Jacob Christensen

I spent last week in Vaasa (or Vasa, in Swedish; the town is officially bilingual) participating in a workshop on populist parties. The work was quite intensive with five official sessions and no less than two dinners and here are some of my thoughts after the discussions:

1. Dealing with “the populist parties” in the Nordic countries as a group is problematic for a number of reasons, most notably because of the lack of formal links between the Danish People’s Party (DF), the Sweden Democrats (SD), Fremskrittspartiet (FrP) and Perussuomalaiset (PS) – DF and SD have shown an interest in creating some kind of ties, though – but also because FrP in particular occupy a different position in the political space compared to DF, SD and PS. FrP in many ways look more like a conservative party with more liberal positions on economy while DF, SD and PS all combine an economically centrist position with an authoritarian position on social issues (immigration and crime as the most notable issues).

2. Several of us implicitly or explicitly addressed questions related to the institutionalisation of populist parties in the Nordic party systems. Even if SD and – to some degree PS – are newcomers, all parties were established in the 1970s (FrP) or 1990s (DF, SD, PS) and while it is still difficult to predict the future strength of PS and SD, we should expect them to stay in the national party systems for some time. We should also note that the parties have led deliberate strategies to stabilise the party organisations on the membership and parliamentary level (A colleague noted that DF’s organisational practices in many ways resembled those of communist parties with a very strong and centralised leadership).

3. Two concepts often associated with populism were spectacular absent from the discussions: Charisma and distrust. There are many good reasons why charisma has fallen out of favour in academic discussions – the concept is hard to operationalise and the institutionalisation processes I described above make references to the party leaders’ charisma less relevant.

I am less certain about distrust. If we look at electoral research, populist party voters usually stand out with low levels of political and social trust compared with other voters. The phenomenon of distrust is not uncomplicated – a Danish research project from the 1990s argued that conflicts between elite and majority positions on the one hand and minority positions on specific issues on the other may generate distrust. Immigration and European policy were cited as the most likely sources of political distrust back then. That distrust disappeared from view has to do with the perspective changing from (voter) demand to (party) supply but this is probably where you write: “More research is needed”.

4. Marie Demker has argued that populist parties are better understood as nationalist parties. The argument is interesting as it sees nationalism as the ideological basis which sets these parties apart from other parties in the Nordic party systems. The argument would also fit with the parties’ position on the libertarian-authoritarian scale. Here populism could be seen as a means used by nationalist parties (and other parties – think of Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s famous New Year’s Speech from 2002) to mobilise voters.

If I should argue against Demker’s thesis I would first of all acknowledge that the present-day DF and SD (and in all likelihood PS) unquestionably qualify as nationalist. If we look at the Danish political history, nationalist agrarianism has manifested itself at certain points during the 20th century (The Free People’s Party, later the Peasants’ Party 1934-1945 and the Independents 1960-1966) but so has an outspoken anti-state populism (The Justice Party 1926-1960, 1973-1975, 1977-1981) and I would question if the Progress Party of the 1970s could reasonably be seen as a nationalist party. Again, more research would be necessary here. We should also consider if the peasant populism that we know from the 1930s and 1970s can be meaningfully compared with the working-class populism of the 1990s (in the case of Denmark: 1970s) onward.

One way of reconciling the “liberal” populism of the 1970s and the “nationalist” populism of the 1990s could be to focus on the European dimension. We know that the EC and later EU has been a continued source of problems for the Social Democratic parties in the Nordic countries with the parties being split between internationalism and welfare-state nationalism.

5. One final round of discussions, linked with #4, had to do with populist parties presenting themselves as “the true Social Democrats”. Both SD and DF have used this line of argument with the 1950s as some kind of imagined Social Democratic ideal (something which most people who were adults or adolescents during that decade would probably question) with the post 1968-Social Democracy presented as traitors to the national Social Democratic idea. This calls for some further arguments which I will leave for later.

I just wanted to point you to a perceptive comment and question about academic publishing and the academic journal system in particular. (I have no idea who the commenter is)

“There’s an age when boys read one of two books. Either they read Ayn Rand or they read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. One of these books leaves you with no grasp on reality and a deeply warped sense of fantasy in place of real life. The other one is about hobbits and orcs.”

Paul Krugman has more.

And yes, I read the one about the hobbits and the orcs.

The thing is: If you have had a blog for some years, the chances are that you have already covered the current issue you were considering writing a blog-post about.

So, here are two previous posts about experts and the use of experts in media:

2008-12-29 According to Experts,

and

2009-01-24 Expert Texpert

Erik Albæk et al’s book about the use of experts in Danish media is presented here and available as a free e-book (pdf) here.

I’m working on a chapter about the organisational history of ATP, the Danish supplementary labour market pension, and visited the ATP Building in the outskirts of Hillerød on Wednesday.

Also published on Ideas on Europe.

Prompted by a question by Kosmopolit, some considerations about academic blogging and my own history.

First, an observation: It is fair to say that Denmark does not have an academic blogosphere like the one we can find in some other countries. Curiously, I know a number of Swedish political scientists (and economists) who maintain their own blogs – check my blog list – but I actually seem to be the only Danish political scientist to have an independent blog. You will find Danish political scientists and economists on the websites of established media like Jyllands-Posten (Peter Nedergaard), Berlingske (Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard) og Politiken (Henrik Christoffersen), but there is no Monkey Cage, Crooked Timber or Economist’s View. Not even a Danish equivalent to the excellent Swedish group blog Ekonomistas.

Equally, I have Swedish colleagues tweeting about politics and academic themes but no Danes. Things are slightly, but only slightly, better on Facebook.

One reason for this sorry state of affairs might be that Danish academics tend to see the internet – and more specifically: blogging – as a mass medium like TV, radio and newspapers: A place where one writes to the general public, not a place where one engages in academic discussions. Traditionally, Danish media have offered good opportunities for academics to publish essays and columns so it would not be surprising if the internet is seen as more of the same. But then again this doesn’t really explain the difference between Denmark and Sweden.

Following this, it will probably not come as a surprise to you that I started blogging when I lived and worked in Sweden. The blog started its life for a relatively simple pragmatic reason: I wanted to share and discuss some rather technical observations about the German federal election in 2005 with a couple of colleagues and a blog appeared to be more convenient than e-mail if I wanted to keep track of my writings. The same goes for the avalanche of posts about Danish and Swedish politics which have followed in the past five and a half years. So if anyone asks, the imagined audience consists of a handful of colleagues (and this is the reason the blog is in English rather than Danish), but obviously anybody passing by is welcome to read and comment. Here, I should perhaps note that the most active commenters – two of my colleagues based in Denmark and Sweden, respectively – tend to reply by sending me … e-mails.

But besides the pragmatic aspect, there are some more general arguments to be made.

First, we live in the age of online but even if universities provide homepages for faculty members (permanent and temporary) and Facebook and LinkedIn provide outlets for online resumés, it may still be a good idea to take control of your online identity. After all, university homepages only provide limited information and are deleted when you leave your position. (I will leave aside the pain inflicted on us by “PU:RE” and similar instruments of administrative torture dreamt up by the bean counters). Similarly, Facebook and LinkedIn are for better or worse walled gardens with powerful, but limited capabilities.

Second, as Anamaria Dutceac Segesten and others have pointed out regular blogging is also an exercise in writing. Similarly, most of my blogposts are inspired by events that I know something about but either don’t understand immediately or want to figure out in greater detail. At best, it can inspire ideas for later research, even if I have tended not to blog about my current research in recent years. I suspect that endless posts on the Danish unemployment insurance during the 1920s might have scared off just about every potential reader.

Okay, it may still be rather pretentious to assume that other people would by definition be interested in one’s scattered thoughts and ideas – and this brings me to the final point:

No, blogging will not make you an overnight celebrity (there is too much noise on the internet these days) or get you on journalists’ speed-dial lists (thank god). My blog has lived and still lives its own quiet life outside of the media highways. But as it is, it has in fact brought me some extra assignments, some of which are documented on my publication list.

Quite a lot, I’d say. Here are some scattered ideas:

1. Agenda-setting and framing. The use of commissions by (especially) centre-right governments to frame issues in the long run have been noted for a long time now. Yesterday’s agreement has its roots in the works of the Welfare Commission and the Labour Market Commission whose ideas were originally rejected by the government. I am sure Torben M. Andersen and Jørgen Søndergaard have toasted each other yesterday evening.

As a prominent colleague wrote: “As a member of a commission you look like an idiot. But you are a useful idiot”.

2. Bargaining strategies. One year ago, Lars Løkke Rasmussen was nick-named “The Substitute” and pundits commented endlessly about the frustrations of Margrethe Vestager who was bordering on irrelevance. I seriously doubt that anyone would say that now. Both Løkke and Vestager faced some very difficult medium- and long-term challenges but both have seen their bets returned in a big way. Reconstructing Løkke’s (and Claus Hjort Frederiksen’s) and Vestager’s choices along the way ought to yield quite a few polsci papers.

Some other thoughts:

3. The end of “contract politics”? Well, maybe. The Social Democrats have been playing a defensive game since 2005 and their success (since when did 28 percent of the vote become a success for the SocDems, by the way?) rely heavily on the weaknesses of the Liberal Party. The developments in the Danish economy since 2008 has helped the opposition (and may very well continue to do so), but the question is if yesterday’s agreement will be a game-changer on the electoral arena.

4. Similarly, the SocDem-SF economic plan relies on “birds on the roof-top” while the retirement reform has clear effects for identifiable groups. Obviously, the SocDems hoped that not being specific about costs would bring them new votes. The question is if the visible costs of the retirement reform will harm the Liberals and the Danish People’s Party.

5. As I noted in an earlier post, the trade-off between cuts to the Early Retirement Benefit and the introduction of border controls as the price demanded by the Danish People’s Party was a no-brainer. At the same time, I doubt that the SocDems and SF will use the prospect of more open borders in an electoral campaign. The EU is not a vote-winner in Denmark.

A manifest for the joyous science (in Swedish) by Anders Hellström and Johan Karlsson.

In the Danish system of government, permanent secretaries prefer to stay out of the headlines. Like any butler worth his money, a good permanent secretary knows that discretion is the first and most important virtue, even more important than being able to guess the minister’s needs. If the permanent secretary is exposed, one of the foundations of modern democratic government – that politicians decide the direction of policies – is put into question.

On the other hand, the role of the permanent secretary is ambiguous. The permanent secretary is, as the title says, permanent – ie. he or she is not elected for a fixed period of time and is not (at least not in theory) hired and fired at the whims of the minister. So, to use the language of political science theory, if the permanent secretary is the agent, who is the principal? Susanne Hegelund and Peter Mose doesn’t use much PolSci lingo in their new and fascinating book about the top echelons of the Danish civil service, “Javel, hr. minister”, but effectively this is the question behind the stories and analyses.

First, some notes about the book: Like its predecessor “Håndbog for statsministre” it is a journalistic study of a part of the political arena which has rarely or never been the object of a systematic academic inquiry. It has all of the virtues of journalistic writing (be vivid, be specific), it attempts to track changes in the role and norms of the civil service and permanent secretaries (from a civil service dominated by legal norms to one dominated by economic and management thinking) and it is surprisingly comprehensive in its coverage (public administration researchers will appreciate that a general coordination ministry is covered as well as a professional (Education, Foreign Office) and a clitentelistic (Transport)) but it also has some draw-backs. In particular, I suspect that the authors may have been seduced a bit by their objects and the principled discussion about the role of the leading civil service merit some more attention. But if you have a personal or professional interest in Danish politics, it should be on your reading list.

As I read the book, it tends to implicitly convey the picture which the top level in the Danish civil service itself wants to paint of the minister-civil servant relationship. Basically, the civil service is seen as the backbone of the Danish political system with politicians in general and ministers in particular as interfering guests whose whims the permanent secretaries attend to while getting the real business done. I am exaggerating here, but in my eyes the larger question about the role of the colour of the government tends to disappear in the discussion, and I suspect that the impact of government change on policy and the civil service is larger than one might assume after reading the book.

There is one obvious reason for this: The book was written almost nine years into the present Liberal-Conservative government’s term in office and even if the authors also cover the governments of the 1990s (and in some cases even further back in time) are covered and Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s famous check-list is duly noted, the immediate effects of the changes of government in 1993 and 2001 tend to be obscured over time. In the real world, no government has 100% control over policy and policy outcomes and there are considerable variations between ministers (the high turn-over in some portfolios obviously puts some serious limits on the minister’s power) and departments, but just as the civil service of the 1990s wasn’t “social democratic” and that of the 2000s wasn’t “liberal”, there have been important changes in policy in a number of policy areas.

But to return to my question about the principal-agent relationship: As I said earlier, the role of the permanent secretary is inherently ambiguous because the permanent secretary on the one hand has to be loyal to the minister’s political priorities (in the Danish political system this means that the parliamentary majority is the principal), but on the other hand also has to take the possibility of a change in government into account. Here, the “people” is the principal – but unlike the parliamentary majority, the “people” never exists as an operative entity. Finally, we could ask if the permanent secretaries see themselves as agents of the civil service – whose interests and values change over time. I suspect that the text could have elaborated this in greater detail (obviously using a different vocabulary)

In the Danish media much attention has been directed at the possible existence of a death list (leading bureaucrats whom a coming Social Democratic-led government want to relegate to less influential positions) and the possibility of introducing deputy ministers in the Danish system of government – both Danish and non-Danish readers should note that Denmark does not have a system of deputy ministers or state secretaries. The later question is indeed important but the brouhaha about the death list unfortunately meant that some of the more fundamental issues about the roles of ministers and top civil servants did not attention they merited. But there are still plenty of opportunities for such discussions.

Susanne Hegelund and Peter Mose 2011: Javel, hr. minister. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.

For reasons that are a bit beyond me, my colleague Jenny Madestam from Stockholm University has been met with criticism for her appearances and comments about the selection of the new chairman of the Swedish Social Democrats. (The next links are in Swedish)

Jenny Madestam’s reflections are here (at the end of the post).
Marie Demker from Gothenburg comments here.
Stig-Björn Ljunggreen, publicist with Social Democratic leanings, comments here.

Update: Forgot Jenny’s original comments. And for the record: We sort of know each other peripherally and are Facebook contacts. And her blog is on my list of links

My own thoughts: Jenny Madestam is one of the few Swedish political scientists who have made systematic studies of political leaders and leadership so it would be obvious that journalists worth their money have her on their speed-dial when the Social Democrats select a new leader. Equally, there are limits to what you can say in a 1,5 minute clip on TV compared to the content of a doctoral thesis.

Obviously, there is a risk of over-stretching your brand – Lars Bille, my old teacher and colleague who was much in demand during the 1990s and early 2000s, reasoned that even during election campaigns he should only appear on one TV channel per day (no, really: He was that much in demand).

Jenny Madestam’s blog (in Swedish) is here.