Jacob Christensen

I’ll be out-of-office untill July 4: First, one week as a guest lecturer in Mainz (sorry, no soccer), then one week’s vacation.

When I return, it will be in the middle of Almedalsveckan – the week in early July when the Swedish political top brass position themselves before the election campaign really takes off in late August.

Oh, and if you need an appartment in Stockholm, my word of advice is: Join the Social Democrats. And the Botnia railway between Sundsvall and Umeå has just been delayed for another couple of years. Couldn’t they at the very least start the service between Örnsköldsvik and Sundsvall when that part is ready?

Sunshine, warm weather – but not to warm – and a summer breeze to go with it.

Does anyone still believe that sports and politics aren’t connected?

Kieran Healy of Crooked Timber has finally found a tv set which will receive World Cup games and won’t rule out airstrikes on Italy – and rightly so: A country with a tradition for destructive soccer really deserves that – while Eugene Robertson of the Washington Post warns against invading Iran just for the moment.

Now that Denmark failed to qualify, I’m still trying to figure out if I should back Sweden (because I live there), Germany (because I’ll be visiting the place next week) or perhaps even Croatia (distant family ties).

A case of New Public Management gone wrong?

Civil servants who were supposed to be administering the government’s much-criticised farm subsidies system have been taking part in ‘depraved’ office pranks such as leaping naked from filing cabinets.The beleaguered Rural Payment Agency has begun an investigation into the behaviour of its staff at its Newcastle office, which allegedly included leaving cups of vomit in cupboards, taking drugs, having sex in toilets and holding breakdancing competitions during office hours. (Source: The Guardian)

According to the RPA’s homepage, the benefits of working at RPA include

• Generous leave allowance
• Flexible working hours
• Modern well-equipped offices.

Perhaps the equipment was simply too modern? The management and the Commons rural affairs committee were, in any event, not amused as the agency’s handling of payments has been criticised lately.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s visit in Washington didn’t quite make the frontpages in U.S. media, but the Washington Post at least noted that the Danish Prime Minister was the first foreign leader in two years to meet President Bush (II) in Camp David.

Just to quote the article:

[A]dministration officials said the rare visit was a telling symbol of the unusually warm relationship that has developed between the leader of the free world and the head of a Scandinavian country of little more than 5 million people.

It may not mean a lot to American voters even if Fogh Rasmussen’s visit can be used as proof that the U.S. is not isolated in international politics. (That’s “proof” as in “spin”, just in case you didn’t know).

The impact on the Danish electorate is bound to be divided: On the right, the visit will be seen as proof of the value of the centre-right government’s international commitments. On the left, the visit will be seen as another sign of Danish acquiescence to U.S. demands.

Oh, and by the way: According to the Post the last guy to stay at Camp David was Vladimir Putin.

This Sunday brought two newspaper interviews with two veteran politicians from the Liberal Party and what is interesting to note, is that their statements go in opposite directions. Present Minister of Education and former Minister of Integration Bertel Haarder was interviewed in Jyllands-Posten while the former chairman of the Liberal Party Uffe Ellemann-Jensen was interviewed in Berlingske Tidende.

Both interviews were published as premium content on the papers’ websites and as I’m a bit mean moneywise right now, a short resume will have to do.

Liberal Tactic I: Blame Danish Self-Sufficiency

Ellemann-Jensen repeated his earlier criticism of the government’s handling of the cartoon crisis and according to Berlingske Tidende’s summary, Ellemann-Jensen stated that Denmark had slept its way through the present wave of globalisation.

Instead of facing the real challenges from the ongoing globalisation, politicians and the rest of the population have cultivated a self-sufficient, almost isolationalist image of Denmark. It is worth noticing that Ellemann-Jensen according to the summary sees a direct link from traditional Euro-scepticism to anti-Islamic and xenophbic attitudes.

Liberal Tactic II: Blame the Muslims and the Left Wing

Haarder’s approach to the issue is interesting because he plays what we may label the “victim card”. According to Jyllands-Posten’s summary, Haarder has chosen to moderate his earlier high profile in immigration and integration policy, not because he has changed his wievs on immigration and integration but because he was the target of a hate-campaign by the Islamic Congregation and the broadsheet “Politiken”.

In this way the government and Jyllands-Posten become the victims of the debate on immigration and integration and the cartoon conflict while the Muslims – and the centre-left – are described as the offenders. Jyllands-Posten’s headline to the interview was “Haarder admits self-censorship” which is in line with the paper’s journalistic angle on the debate since September.

Linking the left-leaning “Politiken” with the Islamic Congregation (whose leading figures seem to have close links with the Muslim Brotherhood) is also a nice propagandistic move.

And Finally

In the interview with Berlingske Tidende, Ellemann-Jensen called for an investigation into how the tone of the Danish debate on immigration and integration. It turns out that a longitudinal study of how Danish media have covered the issue already exists.

The study – The Mass Media’s Construction of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Nationality. An Analysis of the Danish News Media’s Communication about Visible Minorities – was made by Rikke Andreassen as her doctoral thesis at the University of Toronto and available (in English) on her homepage.

The study clocks in at 300 pages so Andreassen’s own summary will have to do for now: 1) No, the “tone” in the public debate measured as the share of negative statements has not become more negative toward immigrants during the last 30 years, but 2) the issue carries more weight in public debate today compared with 30 years ago and 3) the actors (such as the Danish People’s Party) voicing negative views are accepted as mainstream today.

…Dane for Germany?

According to the Danish tabloid BT, this could have happened. In an interview with the paper, the former Danish international captain and present manager Morten Olsen said that the German soccer federation contacted him back in 2004 when Rudi Völler was forced to leave the job as German manager following a dismal performance in the European Championships.

Even better: The guy on the other side of the line issued with the task of convincing Olsen to change jobs was none other than Franz Beckenbauer.

In the end, Olsen declined the offer and the DFB chose former international Jürgen Klinsmann as manager. What is slightly fascinating is that one of Klinsmann’s initiatives in order to boost German morale was to change the colours of the German team’s away jersey from the awful Green-and-White to … Red-and-White.

Rule #1 in all social science is: Never trust anecdotal evidence. On the other hand, I was immediately intrigued by this quote about the (alleged) decline in American entrepreneurship:

“In the vast majority of companies I look at today, the leaders are Israelis, Indians, Chinese, Finns, Danes. They aren’t coming out of the American culture,” he [David Strohm, general partner at Greylock] said. “Liquidity is a major problem.”

The Chinese and the Danes are coming. Globalisation is on the roll.

Source: C|Net 2006-06-09 – ‘What’s killing American competitiveness? Too much money, says VC’

Just for the fun of it, I have applied for a Google spreadsheet account. See the comments on the Flickr page.

No, he’s not. I included Naser Khader in my list of Constitution Day speakers because I needed the link for something else. At present Khader isn’t the leader of the Social Liberal Party and I have no idea if he might be Marianne Jelved’s eventual successor in the more or less distant future.