Jacob Christensen

So there I was in the printer room fighting our obnoxious main printer when my colleague walks up to me and asks, “Say, you know something about North Korea Sweden, right?”

To make a long story short, he is trying to do some content analysis of Swedish and Danish government declarations but in order to calibrate the software, he needs reference points – as in “the most left-wing government” and “the most right-wing government” in Sweden since 1974.

Remember that we are talking governments and not parties here and this makes the whole thing a bit more complicated.

We quickly agreed that the centre-right governments under Fälldin and Ullsten between 1976 and 1982 would be irrelevant which left either the 1991-1994 Bildt government or the present 2006- Reinfeldt government as the candidate in the right corner.

Now, Bildt was more outspokenly neo-liberal than Reinfeldt – but on the other hand the Liberals and the Centre Party were more centrist during the early 1990s compared to today. Then again, the Bildt government introduced a number of deregulation measures in public administration, but I still decided that Reinfeldt 2006- would be the most likely choice as the most right-wing government since 1974. (Remember we are talking Sweden here. As far as I recall, Reinfeldt supported … drum-roll … Obama in the run-up to the US presidential election) One important point is also that Reinfeldt commands a majority which Bildt did not.

And then to the left. I think it is safe to say that the early 1970s was a period of radicalisation on the left and the Swedish Social Democrats sure made a lot of anti-capitalist noise during that era – but was the 1973-1976 government the most left-wing? The problem here is that the 1973-1976 Swedish parliament was hung – the left had 175 seats, the right 175 and some votes would actually be decided by drawing the lot (hence “Lotteririksdagen” – the Lottery Parliament). The general mood was less radical during the 1982-1985 term but on the other hand, the Social Democrats were in a much stronger position as there was a left-wing majority and the Social Democrats outnumbered the combined forces of the centre-right parties. So all in all, I would in fact expect the 1982-1985 government to have been the most left-wing.