Jacob Christensen

To be perfectly honest I more often than not give the Eurovision Song Contest the miss. If the show was rebranded as the Eurovision Kitschiest Performance of the Year Contest, then maybe…

As it is, the Swedes are mad about the ESC, which is known as Schlagerfestivalen in these parts of the world, and they take it so seriously that they have their own mini-series of Schlagerfestivals. This means that a) the tabloids write about the events from January through May and b) there really is no need for a grand European finale: The Eurovision can save the money and the trouble and just hand over the trophy to this year’s winner of the Swedish contest.

Okay, it was a well-laid plan and as all best laid plans, it failed spectacularly. The Swedish entry, performed by local superstar Charlotte Perrelli, sunk without trace. As did the UK, the German and the Polish entries. Instead, this year’s competition was won by a Russian speed-skater.

Part of the attraction of the ESC are the rituals before and after the Grande Finale. There are always complaints about the winning song being a rip-off of some obscure song written by an even more obscure has-been or never-was. And the British sulk when they don’t win – boy, do they sulk. Your average 5-year-old couldn’t throw more tantrums than the British media, but then again: To work in British media, having the mental age of a 5-year-old often looks like a requirement to me.

Anyway, discussions about the misfortune of the British and the unsportsmanlike behaviour of everybody else thanks to semi-anonymous commentator at Crooked Timber, abb1, gave me this link to a table of European neighbourly love.

• Women’s rights: What’s in it for men?
  This column proposes an explanation for the relationship between economic development and female empowerment that emphasises changes in the incentives males face rather than shifts in moral sentiment. Technological change that raises demand for human capi
  (tags: academic research gender development economics politicalscience)
• SFI – Småkriminelle unge fra provinsen kører sprit-kørsel
  Spirituskørsel hænger nemlig ofte sammen med anden risikoadfærd. Mange af de unge er tidligere straffet for anden kriminalitet.
  (tags: denmark research publichealth)
• De Økonomiske Råd – Forår 2008
  (tags: denmark economicpolicy)
• Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment : Risk factors for a first-time drink-driving conviction among young men: A birth cohort study of all men born in Denmark in 1966
  The study concludes that disadvantages during adolescence, including parental substance abuse, having a teenage mother, and domestic violence, are associated with a first-time drink-driving conviction.
  (tags: denmark research publichealth)

The Danish Economic Council published its twice-annual report today. The report has some numbers and figures on savings quotes and private savings.

This one is not too surprising:

And this one – which tracks the dramatic increases in house prices since the late 1990s – not really, either.

According to sociologist Henrik Dahl, Denmark is the Happy GDR: It has a milk monopoly, a beer monopoly¹ and a welfare monopoly. And of cause, public radio.

1. Not that there is anything wrong with that: Your beers pay my work. [↩]

By Lane Kenworthy. I’d say he gets it fairly right.

And let me just add that Denmark – believe it or not – is not quite Sweden. The biggest difference in Kenworthy’s summary probably is in the pensions system.

Liz Trotta of Fox News thinks the idea of assassinating Barack Obama is amusing. Duly filed under “Boneheaded stupidity”.

H/T Edge of the American West.

During the last week, Danish media have informed us that the Conservatives entertain the idea that Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s successor as prime minister should be Bendt Bendtsen. Or Lene Espersen. Or Mads Lebech.

What are the chances, I hear you asking the political scientist.

Zero.

As a general rule, the largest party in a coalition fills the position as prime minister and as we all know, the Liberals are 2,5 times the size of the Conservatives.

There have been some exceptions to this rule, but if we look closer at them, it gets even more obvious that the Conservatives don’t stand a chance to get to appoint the next prime minister.

Exception #1: The Zahle II Government 1913-1920.

If the Social Democrats had wanted it, then it is not unlikely that Thorvald Stauning could have become prime minister in 1913. In terms of votes and MPs, the Social Democrats were after all the largest party on the left side of the political spectrum. As it was, the party still lived by the rule that it would not enter government before it held a majority in parliament. Consequently, the Social Liberal leader C. Th. Zahle became prime minister by default. The Social Liberals, to this day, still haven’t understood this.

Exception #2: The Baunsgaard Government 1968-1971

In 1968, the Conservatives were the largest party in the Conservative – Liberal – Social Liberal coalition and if the general rule had applied, Poul Møller should have been prime minister. The problem was that the Conservatives needed something that would guarantee the Social Liberals’ loyalty. That “something” was the prime minister’s office and so Hilmar Baunsgaard became prime minister.

Exception #3: The Schlüter Government 1982-1984

The 1979 election had yielded a potentially dangerous result for the moderate right – the Conservatives and the Liberals both won 22 seats in parliament. Things became a little clearer in 1981 when the Conservatives won 26 seats and the Liberals 20. Still, to many commentators Poul Schlüter wasn’t the obvious candidate compared with Henning Christophersen.

But Schlüter had an advantage as he was flexible in negotiations. Schlüter’s political masterpiece was that he during the spring and summer of 1982 managed to convince not only the Social Liberals but also the Progress Party that he would take them seriously at the negotiating table. Schlüter could guarantee the four-party government a parliamentary basis, Christophersen could not. Still, the Conservatives bought Liberal loyalty by giving the party control of the Foreign, Finance and Economy portfolios.

To sum up: If a Conservative politician wants to make it to the Prime Minister’s Office in the near future, he or she must be better to secure external support for the government than a Liberal competitor. Given the often fascinating relationship between the Conservatives and the Danish People’s Party since 2001, this is not a realistic scenario, not even if the government should come to depend on New Alliance or the Social Liberals.

In electoral politics, Denmark and Sweden are very different creatures these days so Denmark may not necessarily have many lessons to offer for Sweden, but the latest talk about two alternative coalitions – Social Democrats, Left and Greens to the left and Conservatives, Centre Party, Liberals and Christian Democrats to the right – competing for office led professor Marie Demker to argue that this would lead to a decline in turn-out.

My immediate response would be that Swedish politics, despite all talk about consensus democracy – generally have been a rather rigid two-bloc affair with the 1994-1998 term as the only real exception in later years. And as we all know, turn-out in 1998 was down while the peak in turn-out was during the 1970s and early 1980s. My main explanation for the lower turn-out in 1998 and 2002 is that the centre-right opposition did not appear as a credible alternative to the Social Democratic government.

If we look at Danish data from 1953 onward¹ we get a mixed picture. As in Sweden, turn-out increased from the 1950s to the 1970s despite the gradual lowering of the minimum age from 23 to 20 years. The elections in 1960, 1966 and 1968 which had clear left-right coalitions competing also coincided with an increase in turn-out.² The same goes for the 1998, 2001 and 2007 elections, so I doubt that having two competing coalitions in itself lowers turn-out.

One factor which may play a role in the next Swedish election is the performance of the Sweden Democrats. The SweDems are outside of the suggested coalitions and my guess is that if opinion polls begin to show relatively strong – as in > 5% – support for the party, turn-out will be up for two reasons: First of all, the party appeals to young men – a group with low rates of turn-out. Second, the possibility of SweDem entering parliament and perhaps even controlling the balance will mobilise anti-SweDem voters.

1. The election in September 1953 was the first for the singe-chamber parliament [↩]
2. I’m a little unsure about the figure for 1968, though, as I’ve always understood that the all-time high was in 1973 [↩]

• Paul A Trout – Disengaged students and the decline of academic standards
  (tags: teaching education academic)
• In the Basement of the Ivory Tower | Professor X
  We may look mild-mannered, we adjunct instructors, but we are academic button men. I roam the halls of academe like a modern Coriolanus bearing sword and grade book, “a thing of blood, whose every motion / Was timed with dying cries.”
  (tags: academic education teaching university)
• The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy : Warning–Honest Grading Can be Hazardous to Your Job
  Steven Aird … was recently dismissed from his teaching position because he gave his students the grades they had actually earned, rather than inflating them to keep them happy.
  (tags: education academic university)

I’ve promised myself to remain uncommitted with regard to the Democratic primaries, if only because I’m a Danish and not a US citizen and I would hate to have the Americans telling us which party to vote for in our elections, but there is something about Hillary Clinton which has left me puzzled.

Now, for many reasons I’d love to see a woman as president of the US (just as I wouldn’t mind seeing a – euh – non-white as president) but Hillary Clinton has enriched this electoral campaign with some weird statements.

Case #1: Obama-as-Muslim

There’s nothing to base that on. As far as I know.

I’m quoting out of context here – HRC is answering a question the obnoxious reporter have should aked Obama and not her – but as this commentator points out, we get three different answers to the same (irrelevant) question. The only possible answer, unless you really want to use this piece of gossip in your campaign, is something like

Don’t ask me. Ask Obama.

Case #2: Hard-working Whites

Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and … whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.

Well, yes, we all know that Negroes blacks non-whites are a bunch of jailbirds and welfare queens. Not good. And I used to tell my students that Americans are much better at rhetorics than Scandinavians.

Case #3: Go Ahead and Shoot, You’re Doing Me a Favour

We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.

Recording, NYT report.

Sister, in case anybody tries something funny against Obama in June, you will be in real trouble. And forty years ago, this guy named Martin Luther King was shot.

A campaign isn’t just about rhetorics, and candidates should be allowed the occasional slip of the tongue. I also honestly can’t see HRC as a wing-nutty gun-crazy redneck, so something strange is going on here. Maybe the problem is that HRC’s campaign management has tried to present her as something she is not – neither personally nor politically – and as a consequence, she cracks under stress? Would a campaign that had matched Candidate HRC and Citizen HRC better have been more successful?

And in any event, political scientists who have done the numbers would tell campaign strategists that cultural politics play a larger role for the well-educated and voters with high incomes.¹ The one place where HRC’s strategy might work is in … believe it or not – Denmark where blue-collar workers have left the Social Democrats in favour of the Liberals and the Danish People’s Party during the last decade.

1. Read Andrew Gelman’s blog [↩]