Jacob Christensen

We once again interrupt the blocation to send you to your one-stop guide to all things centre-right in Denmark and Sweden. You can buy a paper copy or simply download it for free.

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.

Just two quick notes about my vacation reading – vacation, that is when I’m not finishing manuscripts:

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.

I hope Fred Bass and “The Editors” will forgive me for lifting his advice about getting rid of books:

My advice is to first clean out duplicates and books with repetitive information — why do you need six dictionaries? Next, remove all books with out-of-date information, like atlases and reference books. Political, economic and topical books should be the next category to sort through; you don’t really need that copy of Richard Simmons’ “Never-Say-Diet Book” (a 1981 best-seller), or a book on the future of the Democratic or Republican parties, written 20 years ago.¹

One should eliminate books that are in poor condition unless they hold sentimental value and remove those you never intend to read again.

Once you have weeded out the duplicates, the out-of-date material and those moldy, unreadable tomes, make sure to note any first editions or autographed books, as they could be valuable if they are in good condition. Put them aside and store them properly — away from direct sunlight and humidity. You might consider investing in some Mylar, as that is the only proven way to keep a valuable book in perfect condition.

I went through the pain last summer (2008, that is) and I’m more or less trying to figure out what to do with the different parts of my library in about a year’s time. Getting rid of old textbooks and books bought for a specific project is the easy bit, weeding out fiction and stuff bought for personal entertainment is much, much trickier. Still, there is something comforting in reading that other people make the same mistakes as I do when it comes to buying books.

1. For “Democratic or Republican parties, insert relevant European party or “the European Union” [↩]

Last week I received the sad message that my former teacher and colleague Gunnar Sjöblom had died at the age of 76.

If you find a copy of the book which was published in honour of Gunnar on his 60th birthday and open it, you will be greeted by a photo of a sardonically looking professor (no tweed-jacket, though), a look which might be a bit unsettling for some. Maybe Gunnar imagined that the photographer was Thomas S. Kuhn or, even better, some 1970s or 1980s marxist student. He had very little love indeed for that bunch. Behind that professorial façade, though, was a man who in smaller groups could be very witty, funny and insightful, also beyond the world of political science.

Gunnar’s claim to fame was his dissertation which was published in English in 1968 as Party Strategies in a Multiparty System. Tellingly, Google Scholar informs us that the book was still quoted into the 2000s, more than 35 years after it was written.

Party Strategies is in many ways a strange book in political science as it is completely theoretical in nature without any open references to empirical data, just as it does not make any use of cases or examples to illustrate its argument. In a way, the book also lacks a thesis to be proved. Rather, the ambition was to apply a systems analysis approach to the study of (well, duh) parties that operate in a multiparty system to discover the various conflicts and dilemmas they face. Even if you are only marginally oriented in the history of the discipline, you will know that Gunnar was playing ball with David Easton (systems theory) and Anthony Downs (party competition).

The book looks at parties acting in the different political arenas and attempts to make a comprehensive overview of the tools and strategies available at each point in the decision-making process. Trying to make a complete empirical analysis of the parties in an existing party system using the scheme of analysis being presented would be a daunting, and in all likelihood impossible, task for any single researcher, but there are many bits and pieces which still merits consideration. And applied on more specific research topics, the book and its scheme could be put to good use.

Gunnar never repeated the feat but spent the 1970s and 1980s producing articles and book-chapters on aspects of party government, usually working in a network of party researchers organised around the late Rudolf Wildenmann. To mention some examples: In 1977, he took on the question of cumulating knowledge in the social sciences in an article in the European Journal of Political Research and in the mid-1980s he contributed to a series of publications about party government with chapters on parties and problem solving in politics and – unusually, for somebody who spent almost his entire career addressing theoretical and methodological questions - the role of parties in the Danish and Swedish political systems.

In Gunnar’s career, one big ambition eluded him: His plan was to write a comprehensive study of party government in Western societies and he made extensive preparations for this work, but it never resulted in a book or a series of papers. He told me, that when he had the opportunity to review the data and literature during a sabbatical, he discovered that much of the material was beginning to be out of date. Other priorities, including national and international organisational duties, had taken up the time needed.

That may be so, but I also suspect that Gunnar lacked the temperament needed to write a synthesis in the style of Giovanni Sartori’s Parties and Party Systems . His approach lent itself better to analysis than synthesis. But then again, who knows what would had happened, if somebody at the right moment had put Gunnar in the office next to Sartori’s?

Still, his contributions to the study of political parties and party strategies stand.

For some examples of early Sjöblom, here are two open-access articles from 1967 and 1968 published in Scandinavian Political Studies. Two reviews of Party Strategies (gated) can be found on JStor here and here.

PS: In case the Google Scholar link fails, this is what you should be looking for – http://scholar.google.dk/scholar?as_q=&num=50&btnG=S%C3%B8g+i+Scholar&as_epq=party+strategies+in+a+multiparty+system&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=title&as_sauthors=sj%C3%B6blom&as_publication=&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&hl=da

091209 – dias

I’ll probably kick myself for doing this (scribd uses a flash-based code) but the slides are reference to a presentation about unemployment policy in Denmark in the 1950s.

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. [↩]

As I read it during the week-end, here are some short notes on Niels Krause-Kjær’s biography of Lars Løkke Rasmussen:

The book is mostly a journalistic biography using template 1A. It is easily read, but on the other hand the tendency to use casual spoken language in a written text occasionally annoys me. There aren’t any revelations in the stricter (media) sense, but it is a very useful summary of Løkke’s twenty-year career in Danish politics. A number of observations still stand out and – at least in my opinion – could merit some attention, also by PolSci types.

So: What did we learn and what might merit some further discussion?

1. For a Danish top-level politician, Løkke has stayed unusually close to his (geographical) roots which are the village of Græsted in Northern Zeeland. He never really went through the socialisation, moving to Copenhagen or Århus meant for Poul Nyrup Rasmussen or Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Somehow, Anker Jørgensen comes up as a parallel, and even he moved from Christianshavn to Sydhavnen.

2. As Krause-Kjær also points out, Løkke’s background in local and regional politics is highly unusual despite all talk of local politics being the entry to a political career. The high-flyers go directly for the national arena, one way or the other.

3. For a long time, Løkke looked like the heir presumptive in the Liberal Party to most people, but Krause-Kjær argues that Løkke through his youth and much of his early years had a tendency to live on the edge in career terms. Does this also apply to his approach to politics and policy decision-making?

4. Kause-Kjær also implies that Løkke will be happy basing his government on the Danish People’s Party. As long as we have a VKO majority, a continued polarisation between the left and the right blocs looks likely. How important is his socialisation in internal party politics and local politics in this aspect?

5. Løkke has a degree in law but has never practised as a lawyer. In fact, the biography makes no mention of how having an academic education has influenced Løkke’s way of working or thinking. When I read Anne Sofie Kragh’s biography of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, I noted that the same applied to him. Which begs the question: These days most top-level politicians have an academic degree, but does having a degree in higher education play a role in practice? Is it mostly a training in managing and presenting a large amount of information (in itself very useful), does it have some substantial impact or is it in fact irrelevant?

6. Kause also points out that Løkke’s personal network is based on party contacts. PolSci people have for a long noted that traditional party organisations were being replaced by smaller, more professional ones, but Løkke has made much of his career in the town halls in meetings with local party activists. Did we underestimate the role of party organisations (we are talking the 90s and the 00s here) or was this another indication of Løkke living dangerously?

Finally, Krause doesn’t compare Løkke with any of his predecessors (needless to say, Kraus notes how Løkke is different from his immediate predecessor Anders Fogh Rasmussen), but I would offer Erik Eriksen as the most likely parallel. Unlike Løkke, Eriksen never appeared as the obvious leader of the Liberal Party – until he seized the day. Similarly, Eriksen became prime minister by seizing the day. For an immediate observation, Løkke was biding his time, but as Krause notes at several occasions, Løkke also knew, and knows, how do identify his moment of opportunity.

And to quote (from memory) what Søren Mørch wrote about Erik Eriksen: He was a friendly man which often misled others to believe that he was their friend.

The advice “If you want a friend in politics, get a dog” still stands.

Niels Krause-Kjær: Lars Løkke – et portræt af Danmarks statsminister. Jyllands-Postens Forlag, 2009.

Update: Anne Sofie Kragh’s name corrected. Apologies.

Elinor Ostrom is one of this year’s laureates. Needless to say, we political scientists consider her one of our own kind.

Of the previous laureates, Kenneth Arrow has had a considerable impact on (parts of) political science – so here the economists can shout w00t – and Herbert Simon is still a classic in the field of public administration. Thomas Schelling is also known to political scientists.

Via Dan Drezner and Crooked Timber: The Republicans¹ want to eliminate political science as a research discipline.

Actually, the real surprise would be if anybody from the Republican Party would support something called science these days.

1. Yes, yes, I know: One stupid senator. But given the state of the Republican Party these days… [↩]

I realised that the Autumn semester will be the first since 1995 where I do not have classes. Weird. But then I have deadlines on two major chapters and I also need to turn a conference paper into something like an article.

All in all something like 125 pages of empirical studies. Plus a bit of free-lance work.