Archive for July, 2007
Vacation
Ah, vacation. After the blogging frenzy of the last weeks, expect lower levels of activity. Very much lower.
links for 2007-07-13
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Materialet består av nio utvalda huvudområden som i första hand bedöms viktiga att få diskutera såväl i partiorganisationen som bland elever och föräldrar, personal och en intresserad allmänhet.
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A new type of librarian is emerging: think Dewey Decimal meets Generation X.
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Under seminariet presenterade Synovate:s Arne Modig och Nicklas Källebring nya analyser över vad som har vid tidigare val och hur väljarnas syn på partierna förändrats sedan riksdagsvalet 2006.
Almedalen: In Lieu of a Round-Up
Yes, I’ve noted that transcripts of Mona Sahlin’s and Göran Hägglund’s speeches from Almedalen are now available. I may get back to those next week.
But the question is if the most important political news from Sweden during the last weeks are a) that the Conservatives have blocked attempts to introduce a reform of regional government in Sweden and b) that the Social Democrats want to reformulate their school policies.
Regional Reform Cancelled
The Conservatives effectively killed the report from the Committee on Public Sector Responsibilities which suggested the creation of 6-9 regions to replaced the present 24 councils and regional state authorities. The Conservatives’ party secretary shot down the plans in early June and the other three coalition partners had no choice but to accept the political facts.
It is interesting that the Conservatives wanted to kill the process in a very public way before the responses of the consultation round had started to come. I very much doubt that the arguments presented by the Conservatives – that an administrative process should be a bottom-up process etc – reflect their true motives: Like their Danish counterparts, the Swedish Conservatives have always had the reputation of a state party – regionalisation, especially with an emphasis on regional industrial and labour market policy, was more of a Social Democratic issue.
What will happen instead?
My immediate, and perhaps slightly provocative, guess is that Swedish health care policy could be aimed in the same direction as the Norwegian and to some extent Danish policies – that is: The counties will lose their position as an independent, and taxing, level of government and be replaced by either national or regional agencies overseeing the provision of health care.
A second step could then be the privatisation of both primary (GPs, local health care centres, etc) and secondary (hospitals) health care producers. Legislation has already opened for the privatisation of hospitals.
Local industrial and labour market policy? Killed off. (Note that one of the first initiatives by the government was to abolish the regional labour market boards).
What’s left is public transport – which could also be transferred to either national agencies or local government associations – and culture (same).
One problem is that the EU’s regional policies expect that there is a regional level of government but if the Danes managed to go past that, then it ought to be possible in Sweden as well.
Education Policy Reconsidered
The Social Democrats have appointed a specialist group to address what is seen as weaknesses in the party’s education policy – specifically problems with regard to primary education. Or to quote the party’s webpage: Why do so many voters believe that the Social Democrats do not back the goal of proficiency?
I’ll just note that the Social Democrats have given children and younger people priority as policy objects. The choice of education is also interesting because it was the Liberal Party’s main issue during the 2002 and 2006 campaigns where the Liberals contrasted their demands for clearer learning goals with alleged Social Democratic do-goodiness. It could signal a shift to the “right” on the cultural dimension.
links for 2007-07-12
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I will offer a few remarks on the relationships among monetary policy, inflation, and the public’s expectations of inflation, focusing–as seems appropriate for this audience–on some important open questions.
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Marriage and the family have become a central battleground between Labour and the Conservatives after David Cameron backed a report calling for married couples to be given tax breaks worth at least £1,000 a year.
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The real problem is that the tax system is based on individuals, while the benefits system is based on households.
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Det sade Peter Eriksson i sitt Almedalstal
Spam in German Is Still Spam
I receive lots of spam on my work e-mail (in fact so much that it is almost impossible to check mail via the webmail system now). That is not surprising. Most of the spam – judging from the message titles – is in German. That is a little surprising.
Denmark: Fewer PolSci Applications in Copenhagen
Copenhagen University released the application numbers for the academic year 2007-2008 earlier today.
The overall number of applications are up slightly from 9662 to 9818 (1st priority), 1st priority applications at the Faculty of Social Sciences are down slightly from 1742 to 1732 while 1st priority applications for the programme in political science are down from 388 to 346.
I don’t know how many places, Copenhagen U offer in PolSci (250??) but I don’t think the drop would be a cause for concern for the Department of Political Science.
Still, it will be interesting to see the final numbers for all universities which will be published on 28 July.
In comparison: Application numbers are up for Law, Economics, Psychology and Anthropology while Sociology seems to be facing a crisis in attracting students.
Harry Potter
New York Times tells us that whatever the merits of Harry Potter, the decline in reading among older children has continued. Btw, did you know that ten-year-olds play golf these days?
links for 2007-07-11
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AT – skattepolitisk förstudieArbetarrörelsens Tankesmedja startar i höst en större skatteutredning. Som utgångspunkt för den finns nu en skattepolitisk förstudie, som utarbetats av de båda före detta statssekreterarna Jan Larsson och Magdalena Andersson.
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Over 475’000 items of research can be browsed or searched, and over 375’000 can be downloaded in full text! This site is part of a large volunteer effort to enhance the free dissemination of research in Economics, RePEc.
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The non-organic stuff was labeled “Conventional.” I found this a little odd, because when I see “Conventional” used as a label, I expect its opposite to be “Nuclear.”
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blog.pmarca.com: Eleven lessons learned about blogging, so far
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What do we do with Bill in pictures with Hillary?
links for 2007-07-10
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DN:s retorikexpert Christer Hanefalk analyserar politikernas tal i Almedalen. Först ut var centerpartiets Andreas Carlgren på söndagskvällen
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Our results do not support the notion that suicide attacks and targeted killings follow the “tit-for-tat” pattern that is commonly postulated in the literature.
Rocky Future
DN’s Gabriella Håkansson has heard the future … and it’s scary!