Scandinavian Politics: PSA conference, Swedish pre-electoral alliance

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: PSA conference; new book

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: Swedish drama, workshop report, new books

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

Scandinavian Politics: turbulence on the Danish left

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

It feels like Nordic politics has been going through a bit of a quiet spell recently. A couple of party leaders (the Finnish Social Democrats, the Norwegian Centre Party) have announced that they're stepping down. The "highly leveraged" Icelandic economy is either going through a slightly rough patch or is poised for total meltdown, depending on who you believe. Most of you will have read about the resignation of the Finnish foreign minister, after some rather inappropriate SMS correspondence.

In Sweden, the Greens' top people have signalled that they want to reconcile their party to EU membership, which could have interesting consequences for their relations with the Social Democrats. There are currently big healthcare strikes in Denmark and Sweden, and both countries have experienced public spats about academic freedom, which Jacob Christensen has written insightfully about (http://jacobchristensen.name/2008/04/15/an-academic-debate-and-other-catfights/).

But otherwise it's been fairly sedate - with, I would say, one interesting exception.

As usual, this exception can be found in Denmark. It concerns the recent behaviour of the Socialist People's Party and, in particular, its leader, Willy Søvndal. One interesting development was his openness to a deal with the right-wing government over holding new referendums on Denmark's longstanding opt-outs from the Treaty on European Union, including EMU. (The Lisbon treaty, meanwhile, was pushed through parliament yesterday, the government having been determined to avoid a referendum.)

More striking, though, was Søvndal's reaction to the wave of unrest that some Danish towns experienced in February, at the same time as the cartoons-of-the-prophet controversy briefly blew back into life. Among other things, he argued that while discrimination against immigrants was a problem, it was "not an open excuse to burn cars". Nor were immigrants the only ones to suffer immigration; so too did groups within the indigenous population, such as young women, sometimes at the hands of "young men with another ethnic background". He also laid into some of the more radical Islamic organisations. For "those with a Muslim background in Denmark", he declared, "the solution to their problems - which I recognise and understand - is not to be found through more religion" (Politiken Feb. 20th 2008).

Now, this position is entirely consistent with a secular left-wing analysis of anti-social behaviour and, especially, religion's role in public life. But it is nevertheless a sharp break with the Scandinavian left's usual position on the plight of many immigrants in the region, which is - putting it very simply - that the host society is to blame for marginalising them. Reactions have ranged from furious attacks on Søvndal from Social Liberals, and from some in his own party, to gleeful congratulation from the governing parties. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Socialist People's Party's opinion-polls figures have gone through the roof.

Meanwhile, the torture for the Social Democrats continues in ever more paradoxical forms. In such good times, economic issues, especially tax, are tricky enough for the party. But on social and ethical issues like immigration and freedom of speech, the Social Democrats are simultaneously being pulled leftwards by the Social Liberals, the party nominally to their right, and powerfully rightwards by the Socialist People's Party, the party nominally to their left and which now stands pretty much level with them in the polls.

The contrast with the immigration debate in Sweden just could not be greater.

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: Danish election, Swedish resignation

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

Two quick reports.

1. It probably won't have escaped your attention that last week the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, called an election for November 13th. While the opposition Social Democrats and Social Liberals have recently been reconciled, current polls make exciting reading for the debutant New Alliance - and therefore for many members of the Liberal-Conservative coalition government. Success for the new party might well liberate the coalition from its reliance in parliament on the far-right Danish People's Party. More on the campaign next week.

2. Meanwhile, in Sweden, the centre-right government becomes ever more accident-prone. Yesterday it notched its fifth resignation in just over a year - two politically appointed under-secretaries, who are a sort of junior minister, and three cabinet ministers. Only one has been over policy disagreement; all others involved scandal of some sort.

This latest one involved Ulrica Schenström, under-secretary in the prime minister's office. A week ago, Aftonbladet published a paparazzo photo of her in a bar with a TV reporter. Their embrace appeared, at least, to be quite intimate, and vague questions were asked as to whether both parties had overstepped the boundaries of a professional relationship. This might have been shrugged off. But suggestions that Schenström had been on some sort of national-crisis watch that night, a sensitive subject for Swedes since the state's slow response to the Asian tsunami nearly three years ago, plus disclosure of the impressive sum that the pair had spent on booze that night, then combined to force her out. (The reporter has also taken a "time-out" from his job.)

This is a major blow to the prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, who loses a close political ally. His judgement in recruiting government colleagues looks increasingly shaky. But questions are also being asked as to whether Schenström's offence was really so heinous, and whether media power hasn't exceeded reasonable limits. The precise nature of her crisis-watch duties are obviously highly germane to her case, but the government is reluctant to elaborate - for security reasons, it says.

Best,

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

Scandinavian Politics: cartoons crisis (cont.), Norwegian local elections

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

Three quick notices.

1. Most of you will no doubt have noted that Sweden is experiencing its own cartoons crisis, a year and a half after Denmark's. The Economist has a good summary in this week's edition, and the English-language online paper the Local (www.thelocal.se) has also covered it, so I needn't go into details here. Suffice it to say that, interestingly, Swedish newspapers have been generally rather keener to stand up for freedom of speech than they were during the Danish crisis (although their attempts to assert the differences between the two episodes have, if you ask me, been somewhat less convincing).

2. I've had two expressions of interest in presenting papers at the 2008 PSA conference in Swansea, on Swedish or Nordic trade unions. If anyone else thinks that they could contribute a paper in roughly that field, we might have a panel proposal in the pipeline. Let me know if you do.

3. A week ago, Norway held its local elections, and there were mixed fortunes across the spectrum. Many thanks to Nick Sitter of the Norwegian School of Management, who's written an excellent commentary on the outcome, which I attach as a Word file.

Best,

Nick.

Scandinavian Politics: Liberal shake-up

Hej to everyone on the Scandinavian Politics list,

Just a brief word about changes in the middle of the party-political spectrum in Sweden and Denmark (thanks to Jacob Christensen for his contribution to the item on the latter). It will be interesting to see whether changes in policy and strategy follow changes in leadership.


- In Denmark, the Social Liberals dumped their long-serving leader, Marianne Jelved, following a meeting of the parliamentary group on Friday. Criticism of her within the party had grown since she distanced it earlier this year from its longstanding informal alliance with the Social Democrats, but without signalling any compromise in its opposition to basic elements in the right-wing government's policy, especially on immigration and tax. That seemed to leave the Social Liberals isolated. Jelved was also seriously weakened by the formation of a breakaway party, New Alliance, by Social Liberal defectors at the beginning of May (see newsletter 070505).

The Social Liberals' second in command, Margrethe Vestager, who had been heir apparent since the late 1990s, takes over as chair of the parliamentary group and as "political leader". In a statement on its website, the Social Liberals urge the governing Liberals and Conservatives, and also (perhaps a little oddly) New Alliance, to join it in "working for a government anchored in the centre, independent of the [radical right-wing] Danish People's Party". This opening to the moderate right could presage real change. Last year Jelved called the Liberal prime minister "a dangerous man".

Yet no concrete policy compromises have been signalled in the press; nor did a leading figure on the Social Liberals right wing get the deputy leader's job that he'd hoped for. It's not yet clear, then, how the isolation of the Danish People's Party will be achieved.

There are some curious aspects to the party's announcement of the leadership change. A policy statement by Vestager was posted on the party's YouTube channel on Thursday night, which suggests that the hand-over was prepared in advance. The design of the party website had also been updated by noon on Friday to feature Vestager. But the statement from the parliamentary group on Friday did not explicitly mention the change in leadership. It was only a later press release from the chair of the party organisation that named Vestager as the new political leader.


- Meanwhile, the Swedish Liberals' election committee (see newsletter of 070119 for more discussion of this very Swedish institution) yesterday proposed schools minister Jan Björklund as the party's new leader, which all but guarantees that he will be elected at the party's autumn congress. He will replace Lars Leijonborg, who announced in late May that he would be stepping down.

Leijonborg has led the party for a decade, with the 2002 election as his high point. But his support had been ebbing away since the hacking scandal that engulfed the Liberals in last year's election campaign, and his fate was sealed by their feeble opinion-poll figures since they entered government. Indeed, the scandal and its aftermath provoked something of a backlash within the party against the tougher, mildly populist direction in which Leijonborg had taken it.

Yet little about Björklund's background - he was a military officer before taking up politics, and made his name almost entirely through advocating greater order in Stockholm's schools - suggests much change of policy. The party's social-liberal left simply lacked a plausible and willing leadership candidate. Wherever Björklund wants to take the party policy-wise, however, any Liberal leader would face the same strategic dilemma: how to profile the party without alienating its coalition partners.


Have a great summer!

Best,

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

Swedish Social Democrats' new leader

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

It's official: the next leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party will be Mona Sahlin. As became clear yesterday, she will be the only candidate for the post when, in March, a special party congress chooses – or, in practice, rubber stamps – the new chair of the party organisation.

So much could be written about this development, but I'll restrict myself to raising briefly a few aspects.

Sahlin will be the party's first woman leader in its nearly 120 years of existence. She is only the second to be chosen in opposition; all her predecessors have been prime minister at some stage. On a personal level, her designation represents an extraordinary political comeback, after she withdrew from leadership contention in 1996 after her chaotic personal finances (minor misuse of government credit cards, unpaid bills and parking fines) came to light.

For me, most fascinating has been the Social Democrats' method of choosing its leader. The other day the Moderate prime minister, Fredrick Reinfeldt, mentioned that it seemed to have had two basic criteria: first, that none of the contenders should say anything about politics; and, second, that none of them should be a man. He called the whole process "very strange"; and, in some ways, it is. Until the 1960s the British Conservative Party leader used to "emerge" rather than be elected, a system that everyone now regards as archaic. But that is pretty much how Sahlin has been chosen. She has "emerged" as potential rivals have backed out, which in most cases they did as they realised that Sahlin was going to "emerge" in front of them.

At the heart of the process has been a very Swedish institution, the "election committee" (valbereddning). In many organisations (including university departments), there is no really open campaign between candidates to a leadership or representative position. Instead, the election committee sounds out the constituency and eventually proposes a candidate (or slate of candidates) that it feels has the best chance of achieving the broadest support – which is what the Social Democrats' election committee did yesterday. The final vote in that constituency is thus often – though not always – a confirmation of this perception, as the election committee's preferred candidate is the only one who thinks it worth standing.

Strange this may be to some, but there is a point to it. As the chair of the Social Democrats' election committee argued, more open competition between candidates is a recipe for factional infighting in a political party. Social Democrats can now rally round Sahlin and pretend that they supported her all along. The process also allowed the party's women's league, early on, to insist that the new leader be a woman, and thus implicitly to threaten an internal explosion if the election committee didn't propose one.

So, while everyone expects her leadership style to be more collegial than that of her predecessor, no one really knows where Sahlin will lead the party policy-wise. In the 1980s and early 1990s, as a young MP and then a young minister, she acquired the reputation of belonging to the right of the party, which is the main reason why she is deeply distrusted by many on the Social Democrats' left, especially trade-union activists. (The revelation today that she went 11 years without being a member of a union, and only joined one last December, will not help her.) Since her ministerial comeback in 1998, she has, as far as I can recall, said pretty much nothing about economic or, especially, labour market issues. But she has taken some pretty radical positions on social issues like equality of the sexes and the integration of immigrants.

Best,

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

Scandinavian Politics latest

Hej to all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

Two quick notices.


1. We only managed to get one of our panels accepted for the PSA conference in Bath in April. This is a bit of a disappointment, and I'm not entirely happy about it. But the conference organisers have, apparently, been inundated with panel proposals, so sifting them was bound to be tricky.

The draft programme can be found at the conference website (www.psa.ac.uk/2007). We're in session B.


2. With the new Swedish government having settled down after its dreadful start, attention is now turning to the Social Democrats and their attempt to find a new leader. As was the case last time, in 1996, the slightly surreal competition revolves around who among the likely candidates can rule themselves out with the most conviction.

The early favourite, European commissioner Margot WALLSTRÖM, has now done so sufficiently often and firmly that some commentators have started to believe her. Still, the party's women's wing is still refusing to take no for an answer, and is still backing her. Meanwhile, one youthful contender, former foreign-aid minister Carin JÄMTIN, briefly looked to have surged into pole position a couple of weeks ago, when Aftonbladet, the left-leaning tabloid, backed her. Yet now she's saying that she wants to stay as opposition leader in Stockholm city council. She certainly has a bit of star quality. But she may have decided to keep her powder dry until the next contest.

Then there's another ex-minister, Ulrika MESSING. While obviously not being so reckless as to suggest that she might actually be interested in the job, she is clearly interested in the job. Somehow, though, few observers seem to take her crypto-candidature that seriously.

That leaves the outgoing leader's favourite, Per NUDER, the former finance minister. But he suffers from three major disadvantages. First, he's probably the candidate most associated with the "modernising" wing of the party, which is not obviously in the ascendancy. Second, he's not the most charismatic of politicians. Third, and probably fatally, he's a man. The clamour within the labour movement for a woman to lead the party, almost irrespective of who she is, seems too loud for it to ignore.

So, amazingly, a decade after the "Toblerone affair" did for her chances of the party leadership, it may well be Mona SAHLIN who gets the nod. Even since those "revelations" about her mildly chaotic domestic finances, her judgement hasn't always been entirely reliable: witness her involvement in the Masoud Kamali debacle (see this newsletter 060808). But the Social Democrats' election committee - which is sounding out the party's preferences and will, in January or February, propose a candidate, who will then (almost certainly) be confirmed by a special party congress in March - may not see many other options.


Best,

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

Swedish resignations

Hej to all on the Scandinavian Politics list,

A week is a long time in politics, they say. It must have felt like that
for the new Swedish prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, who took office
only a week and a half ago. This morning, his cabinet sustained its second
resignation. Very briefly, this is what happened.

As soon as the new government was announced, Reinfeldt acknowledged that
two of its more suprising appointments - trade minister Maria Borelius and
exotically named culture minister Cecilia Stegö Chilò - had hired domestic
help in the 1990s on the black market, that is, without paying employer
charges. This, it seems, was just about forgiveable. What made life much
tougher for Stegö Chilò, though, was the revelation soon afterwards that
she hadn't paid her television licence fee since 1990. Nor, it turned out,
had a third cabinet member, migration minister Tobias Billström.

For both Borelius and Stegö Chilò, maybe the worst mistake was their
shifting explanations for their tax- and fee-dogding. Pressure built on
Borelius as the media revealed aspects of her business life that had never
quite become illegal, but which were somewhat opaque and generally just,
well, a bit dodgy. She resigned on Saturday. That, in turn, proved the
last straw for Stegö Chilò, although her position - a minister in charge
of public-service broadcasting who didn't pay her licence fee - looked
untenable from the start.

Of course, this is all disastrous for the new government. To cap it all,
Stegö Chilò's belated resignation has displaced this morning's other
event, a tax-cutting budget, as the main headline. Meanwhile, commentators
have been drawing inferences about the longer-term significance of this
debacle for Reinfeldt's Moderate Party (Borelius, Stegö Chilò and
Billström are all Moderates, and all belong to its more neo-liberal wing),
for women in politics, and for the risks of appointing to government
individuals who haven't been screened by long experience of party
politics. Maybe it's also that, just as a party can grow too accustomed to
sitting in government, a party can also grow too accustomed to being in
opposition.

Best,

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

PSA conference and new Swedish government

Hej to all on the Scandinavian Politics Specialist Group list,

Two quick notices.


1. We've proposed two panels for the PSA conference in April 2007. See the
Scandinavian Politics website for details (address below, click on
Conference panels and other events).


2. The new Swedish cabinet has this morning been announced. The only
rumour to have leaked out of the negotiations between the four allied
centre-right parties appeared yesterday in a Danish paper, and it turned
out to be true - as well as mildly sensational. Carl Bildt, former
Moderate leader and prime minister, will be the foreign minister. This is
a bold choice by the new prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt. He has
apparently disregarded the risk of being overshadowed by his
internationally well-known predecessor. What's more, relations between the
two when Bildt was party leader and Reinfeldt was chair of the
Moderates'youth wing were not, it seems, enormously warm.

Otherwise, the Moderates have bagged half of the 22 portfolios. Apart from
those of prime minister and foreign minister, they get get justice,
defence and finance, too - which probably amounts to rather more
heavyweight positions than most pundits had expected. The Centre Party's
successful election brings it four portfolios, including commerce, the one
that party leader Maud Olofsson clearly wanted and has got. The Liberals
also get four jobs. Party leader Lars Leijonborg gets education; MEP (and
political scientist) Cecilia Malmström gets the new job of EU minister.
The Christian Democrats' leader Göran Hägglund gets social affairs as one
of his party's three portfolios.

More information can be found at the usual sites, including Dagens Nyheter
(dn.se).


Best,

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

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

Scandinavian Politics: election latest

1. The Swedish campaign has entered its last few days. Most polls give the
bourgeois Alliance a very small lead, but basically the rival blocs are
neck and neck.

The hacking scandal rumbles on. (Some are suggesting that the former
Liberal party secretary, who resigned last week, has not been entirely
straight about how he reacted when he heard in March about the intrusion
into the Social Democrats' intranet.) But while the Liberals have clearly
lost support, their decline hasn't (so far) been quite as catastrophic as
some predicted; and most of that supoprt seems to have gone to other
Alliance parties.

Otherwise, the tightness of the contest has been reflected by the
unusually harsh words that have been exchanged by the prime minister and
the Alliance leader in their most recent debates. It really could go
either way on Sunday.

Members of the list might be interested in a longish article about the
election and the Swedish model in general that's in this week's Economist.
It's available free via the magazine's website
(economist.com/world/europe). The Economist's liberal view on things is,
as usual, fairly apparent; and there are a few slightly irritating factual
errors. But it's not a bad discussion.

2. For rather mysterious technical reasons, I'm having trouble updating
the group's website. But I can at least inform you via this message that I
have new co-ordinates (see below), effective from now.

Best,

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

Please feel free to forward this message to anyone who might be
interested. To join the Scandinavian politics mailing list, send a message
to me, the convenor (nicholas.aylott@sh.se). If you want to send something
to the list, or if you don't want to receive these occasional messages,
just let me know. See also www.psa.ac.uk/spgrp/scandinavia/

Scandinavian Politics latest

Hej to everyone on the Scandinavian politics list,

Many apologies for the long period of silence from me, which can only partly be explained by the tradition, in Sweden at least, of the country more or less closing down during the summer. I've also had (happy) distractions on the family front, which I won't bore you with.

I have two brief notices and some short comments about political developments in Scandinavia.


1. I'm told by the PSA that "The editors of the PSA News are planning to make the September edition of the News a special ‘specialist group’ issue and would appreciate and welcome all reports from all on specialist group activities. Copy deadline is 14th August so can you please get your items by e-mail to the editorial team".

We've had plans to do stuff other than simply use this mailing list as a forum for communication, but time pressure always seems to frustrate these plans, so nothing much has happened since our London seminar a few years ago. We do have some cash (a few hundred pounds) in the kitty, however, which is available for anyone to use in ways that are (a) academic and (b) related somehow to Nordic politics. This could involve hosting a small conference or workshop, which would ideally be open to everyone but need not necessarily be so. I'm completely open to other ideas, too.

Meanwhile, do send me absolutely anything that you think might be appropriate for the mailing list – book news and reviews, articles, events, comments on current politics, whatever.


2. This will probably be my last message from my current institutional address. Again, I won't bore you with details. But, after nearly five tremendous years in Umeå, I'm moving next term to Södertörn University College, outside Stockholm.


3. The possible reorientation of the Danish party system seems – possibly – to be continuing.

At least some Social Liberals, long in bed with the Social Democrats, seem to be becoming increasingly open to a deal with the Liberal-Conservative government. The attraction for the Social Liberals is not only to get closer to where power lies. It's also to pull the government away from its relationship with the increasingly truculent Danish People's Party - one of whose leading lights made, even by his party's standards, some extraordinarily apocalyptic comments about Muslims recently in the newish Swedish news magazine, Fokus (fokus.se). Current Social Liberal leader Marianne Jelved is still cool on the idea of a shift, but others – most loudly, MP Nasar Khader – are keener.

My colleague Jacob Christensen will no doubt give this more attention on his excellent blog (blog.jacobchristensen.name) when he gets back from holiday.


4. Earlier in Denmark, broad cross-party agreement was reached on a major long-term package of welfare reforms. For brief details in English, see the June editions of the not-bad-at-all newspaper, the Copenhagen News, available online (www.cphpost.dk).


5. The Swedish election campaign is finally getting underway this week. With the two blocs neck and neck in the polls, one underlying issue is whether the four parties in the centre-right "Alliance for Sweden" can resist the temptation to turn their fire on each other in their desperation for votes, which they usually end up doing. It promises to be an exciting time for a political scientist. The election is on September 17th.


6. Meanwhile, a major topic of Swedish domestic political discussion in the last few weeks (admittedly, there's been little competition) has been the impending final report in an official "Inquiry into Power, Integration and Structural Discrimination" – that is, on ethnic relations in Sweden. Chief investigator has been a professor of "social work" ("applied sociology" might be better translation), Masoud Kamali, who has attracted massive criticism from all quarters of the media. The story of his inquiry is a long and rather bizarre one, but I'll keep this summary brief.

Basically, Kamali has a big idea, which he applies in pretty much all his very frequent appearances in the printed media. It is that Swedish society and Swedish culture, like others in Europe, are fundamentally racist; that their very essence rests on an identification of "the other", that is, non-European peoples; and that this explains the disadvantages suffered by ethnic minorities in the country today. Few academics would argue that there is obviously nothing in this argument. But not many, even those of a post-modern persuasion, would push it in such a rigid, encompassing and downright provocative form – especially in an official report. "Sweden needs a new [social integration] policy," he wrote recently. "The era of creating an integrated society based on the concept of ein Volk, ein Reich [sic] is past" (DN July 13th).

These eyebrow-raising allusions aren't the only reason why Kamali is controversial. He has been accused of offering little or no empirical evidence for his sweeping arguments. (I can't say I've read the official reports, but I have read the accompanying summaries published in the newspaper, DN. The one on political parties, on Dec 22nd 2005, was of particular interest to me, of course. I must say that it read like a sentence that had been painfully stretched to 1,500 words.) He also tends to respond to critics by attacking their sincerity or motives. Public figures of non-European extraction are said to have sold out to the dominant Swedish culture; apparently, he once referred in print to some of them as "Uncle Toms". On Sunday he told DN that the criticism he'd suffered while leading the inquiry had been worse than the physical torture he'd endured in his native Iran.

The saga has also been rather embarrassing for the Social Democratic government. This is because the original inquiry was led by someone else, a political scientist from Uppsala. In 2003 Kamali, a member of the inquiry, in effect staged a coup, by persuading the responsible minister to downgrade the original investigation and to appoint him as leader of a new one. Numerous political scientists in Sweden were furious at what they saw as the ideological manipulation of these official reports, which are supposed to be politically impartial. The relevant minister was Mona Sahlin, who must be quite relieved that she now has another portfolio.


Best,

Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) | Department of Political Science, Umeå University | SE-901 87, Sweden | www.pol.umu.se

Please feel free to forward this message to anyone who might be interested. To join the Scandinavian Politics mailing list, send a message to me, the convenor (nicholas.aylott@pol.umu.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/

Scandinavian Politics latest

Hej to all members of the Scandinavian Politics mailing list,

Here are a couple of brief updates on recent political events in Scandinavia.


First, to DENMARK. With the cartoons crisis having died down, a development occurred last week that may be of even greater interest to political scientists. (Thanks to Flemming Juul Christiansen of the University of Århus for his thoughts.)

On Friday the Social Liberal (Radikale Venstre) parliamentary group announced (in a "letter of freedom") that, after 13 years of close co-operation with the Social Democrats, the party would no longer support the Social Democrats' leader as their candidate for prime minister. The Social Liberals say that that their own leader, Marianne Jelved, is the person who they'd like to take the job. A more realistic development, though, is that the Social Liberals will try to displace the Danish People's Party as the Liberal-Conservative coalition's main support party in government. Indeed, some leading Social Liberals have stated this goal explicitly.

In some ways, this is yet another blow to the Social Democrats and their newish leader, Helle Thorning-Schmidt. It follows the publication of an opinion poll that puts them on just 19 per cent, which, if it were an election result, would be the party's worst score for 103 years. With the Social Liberals' poll rating now not too far behind the Social Democrats'
(and the Danish People's Party's), Jelved's party has clearly concluded that – to over-simplify the issue – policy influence will be more easily secured though pulling the government to the left than through pulling the Social Democrats to the right.

The extent to which the Liberals and Conservatives will be interested in forming a new constellation remains to be seen. The Danish People's Party has proved a noisy but fairly reliable supporter in parliament (although there is currently a row between the party and the government over a scandal concerning the minister for consumer and family affairs), and the party might well attract even more votes if it were relegated to a purer opposition role. Moreover, the divide over immigration policy, in which the Social Liberals take a much softer line than the government does (or, for that matter, the Social Democrats do), is still wide. Whatever, the new situation may well affect cross-party discussions on a major package of long-term welfare and labour-market policy proposals that the government proposed last Tuesday.


Meanwhile, in SWEDEN, the Social Democratic government's fortunes have taken some entertaining twists and turns recently.

* The resignation two and half weeks ago of the foreign minister was, of course, a blow to the government's image. But it had a silver lining.

As I wrote previously, Laila Freivalds was a political liability, and her disappearance from the political frontline will probably save as many votes in September's election as her resignation loses, if not more. (Her replacement, Jan Eliasson, is a diplomatic heavyweight. But his membership of the Social Democratic party had long since lapsed, and many have seen his appointment as another step towards the departification or presidentialisation of the Swedish cabinet.)

What's more, her resignation largely defused the impending report on the government's handling of the Asian tsunami in 2004 by the parliamentary Committee on the Constitution, which came out a week later. Its severe criticism of Freivalds's actions had been widely anticipated, and one of the government's support parties, the Greens, had pretty much committed itself to voting with the opposition if it moved a vote of no confidence in Freivalds. The prime minister, Göran Persson, had implied that if one of his ministers was forced out, he'd take the whole government out, too.
Presumably the Greens were vote-fishing or, perhaps more likely, signalling to the Social Democrats that their support for Persson's staying in power after the election could not be taken for granted. Whatever, Freivalds's resignation obviated this confrontation, and Persson could dismiss the parliamentary committee's biting criticism of him and five of his ministers as containing "little new".

* But last Friday became, in the words of one commentator, yet another "black day" for the Social Democrats.

(1) Persson himself was prosecuted for deficiencies in the planning of the building work on his estate in southern Sweden. This technical oversight is not such a embarrassment in itself. But it reminds voters of his rather grand private residence, which doesn't draw much admiration among Social Democrats. And the timing was unfortunate.

(2) The Social Democratic mayor of Malmö was prosecuted for accepting an exotic holiday from a contractor who his municipal government had given a lot of work to.

(3) Worst of all, the chair of Social Democratic Youth faced four charges in connection with a drunken pub-fight in January. Apparently, no independent witnesses heard her racially abusing the bar's bouncers, as they claim. But the police report does state that she and her mates threatened both the staff and the police that they would exploit their political "contacts", among whom the minister of justice was explicitly named. Again, this does nothing for the Social Democrats' image. The same political commentator described the gang as "young Social Democratic careerists who behave as if they belonged to a political aristocracy".

* All this overshadowed a demand a week ago by the Swedish equal opportunities ombudsman that the Swedish national team withdraw from this summer's football World Cup in Germany, as a protest against the use of prostitutes that he expects to occur there. That proposal raised lively discussion in my workplace.


Best,

Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) | Department of Political Science, Umeå University | SE-901 87, Sweden | www.pol.umu.se

Please feel free to forward this message to anyone who might be interested.
To join the Scandinavian Politics mailing list, send a message to me, the convenor (nicholas.aylott@pol.umu.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/

Swedish foreign minister resigns

Dear all on the Scandinavian Politics mailing list,

The political near-consensus in Denmark over the cartoons crisis has broken down, with the left-wing opposition openly blaming the prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, for aggravating the crisis for political ends. (The prime minister's party, the Liberals, has thrown the same accusations back. The Socialist People's Party's leader, for example, apparently described back in December the publication of the cartoons as "liberating".)

But the affair has just claimed its first political victim, albeit indirectly, and that victim is not Danish but Swedish. At a press conference an hour ago, Swedish foreign minister Laila Freivalds announced her resignation.

Why?

On February 10th this newsletter reported "the cartoons' appearance on a website run by the Sweden Democrats, the small far-right party." It went on: "Extraordinarily, the firm that hosts the Sweden Democrats' website removed the pictures yesterday evening...after being approached yesterday by both the Swedish Foreign Ministry and the security service." The newsletter also suggested that comments the previous day by the foreign minister "anticipated [sic] this action" (see the Scandinavian Politics group's website for these comments).

But, crucially, Freivalds subsequently denied - in terms that left only the tiniest room for semantic wriggling - that she'd known that her underling in the Foreign Ministry would contact the web host. Even more crucially, the prime minister, Göran Persson, condemned the civil servant's intervention (DN Feb 15th), which raised obvious freedom-of-speech issues. In fact, there were only fairly mild protests from a few newspapers and politicians. But they were enough to prompt an investigation by the chancellor of justice.

Yesterday morning the headline news on the radio was that the chancellor of justice had been informed by the Foreign Ministry that its official had, in fact, contacted the web host AFTER consulting the foreign minister. Now, my powers of political forecasting are not exactly renowned. But I felt immediately that Freivalds was done for. Opposition politicians demanded her sacking. Her desperate attempts to explain what she claimed was a misunderstanding never sounded persuasive. And having been so thoroughly criticised before Christmas by the tsunami investigation, she had no political capital left.

The political consequences are probably negative for the Social Democratic government. It adds to recent minor scandals - the party youth wing's leader getting involved in a drunken pub fight, revelations about libellous rumour-mongering by a party functionary, a massively generous pension plan awarded to the chief executive of the Swedish Alcohol Retail Monopoly, who happens to be the prime minister's wife - that create the impression of a party that's grown too comfortable with government office. (British readers might note comparable developments in the Labour Party.)

On the other hand, Freivalds had become such a political liability during her two and a half years as foreign minister that, with over five months to go before the election, Social Democratic strategists might secretly be pleased to see the back of her.

Best,

Nick.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, senior lecturer (docent) | Department of Political Science, Umeå University | SE-901 87, Sweden | www.pol.umu.se

Please feel free to forward this message to anyone who might be interested. To join the Scandinavian Politics mailing list, send a message to me, the convenor (nicholas.aylott@pol.umu.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/

Scandinavian Politics latest

Hej to members of the Scandinavian Politics list,

Three quick notices - the first administrative, the others related to Scandinavian politics.


1. Here's a further appeal for potential paper-givers at the PSA ANNUAL CONFERENCE on April 4th-6th 2006 (www.psa.ac.uk/2006/default.htm). Any ideas, please let me know - and as soon as possible.


2. THE TSUNAMI REPORT. The findings of the "citizens' commission" that investigated the Swedish government's handling of the Asian disaster last Christmas, which claimed more Swedish lives than any incident since the battle of Poltava nearly 300 years ago, were published last week. My colleague Jacob Christensen summarises the reaction nicely on his blog ("The Perfect Flood I", http://blog.jacobchristensen.name/). There's also an English-language summary of the report, available at the commission's website (www.katastrofkommissionen.se). I can't say that I've read the report, so I can only add the following brief comments.

First, the commission's criticism of the government was unusually, even shockingly, severe. Not only were systemic and procedural flaws said to have delayed for a couple of days any state response to the suffering of so many Swedish citizens; individual ministers and under-secretaries of state were also singled out. Basically, it seems that pretty much every relevant decision-taker was enjoying Christmas and didn't want to be disturbed, so they thus totally misjudged the magnitude of the event. Although the under-secretary in her department probably received most criticism, foreign minister Laila Freivalds - who, it must be said, has looked completely miserable ever since she was surprisingly appointed to the job in late 2003 - has probably received the toughest media treatment.

Now, reasonable people can disagree about the fairness of these attacks. Can a European government really be blamed for what was, after all, a natural disaster on the other side of the world? Shouldn't cabinet ministers be able to enjoy Christmas? Whatever your views on that, it seems that the government's strategy of, as the Swedes say, "doing a poodle" - apologising profusely for your mistakes, accepting responsibility for what went wrong, but staying in your position - will bring about few immediate political consequences.

First, no one will be resigning. A cynic might suggest that nothing else could have been expected. Many observers, not least those on the citizens' commission (who included my esteemed colleague from Umeå, Professor Gunnel Gustafsson), have noted a problem of pinpointing responsibility and accountability in Swedish public administration. Certainly, compared with Britain, few ministers ever resign because of their own mistakes and misjudgments, never mind those of their underlings (deputy prime minister Bosse Ringholm, had he been British, would have surely resigned about 15 times during his career). But there's also a political factor here. The prime minister, Göran Persson, cannot allow anyone to resign - because, as he was explicitly criticised by the commission for failing in his overall responsibility for crisis-management, he cannot just allow someone else to shoulder the blame.

Second, the opposition seems unlikely to move a vote of no confidence in the government. There are some interesting tactical calculations going on here. But just now it seems that there's little appetite for inducing a vote that the opposition knows it would lose.

But, when the election comes around in September, will voters remember this sense that leading ministers are so out of touch that they don't bother to watch the news over a holiday? We'll see.


3. There are fun and games going on in COPENHAGEN CITY COUNCIL following last month's election. See Jacob's blog for details (http://blog.jacobchristensen.name/).


Best,

Nick Aylott.
--
Dr Nicholas Aylott, research fellow (docent/forskarassistent) | Department of Political Science, Umeå University | SE-901 87, Sweden | www.pol.umu.se

Please feel free to forward this message to anyone who might be interested.
To join the Scandinavian Politics mailing list, send a message to me, the convenor (nicholas.aylott@pol.umu.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/