Jacob Christensen

Writing about your own workplace is tricky, so I will just note that the Swedish Agency for Higher Education published the result of its evaluation of programmes in Political Science at Swedish colleges and universities yesterday.

The press release is here and the full report (in Swedish) can be downloaded as a pdf-document.

Okay – I’ll allow myself a few comments:

• In general, it is a favourable report even if the evaluation group questions the quantity and quality of the teaching in methods at Swedish colleges and universities.
• The group notes that Swedish courses are somewhat out of line with the international mainstream as rational choice approaches are given very little attention in undergraduate courses.
• The group also notes that something is fundamentally wrong with the way resources for post-graduate education are distributed. Basically, the larger departments with many highly qualified researchers do not have the money to accept Ph.D.-students. Smaller and newer departments with few or no highly qualified researchers on the other hand have lots of opportunities to accept Ph.D.-students. (I will note that “my” department suffers from the same problem: We do not have the financial resources to accept any new post-graduate students this year and we deplore the situation. And it’s not just a problem in Political Science).

This is just to note that this week has seen a number of fascinating brawls in Danish politics.

1. The chairman of the Social Democratic Party attacked – no, not the government, but her opposition colleagues in the Social Liberal Party for giving too little space for the Social Democrats. Given that the Social Democrats still are more than twice as large as the Social Liberals, that was a hillarious piece of criticism which has left many political commentators stunned.
2. The law and order spokesman of the Liberal Party (that’s a woman as well) attacked – no, not the opposition, but her party comrades in the government for undermining civil rights in the proposals for anti-terror legislation that the government is preparing.
3. Everybody attacked the Minister for Consumer Affairs who found himself in a really dirty affair concering lacking or inefficient food safety controls. You may want to think twice before you order a steak in a Danish restaurant.

Sometime they’ll call general elections and nobody will come – and no: this is not a paraphrase on Bertolt Brecht. The American writer Carl Sandburg was the author of the original quote. And the “sometime” Sandburg wrote about could very well have been last Sunday – in Germany – and Tuesday – in Israel.

Elections for State Legislatures in Germany

The elections in Baden-Württemberg, Rheinland-Pfalz and Sachsen-Anhalt were expected with some interest from the political class as they were the first major test of the Grand Coalition in Berlin, and you could argue that the coalition performed nicely at the polls as the Liberal Party turned out to be the main loser.

In Sachsen-Anhalt, the FDP lost nearly half of its votes while the quirks of the German electoral system meant that the SPD gained to overall majority in Rheinland-Pfalz.

From the point of view of the Chancellor, the good news then was that a Red-Yellow coalition in Rheinland-Pfalz will be replaced by a Social Democratic government and that the Black-and-Yellow coalition in Sachsen-Anhalt will be replaced by a Grand Coalition. All of this means that the Grand Coalition will control its own qualified majority in the Bundesrat and won’t have to take protests form state governments with Green, Leftist or Liberal coalition partners into account.

The bad news was that not too many voters cared. The turn-out in Baden-Württemberg (one of Germany’s richest states) and Sachsen-Anhalt (one of the poorest) fell through the floor. Only 44% of the voters in Sachsen-Anhalt could be bothered to vote.

I’m a bit tired right now, so I’ll just post some links to sites with a comprehensive coverage in German:

• Frankfuter Allgemeine Zeitung: Landtagswahlen.
• Süddeutsche Zeitung: Landtagswahlen 2006.
• Die Zeit: Landtagswahlen 2006.

Israel: New Parties, Old People and Not Too Many Voters

The Israeli elections must have been a nightmare for pollsters.

First, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon left his own party and founded a new one with basically one issue on its programme: Disengagement from the Palestinian Territories (or most of them, anyway). Upheavals like this usually mess up the finely tuned models used by polling organisations, effectively leaving the result of the elections unpredictable.

Second, the very same Sharon suffered a massive stroke which left him in a long-term coma and probably brain-damaged. Sharon was replaced by his less than charismatic deputy Ehud Olmert and at this point most sensible pollsters would shurely have considered getting out of business fast.

In the end, the opinion polls missed the target as Sharon’s Kadima Party only gained around 30 seats – instead of the predicted 40 – in the new Knesset. Negotiations leading up to the formation of new governments are usually a messy business in Israel and I think that will be a safe prediction this time.

Turn-out was low in Israel as well and if we exclude the demographic and legal complexities regarding the true level of turn-out, I think we can find two general explanations in this case:

• The question of disengagement vs. continued presence in the West Bank was not the only issue in the campaign but it was a major one. The problem is that while military and settler presence in the West Bank hasn’t guaranteed Israeli security, it is very uncertain if disengagement will have the desired consequences. There’s not much to be enthusiastic about even if you are a dove.
• With regard to the next government, voters faced the choice between Ehud Olmert and – well – Ehud Olmert. Likud was heading for collapse and Labor is not a major independent force in Israeli politics. Add a scattering of ethnic and religious parties and what you have is Kadima as the only centre in a new government.

For the record: I’ve enjoyed reading Israeli blogger Shai Tsur’s posts about the campaign. His Wednesday Morning Quarterback post is here. You may want to check out his Flikr photosets from the campaign and the election day as well.

So, you were one of the guys who bet his money on Thomas Östros?

Too bad.

Göran Persson did it again and chose a new Foreign Minister, no-one had expected: The career diplomat and sometime Social Democrat Jan Eliasson.

There is a slight problem, though: Eliasson serves as chairman of the UN General Assembly until the end of April and until then Minister of Development Aid Carin Jämtin will be deputy Foreign Minister.

It is not unlikely that when 2006 is over, Sweden will have had no fewer than five Foreign Ministers: Laila Freivalds, Bo Ringholm, Carin Jämtin, Jan Eliasson and following the September elections another Social Democrat or a politician from the centre-right coalition.

Or maybe: Almost nothing.

On the one hand, this Sunday’s Gallup poll confirmed that the Danish Social Democrats still face a hugh problem in attracting voters. Compared to February’s poll, the party’s share of voter support was down from 23,2% to 22,5%. This month’s winner is the Social Liberal Party with 11% of the votes.

On the other hand, the balance between the governing coalition and the opposition is nearly unchanged. The government and the Danish People’s Party commands support from 52-53% of the voters, while the opposition can count on 44-46% of the voters.

During modern history political parties have taken to all kinds of strategies in order to entice people to vote for them or to scare them from voting for the opponents.

The introduction of the secret ballot put some limits to strategies of intimidation but a fascinating story from the Israeli election campaign shows that with a little imagination, you can still implement scare tactics.

The story concerns Rabbi Ovadia Yosef who is the spiritual leader of the religious Shas party and who is accused of using illegal curses against Israelis who do not vote for the party.

It is not the first time that Shas has been the centre of controversy: A former party leader was convicted of corruption some years ago and back in 1996 Rabbi Yosef distributed amulets to people who promised to vote for the party. That move significantly improved the party’s share of the vote but led to the outlawing of such practices.

In case you think that Shas is led by a bunch of religious maniacs – that may be so, but as a religious party Shas has often been able to place itself in the centre of Israeli politics. Religious parties are fairly indifferent with regard to the question of Israeli borders as long as their coalition partners support religious institutions and provide generous social benefits.

On a linguistic perspective: If Israeli legislation makes some curses illegal, which curses can then be applied legally? The Danish Social Democrats might need some urgent help and inspiration here.

If you have lived in Sweden for some years then you will know that the Swedes have two passions: Betting on the Stock Exchange and betting on, well, everything else.

In both cases, insider activity can be a problem. It is, after all, not too difficult to rig share values or matches in different kind of sports. The word of advice is: If you’re a common Joe, be very careful.

The latest betting story concerns the appointment of a successor to the luckless Laila Freivalds as Swedish Foreign Minister. The media have been speculating and seem to have arrived at a consensus where the Minister for Development Aid Carin Jämtin is the most likely candidate.

The Bookmaker Unibet has another perspective on the story. On Friday the company stopped betting on the appointment after a number of people started placing large bets on the present Minister for Trade and Commerce Thomas Östros.

The question now is: Who are the players? Are they government ministers trying to break the bank? Is it a gang of political advisors trying to supplement their incomes? Or is it a deliberate attempt by the Prime Minister to lead the media in the wrong direction?

My guess is that we will be a little wiser on Monday but I have no idea about the identity of the future Foreign Minister. And in case you want to know: I’ve bet my money on Japanese stocks, not on Swedish government ministers.

Washington Post’s regular blog “Think Tank Town” had an intriguing entry this Friday.

The entry reviewed a recent book by Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute who advocates the introduction of a general cash grant as replacement of existing transfer programmes, or to quote the presentation of the book on the AEI’s homepage:

This is the Plan, a radical new approach to social policy that defies any partisan label. Murray suggests eliminating all welfare transfer programs at the federal, state, and local levels and substituting an annual $10,000 cash grant to everyone age twenty-one or older.

Does this ring a bell? As a matter of fact, Murray comes close to advancing the idea of a citizens’ wage which was presented in a Danish context back in the late 1970′s by K. Helveg Petersen, Niels I. Meyer and Villy Sørensen in the book “Oprør fra midten” which was a sort of centrist anti-capitalist manifesto.

The idea that general benefits are more efficient and seen as more legitimate is also a stock argument in the defense of the Social Democratic kind of welfare state.

That still doesn’t make Murray a Social Democrat – he is a card-carrying conservative. Left and right will be happy to engage in a heated discussion over the size of the cash grant and the question of the provision of social and health services.

As expected LEGO and the Danish government were less than happy about the poster linking LEGO (and Denmark) with racism.

According to news reports, a UN spokesman declared that the people behind the poster “probably never realised that LEGO was a Danish firm” and that the poster “was due to be retired after 24 hours anyway.”

And the moon is made of cheese, one might add.

My colleague Nicholas Aylott posted this analysis on the homepage of the Scandinavian Politics Specialist Group. And no: I will not be trying to guess who Göran Persson will appoint as the new Swedish Foreign Minister.

Update: And another of my colleagues, Professor Torbjörn Bergman, is quoted on Reuters.