Jacob Christensen

Cudos to Ida Auken, MP for SF and Environment Minister in the three-party government, for drawing our attention to the State Council, one part of the Danish government which most people would be absolutely clueless about if you asked them in a vox-pop but still consider an essential part of the very special Danish form of democracy. Needless to say, the Danish People’s Party went ballistic and the Liberals and the Conservatives argued that any discussion of the Danish constitution amounted to sacrilege and an attack on everything the Sacred Danish Culture is built on.

If the three parties had their way, the minister would surely be banished to some remote island, just like others who dared to question the role of the monarch in the Danish political system.

Anyway, and on a serious note, we are dealing with the relationship between what Walter Bagehot called the dignified and the efficient components of the constitution with the State Council being one of the dignified components with no efficient political role: The Danish Monarch, unlike the German president, does not have an effective right or duty to perform a judicial review of new laws. Still, the Council and its duties are described in the Danish constitution and given that changing the constitution is almost impossible, we will all have to live with the illusion that the Monarch and the State Council have a political role. That Danish media do not report about the meetings and that the Monarch have more efficient, if technically informal, ways of being informed about current events in Danish politics is another matter.

These days, Danish political culture is mainly about creating and maintaining the illusion that we live in the 19th century – or rather: An imagined 19th century in which the sovereign powers of the Monarch were never challenged and Denmark never suffered military defeat.

Given the way the legislative machine works, there is very little which can be done to minimize the role of the State Council: Every ministry churns out new laws every month in numbers that are now too big to count which again means that ministers have to be present to do their presentations. Perhaps it would be possible to assign duties on a rotating basis and avoid meetings that are only designed to ramp up the numbers.

Okay, okay: One last post before 2012 kicks in…

“Carinagate” may have been the political blunder of the year but if we think twice, Özlem Cekic’s badly chosen case actually raises some relevant questions about social policy. Unfortunately, Cekic’s framing meant that her initiative backfired so badly that it now risks completely to turn the political debate in the direction of envy (recipients are either lazy, rich or otherwise undeserving) than in the direction of considering the means and goals in social policy.

So, as a free lunch, here are my thoughts about the mess brought up by Özlem Cekic, Joachim B. Olsen and Ekstra Bladet.

Carina is not poor. Is that a problem?
Carina, the thirtysomething single mother on cash benefit, whom Özlem Cekic used as a case in her campaining for poor families turned out not not to be poor if the official OECD line of poverty was applied. Once we looked at the data, there were two reasons for this: 1. She has a child and 2. She receives a housing allowance due to the high rent of her apartment. Oh, and with one child Carina is hardly a case of a welfare queen.

Personally, I do not think that children should grow up in poverty in a country like Denmark (or any country, but this is another matter), so viewed from the child’s perspective, Carina’s economic and social situation is acceptable. If the child grows up in somewhat ordered circumstances, its chances of finishing school and getting an education is higher and this is good for all parties.

But then the problems begin. Housing policy has been a mess in Denmark for a long time and Carina is in fact among the losers. This is why she receives a housing benefit. One problem is that public housing was financed in an expensive way from the 1960s on while insiders on the housing market perfectly legally were able to rent cheap apartments. Others faced the choice between an expensive new apartment or buying a bigger, cheaper house. A no-brainer. In terms of housing, however, Carina as an outsider is stuck. And this is bad for all parties.

We should also ask why the authorities over a period of 20 years basically parked Carina on long-term benefits and apparently never seriously reviewed her case and offered her help with her condition. It is very difficult for anybody – even experts – to diagnose people from a distance but a number of people – from case-workers up – should ask themselves if the handling of psychiatric and somatic conditions is adequate. If people who would be able to work are left outside the workforce, everybody lose. And this is very bad for all parties.

I haven’t read Lisbeth Zornig Andersen‘s autobiography but it is obvious to me that Carina unlike Lisbeth Zornig never met somebody who had the power and engagement to push open the doors of the educational and social systems. This is bad and we might ask how we engage people in various kinds of social work and how social programmes can be organised to rehabilitate people who fail to get an education or enter the labour market.

One final thought: The level of social benefits always raises the issue of the relationship between benefits and wages. Ideally, we would want people to have a decent level of security while keeping an economic motive to work (there are other motives besides money, btw) and not putting public finances under too much stress. This is not an easy equation to solve. But we should remember that means-tested cash benefits are only available to people who have depleted their means. This means: No home-ownership and no savings. Not an enviable situation. The situation is different for unemployment benefits and similar programmes.

General benefits vs. means-testing
The other issue which has captured the public mind is the existence of a number of social policy programmes that cover the entire population, most notably the general old-age pension and the child allowance. The typical criticism against this type of programmes is that 1. benefits are paid to people who do not need them and consequently that 2. the programmes create a system where everybody pays money to everybody.

We might expect that voters would react by being more positive to programmes directed at people in need but the fact is that means-tested programmes are often viewed less favourably than general programmes and that people receiving means-tested benefits are often viewed with suspicion. Voters do not like paying for people who do not resemble them: The greater the distance between voters and the poor, the harder it is for politicians to mobilise support for social policy programmes. Someone once coined the phrase that “Welfare for the poor is poor welfare”.

This is not entirely correct: A country like Germany has targeted programmes but also quite generous health care and old-age pensions programmes, but it is true that we should not assume that money saved by not paying benefits or providing services to high-income earners can be used to make social policy programmes more effective.

Another issue is that means-testing creates marginal economic effects and while it may seem easy to create some kind of discretionary or rule-based deductions for one programme, things get really complicated when taxes and a number of transfers and services are added to the equation. So, politically, economically and administratively it may be easier and cheaper to make some programmes available to all citizens.

As they say on Facebook: “It’s complicated”. Anyone promising easy solutions is selling snake oil.

I spent Thursday and Friday at the annual conference of the Danish Political Science Association where a roundtable discussion about about the public role of academics was one of the main events. Even if the roundtable had been planned before the very public conflict earlier this year between Marlene Wind, who is a professor at the University of Copenhagen specialising in EU policy, on the one hand and the Danish People’s Party and the Liberal Party on the other hand, it obviously adressed the issue that public appearances can be controversial.

I did feel, however, that the discussion suffered from a lack of focus as it tried to cover two very different phenomena: Academics as policy advisors, e.g. as members of commissions, working groups or consultants, and academics as “public intellectuals” commenting and analysing contemporary events like the recent election campaign or EU politics regarding the economic crisis. As somebody noticed, economists and – in particular – lawyers have been happy to appear as policy advisors since time immemorial and conversely politicians and bureaucrats have never had any reservations in using them in that capacity. That political scientists have found it harder to reach a similar position may be due to reservations from within the discipline but the lack of a body of policy recommendations may be equally important.

With regard to the other part of the discussion I was struck by the fact that it only adressed the relationship between academia and the traditional media. As an aside I should perhaps note that political scientists in the eyes of journalists make bad commentators because we are often reluctant to predict the future outcome of a process. There are good reasons for this: Back when I used to teach introductory courses in political science, I always made students aware of the fact that one of the simplest and best predictive theories within the discipline – the minimal winning coalition theory of government formation – could only predict about one third of all government formations.

But to return to my main question: This spring I, along along with all other academic employees at the Department of Political Science at the University of Southern Denmark, received a call for contributions to a special election edition of Politiken which was to be distributed to schools. I decided not to participate because I felt that there were people at the department who could write more topical articles about labour market policy, but I also wondered why the department and Politiken had decided to concentrate the initiative solely on print media. Sure, the edition would be made available as a printable pdf, but as far as I could tell there were no plans for interactive features or updating or supplementing or updating the articles during the election campaign. It looked as though the internet did not exist in the minds of my colleagues.

The same could be said about the debate at the conference. I didn’t take notes but I can’t recall the internet ever being mentioned, let alone blogs or (even if I truly hate the term) social media. As somebody who have lived and worked in Sweden, I find it puzzling that I have Swedish colleagues who tweet and/or blog so I can have continuous exchanges with them but Danish political scientists with a personal appearance on the internet are very much the exception. (Take a look at my Links page for some Swedish and international examples) Even polsci departments stick to the basic templates offered by the universities – and they do not include space for any kind of web-based publications. (For a Norwegian example, see the Ta Politika blog from the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo).

I am not sure why the internet is such a non-issue. Maybe my colleagues feel that established media give them sufficient outlet for public appearances or that digital media by definition are not an arena to take seriously. Maybe it is lack of knowledge (a senior professor called my mobile phone “a social medium” when I was checking the Guardian website for news about Greece…). Some would perhaps argue that the pressure to seek grants and publish in peer-reviewed English language journals means that academics should not spend time on interactive media – but then: Why do the Swedes, the Norwegians and the US Americans make more active use of the internet? Surely they must feel the pressure as much as my colleagues. As you can see, I have no good answers.

PS: It appeared that nobody at the conference had read Inside Higher Ed’s recommendations about how to handle established media.

Instead a glass (of something alcoholic, I assume) will be served before dinner.

Later today, the proud editors and contributors will be presenting vol. 2 of Dansk Velfærdshistorie covering the period from the introduction of parliamentarism in 1901 to the Kanslergade Agreement of 1933. My share in the project is a chapter about the introduction and development of unemployment insurance and labour exchanges – a subject which then as now raised considerable political controversies. The presentation is taking place at the old Svendborg Poor House which now houses the Museum of Poor Relief.

AS we all know, electronic and print media are full of pundits and other types of political commentators. Research has indeed shown that pundits are terrible forecasters – but then again the quality of forecasts may never have played too big a role in the assessment of talking heads.

Still, the lack of accountability could be part of the problem. A TV or newspaper pundit can say anything and still be invited back.

But the 2011 election brought an interesting change to this pattern. TV2′s political editor in 2009 declared that “he would eat his old hat” (a common Danish phrase when you are stating your disbelief about something) if Liberal Alliance passed the 2% threshold while the gruesome twosome (aka Peter Mogensen and Michael Kristiansen) promised to wear large ears (I suspect this plays on another phrase: “Hearing so much that your ears fall off).

So:

Henrik Qvortrup eats a hat and Mogensen and Kristiansen wear Dunces’ caps with large ears.

PS: As a political scientist I loved this conclusion from a paper about US pundits: “The final significant factor in a prediction’s outcome was having a law degree; lawyers predicted incorrectly more often.”

Okay, one last one for today: How well have Danish governments performed in elections since the introduction of proportional representation in 1918 (this means that 1920 is the first point of reference).

I have taken the (combined) share of the vote of the parties that were in office at the time of the election – this means that in 1953, 1979, 1981, 1994 and 1998 I compare the parties in the outgoing government, not the government which was formed immediately after the elections in 1950, 1977, 1979, 1990 and 1994, respectively. Given that Denmark was governed by a national coalition 1940-1943/1945 and 1945, I have left those elections out of the calculations. I have also left out supporting parties from the calculation.¹

Anyway, here goes:

As we can see, the government’s performance in the 2011 election was far from stellar but not unusually bad. Being in government can seriously damage your share of the vote.

1. And technically: I leave out the first election in 1953 and use the third and not the first election in 1920 which is wrong [↩]

A bit of PolSci fun on a Saturday afternoon: Media are busy speculating about who will become ministers in the Thorning-Schmidt Government, but first we need a quota to decide the distribution of portfolios.

If we assume that the government will be a “three-leaf clover” including the Social Democrats, Social Liberals and SF, it will hold 77 seats in parliament distributed on 44 SocDems, 17 SocLibs and 16 SF.

This makes the following share of seats:
Social Democrats – 0,5714
Social Liberals – 0.2208
SF – 0.2078

And with 20, 21, 22 or 23 ministers respectively, we get this:
Social Democrats – 11, 12, 12, 13
Social Liberals – 5, 5, 5, 5
SF – 4, 4, 5, 5
If the government has 22 or 23 ministers, SD could cede one chair to the SocLibs (11-6-5, 12-6-5) – the obvious point is that the SocLibs get one extra portfolio relative to SF.

Next come the individual portfolios and the only ones I would consider certain are
Prime minister – Helle Thorning-Schmidt
Economic planning and deputy pm – Margrethe Vestager
Business – Ole Sohn (Villy Søvndal will be a minister but the question is which portfolio he will – and should – opt for).

If the result should be an SocDem-SF coalition, it holds 60 seats with SocDem having 0,73 and SF 0,27. Again with 20, 21, 22 or 23 ministers, this makes:
Social Democrats – 15, 15, 16, 17
SF – 5, 6, 6, 6

I am betting on Mogens Lykketoft becoming the next speaker of the parliament with Holger K. Nielsen (SF) as a long-shot candidate, should Lykketoft unexpectedly join the government. The speaker is not part of the equation.

I was asked to write a summary of the situation in Denmark before the election for Baltic Worlds. It was submitted little over a week ago but I think it still holds up very well.

I’ve had this saved as a draft for some weeks now. The discussion ends somewhat abruptly but maybe I will get back to the issue at some point.

Just to continue a line of thought from my previous note: The question about populist parties presenting themselves as “the true Social Democrats”.

The issue may be more relevant in Denmark and Sweden where support for the Social Democrats has taken a hit while the Danish People’s Party and to a lesser extent the Sweden Democrats have gained. Commentators have pointed out that SweDem have played the “real Social Democrats” card by trying to gain ownership of the “Folkhem” concept. As it is, “Folkhem” has a complicated history (it is in many ways a word which lends itself to discourse analysis) being first a Conservative and later a Social Democratic slogan. “Folkhem” also points to the development where Social Democracy changed from being an internationalist to an essentially nationally oriented political movement with the creation of the welfare states in the Scandinavian countries from the 1930s onward as the best-know effect.

Welfare state researchers will note that the national welfare state model probably reached its peak around 1980 (the period used by Gösta Esping-Andersen in his seminal book “Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism”) but that internationalisation and Europeanisation since then has put the national models of welfare under pressure. “Multiculturalism” and “Structural change” do not carry the same emotional weight as “Folkhem”: They are, at best, technocratic terms.

However, we should be careful in focussing too much on the word “Folkhem” as it is a uniquely Swedish term. Danish has no equivalent – “welfare state” is the closest – and this points to the risk of generalising Swedish experiences. As it is, the “welfare state” only really emerged as a political term during the 1960s in Denmark and it was fiercely debated in the 1960s and 1970s. To use discourse analysis-speak, the hegemony of the “welfare state” was less obvious than the hegemony of the “folkhem”.