Jacob Christensen

Most Danes would accept that Denmark isn’t exactly the centre of the known universe (easy) and live with the fact that we are often confused with Swedes (ve-e-e-ry difficult). But this introduction to an Op-Ed article by Anne Applebaum in Wednesday’s Washington Post will probably leave a lot of us deeply depressed:

The trouble started in Denmark, a faraway country of which we know little.

“A faraway country” – it’s a little like when the Romans spoke about the savage Germanic tribes or the Arabs (!) about the Vikings who came from the end of the Universe.

Once Upon a Time

Back in the 1960s – that golden age of the Swedish Model – Prime Minister Tage Erlander is alleged to have said “Marcus Wallenberg takes care of business and I take care of politics”.

Or maybe it was the other way around, but the point was that the political sphere and the business sphere were perceived to co-exist in a kind of dual hegemony where the Social Democrats dominated Swedish politics and the Wallenberg family Swedish industry.

Since then, things have become more complicated. The received wisdom on the industrialist side of the divide is that the Social Democrats spurred by radical forces in the trade unions first implemented far-reaching protection against lay-offs in the early 1970s and then tried to take over private industries through the establishing of wage-earner funds in the 1980s.

This led to a peculiar form of arms race where the Confederation of Swedish Industries began to sponsor Timbro, a think tank that could compete with the bureaux of the trade unions and promote neo-liberal ideas in Sweden.

Shut Up – or Else!

Fast forward to February 2006 where representatives of large Swedish companies have entered a battle of words with the Social Democrats.

The present round began when the CEO of Ericsson Carl-Henric Svanberg declared that a change of government following the elections in September 2006 would be “refreshing”.

In an interview with Swedish Radio PM Göran Persson countered by suggesting that a re-elected Social Democratic government might review the rules governing voting rights in public companies. Sweden just like Denmark uses a system with A- and B-shares where B-shares have limited voting rights. This means that a small group of shareholders – say: the Wallenberg family – can control a company.

The leader of the Wallenberg sphere Jakob Wallenberg replied by saying that he felt that the PM sounded as if he was threatening Svanberg (and implicitly Wallenberg) in order to silence criticism of the government and the Social Democratic party. (For a summary: Se this article in Dagens Nyheter).

The latest entry in the discussion came from the Social Democrats’ hatchet woman, party secretary Marita Ulvskog who on Wednesday declared that Swedish businesses were deliberately postponing investments in order to create unemployment and thus distort the picture of a stable Swedish economy as part of the election campaign and she implicitly repreated Persson’s threat of abolishing the system with graduated voting rights.

A Credible Threat?

How can we interpret these exchanges? One question could be if Ulvskog is targeting the industrialists or if she is making a classic Karl Rove: Attacking your opponent as viciously as possible in order to mobilise your base. Going for the throats of Swedish industry during electoral campaigns is in fact a tried and tested Social Democratic strategy as Lars Weiss pointed out in a comment in Dagens Nyheter.

Another question could be if Persson’s and Ulvskog’s threat about abolishing the graduated voting rights is credible. Establishing wage-earner funds during an era where international capital flows were restricted was one thing as investments made by the funds could be used to crowd out traditional investors in the large industries.

Abolishing voting rights in a situation where capital flows are globalised is a different matter. It would of cause affect the position of the Wallenberg family and other traditional centres of power in Swedish industry negatively in the short run but it would probably also make long-term investments in Swedish industries more insecure as international capital funds – locust swarms to quote the former chairman of the German Social Democratic party, Franz Müntefehring – would compete with Swedish funds.

In this way it is perfectly imaginable that an abolition of the graduation of voting rights would be self-defeating in terms of Social Democratic industrial policy which is still in many ways nationally rather than globally oriented.

Correction: The surname of the Social Democratic party secretary is written Ulvskog.

If you think that nothing could possibly beat a bunch of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad when it comes to triggering conflicts in the modern world, think again.

My advice if you should ever for whatever reason happen to visit Sweden is: Don’t mention the carnivores! Ever!

If you do, you will soon discover that the Swedish reputation for moderation and rational discourse is – shall we say somewhat exaggerated. It is not without reason that the English “let sleeping dogs lie” has been translated into the Swedish “let sleeping bears lie”. And by bears we don’t mean Russians but members of the species Ursus Arctos.

To a foreigner living in Sweden the obsession with carnivores is fascinating because the greatest danger to humans is in fact posed by the common moose. Traffic incidents involving mooses are frequent and as a full-grown animal is not only big and heavy but also designed a bit like an SUV, it will cause severe damage on an ordinary car. This is why Volvos have traditionally been built like tanks.

The carnivore which poses the biggest danger to a human, should you encounter it, is the bear. The good news is that bears are shy and will try to escape if they catch the smell or hear the noise of a human. This is why direct confrontations between humans and bears are very rare.

Wolves are much less dangerous to humans than bears but have a worse reputation (Test: Would you rather give your 1-year old a toy wolf or a teddy bear?). Part of the reason is that wolves attack small livestock (yes, sheep!) and imposes a cost on some farmers but irrational fears steeped in the ancient peasant culture seems to live on.

The Wolf enters Politics

The Swedish elections are 7 months away but the wolves have already entered the campaign. In Älvdalen the local branch of the Moderate Party (the Swedish Conservatives) managed to collect enough signatures to bring a petition for a local referendum about the regulation of the carnivore stock on the agenda of the local council. The issue has also been on the political agenda in other parts of Dalarna and Värmland.

The carnivore question has an interesting centre-periphery aspect: In Dalarna and Värmland national carnivore policies are also seen as a sign of urban indifference to agricultural societies. At the same time, the Social Democratic hegemony in Swedish politics is built on the party’s ability to penetrate and mobilise the Swedish periphery.

The government at first tried the tried and tested way of dealing with such questions: Estabishing a public inquiry and incorporating potential opposition. On January 19, the Department of Environment issued the former chairman of the Federation of Swedish Farmers, Hans Jonsson, with the task of reviewing national policies. The review was to be finished in June 2007.

Nice try but the elections are in September 2006. What to do?

In a letter to Dagens Nyheter on Tuesday Februar 7 the Minister of Agriculture Ann-Christin Nykvist (note the portfolio) and the Social Democratic party secretary Marita Ulvskog (elected in Dalarna!) announced that the Social Democratic party would establish a fast-working group that in cooperation with local interests would present new proposals for a decentralisation of policies regarding the regulation of carnivore stocks.

If you are an independent observer you may want to ask why the Social Democratic government first establishes an inquest and then three weeks later declares that the party can’t wait for the results and sets up a competing committee.

Hans Jonsson did that and declared on Wednesday that he would resign from the inquiry.

Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? The Social Democrats, that’s who.