Jacob Christensen

Just a rejoinder to a blog-post by one of my former students about the resignation of the Czech government after a vote of no confidence: Politics in the Czech Republic seem to be a highly complicated affair – well, Kafka was from Prague after all, so what did we expect? – and it is worth noting that international media have a hard time explaining exactly why the Topolanek government fell.

But then there is the thing about votes of no confidence. As it is, there is one country where votes of no confidence (either formally or de facto) have played a large role in parliamentary life. Just look at these years:

1909, 1929, 1947, 1950, 1967, 1973, 1975, 1981, 1984, 1988

That’s ten votes of no confidence or similar votes which have triggered either the resignation of a government or general elections since the introduction of parliamentarism in 1901.

To be more specific:

• Government resigned without calling a general election: 1909, 1950, 1975
• Government called a general election and lost: 1929, 1947, 1967/8, 1973
• Government called a general election, but the Prime Minister continued in office after the election: 1981, 1984, 1988

And, yes: The country is Denmark and parliamentarians seem to have learnt something from the last three occasions because we haven’t had a decent vote of no confidence bringing down a government since 1988.¹ And EU is the main reason why the Danish People’s Party isn’t a formal member of the governing coalition since 2001.

PS: In case you wonder, we have also had resignations preempting a vote of no confidence. 1909 (yes, a messy year), 1982 and 1993.

PPS: But wait, I hear you say – wasn’t there elections in 1950 and 1975? Sure – the governments were brought down shortly after the elections and the Prime Minister (Hedtoft in 1950, Hartling in 1975) didn’t have the stomach for new elections.

1. I will leave aside 1997 when the government tried to bring down itself. A high point in political comedy [↩]

I scored 801 of 1000 and am able to call my musical tastes rather eclectic.

Worth noting that the distribution of last.fm users is slightly skewed towards the eclectic side

More fun with last.fm by Anthony Liekens.

The good news: I now, finally, have a Swedish e-legitimation, courtesy of Nordea.

The bad news: I need to find a Swedish ATM before I can use the e-leg. A trip to Malmö next Saturday?

November comes quickly (oh, puh-leeeze. Give us some months of summer, would you). David Garby of Dansk-Politik.dk discusses Social Democratic strategies for the 2009 local election campaign with local government spokesman Rasmus Prehn.

European elections, I hear you ask. Eh, right…

Update: Forgot to mention who DTG was discussing Soc Dem strategies with. Duh!

Don’t say that rss-feeds cannot be amusing: Charlemagne of The Economist takes Eurobabble to new heights.

Earlier today I heard Laurie Taylor recommend listeners to podload the downcast of Thinking Allowed. And why not?, I would like to ask.

Nate Silver tells us why the “bonuses” dished out at AIG (ultimately at the tax-payers’ expense) never were proper bonuses. And why a lot of bonuses aren’t, in fact, bonuses.

…I’m just not all that excited about confiscating the “bonuses” paid to the AIGFP employees. Rather, I’m interested in compensation and incentivization structures in general. Aggregate compensation throughout the financial services industry, I would guess, is much higher than is economically optimal (there is a lot of evidence that this is true of CEO pay). A lot of people are getting paid for what is thought to be skill but is really just luck (or economic rent).

As they say: Read the whole thing.

Back after a session at the library where I’ve been trawling through some 20-odd years of the journal of the Danish TUC (known as DsF in ye olde days¹ ), I have a problem: I couldn’t find what I was looking for.

The thing is: Between 1904 and 1930, DsF mentioned the state of the unemployment funds and unemployment insurance quite a lot. After 1930, mentioning fell to the degree that unemployment insurance and unemployment funds almost became a non-issue in the publication. The question is why?

One reason could be that with the establishing of a Social Democratic-led government in 1929 and the coming of the Age of Social Democracy, trade unions were less likely to use demands for better financing and higher benefits in public debate. After all, the government was their brethren. Possible, but we still have to remember that the unemployment insurance was basically part of labour-market policies, and those were the domain of the trade unions, not the party.

Another reason could be that as unemployment funds were organised in connection to the existing unions, the issue was decentralised to individual unions. Fine, but in general the 1930s and 1940s were an age of centralisation of labour-market relations. On the other hand, one unemployment fund in particular was the source of concern from the late 1930s onward – the Unskilled Workers’ Unemployment Fund, in case you wondered. But as late as 1952, its finances were discussed as an issue for DsF.

Finally, there is the likelihood that unemployment insurance became a special topic for the 12-, later the 32-man committee and eventually the Confederation of Unemployment Funds which was established in 1947.

Obviously, when you’re looking at one part of labour-market policies, you become a bit myopic: Unemployment insurance is only one of a number of instruments in employment policy (but in terms of expenditure still an important one), so it is easy to see that DsF discussed a lot of employment and unemployment related issues in its journal and on its annual conventions.

1. DsF = De samvirkende Fagforbund; today known as LO [↩]

Generally, I’m not in the business of offering advice… well, I am, actually, but that’s strictly academic advice on writing essays and papers (something which I s**k at).

Anyway, here’s Laura McKenna’s advice for future babysitters. Or young women, if you prefer it that way. And here’s Timothy Burke’s advice for students of both (or should that be “all”?) sexes.

Topics for discussion:

1. To what degree can Laura McKenna’s advice be applied by men as well as women?
2. To what degree can Timothy Burke’s advice be said to reflect US experiences and to what degree can it be applied directly in, say, Denmark?

Bonus exercise for advanced students:

• Install Ubuntu Linux on your laptop and demonstrate the installation in class.

When you’re a professor, the “dream” is “Did I have a lecture later today?”.

Naser Khader is now officially a member of the Conservative Party. He hereby joins a select group of MPs who have represented no fewer than three parties (four, if we decide to count NA and LA as distinct parties) in the Danish parliament.

Simon Emil Amnitzbøll next?