Some Final Thoughts About the New Swedish Finance Minister

This should be a much longer post but for a number of reasons – lack of time and creativity – my thoughts wouldn’t merge into a readable text.

But here are some of my main points:

  • Finance is a special portfolio because of the coodinating tasks – this makes it a powerfull but also potentially dangerous portfolio
  • Finance is usually not a good stepping stone in a political career: It’s not unusual that Finance Ministers who have gone on to become party and/or government leaders have been disasters (Helmut Schmidt is the only good exception that I can think of right now)
  • If you look at Denmark and Sweden during the last 25 years, success in government has rested on a close cooperation between the Prime Minister’s Office and the Finance Ministry – in some cases (notably Denmark 1993-2001 but also earlier during Schl�ter’s term in office) the FM has been in the lead with regard to policy development, in other cases (notably Denmark 2001-today) the initiative has been with the PMO
  • Finance could be seen as a staff rather than a line portfolio in modern governments, a strong PM would want close control of the FM
  • Anders Borg fits the bill for a staff officer
  • The question is: Does this mean that Fredrik Reinfeldt will be as dominant as Prime Minister in the present Swedish government as G�ran Persson was in the previous (interesting because we have the single party/coalition and minority/majority parametres to consider) and Anders Fogh Rasmussen in the present Danish government (minority coalition but with a much weaker partner).

I would like to note that I was inspired by Susanne Hegelund and Peter Mose’s observations in their book H�ndbog for statsministre which points in the same direction as recent comparative research into the role of the prime minister. Also: Nicholas Aylott’s book chapter “‘President Persson’ � How Did Sweden Get Him?” (in Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb (eds), The Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies).

PS: I know that I at one time promised a review of H�ndbog for statsministre – but, but, but… [enter bad excuse here]

Thüringen Update...
One More Very Short Note on the German Election (Guessing Portfolios)...
A Game of Chairs...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Category: Political science etc., Politics | Tags: , Comments Off

Comments are closed.

↑ Back to top