an extreme form, in entirely unsuitable circumstances.

This is a party that desperately needs an open, frank debate about its direction. Should it shift towards the centre and chase middle-class voters? Or should it rediscover what some would see as its ideological core and move left instead? Either option is quite conceivable and legitimate. The party just needs to decide which to take.

Choosing a leader would, in most other Western parties, offer an excellent opportunity to do just this. Party members would simply opt for a candidate that championed one path or the other. In Sweden, however, aspiring Social Democratic leaders are, by tradition, not supposed to pitch for the top job. Instead, they should wait for the party, in the form of the selection committee, to call. Since the Social Democrats lost the 2006 election, party members have thus never had the chance express their views in a leadership ballot – or perhaps even to decide what their views really are.

Just as bad, the leader who they eventually got in March was probably quite unprepared. Rather than bridging the Social Democrats' ideological factions, the selection committee seemed paralysed by them. Each of the main leadership contenders was consistently blocked by the party's left or its right. Juholt's emergence as a compromise figure, at almost the last minute, probably left him as amazed as anyone else. His party should not have been surprised, then, if he didn't have a thought-through vision of what he would do as leader, nor the managerial skill to implement such a vision. Until then, he had never really needed either.

The old selection method worked fine when the party was in government. What the party wanted when it changed leader was clear enough. A manifesto had previously been agreed by the party, endorsed by the electorate and formed the basis of a government programme. The new leader, always an experienced cabinet minister, was already signed up to it.

In opposition, however, the mandate for a new party leader is much less obvious. The previous election manifesto is, in practice, void after its rejection by voters. A different type of choice by the party is necessary. The Social Democrats' failure to change their way of choosing helps to explain why the last two selections, both made in opposition, have turned out so badly.

In fact, there is a simple way forward for the party. Without abandoning the selection-committee model entirely, two other Swedish parties have recently chosen new leaders in a more open way, with different candidates competing openly and offering distinct pledges on where they wished to take their parties. Doing something similar would force Social Democrats to decide what they want and, by definition, produce a leader in tune with that decision. Will this 122-year-old party be bold enough to break with its past in this way?

Nicholas Aylott 2011-10-13

A version of this article appeared in the Local on October 13 (www.thelocal.se/36724/20111013/

Call for papers REMINDER

2011-09-29T08:33:00.001+02:00

Workshop – Call for papers

We, the specialist group in Scandinavian Politics, will hold a workshop on the 13th of December 2011 here at Karlstad University, Sweden.

Workshop Theme: Scandinavian Politics

Format of the Workshop: It will be a discussion based workshop.

If you would like to participate please send an abstract to malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se

Deadline: 7th of October 2011.

PSA Annual Conference 2012 – Call for papers

Calls for papers to the PSA Annual Conference in Belfast 2012 has been launched http://www.psa.ac.uk/2012/

The specialist group can put forward panel proposals to the conference and we aim to do so after the success we had at the 2011 Annual Conference.

Send paper abstracts to malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se

Deadline: 7th of October 2011.

If you have any questions or queries please contact Malin or Lee (lee.miles@kau.se)

Autumn greetings Karlstad, Sweden

Malin & Lee

_______________________________________________________________________
Malin Stegmann McCallion                                      Dr Malin Stegmann McCallion
Fil Dr, Universitetslektor                                           Senior Lecturer/Assistant Professor
Statsvetenskap                                                             Political Science
Karlstads universitet                                                   Karlstad University
Universitetsgatan 2                                                     Universitetsgatan 2
651 88 Karlstad                                                              651 88 Karlstad
                                                                                            Sweden

E-post: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se Email: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se
Tel: 054 – 700 1205 Telephone: +46 (0)54 700 1205

workshop and conference - call for papers

2011-09-05T13:19:00.001+02:00

Welcome back to the Academic Year 2011-2012 and new exciting meetings of the Specialist Group on Scandinavian Politics.

Workshop – Call for papers

We, the specialist group in Scandinavian Politics, will hold a workshop on the 13^th of December 2011 here at Karlstad University.

Workshop Theme: Scandinavian Politics

Format of the Workshop: It will be a discussion based workshop.

If you would like to participate please send an abstract to malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se

Deadline: 7^th of October 2011.

PSA Annual Conference 2012 – Call for papers

Calls for papers to the PSA Annual Conference in Belfast 2012 has been launched http://www.psa.ac.uk/2012/

The specialist group can put forward panel proposals to the conference and we aim to do so after the success we had at the 2011 Annual Conference.

Send paper abstracts to malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se

Deadline: 7^th of October 2011.

If you have any questions or queries please contact Malin or Lee (lee.miles@kau.se)

Autumn greetings Karlstad, Sweden

Malin & Lee

E-post: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se Email: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se
Tel: 054 – 700 1205 Telephone: +46 (0)54 700 1205

VB: Workshop on 'Impact of Engagement

2011-04-05T12:04:00.001+02:00

On behalf of Political Studies Association.

Från: Sandra McDonagh [mailto:sandra.mcdonagh@newcastle.ac.uk]
Skickat: den 4 april 2011 16:12

Ämne: Workshop on 'Impact of Engagement

Dear Specialist Group Convenor

Would you please inform your members of the following:

At a time when academics increasingly need to consider the wider “impact” of their research, greater consideration needs to be given to the ways in which academic research can help shape and inform the policy-making process and the practical measures that academics need to take to ensure their work is heard, understood and acted upon by the appropriate decision-makers. To this end the Political Studies Association has decided to run a free workshop on “Impact and Engagement” at the Novotel London West, London W11 on Monday, 18^th April (the day before the start of its annual conference).

The workshop will consist of three sessions:

Session 1: Engaging the Media (10-11.30am)

Sue Cameron, Financial Times, tbc

Professor Phil Cowley, University of Nottingham

Martin Rosenbaum, Producer, BBC Radio 4

Nadine Smith, Head of Communications, Institute for Government

Session 2: Engaging Parliament and Government (11.30am-1.00pm)

Professor Archie Brown, Oxford University

Paul Evans, Principal Clerk for Select Committees, House of Commons

Professor Iain McLean, Oxford University

Baroness Parminter, Liberal Democrat working peer and former Chief Executive of the Campaign to Protect Rural England

Session 3: International Intervention case Study (2-3.30pm)

Sir Mike Aaronson, visiting Professor at University of Surrey and former Director General of Save the Children UK

If you are interested in registering for the workshop please contact sue.forster@ncl.ac.uk

Best wishes

Sandra

Sandra McDonagh

Political Studies Association

Politics

Newcastle University

Newcastle upon Tyne

NE1 7RU

Tel: 0191 222 8021

Fax: 0191 222 3499

Mob: 07966 360031

www.psa.ac.uk

The Swedish Social Democrats' search for a new leader took a decisive and dramatic turn yesterday.

2011-03-11T12:15:00.001+01:00

On behalf of Nicholas Aylott:

The Swedish Social Democrats' search for a new leader took a decisive and dramatic turn yesterday. The party's selection committee nominated Håkan Juholt as its preferred candidate. He and the nominee to the position of secretary-general, Carin Jämtin, will almost certainly be confirmed by a special party congress in a couple of weeks.

Juholt is the party's defence spokesman and chair of its Kalmar region, in the south-east, where it is relatively strong. Still, his nomination is an absolute sensation. He has no ministerial experience. Until the last couple of days, he had almost never been mentioned in the media as a serious candidate. What seems to have happened, according to reports, is that the coalition of left-leaning party regions fell in behind him at the last minute, and the looser coalition of right-leaning regions broke up. Enough of the latter group found him acceptable to leave the most right-wing regions too isolated to resist the selection committee's proposal.

Juholt is by no means a mad choice. He has both a presence in the Social Democratic parliamentary group and a strong base in its organisation. He is a talented debator. He has an agreeable, down-to-earth personality and a tremendous moustache. His only enemies within the party appear to be the previous leader and secretary-general, which hardly matters now.

His greatest advantage right now, though, is that no one really knows what he thinks on most central political issues. He has said enough to make the party's left back him, but little more than that, which, in the end, made him sufficiently broadly acceptable among the Social Democratic power-brokers.

It might not be an advantage for much longer, though. It may be thought fairly remarkable, and perhaps sub-optimal, that a party facing huge, historic challenges is about to elect a leader without having any real idea about how he plans to address those challenges. He will thus have no clear mandate to do anything at all.

Nicholas Aylott 2011-03-11

Swedish Social Democratic Party is choosing a new Party leader

2011-03-09T08:22:00.000+01:00

An update on what is happening within the Swedish Social Democratic Party:

The Swedish Social Democrats' selection of a new leader to replace Mona Sahlin has induced the most acute crisis in the 122-year history of possibly the most successful political party in the world. It is fascinating for several reasons.

For one thing, the party's peculiar method of choosing its leader now looks woefully dated. Basically, a "selection committee", a group of Social Democratic elders, takes soundings from all levels of the party and then proposes a single candidate who it thinks will be most acceptable to all. This candidate is then confirmed at a party congress.

This method might seem odd, but it is used in all Swedish parties – and indeed, in many Swedish organisations. Still, the Social Democrats have developed an extreme form, in which, by custom, no candidate should even express his or her leadership ambitions before being nominated by the selection committee. Of the three likeliest current contenders, one has said that, if he were asked by the selection committee to lead the party, he would give it serious consideration. Another wrote on Facebook that he wants to contribute to the party's renewal in some sort of leading position. The third has just kept completely quiet.

In my view, this tradition can be explained partly by the fear that open internal conflict might damage the party's competitiveness, but also by the Social Democrats' special character. The party comprises a broad and complex coalition of ideological tendencies, regional interests and material interests (such as unions), not to mention men and women. This requires decisions, including leadership appointments, that are elaborately negotiated and that keep all these tendencies and interests broadly satisfied. The tradition of negotiated solutions runs deep in the party. In a phrase that will surely become someone's book title, the chair of the Social Democrats' current selection committee dismissed the idea of more open competition between leadership candidates by declaring (to translate the quote into British English), "This isn't the X-Factor, you know."

The trouble is, this time the Social Democrats are failing to negotiate a solution. Just a couple of weeks before the special congress that is due to confirm the new leader, the field remains, astonishingly, wide open.

This is basically because the party is fundamentally split over how to respond to its historic setbacks. Should it try to recapture the median voter as soon as possible - that is, to move rightwards? Or should it instead retain (or even revive) its radicalism and, secondarily, seek to persuade the median voter to shift to the left? This is an acute dilemma for social democrats, and it is hardly unique to Swedish ones. Still, an open competition between candidates, each with his or her own platform, might have forced the party as a whole to choose between these options. The winning candidate would then have had some sort of mandate to pursue one course or the other. But open competition has not been allowed. Many Social Democrats are now expressing dismay at how the selection committee has conducted the process.

Meanwhile, there is an interesting riposte here to the prevailing theories of the unstoppable rise of the party in public office – that is, MPs and ministers – and the marginalisation of members and activists. Now, this particular case study hardly falsifies such theories. But it does give pause for thought. Press reports suggest that the Social Democrats' selection committee has essentially mediated between the party's regional units, which, at every stage, have a decisive role in the selection of a leader. For now, at least, it is firmly in the party organisation that the action is taking place.

And, in fact, this might well be part of the party's problem. The Social Democrats' huge challenge is to win back support in the big cities, which fell to a little over a fifth of Stockholm voters in the election last autumn. But the party's decline in the capital has transferred internal power to the less urban party regions, which have more members, and which may prioritise quite different issues to those that concern Stockholmers. The phrase "vicious circle" springs to mind.

So who will get the job? The Swedish papers are having great fun printing the pictures of the three bespectacled male MPs who are apparently likeliest to get the nod, and it's true that, from some angles, they do look pretty similar. In fairness, the youngest of them, Mikael Damberg, who is also chair of the party's Stockholm region, has a bit of flair. But he has declined to moderate his clear and long-held preference for taking the party towards the political midfield, which seems to have made him persona non grata to some of the other party regions, especially from the far south and the midlands.

At this late stage, then, three scenarios seem plausible. (1) Perhaps most likely is an 11th-hour package deal in which Damberg's hitherto implacable opponents would be bought off with the appointment of left-wingers – and women – to other leading positions in the party. (The party's secretary-general, a man, resigned on Sunday, perhaps facilitating such an outcome.) Or (2) the selection committee might despair of finding a long-term leader, which pretty much the entire party has said that it wants, and, as a short-term fix, it would instead propose the most experienced and inoffensive of the three likely lads. Or (3), if the current deadlock really can't be broken, a wild card may emerge at the last minute, perhaps someone like Per Nuder, who is among those who have hitherto insisted that they are not interested in the job. Perhaps they didn't really mean that.

Needless to say, none of these scenarios involves favourable circumstances for a new party leader.

Nicholas Aylott 2011-03-08

PSA Scandinavian Politics Specialist Group AGM

2011-02-28T15:50:00.001+01:00

Dear Scandinavian Politics Specialist Group Member,

Please find the date for this year’s AGM and agenda attached. If there is any other business you wish to bring up onto the agenda please email Malin before the 25^th of March 2011.

Malin & Lee

VB: PSA News PSA Executive Committee Vacancies 2011

2011-02-28T13:35:00.001+01:00

For your information.

Malin & Lee

Från: members-bounces@psa.ac.uk [mailto:members-bounces@psa.ac.uk] För PSA News
Skickat: den 28 februari 2011 12:33
Till: members@psa.ac.uk
Ämne: PSA News PSA Executive Committee Vacancies 2011

Executive Committee Vacancies 2011

Notice is hereby given that nominations are invited from members wishing to stand for the post of trustee or Honorary Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Political Studies Association.

Vacancies exist for three trustees to serve for terms of three years beginning on 9^th July 2011. In addition, due to the resignation of Dr Andrew Russell, a by-election will be held for the post of trustee for one year beginning on 9^th July 2011.

The post of Honorary Secretary is for a two year term beginning on 9^th July 2011.

The nomination form, available here [Word[ [pdf], proposed and seconded by Political Studies Association members, should be posted or e-mailed to the Returning Officer, Professor Paul Whiteley, at the address below, by Friday 8^th April at 12 noon:

Professor Paul Whiteley

Political Studies Association

30 Tabernacle Street

London EC2A 4UE

e-mail: nominations@psa.ac.uk

If the number of nomination exceeds the number of vacancies, an election by postal ballot of the whole membership will be held.

The Political Studies Association is committed to the principles of gender equality and to encouraging candidates from a diverse range of backgrounds. While taking full account of equal opportunities, nominations are particularly welcome from groups currently under-represented on the Executive Committee, such as ethnic minorities and the disabled. At the same time candidates should be aware that we expect membership of the Executive Committee to entail significant responsibilities and a substantial time commitment.

NOPSA CONFERENCE 2011

2010-12-22T10:54:00.001+01:00

On behalf of Nick Aylott please contact Nick or Kadri for further information.

NOPSA CONFERENCE 2011

August 19th-21st 2001, Vaasa, Finland

www.nopsa2011.abo.fi

Call for papers: deadline January 15th 2011

Models of Democracy: What Are They and Do They Travel?

Workshop leaders

Dr Nicholas Aylott

School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Sweden

sh.se/nicholasaylott, nicholas.aylott@sh.se

Dr Kadri Simm

Institute for Semiotics and Philosophy, University of Tartu, Estonia

This workshop would have two main objectives.

First, it would seek to develop our knowledge and understanding of different forms of democracy. These could be procedural forms - liberal, illiberal, direct, representative, party-centred, candidate-centred, deliberative and the like. Equally, they could be regionally or culturally specific, such as the European or Nordic "models" of democracy. What, if anything, is really distinctive about such models? What is to be gained analytically by constructing them? How closely do real-world cases conform to their precepts?

The second objective concerns the possible transmission of these precepts from one place to another. Policy diffusion is a well-established sub-field within political science. Somewhat less studied, however, though certainly not entirely neglected, has been the notion of institutional diffusion: the idea that political institutions can spread from one place to another, perhaps inducing a break with local practice. Under what conditions might this happen? Clearly, modern institutional theory is likely to be central to many of the workshops' contributions, though that leaves wide scope for various ways of defining and understanding political institutions. Post-communist democratisation in Europe is one area in which the application of an institutional-diffusion framework might be especially helpful.

The core of the panel would comprise participants in an ongoing international research project, the Nordic Model of Democracy (nmd-project.net), which investigates the relationships between democracy in the Nordic and Baltic states. The panel chairs are both members of the project team. However, we welcome papers that contribute to either or both of the two main objectives outlined above. A variety of methodological approaches is also encouraged.

In order to make our workshop as inclusive as possible, and especially with an eye to participation by scholars from the Baltic states, we would like its working language to be English, and we would expect most papers to be written in English. However, we are conscious of NOPSA's tradition of providing a forum in which Nordic scholars can present and discuss their work in their own Scandinavian languages, so our workshop would remain open to papers that are written in Danish, Norwegian or Swedish.

Scandinavian Political Studies

2010-11-23T11:49:00.001+01:00

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SO, FAREWELL, THEN, MONA SAHLIN

2010-11-16T08:19:00.001+01:00

An up-date from Nick Aylott on what is happening within the Swedish Social Democratic Party.

Malin

Avaiable online here http://www.thelocal.se/30228/20101115/

'Almost nothing was achieved under Sahlin'

Swedish Social Democracy yesterday became slightly more like a normal European political party. Its leader accepted the consequences of a disastrous election performance and resigned, thus finally concluding a rather weird period in which everyone in the party was looking at each other and waiting for someone else to act. Mona Sahlin thus notches up a series of records, including that of being the shortest-serving Social Democratic leader ever, and the first of the democratic era not to become prime minister.

Back in September, the Social Democrats suffered their' worst election result for nearly a century, which will probably presage their longest spell in opposition since they first entered government in 1920. Immediately afterwards, I had been very surprised at the party's apparent willingness to keep Sahlin as leader (and at her willingness to carry on). My inference was that you should never underestimate the Swedish labour movement's loyalty to its incumbent leader (or, indeed, Sahlin's own toughness). Remarkably, no party figure of any significance ever called for her to go.

But things began to unravel a couple of weeks ago. Even then, the criticisms were coded. Aftonbladet, a supportive newspaper, described the leadership question as "the elephant in the room", but left it at that. The same day, the head of the party's youth wing - displaying, incidentally, the sort of timing, judgement and luck that bode well for her own political future, and which consistently eluded Sahlin - called on the entire party leadership to put itself up for re-election at a special party congress. Again, she avoided direct criticism of any individual; but her call soon picked up support from high places in the party. Last week, and without getting clearance from the party's executive committee or party board, Sahlin declared that she too agreed with this "obvious" step, and that it should be undertaken at a special party congress to be held earlier than expected, perhaps in March next year. Uproar ensued, with Social Democrats openly applauding or criticising her move. A telephone meeting with the chairs of the party's regional units on Friday was adjourned until they could all physically meet, yesterday. Then she announced that she would not stand for re-election.

If you ask me, the bottom line is this. West European social democracy has deep-seated problems; the Swedish party is scarcely alone in experiencing hard times at the moment. Still, the Swedish case does seem to have peculiar difficulty in changing to address these problems - or, to use the usual social democratic parlance, to "renew" itself. The core of this difficulty is leadership, by which I am not chiefly referring to any personal qualities that Sahlin herself may or may not have.

Sahlin's own period as party chair involved an almost complete lack of leadership. Perhaps this was partly a reaction against her predecessor's rather heavy-handed style. But it may have more to do with the party's institutions (defined in a broad sense).

She did manage to pull the Social Democrats' education policy towards a position that was more in line with most voters' views. She was also responsible for the decision in 2008 to build a pre-electoral coalition with the two other left-of-centre parties (even if she was forced by her party to include the Left Party in that alliance, which proved electorally catastrophic). But as regards other substantivepolicy areas, especially economi cs, nothing was achieved - and, even worse, it never became at all clear what Sahlin WANTED to achieve. The manner in which she was selected as leader never involved her having to declare her candidacy, never mind set out a platform for where she wanted to take the party. The policy-review commissions that she then launched were soon marginalised by inter-party negotiations with the Social Democrats' alliance partners. Her reaction to the election defeat in September was to call yet another investigative commission, with 50-odd members, fairly junior leaders and a leisurely timetable.

Another strange element in this strange saga is that both Social Democrats and journalists have repeatedly tried to distinguish between debate about policy and debate about leaders - as if the two are not inextricably connected. Political alternatives are packaged and presented by individuals. Their rival packages serve to shape views in a party (or any other organisation) about direction. Choices can then be made.

A rather interesting intra-party conflict broke out late last week, as Sahlin's authority slipped away. One former Social Democratic minister launched an amazingly personal attack on the party's shadow finance minister. He responded by trashing the policies that he had previously defended and setting out an alternative economic policy that pitched squarely for the political midfield. That may be precisely the sort of open debate, with various leadership contenders positioning themselves through outlining their own manifestos, that the party now needs - and which the previous leader-selection process bent over backwards to avoid.

We will see if the new selection committee, which the party council will confirm on December 4th, interprets its mandate in a different way, one that condones a debate between competing candidates - as would be taken for granted in, say, the British Labour Party or even the Danish Social Democratic Party. In yet another twist to the tale, there is at present no front-runner to replace Sahlin, with, for example, as many as ten possibilities listed in today's Dagens Nyheter.

NA 2010-11-15

E-post: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se Email: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se
Tel: 054 – 700 1205 Telephone: +46 (0)54 700 1205

PSA Annual Conference & 'Europe and the Swedish Election of September 19th 2010

2010-10-18T06:55:00.001+02:00

The deadline for the PSA Annual Conference has now passed and the Specialist Group on Scandinavian Politics has submitted two panel proposals for the general conference and one panel proposal for the Postgraduate Conference. We look forward to hearing about the papers presented and hope to be able to organise a meeting for the specialist group at the Conference in April 2011. http://www.psa.ac.uk/2011/

Also for your information, attached is a new election briefing produced by the European Parties Elections and Referendums Network (EPERN) on 'Europe and the Swedish Election of September 19th 2010' by Nicholas Aylott (Södertörn University, Stockholm). Apologies for cross posting.

More about the European Parties Elections & Referendums Network can be found here: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/sei/1-4-2.html

Best wishes,

Malin & Lee

E-post: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se Email: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se
Tel: 054 – 700 1205 Telephone: +46 (0)54 700 1205

Post-elections reflections

2010-09-21T11:31:00.003+02:00

Post-election reflections from Nick Aylott:

A very stimulating post-election seminar organised by the Centre for Business and Policy Studies (SNS), which I attended today (Monday), has added to the reflections that have been aired by politicians and journalists about the remarkable outcome of the Swedish election yesterday.

It goes without saying that much of the discussion was about the breakthrough of the SWEDEN DEMOCRATS into parliament with 20 seats.

No one suggests doing anything other than isolating them in parliament, despite the conciliatory comments of the Sweden Democrats' leader, Jimmie Åkesson, on TV last night. (The Left Party leader refused to sit in the same make-up room as Åkesson before their appearances on Swedish Television.) But there is a divide about how the political mainstream ought to react.

One lot wants simply to "fight racism". For example, a leading Green talked repeatedly about resisting the Sweden Democrats' "depiction of reality", by which he meant that they should not be allowed to set the policy agenda in the way that the Danish People's Party has in Denmark. But there are others who fear that this means, in practice, a continuation of the mainstream parties' reluctance to discuss at all the issues that the Sweden Democrats have exploited so successfully. One speaker at today's seminar advocated explicitly a much franker debate about both the benefits and the problems that immigration has involved.

Then there's the PARLIAMENTARY SITUATION, in which the governing Alliance seems set to end up, agonisingly, three seats short of a majority. The government has said all along that, in this sort of situation, it would approach the Greens about a deal, and it confirmed today that it will do so once all the pre-election-day votes are counted and the final result is clear, on Wednesday. Could we, then, see a four-party coalition acquiring a fifth member? Could the Greens' leaders be tempted by the prospect of ministerial jobs here and now, rather than four years in the political wilderness? Might they have become so exasperated by association with the Left Party's toxic brand that they're prepared to abandon their red-green allies?

Probably not. Committing your party to one of two rival pre-electoral coalitions, and then defecting to the other one as soon as yours loses, would be pretty hard to sell to members and voters. But that leaves the government in a dreadful bind. It's not really a question of how it will survive in office as a minority, but rather how it will manage anything beyond that. Let's say that it proposes a fifth increment in its flagship policy, the earned-income tax credit. The red-greens, of course, say no. But the Sweden Democrats turn round and say yes, all right. What does the government do then? As my colleague Flemming Juul Christiansen has shrewdly put it, "we imagine a situation in which a party, however much disliked by the others, unconditionally and without any bargaining, support proposals of the government. Will then the very fact that such a party supports the proposal become a problem for the proposal in itself?" The short answer is: yes.

Parliament reopens on October 5th. Inter-party discussions before then will be fascinating and, indeed, gripping.

Naturally, the SOCIAL DEMOCRATS' disastrous performance, their worst for 96 years, was also a hot topic at the seminar.

Say what you like about the party leader, Mona Sahlin, you can never write her off. She was very clear last night about the Social Democrats' "very bad" result. Yet it seems that she intends to carry on in her job, and there is no immediate indication that her party wants to kick out its sitting leader, which would be a first. Still, there is some acknowledgement that the Social Democrats didn't do well from their alliance with the Greens and, especially, the Left. Perhaps now the party will have the far-reaching debate about its future that it signally avoided after the resignation of Sahlin’s predecessor.

Above all, it has to re-establish a connection with the prosperous bits of Sweden, especially in the big cities, where the party's dramatic decline continued (it won just 22% in the Stockholm municipal election). The red-greens' belated focus on government reforms of various welfare services, and particularly on individual cases of heartless treatment, certainly seemed to stave off the electoral meltdown that threatened a week or so ago. But, as one participant pointed out at the seminar, it was essentially the tactics of an opposition, rather than of an aspiring government. Cross-class appeal was always the secret of the Social Democrats' political success, and, somehow, that's what they need to recover.

That result in full (as of Monday afternoon):

RED-GREENS

Left Party 5.6% (-0.3%)

Social Democrats 30.9% (-4.4%)

Greens 7.2% (+2.0%)

ALLIANCE

Centre Party 6.6% (-1.3%)

Liberals 7.1% (-0.4%)

Christian Democrats 5.6% (-1.0%)

Moderates 30.0% (+3.9%)

Sweden Democrats 5.7% (+2.8%)

Turnout 82.1% (+1.7%)

Source: Election Authority http://www.val.se/val/val2010/slutresultat/R/rike/index.html

We can also recommend could also recommend Jacob Christensen's insightful reflections which can be found here http://jacobchristensen.name/ and the Swedish Radio’s programme from Sunday evening http://sverigesradio.se/cgi-bin/international/nyhetssidor/sandningsarkiv.asp?date=19/09/2010&programID=2054 (available until 18 October 2010).

Malin & Lee

E-post: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se Email: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se
Tel: 054 – 700 1205 Telephone: +46 (0)54 700 1205

Annual Conference and Swedish elections

2010-09-19T16:23:00.001+02:00

Dear Scandinavian Politics Specialist Group Subscriber,

1. A date for your diary:

Political Studies Association - 61^st Annual Conference

Transforming Politics: New Synergies

19-21 April 2011, London

Graduate Conference & Workshops 18 April 2011

We, the Scandinavian Politics Specialist Group, are planning to put proposals in for panel as well as a workshop at the conference. Please include a title of your proposed paper as this will provide us with an indication of subject areas and enable us to group research papers with similar ‘topics’. We have received a good response to the earlier email about the Annual Conference so this is just a reminder for those of you who have been thinking about participating but have yet to reply. We ask that you by return email show your interest in participating in a panel and/or a workshop on Scandinavian politics.

2. Swedish elections:

Today, 19 September 2010, the elections to the Riksdag, County Council and Local Councils are taking place in Sweden. If you want to read more about this in the Swedish press (in Swedish), international press (in English) or follow the result of the election – voting starts tonight when the polling stations close you can do this on the following links:

Swedish media:

DN http://www.dn.se/nyheter/valet2010/

SvD http://www.svd.se/nyheter/politik/valet2010/

Sveriges Radio http://sverigesradio.se/sida/gruppsida.aspx?programid=3615&grupp=9635

SVT http://svt.se/val?lid=menu&lpos=3

Swedish Election Authority’s website http://www.val.se/in_english/index.html

International media:

BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11360495

The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/09/19/world/international-us-sweden-election.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

France 24 http://www.france24.com/en/20100919-swedes-vote-tight-parliamentary-elections-far-right-sweden-democrats-reinfeldt

Reuters UK http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE68I0IP20100919

Irish Times http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0918/1224279168129.html

ABC News International http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=11670290

Berlingske Tidene http://www.berlingske.dk/verden/kaos-truer-sverige-efter-valg

Politiken http://politiken.dk/udland/1063220/i-dag-skriver-sverige-historie/

Hufvudstadsbladet http://www.hbl.fi/text/utrikes/2010/9/17/w51990.php

Aftenposten http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/article3817803.ece

Best wishes,

Malin & Lee

E-post: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se Email: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se
Tel: 054 – 700 1205 Telephone: +46 (0)54 700 1205

Swedish election on Sunday: latest situation

2010-09-13T10:03:00.001+02:00

With less than a week to go, the most interesting questions are not those that people were earlier expecting. For a start, the issue of whether the current four-party, centre-right coalition government would hold on to office is no longer the one that everyone's talking about. Unless the polls are drastically and systematically wrong, the coalition will retain power. Their lead over the left-of-centre parties has grown steadily over the last three weeks or so.

Instead, the main questions are: will the far-right Sweden Democrats get into parliament for the first time? and, if they do, will they then hold the balance of power? At the moment, it looks pretty likely that the Sweden Democrats will indeed get past the 4% threshold.

Previously, everyone assumed that, because the left and right blocs were so evenly matched, the Sweden Democrats would thus deprive both those blocs of a parliamentary majority - something of a nightmare scenario for all the mainstream parties. But such has been the decline of the left, the Social Democrats especially, that the government's current majority might even survive a breakthrough by an eighth party into parliament. The 35% that the Social Democrats achieved in 2006 was widely seen as a historic failure. Their performance in this election looks set to be a lot worse. Incredibly, they may not even end up as the biggest party.

What's gone wrong for the Social Democrats? Lots of things, of course.

But the one factor that pretty much all commentators agree on is the fateful decision in autumn 2007 to build a pre-electoral coalition with the Greens and the Left Party. Something similar has worked well in Norway; but it's been a different story in Sweden. One of the more entertaining features of this election campaign has been the Left Party's consistently and cheerfully emphasising the issues on which the allied left-of-centre parties are least agreed, and those on which the Left's preferences are least in tune with those of broader public opinion. (As the Social Democrats' support appears to have collapsed, and the Greens' has slipped back, the Left's own poll figures have held up pretty well.) A good deal of post-election recrimination is to on the cards.

Nick Aylott.

E-post: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se Email: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se
Tel: 054 – 700 1205 Telephone: +46 (0)54 700 1205

A short notice on developments in Danish politics this summer

2010-08-05T08:29:00.001+02:00

Here's a brief account of some entertaining controversies facing two party leaders in Denmark, written by Flemming Juul Christiansen of Aarhus University.

----------

A short notice on developments in Danish politics this summer. Two of the party leaders are in trouble:

First, there's the Social Democratic leader, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who is married to Stephen Kinnock, son of the former Labour leader. He works in Switzerland. A month ago it turned out that he also paid his tax there, and that the couple had told the Danish tax authorities that he was in Denmark less than 33 weekends each year, which is what he has to be in order to comply with the rules. However, soon after, the couple stated that he would now pay tax in Denmark, and the case seemed to be over. Until last week, when it was revealed that a year ago, in order for Kinnock, as a foreign citizen, to own a house in Denmark, the couple had told the Danish Ministry of Justice that he was in Denmark all 52 weekends during a year, which was approved. Now, the problem is that the couple in writing has told two different public authorities things that cannot both be true at the same time, and which has financial gain as a possible motive. This could very well be illegal, and they risk a fine.

Thorning-Schmidt has issued a statement regretting their "carelessness", and that they are sending the Ministry of Justice precise information. She has otherwise remained silent in the case and so have the Social Democrats' allies, the Socialist People's Party and the Social Liberals. This is a sign of them sticking to her as their best card for winning the next election. There is no likely Social Democratic successor. From the government side, only party spokespeople, not ministers, have commented on the affair. Leading articles in today's newspapers are quite critical towards her, though, pointing to the legal side of the matter as a major blow to her credibility.

Second, there's the foreign minister and leader of the Conservative Party, Lene Espersen. Unlike her Swedish counterpart, Carl Bildt, Espersen did not participate in a recent EU summit. Ever since she failed to attend a meeting with, among others, Hillary Clinton over the Arctic back in the spring, her meeting activities have been scrutinised by the press.

She replaced her popular predecessor, Per Stig Møller, who is an icon for the left wing of the party, for no other reason than personal ambition; she stated that in public. Furthermore, she wanted to escape all the heavy burdens of legislation in the Ministry of Trade. Fairly predictably, this admission has created problems for her. Over the last 10 years, all Danish foreign ministers have missed this meeting in July. So, Conservative spokespeople speak about a witch hunt. She is trapped as foreign minister. She needs now to attend every possible meeting, and will thus have even less time at home as party leader, where she is criticised for having no vision. Furthermore, she can't abandon her post without losing too much authority as party leader.

As with the Social Democrats, however, there is no likely successor.

Connie Hedegaard, who would have had some support from the left wing of the party, has become European commissioner in Brussels.

E-post: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se Email: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se
Tel: 054 – 700 1205 Telephone: +46 (0)54 700 1205

PSA 61st Annual Conference - Scandinavian Politics Specialist Group

2010-07-21T10:49:00.001+02:00

Dear Scandinavian Politics Specialist Group Subscriber,

A date for your diary:

Political Studies Association - 61^st Annual Conference

Transforming Politics: New Synergies

19-21 April 2011, London

Graduate Conference & Workshops 18 April 2011

We, the Scandinavian Politics Specialist Group, are planning to put proposals in for panel as well as a workshop at the conference. We ask that you by return email show your interest in participating in a panel and/or a workshop on Scandinavian politics. Please include a title of your proposed paper as this will provide us with an indication of subject areas and enable us to group research papers with similar ‘topics’.

Best summer wishes,

Malin & Lee

_ _ _

Below is other information from the Political Studies Association which is of interest to us.

PSA 'EXCHANGER' SCHEME HONG KONG

There is an opportunity for one or two PSA members to present their work at the annual conference of the Hong Kong PSA this year. The meeting is 26-27 August 2010 at Hong Kong Baptist University in Kowloon Tong. Those chosen receive free registration (as do those PSA members attending but not on the 'exchanger' basis), hotel accommodation nearby and some local hospitality, as a well as a guaranteed place on the programme. PSA UK has a special grant scheme to support co-funded applications covering airfare. Anyone interested should email a paper title, brief abstract, and one-page CV to Professor Terrell Carver, PSA's International Relations Sub-committee Chair (tfcarver @ earthlink.net) as soon as possible. PSA News records the experiences of last year's 'exchanger' Dibyesh Anand in vol. 20, no. 4, p. 23, available on-line at htttp://www.psa.ac.uk.

Professor Terrell Carver

University of Bristol

_ _ _

PERSONAL WEBPAGE ON THE PSA WEBSITE

Dear PSA member,

As part of the Association’s 60^th Anniversary activities, we have extended the Members’ Area on our main web site to include a facility for all members to create and maintain their own personal web page. The key features of the launch version of this facility are:

Each page has a “latest news” section which feeds automatically into the new Members’ News panel on the Members’ Area home page.
In addition there are sections for your curriculum vitae and for publications.
All entries are searchable in the site search available to members, but not in the open access version.
Access is restricted to Association members only. In the first instance, none of the facilities is available on open access. Later in the year this policy will be reviewed and members will be consulted on the option to change this restriction, as well as adding further faculties.

There is an introductory page and guide to users here. If you have queries, problems, or suggestions, please let me know by email using webmaster @ psa.ac.uk (Please do NOT reply to the List Server email at members @ psa.ac.uk. This will not reach me.)

With best wishes

Richard Topf

(Electronic Publications Editor)

E-post: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se Email: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se
Tel: 054 – 700 1205 Telephone: +46 (0)54 700 1205

"Nordic and Baltic Economies: Problems and Prospects" Seminar

2010-04-13T15:12:00.001+02:00

On behalf of Mary Hilson apologies for any cross-posting.

The UCL Nordic/Baltic Research Group is pleased to announce a forthcoming seminar on "Nordic and Baltic Economies: Problems and Prospects", to take place at UCL on 29th April 2010. The seminar is the second in the ESRC-funded series "The Nordic and Baltic States in the European Political Imagination".

In the current global economic turmoil, some of the Nordic and Baltic economies – such as Latvia and Iceland – have suffered badly while others – Norway, in particular – have survived the downturn relatively well. Over the last few years, the economic performance of Europe’s regions has grown in importance to practitioners and academics alike. The speakers at the seminar will be discussing issues related to economic development and future growth potential in the region ranging from financial recovery and tax reforms to labour market policies and innovation.

For further information including the full programme please follow this

link: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/silva/nordicbaltic/NBEconomies. There will be a charge of £10, payable on the day. To register please contact Allan Sikk (a.sikk@ssees.ucl.ac.uk).

All welcome!

Mary Hilson (on behalf of the Nordic/Baltic Research Group)

E-post: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se Email: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se
Tel: 054 – 700 1205 Telephone: +46 (0)54 700 1205

2010-04-13T13:58:00.001+02:00

Dear Scandinavian Specialist Group Member,

Please find attached the documents, links and instructions for the AGM taking place this Friday 16 April 2010, 11am Swedish time.

Practicalities first, on Friday you need to log onto in order to join the meeting:
https://connect.sunet.se/psaspsg/
If you have never attended a Connect Pro meeting before:
Test your connection: https://connect.sunet.se/common/help/en/support/meeting_test.htm
Get a quick overview: http://www.adobe.com/go/connectpro_overview

Please find test your connection prior to the meeting as sometime one has to install plug-ins for the programme to work correctly.

This is a programme which enables us to talk to each other using web cameras (do not worry if you do not have one we can still hear you and talk with you). It would be good if you have earphones/headset and do not use the speakers on the computer as the microphone will pick this sound up and we will hear an echo.

The documents attached are an agenda for the meeting and a copy of the report for 2009 (based on the form which is to be returned to the PSA).

A link is provided to an amended draft for a constitution for the Specialist Group which will be discussed and adopted at the AGM https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AfIcIEu7mjItZGR4MnIyOGZfMzYxc3J6cDU1Zno&hl=en_GB

We are very much looking forward to seeing in virtually on Friday,

Malin, Lee & Nick

E-post: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se Email: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se
Tel: 054 – 700 1205 Telephone: +46 (0)54 700 1205

PSA Scandinavian Politics Specialist Group technical instructions for the AGM

2010-04-11T17:41:00.001+02:00

Dear PSA SPSG Member,

Please find the details on how to participate in the online meeting this coming Friday (16 April 11am Swedish time) below.

Please find test your connection prior to the meeting as sometime one has to install plug ins for the programme to work correctly.

Minutes and other documents will be distributed prior to the AGM.

I am looking forward to be seeing everyone on Friday.

Malin

Please join me in a Connect Pro Meeting.

Meeting Name: PSA Scandinavian Politics Specialist Group
Summary:
Invited By: Malin Stegmann McCallion (malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se)
When: Friday 16 April, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Time Zone: (GMT+01:00) Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna

To join the meeting:
https://connect.sunet.se/psaspsg/

----------------
If you have never attended a Connect Pro meeting before:

Test your connection: https://connect.sunet.se/common/help/en/support/meeting_test.htm

Get a quick overview: http://www.adobe.com/go/connectpro_overview

Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat and Acrobat Connect are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries.

E-post: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se Email: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se
Tel: 054 – 700 1205 Telephone: +46 (0)54 700 1205

Call for papers: Nordic Research Network: PhD Symposium of Scandinavian Studies in the UK, 9-10 September 2010

2010-03-12T12:40:00.002+01:00

Please find attached to this e-mail the Call for Papers of a forthcoming AHRC-funded symposium open to PhD students based at a UK institution working in any field of Scandinavian Studies, namely to any PhD student doing research on ANY aspect of the histories, cultures or languages of the Nordic countries. Students who are working on comparative research projects where aspects of the histories, cultures and languages of the Nordic countries are compared to those of other countries are also encouraged to apply.

The Nordic Research Network: PhD Symposium of Scandinavian Studies in the UK, hosted by the Department of Scandinavian Studies at University College London, will take place on 9-10 September 2010. The Call for Papers will remain open until 30 April 2010.

CONTACT EMAIL: nrn2010@googlemail.com

Yours sincerely,

The Organisers
Elettra Carbone
John Mitchinson
Orri Tomasson

NORDIC RESEARCH NETWORK PHD SYMPOSIUM OF SCANDINAVIAN STUDIES IN THE UK

2010-03-12T07:57:00.001+01:00

On behalf of the organisers Elettra Carbone, John Mitchinson and Orri Tomasson

2010 AGM

2010-03-02T12:45:00.001+01:00

Date for AGM 2010.

The date for the 2010 AGM is 16 April 2010 at 11am (Swedish time). The AGM will take place virtually through Adobe Connect. More information will be distributed in the near future but please put this time and date in your diaries.

Malin & Lee

E-post: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se Email: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se
Tel: 054 – 700 1205 Telephone: +46 (0)54 700 1205

Introduction and Newsletter February 2010

2010-03-02T12:30:00.001+01:00

Dear members of the PSA Scandinavian Specialist Group,

We, Professor Lee Miles and I, would like to introduce ourselves. Lee is part of EUPOLIS a Jean Monnet multinational research group, the editor of Cooperation and Conflict and editor of the Europe and the Nation State Book Series published by Routledge Publishers. Lee is part of the euro-outsiders project which examines the common challenges and forms of co-operation between those EU countries that are presently outside the European single currency. Lee’s research interest are Fusion, Sweden, Nordic Foreign Policy. Malin has written on multi-level governance in Sweden and Sweden’s ‘regional mess’ and her research interests are Swedish regionalisation through a ‘EU’ropean perspective, Europeanisation, Multi-Level Governance, and Paradiplomacy. Recently we finished a report for Nordregio together with our colleagues, Magnus Lindh, Hans Lödén and Curt Räftegård here at the Department of Political and Historical Studies, called ‘Fusing Regions? Sustainable Regional Action in the Context of European Integration’.

We are based at the Department of Political Science at Karlstad University which is currently in a very exciting and expanding phase. In 2010, the Department consists of small, yet highly cohesive group of 1 professor, (Lee Miles) 8 lecturers (including two Associate Professors), and 6 PhD students. The central interests of the Department revolve around three core research themes: regionalisation and European integration, public administration and innovation governance. 3 of our PhD students are part a new interdisciplinary Research School on Region Building, established in 2009, in which the Department is an integral partner, that brings together PhD students from across the Faculty of Social and Life Sciences to work on integrated projects associated with region-building in Europe. Political Science’s research themes within the Research School are regional transformations (i.e. the changing role of the region in the welfare state), ‘glocalisation’ (i.e. the interdependent relationship between the global and local levels in society) and the changing nature of politics at the sub-national level through the increased use of international networks.

The aim is to provide a short newsletter each month with stories that is of interest to the Scandinavian Specialist Group. If there is something that you would like to distribute please email Malin and it will either be included in the next newsletter or distributed immediately.

News of interest in short (February 2010):

§ Danish government reshuffle – an excellent summary is provided by Flemming Juul Christiansen, Aarhus University and Jacob Christensen, University of Southern Denmark (please see below).

§ The Danish daily Politiken is betraying the freedom of expression. That is the general sense since the paper reached a settlement with eight organisations representing almost 95,000 Muslims. In the settlement the paper does not waive the right to re-print the cartoons and the paper does not apologise for the publication of the cartoons (originally published by Jyllands-Posten) the apology is for the insult that Muslims may have felt over the publication and that is enough according to the lawyer representing the eight organisations. The editor for Politiken does not believe that the paper has sold out the freedom of expression with the settlement. He believes that it can lessen the tension and improve the relationship between Danish media and the Muslim world.

§ A new record in how many is moving to Norway. The immigration to Norway during the ‘naughties’ of people who received a residence permit was the largest the country has experienced in modern times. 510,748 people received residence permits and these figures do not include Danes or Swedes.

§ The Norwegian people’s support for the international military efforts in Afghanistan is decreasing. Compared to an opinion poll two years ago where over half of the people asked supported the international forces the support today is down to 43 percent. However 56 percent of the people polled still believe that Norway should have soldiers in Afghanistan.

§ Monday first of March 2010 was a historical day for Åland as of this date the members of the Landskapsregering can now call themselves minister. According to lantrådet Eriksson Åland now have a terminology which is natural for a government and is an important expression for the self-government of Åland.

§ Iceland is one step closer to negotiations in relation to the so-called Icesave Agreement. On the Icelandic paper Frettabladid announced on the 11^th February that the British and Dutch governments had agreed to renegotiations on the premise that the Icelandic government meet to certain conditions. On the 26^th February these negotiations collapsed. The next event in relation to the ongoing work to resolve the differences around Icesave is a referendum taking place on 6^th March.

§ The Commission has recommended that the EU can start membership negotiations with Iceland and this is a first step on the path for Icelandic membership of the European Union. On the Icelandic side a political decision is now needed, possibly a referendum, in order to be able to continue the process towards becoming a member.

Please do not forget Flemming and Jacob’s excellent summary of the latest government reshuffle in Denmark. Please see below.

Best wishes for this time,

Malin & Lee

On February 23, Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen presented a reshuffled government and on February 24 he and Deputy Prime Minister Lene Espersen presented a revised government programme which effectively replaces the programme adopted in November 2007 by Løkke Rasmussen and Espersen’s predecessors Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Bendt Bendtsen.

Political commentators had long expected Løkke Rasmussen to reform his government in order to demonstrate that he had moved out of the shadow of Anders Fogh Rasmussen and managed to set his own team and political agenda. In early January there had been intensive rumours about a reshuffle which was alleged to have been cancelled at the last moment due to disagreements between the Liberals and the Conservatives over Conservative demands for reforms in economic and labour market policies.

During much of February political and media attention had been focused on Defence Minister Søren Gade (Liberal) who had been involved in two cases regarding the Ministry of Defence’s handling of information about Danish army operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. While Gade continued to be one of the government’s most popular ministers among the public, he also left the impression of not being in control of his department. Gade left his position as well as his seat in parliament in connection with the reshuffle.

The Reshuffle

In quantitative terms, the reshuffle was the largest since Anker Jørgensen reshuffled his government in 1973. Just like Løkke Rasmussen, Jørgensen had taken over from his predecessor during an ongoing electoral term and reformed his cabinet after little less than a year in office. Besides Lars Løkke Rasmussen, only four ministers kept their portfolios while seven ministers left office and seven new ministers were introduced.

The reshuffle did not alter the relative strength of the two coalition partners with regard to the share of ministers and portfolios but there were some changes in the distribution of portfolios, with the Liberals taking over Health and Transport from the Conservatives while ceding Social Affairs and Science. The Interior (Local Government) portfolio had been coupled with Social Affairs in the previous line-up but is now coupled with Health. The Liberal Party has 13 ministers and the Conservative Party six. In the reshuffled government, 10 ministers are men and nine women which means that it has the highest share of women ministers in Danish history. For the first time in Denmark, women occupy the positions of Foreign Minister and Defence Minister.

The most notable changes in personnel included Conservative leader Lene Espersen’s move from Business Affairs to Foreign Affairs, while Liberal veteran Bertel Haarder moved from Education to the combined Ministry of the Interior and Health, and deputy Liberal leader and Minister for Taxation Kristian Jensen left government to take up the position as leader of the parliamentary group of the Liberal Party.

Espersen’s move had been widely expected, as she wanted a portfolio that would give her a higher public profile while relieving her of much of the detailed and technical casework characterising Business Affairs. As a consequence of her move, the Foreign Minister since 2001 Per Stig Møller was moved to Cultural Affairs, while the Conservative #2 Brian Mikkelsen took over the Business Affairs portfolio and Lars Barfoed took Justice.

Among the Conservative ministers, Cultural Affairs Minister Carina Christensen and Health Minister Jakob Axel Nielsen left the government to return to the Conservative group in parliament. In both cases, they were considered disappointments at the ministerial level after being brought in by former Conservative leader Bendt Bendtsen in 2007. The two new Conservative ministers, Charlotte Sahl-Madsen (Science) and Benedikte Kiær (Social Affairs) were recruited from outside the Conservative parliamentary group. Kiær has been active in Conservative politics at the local and regional level while Sahl-Madsen has had a career in business and only became a member of the Conservative Party the day before her appointment as minister. The selection also to some degree illustrates the problems faced by the Conservatives in recruiting political talent.

On the Liberal side of the reshuffle, all five new ministers – Søren Pind (Development), Tina Nedergaard (Education), Hans Christian Schmidt (Transport), Gitte Lillelund Bech (Defence), Henrik Høegh (Food and Agriculture) – were recruited from the parliamentary group, but some of the details of the moves also highlighted a conflict between the party leadership and Liberal MPs. While Bertel Haarder’s move to Interior and Health was seen as surprising, it also reflected that the prime minister needed an experienced minister to deal with these portfolios, which have the potential to create major difficulties for the government as the quality of health services and local concil budgets move into the focus of attention.

Karen Ellemann, who had struggled during January and February with the implementation of an earlier agreement between the government and the Danish People’s Party about the provision of lunch meals for children in kindergartens, was moved from Interior and Social Affairs to Environment; Troels Lund Poulsen moved from Environment to Taxation; while Helge Sander, who had been Minister for Science since 2001, Ulla Tørnæs (Development and a minister since 2001) and Eva Kjer Hansen (Food and Agriculture) left government, along with Søren Gade and Kristian Jensen. Sander was considered part of the older guard in the Liberal Party, while Tørnæs and Kjer Hansen – just like the Conservatives’ Christensen and Axel Nielsen – had failed to create a distinctive profile during their time in government.

Two secondary portfolios also changed hands as part of the reshuffle, as Climate and Energy Minister Lykke Friis took over Equal Rights from Employment Minister Inger Støjbjerg, while Karen Ellemann took Nordic Cooperation from Bertel Haarder.

Kristian Jensen’s move to become chairman of the Liberal parliamentary group, while previous group chairman Hans Christian Schmidt was appointed Transport Minister, was interpreted as an attempt by Lars Løkke Rasmussen to strengthen his grib on the Liberal group in parliament. According to reports, the group on occasions during the last year has been on the verge of open rebellion against Løkke Rasmussen on policy and personnel issues, and Hans Christian Schmidt only agreed to leave his post without a vote in the group if he was offered a position in the new government. Liberal political spokesman Peter Christensen had indicated that he was not interested in entering government at this point in time.

The formal document announcing the reshuffle can be found at: http://www.stm.dk/_a_1615.html

Details of the Revised Government Programme

The revised government programme was presented by prime minister Løkke Rasmussen and foreign minister Espersen on the same day finance minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen presented the Danish convergency programme. The convergence programme focussed on a number of external demands on Danish economic policy, especially the need to control public spending in 2011 and later.

As the government wants to increase spending on health while saving on general public spending, national and local government services will be put under detailed scrutiny in the preparation of negotiations with local and regional authorities scheduled to take place in a couple of months and the 2011 budget which will be presented in August. The government announced a policy of zero growth in the public sector in the years to come.

The new ‘working programme’ is called ‘Denmark 2020 - Knowledge, growth, wealth, welfare’. Compared with earlier programmes, it has changed stylistically from presenting a number of precise promises to be delivered during the parliamentary term to broader statements about the government’s long-term goals. This marks a departure from the “contract politics” introduced by Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s predecessor Anders Fogh Rasmussen in 2001.

The main task facing the government will be to manage the economy while satisfying voter expectations for improved welfare and health services at the same time. Another specific problem is found in the agricultural sector, heavy burdened by debt. The sector still provides almost 1/5 of Danish exports and the Liberal Party has its roots here despite the fact that it has broadened its support considerably over the years. The government proposes to relieve the sector of taxation.

While the programme does mention increasing the supply of labour and quality of the labour force as one of the major goals of the government, it avoids mentioning reforming the early retirement benefit with the aim of raising the effective age of retirement. Instead the programme mentions earlier entry of university candidate into the labour market and activation of young and long-time unemployed as ways to increase the labour force.

While the programme mentions the long-term goal of repealing the Danish EU opt-outs, no timeframe is given. Specifically, the programme no longer includes a formulation that a referendum on one or more of the opt-outs will take place during this electoral term.

The full text of the programme is available in Danish at http://www.stm.dk/_a_1619.html

Flemming Juul Christiansen, Aarhus University

Jacob Christensen, University of Southern Denmark

PSA SPG

2010-02-12T09:53:00.001+01:00

Dear Specialist Group Member,

Jacob Christensen of the University of Southern Denmark has kindly offered members of the list an exclusive preview of his summary of Nordic politics in 2009, which he's compiled for the Annual Register (a journal that, according to its website, "began publication in 1758...[and]...is now published by Longmans"). Jacob took over as Nordic summariser from Mary Hilson last year.

Mary wrote previously that the Register's editor "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."

Best wishes,

Malin, Lee & Nick

________________________________________________________________
Malin Stegmann McCallion                               Dr Malin Stegmann McCallion
Fil Dr, Universitetslektor                                    Senior Lecturer/Assistant Professor
Statsvetenskap                                                     Political Science
Karlstads universitet                                            Karlstad University
Universitetsgatan 2                                              Universitetsgatan 2
651 88 Karlstad                                                    651 88 Karlstad
                                                                                 Sweden

E-post: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se Email: malin.stegmann-mccallion@kau.se
Tel: 054 – 700 1205 Telephone: +46 (0)54 700 1205

Scandinavian Poltiics: news round-up

2010-01-22T15:40:00.001+01:00

Just a quick resumé of political developments in the Nordic countries so
far this year.

* The situation in ICELAND, as most will know, is dramatic, since
President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson declared on January 5th, to general
amazement outside the country, that he would veto the Icelandic
government's deal with its British and Dutch counterparts over Icesave,
the subsidiary of Landesbanki, one of the Icelandic banks that collapsed
so spectacularly last year.

The legal basis on which Britain and the Netherlands are demanding
compensation for their bailing out Icesave customers in their own
countries remains, as far as I can understand, open to very different
views. But it is the terms of the agreement that are really at issue.
One of the founders of the domestic campaign against the deal,
InDefence.is, writing in the FT on January 10th, reckoned that his
compatriots would have to stump up 50 per cent of Iceland's gross
domestic product, "equivalent to a bill of €12,000 ($17,000, £11,000)
per person...The interest on top of this is an eye-watering annual rate
of 5.55 per cent. A year's interest equals the running cost of the
Icelandic healthcare system for six months."

Grimsson's veto can be overridden by parliament if it wins a referendum
on the issue. Assuming that the referendum, which has now been set for
March 6th, does take place, it will be the first time that this
constitutional provision has been activated by an Icelandic president. A
No in the vote might well doom Iceland's immediate prospects of joining
the EU. The coalition of the social democratic Alliance and the
Left-Green Movement might also be in danger, because the latter party is
very lukewarm about the Icesave deal.

* In DENMARK, too, there was some drama a couple of days ago when one of
the Danish People's Party's MPs, Christian H. Hansen, defected from his
party to sit as an independent in parliament. He cited his party
leadership's lack of interest in climate change and prioritisation of
Muslim-related issues rather than economic ones. (Separately, Liberal
prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said this week that, regardless of
how few women in Denmark actually wear them, the Islamic burka and niqab
have no place in Danish society.)

This deprives the government of Liberals and Conservatives, plus the
supporting Danish People's Party, of its parliamentary majority.
However, Hansen promised to continue supporting the government, as has
another independent MP, a former Conservative. A Faroese MP also made
the same pledge. So the government does not yet have to turn to the
three MPs of the failing Liberal Alliance. An election is likely at some
stage this year. (Thanks to Jacob Christensen and Flemming Juul
Christiansen for their observations on this.)

* Meanwhile, the fun is starting in FINLAND, since Matti Vanhanen, the
Centre Party leader and prime minister, announced over Christmas that he
would stand down at this June's party congress. Not only has the initial
frontrunner, environment minister Paula Lehtomäki, announced that she
won't be a candidate to replace him. More excitingly, trade minister
Paavo Väyrynen, who previously lead the party in 1980-90, has thrown his
hat into the ring. When asked how he intended to lead the party to
victory in the election that is due in 2011, Värynen, 63, told Hbl that
"I would emphasise ideology more than Vanhanen has, and I will also make
use of the mature man's charm."

Värynen is a controversial figure, and eyebrows have been raised about
his candidacy, not least in the other coalition parties. One
Conservative MP expressed it with nice understatement. "It is up to the
Centre Party to choose its own leader," he commented, "but the prime
minister must enjoy the confidence of both parliament and the
government. At least in the Conservative Party, Paavo Väyrynen sparks
discussion."

* In NORWAY, an official inquiry has been launched into "the political
judicial, administrative, economic and other social consequences" of the
country's position within the European Economic Area. Of the inquiry's
12 members, only one is a foreigner - a political scientist from
Stockholm University.

* In SWEDEN, meanwhile, the parties are gearing up for the election this
autumn. As it came to light, at the back end of last year, that
thousands of Swedes would find their sickness benefits coming to an end,
thanks to new government policy to promote its emphasis on work, the
opposition "red-greens" managed to establish a decent lead in the
opinion polls. This week, the red-greens' leaders published their own
proposal for reforming sickness benefits. The government dismissed it as
essentially a return to the old system, which permitted very high levels
of apparent incapacity among the relatively healthy Swedish population.

The red-greens are, however, struggling to reach agreement on some
policy issues, notably schools (especially marking) and defence
(especially Afghanistan). Perhaps more ominously, the Left Party's
representative on the joint working group on schools policy was quoted
in DN on January 16th as saying that "It's not so clever to decide all
these difficult questions before [the election]. The voters must have
the chance to decide which influence the respective parties ought to
have." That surely questions the whole point of the pre-electoral
alliance that the other red-green parties, the Social Democrats and the
Greens, have been so keen to build in order to match that of the
centre-right coalition.

Nicholas 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

Just a quick resumé of political developments in the Nordic countries so far this year

2010-01-21T13:44:00.001+01:00

Just a quick resumé of political developments in the Nordic countries so far this year.

* The situation in ICELAND, as most will know, is dramatic, since President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson declared on January 5th, to general amazement outside the country, that he would veto the Icelandic government's deal with its British and Dutch counterparts over Icesave, the subsidiary of Landesbanki, one of the Icelandic banks that collapsed so spectacularly last year.

The legal basis on which Britain and the Netherlands are demanding compensation for their bailing out Icesave customers in their own countries remains, as far as I can understand, open to very different views. But it is the terms of the agreement that are really at issue. One of the founders of the domestic campaign against the deal, InDefence.is, writing in the FT on January 10th, reckoned that his compatriots would have to stump up 50 per cent of Iceland's gross domestic product, "equivalent to a bill of €12,000 ($17,000, £11,000) per person...The interest on top of this is an eye-watering annual rate of 5.55 per cent. A year's interest equals the running cost of the Icelandic healthcare system for six months."

Grimsson's veto can be overridden by parliament if it wins a referendum on the issue. Assuming that the referendum, which has now been set for March 6th, does take place, it will be the first time that this constitutional provision has been activated by an Icelandic president. A No in the vote might well doom Iceland's immediate prospects of joining the EU. The coalition of the social democratic Alliance and the Left-Green Movement might also be in danger, because the latter party is very lukewarm about the Icesave deal.

* In DENMARK, too, there was some drama a couple of days ago when one of the Danish People's Party's MPs, Christian H. Hansen, defected from his party to sit as an independent in parliament. He cited his party leadership's lack of interest in climate change and prioritisation of Muslim-related issues rather than economic ones. (Separately, Liberal prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said this week that, regardless of how few women in Denmark actually wear them, the Islamic burka and niqab have no place in Danish society.)

This deprives the government of Liberals and Conservatives, plus the supporting Danish People's Party, of its parliamentary majority. However, Hansen promised to continue supporting the government, as has another independent MP, a former Conservative. A Faroese MP also made the same pledge. So the government does not yet have to turn to the three MPs of the failing Liberal Alliance. An election is likely at some stage this year. (Thanks to Jacob Christensen and Flemming Juul Christiansen for their observations on this.)

* Meanwhile, the fun is starting in FINLAND, since Matti Vanhanen, the Centre Party leader and prime minister, announced over Christmas that he would stand down at this June's party congress. Not only has the initial frontrunner, environment minister Paula Lehtomäki, announced that she won't be a candidate to replace him. More excitingly, trade minister Paavo Väyrynen, who previously lead the party in 1980-90, has thrown his hat into the ring. When asked how he intended to lead the party to victory in the election that is due in 2011, Värynen, 63, told Hbl that "I would emphasise ideology more than Vanhanen has, and I will also make use of the mature man's charm."

Värynen is a controversial figure, and eyebrows have been raised about his candidacy, not least in the other coalition parties. One Conservative MP expressed it with nice understatement. "It is up to the Centre Party to choose its own leader," he commented, "but the prime minister must enjoy the confidence of both parliament and the government. At least in the Conservative Party, Paavo Väyrynen sparks discussion."

* In NORWAY, an official inquiry has been launched into "the political judicial, administrative, economic and other social consequences" of the country's position within the European Economic Area. Of the inquiry's 12 members, only one is a foreigner - a political scientist from Stockholm University.

* In SWEDEN, meanwhile, the parties are gearing up for the election this autumn. As it came to light, at the back end of last year, that thousands of Swedes would find their sickness benefits coming to an end, thanks to new government policy to promote its emphasis on work, the opposition "red-greens" managed to establish a decent lead in the opinion polls. This week, the red-greens' leaders published their own proposal for reforming sickness benefits. The government dismissed it as essentially a return to the old system, which permitted very high levels of apparent incapacity among the relatively healthy Swedish population.

The red-greens are, however, struggling to reach agreement on some policy issues, notably schools (especially marking) and defence (especially Afghanistan). Perhaps more ominously, the Left Party's representative on the joint working group on schools policy was quoted in DN on January 16th as saying that "It's not so clever to decide all these difficult questions before [the election]. The voters must have the chance to decide which influence the respective parties ought to have." That surely questions the whole point of the pre-electoral alliance that the other red-green parties, the Social Democrats and the Greens, have been so keen to build in order to match that of the centre-right coalition.

Nicholas Aylott.

Scandinavian Politics: new group leadership

2010-01-01T17:50:00.001+01:00

There is also news about the Scandinavian Political Specialist Group
that needs to be conveyed.

* As some will remember, a few months ago I asked for a volunteer to
take over from me as convenor of our group. As it happens, the
development that triggered my request - the PSA's insistence that all
its affiliated specialist groups charge membership fees - has now been
rendered obsolete, as the association has recently withdrawn this
demand. Still, our specialist group needs more time and energy that
I've been able to give it, especially over the last couple of years.
So, in my view, we still need a new convenor. And, as it happens, we
have just the man. And the woman.

Effectively immediately, then, the new joint convenors of the group
are Professor Lee Miles and Dr Malin Stegmann-MacCallion of Karlstad
University, Sweden. Lee is on leave from his professorship at
Liverpool University, so the group will now have more of an anchor in
Britain, which is a plus. Lee has long been very active in our
community of British political scientists working on Nordic-related
topics; for many of you, he will need no introduction. Anyway, there
is more information about Lee and Malin on the homepage of political
science at Karlstad (www.sam.kau.se/stv, click on "Personal").

I still plan to contribute to our group. But Lee and Malin will give
the group more dynamism. Control of all the group's resources - our
money in the bank, our entries on the PSA website, our own archive of
newsletters - will be passed from me to them in due course.

* One new PSA demand of its specialist groups does still apply: we
must have a formal constitution. Lee and I have been conferring about
what it should contain, and we have produced a draft that can be
viewed at the following address:

http://tinyurl.com/spsgconstitution

Do please have a look, and let Lee (lee.miles@kau.se) have any
suggestions for revisions or changes - really, anything you think
relevant - by January 22nd.

* The final thing to mention is that our group will have an annual
general meeting this spring. The two main items on the agenda will be
(a) confirmation of Lee and Malin as co-convenors and (b) formal
adoption of the group's constitution. It looks likely that this
meeting will be internet-based rather than a physical gathering. I
have my own ideas for exactly how we could do this, but additional
ideas are more than welcome.

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 the convenor (lee.miles@kau.se). If you want to send
something to the list, or if you don't want to receive these
occasional messages, just let him know. See also
www.psa.ac.uk/spgrp/scandinavia/scandinavia.aspx

Scandinavian Politics: Finnish PM

2010-01-01T17:44:00.000+01:00

A happy new year to all on the Scandinavian Politics specialist group
mailing list!

This message is also to inform those of you who didn't know that
Finland's prime minister, Matti Vanhanen, announced shortly before
Christmas that he will be giving up the leadership of his Centre Party
in June 2010. He explained that he will undergo a leg operation soon
after, which will require too much convalesence to allow to him to
continue in the role. His popularity has also been sinking
significantly, however, especially since the party-finance scandals of
2009. As far as I know, Vanhanen hasn't absolutely confirmed that
giving up the party leadership also means that he will relinquish the
prime ministership, but I think this is generally acknowledged. (More
informed recipients of this message are welcome to put me straight on
that.)

Minister of the environment Paula Lehtomäki is apparently the early
frontrunner to replace Vanhanen as Centre leader. This might thus make
her Finland's second woman prime minister, although people in the
other coalition parties have objected to the assumption that this
would happen automatically.

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/spgrp/scandinavia/scandinavia.aspx

Scandinavian Politics: Danish local elections

2009-11-18T16:44:00.001+01:00

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

Scandinavian Politics: extremists in the media

2009-10-26T10:50:00.001+01:00

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

Scandinavian Politics: PSA conference in spring

2009-10-09T08:19:00.001+02:00

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

Scandinavian Politics: Norwegian election outcome

2009-09-15T11:28:00.001+02:00

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

Scandinavian Politics: news and conference idea

2009-09-07T10:49:00.000+02:00

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

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

2009-09-01T07:58:00.000+02:00

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 -----

Scandinavian Politics: latest

2009-08-05T10:08:00.001+02:00

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

Scandinavian Politics: Iceland's EU application

2009-07-28T08:40:00.001+02:00

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

Scandinavian Politics: latest

2009-07-03T09:23:00.000+02:00

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

Scandinavian Politics: more on the future

2009-05-29T10:58:00.001+02:00

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/

Scandinavian Politics: Lectureship in European Politics

2009-05-20T16:29:00.000+02:00

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>

[Fwd: Call for applications: mobility fellowships]

2009-05-19T16:03:00.000+02:00

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 -----

Scandinavian Politics: Icelandic election

2009-04-26T16:16:00.000+02:00

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/

Scandinavian Politics: our group's future

2009-04-24T09:48:00.000+02:00

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/

Scandinavian Politics. Danish PM, Swedish opposition

2009-04-05T11:46:00.000+02:00

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/

Scandinavian Politics: new Danish PM?

2009-02-24T13:42:00.000+01:00

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/

Scandinavian Politics: 2008 report, Nordic politics latest

2009-02-05T07:51:00.000+01:00

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/

Scandinavian Politics: Iceland's government falls

2009-01-27T17:35:00.001+01:00

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

Scandinavian Politics: Review of 2008

2009-01-14T08:36:00.002+01:00

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/

Scandinavian Politics: Danish parties

2009-01-07T15:47:00.000+01:00

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

Scandinavian Politics: Iceland, Bergen summer school

2008-12-14T14:35:00.002+01:00

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

Two very quick notices.

1. The Economist this week has a special briefing on Iceland's economic woes (www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12762027).

2. Beneath this message is a copy of a call for papers for the NordWel Summer School 2009, June 7th-12th 2009, in Bergen.

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/spgrp/scandinavia/

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Call for papers: NordWel Summer School 2009, 7-12 June 2009, Bergen
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:20:53 +0200
From: Anna Alanko

Dear recipients,

could you please forward the below message to suitable e-mail lists?
Thank you for your co-operation.

Best regards, Anna Alanko

**
CALL FOR PAPERS:

NordWel Summer School 2009:

"State, Society & Citizen - Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Welfare
State Development"

Bergen, 7-12 June 2009

NCoE NordWel in cooperation with the Rokkan Centre, the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion and the
Department of Comparative Politics at University of Bergen is
organizing a summer school in Bergen, 7-12 June 2009.

We welcome Ph.D.-students and young researchers from different
backgrounds both within and outside the Nordic countries to
participate in discussing the history of the welfare state, its
preconditions and how we ought to study it.

We invite proposals for papers that deal with welfare and welfare
state in a broad historical perspective.

Please find the detailed call for papers attached or at the NordWel
home page http://blogs.helsinki.fi/nord-wel/summer-school/

PhD students and young researchers interested in participating in the
summer school should send an abstract (1/2 page) and a short biography
by email no later than 10 February 2009 to coordinator Anna Alanko
via e-mail: anna.alanko@helsinki.fi

With best regards,

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/
NordWel_summerschool_ Call for papers 2009.doc

Scandinavian Politics: PSA conference, Swedish pre-electoral alliance

2008-12-11T15:07:00.000+01:00

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.
--
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

Scandinavian Politics

2008-11-20T08:50:00.000+01:00

Hej to all on the Scandinavian politics list,

Various notices.

1. PSA CONFERENCE, April 2009 (www.psa.ac.uk/2009). There may be room for just one more paper on our panel. Let me know sharpish if you're keen.

Here are some additional items that might be of interest.

2. LONDON EVENTS (courtesy of Mary Hilson)

Book launch: Helsinki Catch - European Security Accords 1975

The book deals with the CSCE process (Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, later OSCE) from the Finnish perspective and covers the period of CSCE's early phases, including the negotiation of the so-called Helsinki Accords up to the end of the Cold War and the transformation of Europe. The author is one of Finland's most renowned CSCE experts, Ambassador Markku Reimaa, who participated in the Conference throughout its various phases and led the Finnish delegation at the Stockholm Conference on Confidence and Security-building Measures and Disarmament in Europe.

The seminar will take place at UCL, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, Room 433, 16 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BW (for maps and directions please see www.ucl.ac.uk/maps). The event is organised by the Finnish Embassy, and will be followed by a reception to which all attending the seminar are invited. If you would like to attend, or if you would like further details, please contact Ms Anna-Leena Raittinen at the Embassy of Finland on 020 7838 6237 or anna-leena.raittinen@formin.fi. RSVP by Friday 21 November.

PS: Don't forget the UCL Nordic-Baltic Study Day on 28th November (www.ucl.ac.uk/~tjmsrcm/NBRG/NBRGHomepage.htm). All are welcome, but places are limited (due to the size of the room) so please let me know (m.hilson@ucl.ac.uk) as soon as possible if you would like to attend.

3. SCHOLARSHIPS AND STIPENDIUMS FROM MANCHESTER

The Democracy, Citizens and Elections Research Network (DCERN) at the University of Manchester (www.dcern.org.uk) would like to publicise upcoming opportunities for visiting research positions/fellowships at Manchester. Schemes are open to international and domestic doctoral students and those holding their PhD and vary from one month up to three years. For further information see:

* University of Manchester Simon and Hallsworth Fellowships for early-career scholars in social sciences and political economy to conduct a programme of research at the University of Manchester. www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/research/simonhallsworth/
Deadline Jan 2009
* University of Manchester Simon and Hallsworth Visiting Professorships to enable established researchers to come to Manchester for a period of 2 - 12 weeks to work with colleagues. Applications due in Jan 2009. Further details available from dcern@manchester.ac.uk .
* Newton fellowship scheme - aims to attract the best postdoctoral researchers to the UK for up to two years. They cover a range of disciplines, including the social sciences. Applications for October 2009 are now open. You can find out more at
www.newtonfellowships.org/
* The British Academy visiting fellowship scheme enabling early-career scholars to attend a UK institution for 2-6 months (deadline 12 Jan):
www.britac.ac.uk/funding/guide/intl/visfells.cfm

Please email dcern@manchester.ac.uk for further details on this or any of the above opportunities.

4. CALL FOR PAPERS: Annual European Graduate Conference on Political Parties (AEGCPP - www.aegcpp.org.uk), Monday 16th February 2009 at the University of Birmingham.

Best,

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

Scandinavian Politics: [Fwd: PSA Conference 2009]

2008-11-17T10:52:00.000+01:00

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

Just a quick note to let you know that our panel proposal for the 2009 PSA conference has been accepted. See the link below for further details.

Let me know if you're interested in presenting something in Manchester in the spring.

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/spgrp/scandinavia/

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: PSA Conference 2009
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:16:14 -0000
From: PSA Conference 2009
Reply-To:
Organization: PSA
To: Nicholas Aylott

Dear Nicholas Aylott,

Thank you for submitting your panel proposal *Panel130 * for the 2009
Manchester PSA conference. The number and quality of the proposals we
received for the conference was very high. We are writing to confirm
acceptance of this panel for the conference. Please note: there are a
number of individual papers that we are seeking to accommodate in the
programme, where space permits. We will contact you if we find an
appropriate additional paper for your panel.

Further information about paper submission is available on the PSA web
site here .

Best wishes

Moya Lloyd & Ruth Kinna

Scandinavian Politics: events in London

2008-10-26T11:27:00.000+01:00

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

The following two events in London may be of interest to some. Details are provided by Mary Hilson of the Department of Scandinavian Studies, University College London.

1) Conference: Nordic Media in Theory and Practice, UCL, 7-8 November
2008

Organised by Reuters Institute for Study of Journalism in Oxford, in association with Department of Scandinavian Studies at UCL. For more information see http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/about/news/item/article/nordic-media-in-theory-and-practice-7-8-november.html

2) Baltic-Nordic Study Day, UCL, 28 November 2008

This event launches a new research group on the Baltic-Nordic region, linking the UCL Department of Scandinavian Studies and the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. The Study Day will bring together researchers from UCL and other universities in London and the
CEELBAS (www.ceelbas.ac.uk) network. See
www.ucl.ac.uk/~tjmsrcm/NBRG/NBRGHomepage.htm or follow the link
from the UCL Department of Scandinavian Studies homepage (www.ucl.ac.uk/scandinavian-studies/welcome). All are welcome to
attend.

Best,

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

Scandinavian Politics: mobility fellowships, Nordic politics latest

2008-10-16T09:42:00.000+02:00

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

Five brief notices.

1. We still have places for one or two papers in the panel proposal submitted to the organisers of the PSA CONFERENCE in Manchester next April (www.psa.ac.uk/2009). Do let me know if your interested.

2. A communication on POSTDCOC MOBILITY from Helsinki University.

-----
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 July 2009 - 31 December 2010 (please see the attachment for details).

For more information see NordWel's web site: http://blogs.helsinki.fi/nord-wel/

Call for Applications as attachments.
-----

3. No one will have failed to notice that the BANKS CRISIS spread devastatingly into Europe last week. I won't comment on the collapse of Iceland's three main banks, except to refer you to a nice, concise article in this week's Economist (www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12382011); and to speculate gloomily that, with those banks' debts apparently amounting to nine times Iceland's GDP, some very lean years are surely in store for the country.

Rumours persist that Swedish banks' exposure to the collapsed property-bubble in the Baltic states could yet land at least one of them in severe difficulty - although, interestingly, there has also been criticism that such rumours haven't been investigated more energetically by Sweden's economics journalists.

4. Danish party politics displays yet more instability, this time affecting the Social Liberals (insightfully chronicled, as usual, by Jacob Christensen, http://jacobchristensen.name/2008/10/14/amnitzb%c3%b8ll/). But it's Sweden where the fun has really been occurring recently.

Amind the financial crisis, some eyebrows were raised at the timing of a press conference on Wednesday October 8th, at which the Social Democrats and the Greens announced an alliance between them, with the goal of forming a full coalition government after the next election. Even odder, perhaps, was that this alliance was given a specific shelf-life - until 2020, to be precise. But the main talking point was the clear statement that the Left Party, the third member of the quasi-coalition of 1998-2006, was to be exluded from the alliance. This was because of the Left's refusal to be bound to the fairly stringent fiscal norms that all the other parties accept - a radical position that might be an electoral liability for office-seeking parties that were associated with it.

The reaction of the Left was predictably angry: its leaders repeated their pledge to vote against any government that excludes them, including a coalition of Greens and Social Democrats. But what the Social Democratic leader, Mona Sahlin, appears to have "totally misjudged" (to quote a Swedish political columnist) was the subsequent reaction from within her own party. From all quarters of the labour movement came furious protests that it was too soon to marginalise the Left.

Within a couple of days, and to the Greens' obvious frustration, Sahlin had backtracked. The government issue remained open, she said, and talks with the Left would continue. A year and half after becoming party leader, Sahlin's authority has been powerfully weakened. There are also serious doubts now about her cautious, ongoing attempts to nudge the Social Democrats towards the political midfield. And Swedish voters are little the wiser about how the three left-of-centre parties will present themselves in opposition to the governing Alliance for Sweden (whose four leaders have pledged to deepen their parties' co-operation) in 2010.

5. For anyone who's noticed a certain stagnation in our group's website, there are technical problems that I'm trying to resolve with the PSA webmaster.

Best,

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

Scandinavian Politics: PSA conference

2008-10-05T18:00:00.000+02:00

The deadline for submitting panel proposals to the conference (www.psa.ac.uk/2009) has been extended to october 10th.

We have or two places left in nascent panel-proposal that has the rather broad theme of Nordic and Baltic relations. Would anyone fancy climbing on board? We could do with a chair for the panel, too, if anyone is available.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University College, Stockholm
SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden
www.sh.se/samhallsvetenskaper

[Fwd: Call for papers: Labour Markets and Welfare States. The Nordic Model in Comparative and Transnational Historical Perspectives]

2008-09-23T07:39:00.000+02:00

Possibly of interest to some on the Scandinavian Politics list...
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University College, 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/spgrp/scandinavia/

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Call for papers: Labour Markets and Welfare States. The Nordic Model in Comparative and Transnational Historical Perspectives
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:25:33 +0300
From: aalanko@mappi.helsinki.fi

Dear recipient,

could you please forward the below call for papers to your e-mail lists?
With best wishes, Anna Alanko

**

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Labour Markets and Welfare States. The Nordic Model in Comparative and
Transnational Historical Perspectives

The conference "Labour Markets and Welfare States. The Nordic Model in
Comparative and Transnational Historical Perspectives" takes place in
Stockholm, 13-15 May 2009

Organizers: The Nordic Centre of Excellence: The Nordic Welfare State
- Historical Foundations and Future Challenges (NCoE NordWel) in
cooperation with the Department of History, Stockholm University.

Since the 1930s, the Nordic countries have been singled out as a
special case in international politics. In comparative welfare state
research the concept The Nordic Model has become a standard term.
However, the Nordic model is often and inadequately described in terms
of distinct social policy configuration when it is better seen as a
particular complex of welfare policies, labour market institutions,
and gender relations which has emerged in the Nordic countries over
the last century. According to this interpretation, two principles
characterize the model. On the one hand, a universalist idea of social
rights based on citizenship, and on the other hand, the normalcy of
wage work as the social form of labour.

The second international conference organized by the NCoE NordWel is
devoted to the historically contingent interconnectedness of welfare
states and labour markets. We invite proposals for papers that analyze
these complex relations in a broad historical perspective covering the
period from ca 1900 to the present. Papers can be both theoretical and
empirical in their approach. They can deal with particular cases,
focus on national themes or have a comparative/transnational
perspective. Among the suggested themes are

* Comparative analysis of labour markets and welfare states

* Gender, wage work, family policies and welfare states

* Labour market policies and activation policies - continuities and
discontinuities

* Sectorialized wage work (health care, social services) in the making
of welfare states

* Unions, employers and welfare states

* Migration, global labour markets and national welfare policies

* Changing and competing concepts, images and definitions of work and welfare

Paper proposals (1/2 page) should be submitted to the following e-mail
address: nils.edling@historia.su.se. The deadline for submissions of
abstracts is December 15, 2008. Authors of submitted abstracts will be
notified not later than January 15, 2008.

NCoE NordWel will provide accommodation for all participants with
accepted papers. Travel grant can be applied for in connection with
abstract submission.

Nordic Centre of Excellence The Nordic Welfare State - Historical
Foundations and Future Challenges, NCoE NordWel, is a
multi-disciplinary, cross-national research network of seven partner
units in Nordic universities. The Centre started its activities in
March 2007 as a part of NordForsk Centre of Excellence. For more
information, see: http://blogs.helsinki.fi/nord-wel/.

--
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/

Scandinavian Politics: PSA conference; new book

2008-09-15T09:58:00.000+02:00

Dear all,

Three items in this newsletter.

1. PSA CONFERENCE In Manchester in April 2007 (www.psa.ac.uk/2009). The deadline for panel proposals is September 28th - that is, within a fortnight. So far, we've had two suggestions:

(a) "privacy-related" issues, epitomised by the ongoing broughhaha in Sweden over the proposed surveillance law (see below);

(b) "ethics and Nordic military policy".

If anyone would be interested in presenting a paper related to one of these topics, let me know, and I'll put you in touch with the relevant person.

2. NEW BOOK on Swedish social democracy. One of the members of this list, Dimitris Tsarouhas. now of Bilkent University (dimitris@bilkent.edu.tr), has produced this book, published by IB Tauris (www.ibtauris.com). The publisher's website summarises Social Democracy in Sweden thus:

"What is the future of social democracy in the age of globalization? The Swedish model, long the paradigm for socially responsible capitalism, was pronounced dead in the 1990s, but a new Swedish model has emerged and is thriving. Europeanisation and globalization were expected to erode social democracy, placing limits on the power of organized labour to negotiate with capital. Here Dimitris Tsarouhas shows why and how this did not happen. Tracing the emergence of the original model to its institutional and political origins, he garners rich empirical evidence to show the resilience of the fundamental nature of Swedish social democracy in the face of changing policies, institutions and labour relations. 'Social Democracy in Sweden' is an important reassessment of European social democracy and the impact of globalization."

I'm sure this will be of interest to a lot of other members of our list.

3. BRIEF REVIEW OF RECENT NORDIC POLITICS.

* The centre-right Swedish government, having got to half way in the parliamentary term, must be wondering how it allowed defence and security to dominate the political agenda. It is still far from certain that its surveillance (FRA) law will get through parliament (which reopens tomorrow), such is the unease among the coalition's backbenchers. Then, last week, perhaps in the light of foreign minister Carl Bildt's eyebrow-raisingly hawkish response to Russia's behaviour in the Caucasus, the government decided to review its much-criticised defence policy.

Meanwhile, the three left-of-centre opposition parties are still miles ahead in the polls. Recently, Social Democratic leader Mona Sahlin confirmed the widely held assumption that, if possible, her party will return to office after the next election in coalition rather than alone. Whether that coalition would include both the Left Party and the Greens, or just the Greens, is still unclear, however - and this may prove to be the current government's last trump card. The Left's leadership wrote an uncompromisingly radical article on economic policy last week that makes it hard to see a basis for a deal with the other two parties.

* The war in Georgia has prompted mixed but generally more measured reactions in Finland. The authors of a parliamentary report on national security policy, which in the summer dismissed the idea of a military threat to Finland from Russia, told Hbl last week that nothing had happened to change their opinion.

* In Norway, the Progress Party is making ever more progress in the opinion polls, to the extent that it is now talking about what it would do in government after the next election, in autumn 2009. Its governing prospects are hindered by the refusal of Christian Democrats to contemplate joining it in a coalition, and of the Liberals even to consider passively supporting a government that included Progress. But some Conservatives are tempted by the idea of coming to an arrangement with Progress. And the party's leader, Siv Jensen, has even mooted the idea of its forming a single-party minority government, even if it could only survive a short time.

* As usual, however, it's been Denmark where politics has been liveliest. (Thanks to Jacob Christensen and Flemming Juul Christiansen for their thoughts on a draft of the following resumé.)

Last week Bendt Bendtsen stepped down as Conservative leader, minister of the economy and commerce, and deputy prime minister (he will now run for the European Parliament). After a unanimous vote in the Conservative parliamentary group, he was replaced in all three roles by Lene Espersen, minister of justice for the last seven years. The latest opinion polls do not suggest that the move has given the Liberal-Conservative coalition a shot in the arm, which is what it needs.

One of its difficulties was caused by the uncertainy about the future of the Lisbon treaty, which forced the government to shelve its plans for referendums on scrapping some or all of the exemptions that Denmark has from some EU policy areas. More serious has been the challenge posed over the summer to the government's flagship policy, on immigration, by the European Court of Justice, which has been aggravated by the poor management of the issue by Birthe Rønn Horbech, the integration minister, and her department.

Another problem is the historic agreement, concluded a month or so ago, in which the Socialist People's Party agreed a shadow budget proposal with the Social Democrats. This agreement makes a coalition between these two parties, and probably also the Social Liberals, that much more likely. The Socialist People's Party's office-seeking course, which has involved much more centrist positions (by Danish standards) on, especially, economics and ethnic-minority integration, has won it big rewards in the opinion polls. Some of its own leading figures are less enthused, though.

Finally, New Alliance, which won parliamentary seats for the first time in 2007, has tried to draw a line under months of disastrous infighting and defections by changing its name, to Liberal Alliance, and its policies, also in a liberal direction. However, its support in opinion polls remains almost non-existent. More on these and other issues in Danish and Nordic politics can be found on Jacob Christensen's excellent blog (jacobchristensen.name).

Best,

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

Scandinavian Politics: PSA conference 2009

2008-08-18T11:52:00.000+02:00

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

It might still be summer for some, especially those in Britain (summer in the sense of the calendar, rather than the weather, anyway). But here in chilly, rainy Stockholm, preparations for the new academic year are well underway. And it's thus time encourage you to start thinking about the 2009 PSA conference, on April 7th-9th (www.psa.ac.uk/2009).

An added attraction this year is that the conference will, for the first time, be held in a proper conference centre rather than a university campus. That this particular conference centre is in Manchester is another attraction. All the more reason, then, for a good Scandinavianist turnout.

If anyone is interested in presenting a Nordic-flavoured paper at the conference, or indeed of organising a panel, please let me know (I've been informed that "it will be your responsibility as convenor to submit the panel proposals for your specialist group").

As for the panels' composition, there are stricter guidelines than usual. "All panels", apparently, "should have a minimum of three papers and a maximum of four. Participation by graduate students is limited to one paper per panel proposal."

If you have some research on the go that you think could usefully receive some feeback around next spring, do let me know.

Best,

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

Scandinavian Politics: question about MPs and parties

2008-08-01T13:53:00.000+02:00

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

Robin Pettitt of Kingston University has asked me to send out the following question to the list.

"There is a clause in the Danish Constitution (§ 56) which states that 'members of parliament are bound only by their own convictions and not by any directions from their voters'.

"Is anyone aware of any other country in Scandinavia or beyond having a similar clause, or of any literature dealing with constitutional rules protecting the independence of MPs from their voters/parties? Any suggestions and help would be greatly appreciated."

Please reply directly to Robin (r.pettitt@kingston.ac.uk).

Meanwhile, I hope everyone is having a prodcutive summer, however you define productive.

Best,

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

Scandinavian Politics: Swedish drama, workshop report, new books

2008-06-19T08:38:00.000+02:00

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

Several items of interest.

1. SWEDEN'S BUGGING LAW. There's been British-style parliamentary drama in Sweden this week. A new law that permits the state to monitor all electronic communication that traverses the country's borders, even without any suspicion of crime, was approved by parliament late last night. (I won't comment on the symbolism of Sweden's football team getting torn apart by their Russian opponents at pretty much the same time.)

As you might expect, and as Jacob Christensen has observed on his excellent blog (http://jacobchristensen.name/2008/06/16/fra/), this law has been massively controversial. It has no visible support anywhere in the Sweden outside the governing parties (although it was actually the previous Social Democtatic government that initiated it). Indeed, several MPs from three of the four right-of-centre coalition parties threatened to vote against the bill. Departure from the party line by only four of them would have deprived the government of a majority. But several last-minute concessions persuaded all but a couple of Liberal MPs to support their government.

Among the many interesting aspects of this episode are (a) the threatened breakdown in parliamentary-party discipline, which is unusual in Sweden, and (b) the fact that several of the rebel MPs were both young and elevated up their respective parties' lists in the 2006 election by their high proportions of personal preference votes.

2. WORKSHOP REPORT. Last week a very interesting and, by all accounts, successful workshop took place in London. The theme was Political Outsiders in Swedish History. A report written by the organiser, Mary Hilson of UCL, is attached as a text file.

3. NEW BOOKS. Concidentally, Mary Hilson has just published a book on modern Nordic history that I suspect will be extremely useful for both teaching and research.

www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/book.html?id=329

Equally useful will be a new edition of David Arter's textbook, Scandinavian Politics Today, which will be out in September.

Meanwhile, enjoy summer.

Best,

Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University College, 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/spgrp/scandinavia/

Political Outsiders in Swedish History

A workshop with the above title was held at UCL on Friday 6 June 2008, organised by the Nordic History Group (UCL Department of Scandinavian Studies), in co-operation with Lund University and Malmö University College, and with financial support from the Political Studies Association's Scandinavian Politics Specialist Group and the UCL Centre for European Studies.

The aim of the workshop was to bring together historians and political scientists to explore one of the fundamental assumptions about the so-called Swedish model, namely that Swedish political history is seen as having been characterised primarily by a political culture of compromise and consensus. Traditionally, the crucial turning point for the establishment of the Swedish model was understood to be the 1930s, when several historical milestones - notably the 1933 'cow-deal' and the 1938 Saltsjöbadsavtal - established a political settlement that was to endure for most of the twentieth century.

Recent historical scholarship has traced the roots of the model back to the Enlightenment or even earlier, citing the institutions of early modern peasant society as the forerunners of a distinctively Swedish political culture of compromise and consensus. Within Swedish historical writing, and within more general perceptions of Sweden, both externally and internally, the 'consensus view' of Swedish history has thus become established as a Swedish Sonderweg, and even to take on the characteristics of a national myth. However, given the apparent demise of some aspects of the model in recent years, a re-assessment of its historical roots seems timely, and appropriately enough, this workshop on national myths in Swedish history was held coincidentally on the Swedish national day.

The political outsiders discussed in the papers presented at the workshop were all outsiders in a double sense: they were often radicals in their own day, but they also stand outside mainstream Swedish historiography. Five papers were presented. Lars Edgren (Lund University) discussed the little-known C19th Lund radical Nils Rudolf Munch af Rosenschöld, drawing on his journal Fäderneslandet to examine links between democracy, nationalism, anti-semitism, gender and sexuality in a political movement largely ignored by Swedish historians. Irene Andersson's (Malmö University College) paper examined the women's organisation Frisinnade Kvinnors Riksförbund to present a more nuanced view of gender politics in the first decade of full citizenship, in the 1920's - a decade that many contributors discussed as a 'lost decade' in Swedish history writing.

Stefan Nyzell (Malmö University College) dealt with suppressed aspects of the history of the Social Democratic Party itself, taking as his point of departure the so-called Möllevången riots in Malmö in 1926. Magnus Olofsson (Lund University) presented work from his recent doctoral thesis on the rural protest movements in Skåne in the 1860s, showing how farm tenants used various forms of violent and non-violent protest to assert their rights against larger landowners. Finally, Mary Hilson (UCL) presented an overview of recent historiographical developments, emphasising the role of contingency in the development of the so-called Swedish model in the first half of the twentieth century.

Comments on all the papers were provided by two political scientists, Lee Miles (University of Liverpool) and Christine Agius (Salford University). There was general agreement that while it was important to acknowledge the often peaceful nature of Swedish political development seen over a long historical period, the role of conflict in Swedish society at different times should not be overlooked. Also the role of international politics in steering internal Swedish developments was emphasised.

The small size of the workshop (about 12 participants overall) allowed for wide-ranging discussion on a variety of topics, and useful parallels were also drawn with the other Nordic countries, Denmark in particular. The workshop was an excellent example of the cross-fertilisation and useful exchange of ideas that can arise from inter-disciplinary collaborations between historians and political scientists in this way.

It is hoped that this work will eventually result in the publication of a volume with the same title.

Mary Hilson, UCL
June 2008

Fwd: Call for Applications: Mobility fellowships for PhD Students and Postdoctoral Researchers]

2008-05-29T07:29:00.000+02:00

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

The following announcement may be of interest to some on the list.

Otherwise, I hope that everyone is easing themselves into summer mode, whatever that mode actually involves for each of you!

Best,

Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) in political science
School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University College, 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/spgrp/scandinavia/

-------- Ursprungligt meddelande --------
Ämne: Fwd: Call for Applications: Mobility fellowships for PhD Students and Postdoctoral Researchers
Datum: Tue, 27 May 2008 20:54:59 +0300
Från: Heidi Haggrén
Till: k.charles@ucl.ac.uk,francesca.parenti@iue.it,"Nicholas Aylott" ,schulte@werknetz.com,info@espanet.org,henvendelser@fosam.uio.no,hiscj@hum.au.dk,sekretariatet@nsuweb.net,anewby@STAFFMAIL.ED.AC.UK

Please circulate this Call for papers to all potentially interested.

Best wishes,
Heidi Haggrén

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

CALL FOR PAPERS

NordWel mobility fellowships

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 visit in one of the institutions participating in the Centre.

For more information see Call for Applications:
http://blogs.helsinki.fi/nord-wel/mobility/mobility-fellowships/call-for-applications/.

The deadline for applications is 16 June 2008 by 3:45 pm.

--
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/

CfP_NordWel-fellowships_post-doc-researchers.doc

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