And look: There is even a French version.

On a slightly more serious note, I go through the recent history of the centre-right in Denmark and Sweden: The parties, the policies and the electoral impact. But I didn’t dare predict the result of the Swedish election.

Enjoy your reading.

Related posts:

1. The One in which I Predict the Outcome of the Swedish Election Never ever ask a political scientist to guess the outcome...
2. Quotes from the Webs Jonathan Hopkin: This arrangement [Parliamentary elections as "presidential elections"] has...
3. Some Very Very Short Notes on the German Election 1. Lowest turn-out since the creation of the Federal Republic...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

1. Peter Baldwin: “The Narcissism of Minor Differences”

US historian with European links goes mediaeval on tales of American exceptionalism and whatever Europeans have claimed in their favour in a frenzy of (easily accessible) statistics. If it wasn’t for the size of the country and the level of GDP (yes, the Americans are wealthier than we are), Martians would think that the Americans were sort-of-Europeans.

Read it before (or rather: instead of) your newspaper columnist.

Bonus info: The Swedes have guns. And they are not afraid to use them. The NRA would love Sweden.

2. Pranab Bardhan: “Awakening Giants. Feet of Clay”

US-Indian economist looks at emerging economies and helps you sort out facts from globalisation-babble. 160 pages. And no: You do not have to be an economist to get the picture.

Related posts:

1. Bleg #2: How Many Morning Papers Do I Really Need? Right. Bleg #1 didn’t solve the problem, but it gets...
2. Amalienborg, We Have a Problem… One word: Ouch! The summer break could be really interesting...
3. Maybe They Ought to Learn a Bit from Mr. Gallup Newspaper #1, quoting an opinion poll: HELLE GETS SPANKED IN...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Some comments:

First, despite European aspirations Erasmus exchanges only stand for a part of the total number of exchanges. Students also go to the US and Australia – universities in the latter country in particular have turned exchange students into big business. It is perfectly possible that the total number of exchanges have risen while the numbers for Erasmus exchanges are effectively flat.

Second, there may be good reasons why students don’t choose to take one or two terms abroad. The main problem is if the academic value of the exchange courses is equal to that of courses at the home university. One problem here is that even though we have the ECTS system, courses for exchange students run separately from ordinary courses. Another issue is that even though politicians and bureaucrats like to think that abandoning national languages in favour of English in higher education increases the value of courses and programmes, research has frequently shown that teaching in English for non-native speakers lowers the value of information with some 20-30 percent compared with teaching in one’s native language. This leaves the social aspect as the main point of attraction for students.

Third, an international internship may offer more value for money for students than traditional courses. To a prospective employer, such an internship will be direct proof that the applicant will and can work in an international setting. The value of a term at an Australian university education factory is more questionable.

I do think there are some very good reasons why students should consider taking some part of their education outside of their home university – in short: you learn to think in different ways about your subject and how to organise teaching – but both students and universities would be well advised to consider the exact value of exchange programmes.

This is probably easier on the Masters level where programmes can be more specialised. It will make sense to try and attract students on a faculty basis on two to three main themes rather than trying to cover everything in more-or-less basic English language courses. This will of course demand cooperation between different departments in the planning of courses on the masters level.

I see some bigger challenges on the bachelor level where programmes are broader, even if exchanges generally take place in the fourth and fifth years.

Related posts:

1. “Fail”. As in “Pass” This story makes the rounds from time to time: Because...
2. Prestigious Unemployment Somehow this is a classic of early and mid-August: The...
3. “Fail”. As in “Pass” (Update) Unfortunately, the piece is not on the web, as far...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This arrangement [Parliamentary elections as "presidential elections"] has been moribund for around four decades, but strangely the two-party logic still infuses the political debate. The reason is that although the share of the vote won by the Labour and the Conservatives has been in steady decline ever since the 1950s, the decline of the two-party system has been largely masked by two factors. First, the British electoral system vastly over-represents the two largest UK-wide parties, consistently awarding Labour and the Conservatives the vast majority of seats in the House of Commons even as their joint vote share declines. Second, because for most of the last 40 years one of the two parties has performed badly enough to hand a parliamentary – if not an electoral – majority to the other. Labour’s travails gave the Conservatives a free run from 1979 until the 1990s, whilst the Conservatives ceased to be competitive from 1997 until quite recently.

Hopkin also discusses the policy positions of the three main parties and sees complications.

The LSE’s guide to voting systems.

Andrew Rudalevige summarises the logic of the 55%-clause:

…we will all go together when we go…

Erik Voeten considers another mystery of the C-LD coalition: The speed.

…the British coalition seems based on a pretty loose set of principles and was negotiated in a similarly ad hoc manner…

…Given the many difficult decisions the government faces, not in the least on how to balance the budget, one needs not go out on a limb to predict that there will soon be important issues on the table that the coalition partners have not yet bargained about. It would seem equally unadventurous to predict that this government will not last five years.

Related posts:

1. Games You Can Play with Your Parliament There is nothing as fascinating as a juncture where established...
2. Cameron: Did He Jump or Was He Pushed Into Action? I’m by no means an expert on the UK constitution...
3. In a Historical Perspective Leave aside that all attention this weekend has been focused...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The voters in the UK similarly decided (if “voters” can actually “decide” anything – elections are the outcomes of millions of individual decisions) to pull a nasty trick on the parliamentary elite. Yes, the Conservatives noted a modest but not excessive win. Yes, Labour suffered a defeat but not a debilitating one, and the Liberal Democrats enjoyed the smallest of gains counted in votes and a marginal loss of seats.

Now, the parties face two problems: One short-to-mid-range and one long-range.

The mid-range problem has to do with the economic state of the UK which is complicated enough as it is.

The long-range problem is about constitutional reform, or to be more specific: A reform of the electoral system. The LibDems want some kind of proportional representation (apparently, some kind of AV is the most likely outcome), the Conservatives – in particular backbenchers and members of the party organisation – want to retain the status quo and Labour – well, Labour may be late converts to PR.

One frequent argument against introducing PR is that it will lead to instability and sinister back-room dealings between politicians, presumably moving influence from voters to parliament. The counter-argument is that no UK election since 1901 has resulted in any one party receiving a majority of the votes cast. Strictly speaking, every government since 1945 with the exception of those operating under the Lib-Lab pacts have operated against a popular majority. Parliamentary agency is a fundamental fact in any form of parliamentary government. The Conservatives have been the main beneficiaries for the last 65 years and so it is no surprise that the party organisation would prefer the world in general and Westminster in particular to stay as it was in 1945 (well, actually 1951 would be their year of choice).

This makes the prospect of a C-LD agreement (either in the form of a formal coalition government or a tolerated minority government) puzzling. In policy terms (in particular foreign policy and Europe, the nemesis of John Major and every subsequent Conservative leader) the Conservatives and the LibDems appear to have very little in common and in constitutional policy, they are polar opposites.

So how about Lab-LD? Even if the LibDems are closer to Labour in many areas, Labour never delivered on its loose promises of electoral reform – and let’s face it: Labour managed to hold on to power in 2001 and – crucially – 2005 thanks to FPTP – so there is a credibility issue here. And even more importantly, despite all talk of a rainbow coalition, Labour and the Liberal Democrats do not have a working majority in the new House of Commons. If there had been a majority, a Labour-Liberal Democrat deal would have been a no-brainer and the Conservative backbenchers would already be reaching for their knives.

But now look at the mess: The only viable coalition appears to be C-LD, but LD surrendering to the facts (provided those are the facts) would be a deadly strategy. On the other hand, David Cameron might look weak – especially in the eyes of the Norman Tebbits of the world – if he gave too large concessions.

The relatively weak performance of the Conservative Party in this election could be a blessing in disguise for David Cameron. Sure, a number of die-hards and right-wing newspapers would argue that the Conservatives should just sit out the storm, call a snap election in six months’ time and – whoopla! – the world is back in order and the lower classes know their place in society.

But Cameron could just as well argue that in the short term a coalition with the LibDems is a prerequisite for winning government office, and – hey, we have done business with the LibDems now, so electoral reform (but preferably in the most minimal of alternatives) could in fact help us in the long run. After all, the UK has now had two elections in a row where no party won more than 36% of the vote (okay, 36,1%, but still), despite FPTP. Maybe this kind of fragmentation is the reality of the 21st Century, and the political leader who is the first to realise this and act accordingly could have a big advantage.

Anyway, I foresee a great number of academic papers and books analysing the dilemmas faced by the parties and their strategies in the negotiating process as well as its eventual outcome (I would still put my money on some kind of C-LD deal). Plus endless gabbing by pundits, of course.

Oh, and the post-election process has been interesting in one particular way: Note how civil the politicians have been and that the negotiating process(es) actually appears to have been carried out in a quite professional way. Not a bad performance for a system used to single-party majorities.

Related posts:

1. Quotes from the Webs Jonathan Hopkin: This arrangement [Parliamentary elections as "presidential elections"] has...
2. Cameron: Did He Jump or Was He Pushed Into Action? I’m by no means an expert on the UK constitution...
3. Centre It is always a bit annoying when somebody else comes...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Still, we are dealing with something which looks like a middle-class rebellion: Angry, middle-class, middle-aged white men, to be more specific. My hunch was that linking the tea partiers to the stagnation (if not decline) in median incomes might give some insight into the nature of the tea party-movement – the thing is, that we may have seen similar dynamics on this side of the Atlantic. (What? The Americans react like Europeans? Scary, no?).

Things, however, seem to be a bit more complicated.

Let me steal the words of Heather Boushey of Slate:

The data instead show that Tea Party supporters are in the group of Americans adversely affected by the hollowing out of the middle class in the last few decades.

…

Given that their labor market experience, education, race, and gender should give Tea Party supporters an economic advantage—as well as an internal sense that they should be moving up the ladder—their actual middle-class status may make them feel as if they haven’t lived up to their expectations. Certainly, economic security has eroded, especially in the last few years, for this demographic. White men in particular are one of the few groups to have hit all-time-record-high unemployment rates and record-low employment rates during the Great Recession, alongside teens and older workers.

The picture that emerges, then, is more like what you’d expect. The Tea Party is made up of more-traditional middle-class families who had a certain expectation of upward progress. Over the last decade or so, they’ve gotten stuck. Even before the recession, the 2000s were the first economic recovery in the post World War II era during which median family income was lower at the end than it had been at the prior economic peak, in this case, 2000. That’s a stunning lack of gains for the typical American family.

Now, we are not dealing with losers in the traditional sense here – no low-skilled industrial workers losing their jobs to the Chinese – but rather the disappointed middle class. (There still is a clear majority of men among partiers, though.) In a warped way, they are closer to the strata which were behind the left-wing mobilisations of the 1960s and 1970s in Western Europe – except that these groups tended to be public employees. But still, the realisation that the affluence engine of the 1950s and 1960s has finally stopped working like it used to puts the political system under some kind of pressure. The massive lack of confidence in not only the present US administration but also US political institutions is notable. (Just as it is notable that the partiers find it harder to blame the financial sector).

When you go through the tables, it is obvious (at least to me) that the tea party equations do not add up on a number of points – specifically, the tea partiers cannot, or will not, understand the effects of Bush 43′s (and the Republican Party’s) fiscal and tax policies on the US economy and federal budget. Somehow, ideology must play a role here. As a whole, the tea partiers (conveniently?) seem to forget that the Republican Party controlled the US congress between 1995 and 2007. Perhaps the dream of 1994 lingers on?

On the other hand, we are not dealing with gun-toting fundamentalist rednecks. Yes, the partiers are generally more conservative/authoritarian on social issues (in the US meaning of the term) but they are hardly extremist. Yes, they adore Sarah Palin, but they do not think she would make an effective president of the US (which means that the partiers can make the distinction between expression and policy craft).

But somehow this looks like we are dealing with the fallout from the New Economy and the Great Moderation of the later decades. Just to exaggerate a bit: Obama is more of a traditional Democrat – industrial workers, trade unions, Mid-West, etc. – so it is perhaps not so surprising that he doesn’t click with the partiers. And similarly, the partiers’ priority of jobs as the main problem fits badly with the Obama administrations (public) focus on health care.

Related posts:

1. Tales from the Periphery (II) Last week, Berlingske Tidende published a poll indicating that some...
2. Les Bourgeois Ola Nordebo has one or two problems with the political...
3. Gone Fishing. And Hunting Back in the days, the former Danish Foreign Minister and...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

One obvious point omitted from the neuro-lit discussion: Publish or perish. If you repeatedly tell professors their teaching adds literally little to no value to their own CV and will go all but unconsidered in their tenure hearing, then English professors will themselves devalue the teaching function of being an English professor –i.e., passing along literature to a new generation.

Link to episode (where the quote wasn’t said)

Related posts:

1. Erasmus, Internships and Exchanges According to reports, the number of Danish students using the...
2. Lawyers and Sociologists Have you ever wondered about the real difference between law...
3. The Damned United I’m in no way a football fanatic (and never have...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Så här skulle jag kunna hålla på varre dag. Men till slut slår man dövörat till och slutar helt enkelt att ta några undersökningar som presenteras i medierna på fullt allvar.

Marie Demker despairs over the use and reporting of surveys in media. It is not just a Swedish issue, y’know.

Related posts:

1. The One in Which I Caused Swedish Poetry Lights. Camera. Action. I’m not sure if I won or...
2. When Marketing Is Just Too Successful Én ting er, at man forbyder et enkelt produkt, men...
3. The One in Which I’m Quoted My profound insights into the changing nature of the Danish...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

As managementspeak goes, it is a piece of art. But excuse me: I have always known that most university candidates will not be looking for a career in research. And I’ve been around for a couple of years.

Related posts:

1. “Fail”. As in “Pass” This story makes the rounds from time to time: Because...
2. Erasmus, Internships and Exchanges According to reports, the number of Danish students using the...
3. Prestigious Unemployment Somehow this is a classic of early and mid-August: The...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The reason? First, universities are financially pressed, so departments and faculties need all the money they can get (okay, this goes for just about all organisations) and, second, universities receive funding based on the number of students who pass exams. The more students who pass, the more money.

This is a nice, typical NPM way of doing things which works beautifully – as long as there is no goal displacement. Which is something pre-NPM organisational theorists knew about. So, for instance, if a NPM scheme puts emphasis on economic incentives as a means to achieve academic goals, the organisational goal may easily shift to attracting economic funding with academic standards becoming less important.

Another case in point: University professors discuss how many papers they have published, not what insights to the field of study they have contributed. This happens because the Orwellian named Ministry of Science wants to base university research funding on the number of publications.

In order to counteract this, NPM systems have to rely on extensive hierarchical and outside controls – which is why academia, like other parts of the public sector, is being flooded with evaluation agencies, layers and layers of managers and rules and regulations as if there was no tomorrow.

Anyway, I hear you ask, I taught at different Danish and Swedish universities between 1992 and 2008 and have I ever experienced a situation where superiors directly or indirectly “expected” me to pass students who did not live up to the standards formally described?

Actually, no. I cannot mention a case where there was a direct or indirect expectation that a certain part of the student group should pass (or fail) an exam – which is not to say that the drop-out rate was not a cause for concern in a number of cases when it came to PolSci (or, during my time in Sweden, PolMag) programmes. As it is, drop-out rates varied wildly – in Copenhagen something like 90 per cent of the students who started on “my” courses also passed the final exams with the rest disappearing along the way, in the first-year courses I gave in Sweden, something like 20-25 per cent received an F at the first exam.

So, never ever? Well, there was one case with a programme that seriously needed being taken care of. I and others discovered this when I had to fail almost half of the class – which was not particularly funny. I had to spend some time telling the powers that be that something was very wrong here and that professional standards had to be applied rigorously.

And the thing is: Students actually respect teachers who take professional standards seriously.

But in all of this, I can see a problem if a) the professional culture is underdeveloped or b) management gets too much power – or both. My point here is that managers who are not in line with the academic or vocational professional culture tend to look at indicators in the bottom line rather than at the hands-on experience of the quality of programmes and teaching.

Related posts:

1. Erasmus, Internships and Exchanges According to reports, the number of Danish students using the...
2. “Fail”. As in “Pass” (Update) Unfortunately, the piece is not on the web, as far...
3. I See a Use for the Burqa Here Terence Kealey, chancellor of Buckingham University says that female students...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.