Jacob Christensen

Ola Nordebo has one or two problems with the political dimensions and their names. I may not be able to help him out of his misery, but I do have my own motives for trying to clarify what we mean by “right” and “bourgeois” (borgerlig/borgarlig) in Denmark and Sweden.

First: Do we need one or more dimensions to describe and analyse the political conflicts?

As it is, political scientists have been discussing this almost endlessly, but the received wisdom seems to be that Danish politics needs two dimensions to make any sense (socio-economic and libertarian-authoritarian are the best bets, AFAIK) while Sweden is quite a unique case in Europe as it generally fits nicely on a left-right socio-economic scale.

While the Green Party, and in later days the Sweden Democrats, have made some attempts to break the Swedish unidimensionality, indications are that they have failed. Which is one reason why SD has found it difficult to make it to the national political scene. One interesting question could be what would happen if the Greens and the Left Party force the Social Democrats to abandon what (at least to me) looks like a de facto alliance with the Conservatives on asylum and immigration politics.

Denmark, on the other hand, is a country where the classical left and right have imploded. It’s not that class does not play a role in Danish politics, but blue-collar voters now choose between the Social Democrats, the Liberals and the Danish People’s Party. Immigration policy is one reason behind this.

Second: What does “right” or “bourgeois” mean on the political arena?

One problem is that both “right” and “bourgeois” tend to be pejorative terms and in Denmark, the … uhm … bourgeois parties go to great lengths to present themselves as something else. “Right” carries connotations of bad guys like Hitler, Franco, Pinochet and Reagan (Try mentioning any of the four to a Social Democrat in either country and watch: The reaction is pretty similar). At best, “right” means upper class. Like in the 19th century. The Swedish Social Democrats are more than happy to call the bourgeois parties “The Right”.

As a reaction, both the Danish and the Swedish conservatives shed the “right” brand. The Danes in 1915, the Swedes in the 1950s. Both parties have always suffered from a certain schizophrenia with regard to their true identity: Should the be true Conservative parties, or should they appeal more broadly to the middle classes? Hence their double names: The Conservative People’s Party and the Moderate Rally.

But things get worse as “the right”, i.e. those parties which are to the right of the Social Democrats, come from very different ideological traditions. A historical irony means that Left (Venstre) is on the right side of Danish politics, but are The Left liberals or agrarians at heart? (Both, actually. As true agrarians they do not care one second about the environment, as liberals they need to establish at least some green credentials). Oh, and the Danish Agrarian Liberals have very little in common with their Swedish counterparts, the Centre Party.

To make a long story short, we have social-liberals, liberals, agrarians, conservatives, Christian conservatives and nationalists joined in a motley mess. In Sweden, the social-liberals (Folkpartiet) lean right, in Denmark they (Radikale Venstre) lean left. So, does “bourgeois” mean staid middle class or progressive?

Acutally, in Denmark “bourgeois” has a nasty smell of Gentofte and Søllerød to it and the Conservatives in particular prefer to speak about the “bourgeois-liberal” parties or, even better, the “non-socialist” parties.¹

Bonus: Why do the centrist Danish Social Liberals call themselves “the Radical Left”? Back in 1905, one of the party’s founders was heavily Francophile and wanted to establish a link with the French “Parti Radical“. The “Left” was taken from the fact that the party was a splinter group from Venstrereformpartiet (the “Left Reform Party”).

1. For Gentofte and Søllerød, insert Täby and Danderyd in Sweden. [↩]

Lights. Camera. Action.

I’m not sure if I won or lost all possible street-cred here. Never mind: PSW is the real culprit. Or maybe the buck stops with Roland Poirier. Anyway: Swedes can in fact be funny, though I still think the Germans are in front when it comes to razor-sharp satirical wit.

In case you would like a dose of contemporary Swedish poetry in the grand tradition, PSW is ready to take your challenge.

Hurry over to XKCD to behold the resurrected glory of GeoCities.

As a commenter wrote: This is beyond #win (If you have just the least idea about html, check the source code). Indeed. Also: XKCD’s forums.

HT: BoingBoing.

Oh, and Flash is for today’s web what animated gifs were to web 1.0.

Update: A reply in kind.

My colleagues hinsidan has been discussing possible strategies for dealing with the Sweden Democrats, a small xenophobic party with aspirations about entering the Swedish parliament in 2010.

Ulf Bjereld (in Swedish, from a Social Democratic perspective): 1, 2.

Andreas Bergh (also in Swedish, a short calculus from 2006 on why mainstream parties should ignore the SweDems).

Peter Santesson-Wilson (In Swedish. The Bergh reloaded). PSW points us to Sanna Rayman.

Nicholas Aylott (In English)

Henrik Oscarsson does some math.

It is that time of the year electoral cycle again:

They don’t make them like they used to. Here’s the one and only Helmut “Schnauze” Schmidt:

And a remarkably subdued Franz Josef Strauss:

Both with a little help from Loriot.

Much has been said about this incident:

So here’s Ze Fohreign Minister (designate) spieking English. Is he better or worse than Anders Fogh?

So, how did I do in my prediction of the distribution of portfolios?

It was 8 CDU, 3 CSU and 5 FDP as I predicted, but then problems began:

Chancellor – CDU (correct)
Minister of chancery – CDU (correct)
Foreign – FDP (correct)
Finance – CDU (WRONG! I predicted CSU)
Trade and Industry – FDP (correct)
Internal – CDU (correct)
Justice – FDP (correct)
Labour and Social Affairs – CDU (correct)
Consumer and Agriculture – CSU (correct)
Defence – CSU (WRONG! I predicted CDU)
Families, etc – CDU (correct)
Health – FDP (WRONG! I predicted CSU)
Transport and infrastructure – CSU (WRONG! I predicted FDP)
Environment – CDU (correct)
Education and research – CDU (WRONG! I predicted FDP)
Development – FDP (WRONG! I predicted FDP)

So, six out of sixteen portfolios wrong. Oh dear.

At least nobody had seen Günther Oettinger as the next German EU commissioner. (Kosmopolito blog on Oettinger).

And if you feel like reading some 130 pages of German, here’s the coalition agreement.

Have you ever wondered about the real difference between law scholars and economists on the one hand and sociologists on the other? Let me put it this way: I cannot possibly imagine a law or an economics professor even asking this question.

Political scientists? Oh, we write text books. Well, some of us do.

I have tried to come up with something interesting about the local elections here in Odense. As it is, the campaign hasn’t really started yet (we are less than a month away from the elections), but signs are that the Conservatives are in trouble while the Socialists look set to win.

The left-wing parties managed to put put their foot in the mouth (or should that be: Put their feet in their mouths?) by having LO, the Danish TUC, write their electoral platforms.

What? They only got 100.000 DKK? That’s pretty cheap, I’d say.

Otherwise we have the (indirect) choice between Boye and Boye as mayor. One Boye is Conservative and incumbent mayor, the other Boye is a Social Democrat and a former mayor. I tried DR’s election guide: It recommended that I voted for the Social Democrats. Or the Conservatives. Flip a coin.

Helpful.

Local politics is different.