Jacob Christensen

A summary written by my colleague Flemming Juul Christiansen of Aarhus University is posted here.

Also: Politiken’s news in English.

I’m off to the theatre tonight so there will be no immediate postings.

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I must admit that this round of campaigns has put me in a bit of a predicament. As a certified political scientist, I really ought to have enjoyed any second of a vigorious electoral campaign, but my impression is that the campaign has been less than inspiring. This is even more strange, given that more than a handful of the local councils are up for grabs.¹ The Liberal Party looks set for an embarrassing result at the polls and at the later selection of mayors – and the party has responded by lowering expectations and withdrawing the party leader, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, from tomorrow’s post-mortem rounding-up. Kristian Jensen was given the unenviable task of defending the liberal colours.

The campaign in Copenhagen more or less died when the Social Democrats pulled Frank Jensen out of the hat. The big issue here is if the Danish People’s Party will win enough votes to get one of the seven mayor portfolios (in all likelihood the integration portforlio – something which will surely guarantee four years of conflict in the City Council). I suspect that even the Social Liberals will not be missing Klaus Bondam.

The campaign in Ã…rhus … faggetaboutit. Nikolaj Wammen. End of message.

Among the larger cities, the elections in Odense and Kolding have more than a shadow of excitement over them. In Kolding, the long-serving Social Democratic mayor Per Bødker Andersen is in trouble because of the council’s economic problems, while Odense looks set to return Social Democrat Anker Boye to the position he lost to the Conservative Jan Boye four years ago.²

Hey, wait: Odense should be exciting, so what have I been missing here? Let’s see:

1. Less than inspiring candidates. I mean: After considering the question thoroughly the local Social Democrats came up with … Anker Boye. Right? And Jan Boye was supposed to be a breath of fresh air, but but but… Well. Yes. Exactly.

2. Economic constraints. Earlier this year, we were warned that while the local council wasn’t on the brink of an economic collapse, there would be serious constraints to the initiatives the council will be able to fund in the coming four-year period.

3. In the doldrums. I haven’t made any systematic analysis of this, but my impression is that Funen in general and Odense in particular have been missing out on the economic development in the last decade or so.³ The closing of Lindø Shipyard will continue to put the local economy under pressure. The problem here is that the local council can only do so much for local and regional growth. That the Conservatives came up with some seriously dodgy statistics may be an illustration of the problem. The Social Democrats didn’t have much to speak for them in 2005, but neither do the Conservatives now.

4. And in any event, the government and the Folketing decides. Just say “hospitals” and “food for pensioners” and everybody will know what it meant by this.

Well, either way I will get a Boye. The question is which one is the least bad alternative.

Psst – regional councils …

Oh God, no…

1. Kristian Madsen has a post summarising the situation. [↩]
2. Here’s Jarl Cordua’s wrap-up of the campaign in Odense. [↩]
3. I will leave aside the question if the economic boom of the 00s was sustainable. [↩]

No “Dancing with the Stars” for Juliette Binoche. She goes for the real deal instead:

The British, in particular, hated it.

HT: Roger Ebert’s twitter.

A young and still hopeful reader of the blog mailed me some days ago and asked: What does it take to enter a Ph.D. programme in Political Science?

My immediate reaction was to think that I was the wrong person to ask as I have never been on a committee which assesses applications for Ph.D. programmes. But then again I’ve met a number of Ph.D. students over the years so maybe I have learnt something along the way.

Perhaps I should start by pointing out that in Sweden and Denmark accepting a Ph.D. student is an investment for the department in question. Unlike in Germany, the programme has to be financed in advance, and departments (or rather faculties) receive payments for the number of Ph.D. students who pass their programmes. So, first of all: The department, or the committee, wants to be reasonably sure that you will deliver a dissertation. Of course, things happen: Life has its nasty surprises and students may discover that spending life in academia is not their real goal in life. But if taking your MA took ten years and you have a nasty collection of 2s and 4s on your papers, you may as well forget about it. On the other hand, you do not need a full collection of 12s to get accepted. I know people who never got a 12, or the equivalent, and have made nice careers.¹

My guess is that dependability, rather than talent, is important. Research is also a craft to be learned and applied. And we know that not everyone is an Einstein. In fact, a discipline full of Einsteins may not be a good thing.

When it comes to your application or your project, I would say that having an idea about the current theoretical discussions and the state of the art with regard to empirical or theoretical research topics helps. But this is something you can use your masters thesis for.

Finally, my recommendation is that you pay the chair of the local Ph.D. programme a visit. This could also give you an idea about what type of applications and applicants they are looking for. Oh, and taking your Ph.D. somewhere else than where you took your MA is not necessarily a bad thing.

1. 2s, 4s and 12s? In case you are clueless, look here. [↩]

Life isn’t too short for French films. Some French films, that is.

Durin the week, I have watched Le gout des autres, directed by and featuring Agnes Jaoui, and L’ennemi public n°1, the second of two films about the notorious criminal Jacques Mesrine starring Vincent Cassel.

Le gout des autres is interesting and worthwhile because it explores human awkwardness without exposing its characters needlessly. It may not be a path-breaking piece of art, but it manages to be reasonably profound and entertaining at the same time. (By the way: Can anyone tell me how the French always manage to come up with attractive actresses who look like real people and not illustrations from a textbook in plastic surgery?)

L’ennemi public n°1 was a disappointment. I actually liked L’instinct de mort, even if Jacques Mesrine is (was) a very problematic character. Like many criminals he was first and foremost a (violent) criminal trying to come up with a justification for his acts. Still: Even if Instinct was much surface and not too much depth, I felt that I got a feeling for Mesrines personality.

After considering the issue for a couple of hours, I think my problem was this: Ennemi is, dramatically speaking, just more (as in: Two hours) of the same. Mesrine doesn’t really develop as a character during the second film. At the same time, the French state (in all likelihood for good reasons) develops a serious grudge against Mesrine with the shooting executed by a division of the police in 1979. It would have been interesting if the second film had turned the perspective and followed the process which led to a decision to kill Mesrine.

But on the other hand that may have been to controversial in France, even after thirty years.

Inspired by this post by John Quiggin and especially the following comments, I couldn’t resist revealing my true position in the OS Wars. Dropbox to the rescue:

I’m not sure if this is Mac 2 – 2 Others or UNIX 3 – 1 Windows.

Bleg: Can anyone please tell me why I should vote in next Tuesday’s elections for regional councils? I mean: Seriously, does this election make any sense?

I could ask Ulrik Kjær, but I think I know the answer.

Fokus claims that the laundry room is uniquely Swedish. I beg to disagree: I can’t say if the Swedes invented the shared laundry room or were the first to but the idea into general practice, but laundry rooms have been a feature of many Danish condominiums and housing estates for a long time.

Still, the point stands: A shared laundry room is an interesting way of pooling resources – even if buying a washing machine these days is within the reach of most people, machines in individual apartments are often underused. The laundry room is also a cause for conflict – not everyone can do their laundry at the same time, the machines and the room have to be kept clean, clothes cannot lie around forever, etc – so an elaborate system of norms and communication is demanded to make the room work and the machines run. Unfortunately, Danish does not have a word for “arga lappen” (there is a pun here which can only be understood in Swedish) but we do know then down here as well.

That said, I do miss the opportunity to book a time for doing the laundry where I live now. As it is, I have to go down to the laundry room and check if the machine is vacant, go back and fetch the laundry – and hope that nobody else manage to get to the machine before I do. I take it, that you feel the frustration and anxiety. Oh, and the tumble dryer is out of order.

When hamfisted multiculturalism meats thinly veiled racism, the result is often mind-boggling. This week’s case in point is Hvidovre, a suburban local council in Copenhagen, where a candidate for the Danish People’s Party now demands that at least one in five meals in council institutions should be served with pork. Needless to say, that would mean that muslim children and adults would go starving one or two days a week.

The story about institutions not serving pork (actually, in Danish we are not so French about it: We eat pigs. End of story) for fear of offending muslims is an old one, but I have never seen any precise figures detailing the possible extent of such behaviour.

What I do find interesting, though, is that is seems impossible to Danes to administer a system where people have a choice in the delivery of meals. In Sweden, you will be met with a form where you can enter special wishes or needs. One reason is that the place is full of vegetarians and people with allergies (I, for one, have an issue with apples and nuts). Another may be that the Swedes on this issue have somehow been able to break out of the one-size-fits-all way of thinking.

As I don’t have any children myself, I haven’t followed practices in Sweden and Denmark, but it really ought not to be that hard to introduce an element of choice in day-care and and other meal services. Except for a party which wants to turn us all into leverpostej.