Jacob Christensen

The results of the electoral sweepstake of the Swedish Political Science Association are here (pdf-format, right-click to download).

Two interesting points: 1. Interest in the sweepstake was limited to Gothenburg, Lund, Umeå and Karlstad and to a certain degree Uppsala, 2) Political scientists can’t add to 100. I’m not quite sure which point is the scarier.

My own entry from back in March is here.

We’re – as usual – running a separate sweepstake here in Umeå but this time, I’m keeping my guess secret.

If you are into numbers, the annual Budget Proposal of the Danish Government was published today and is available through the homepage of the Danish Ministry of Finance. Worth noting – though hardly surprising by now – is that the government is promoting the proposal under the headline Reformer og velfærd (“Reforms and welfare”).

Both the Liberals and the Conservatives emphasise improvments to public and welfare services while investments and research initiatives receive less attention.

The first comments from the Social Democrats and the Socialist Party focus on the valence issue aspect of the service issue: The Social Democrats accuse the government of manipulating the data about appropriations for public services while the Socialist Party claim that the government is trying to hide a shift in emphasis from services to the elderly to education and research.

The Socialist line of criticism incidentially mirrors recent demands from the Danish People’s Party that resources should be transferred from research to welfare services for the elderly.