Jacob Christensen

Incredible but true: They are still negotiating in some of the local councils. Today, Kerteminde much to everybody’s surprise got a new mayor (the term “suicide mission” comes to hand, given the state of Kerteminde) and Nordfyn also suddenly looks shaky.

Or perhaps I should say: Everything is going as usual. In many places, the distribution of posts and spoils went relatively fast and smoothly, but there were the usual hiccups. Hiccup type #1 is when a party decides to enter an agreement with another set of parties than announced before the election, while Hiccup type #2 is when a councillor leaves his or her party in order to become mayor or head of one of the committees or whatever.

The Bondam incident in Copenhagen was a Type #1 Hiccup: Nobody left their parties but that the Social Liberals (RV) should form an electoral group with the Danish People’s Party (DF) was … not expected. The issue here was of course that RV are fierce critics of DF’s immigration and value policies and vice versa.

So, why did they do it? The answer is not simply personal aspirations as all signs are that Klaus Bondam could have had a less exposed and just as economically profitable post had he and RV stayed with the Social Democrats. On the other hand, this would have left the Social Liberals less visible politically during the coming term – for better or for worse: The party could always take a bet on collecting the disgruntled vote in Copenhagen in 2013 and find a new leading candidate.

Trying to reconstruct a negotiation of this kind is not entirely easy, because there was more than the seven mayoral portfolios in play. As said, the negotiation also included a number of board memberships, committee memberships and chairs, etc, etc. We should also remember that local councils are limited in their powers which means that the ideological dimensions which control national politics have less power in controlling local parties.

But what we had in the end in Copenhagen were two technical coalitions: One consisting of the Social Democrats, the Socialists, the Red-Green Alliance and – ca-chinnngg! – the Conservatives and another consisting of the Liberals, the Social Liberals and the Danish People’s Party. The first coalition controlled 41 of the 55 seats in the City Council and took five of the seven portfolios, the second controlled 14 seats and took two portfolios. If we break this down, the distribution was: S 2, SF 2, EL 1, V 1 and RV 1.

(I’m not sure it gets any easier, but you can look at the spreadsheet with the calculations of some of the possible combinations I have made here. Sorry about the layout but I’m not a professional city council negotiator).

Now, if we compare with a situation without alliances, the final result meant that S “lost” one portfolio while RV “won” one. The only combination which would have given S three mayors was an S-SF-EL-RV-KF alliance. As far as we know KF was the first party to defect from its initial alliance (V-DF-KF) but the question is how much S would have had to pay for RV to accept to stay in the five-party alliance.

A V-DF-KF alliance, on the other hand, would have yielded two portfolios – but as DF was the bigger party in terms of votes, one could argue that that party should have had the second of the portfolios available to the alliance. Apparently, this was not acceptable to KF which could then choose between not getting a portfolio in the right-wing alliance or join the left-wing alliance. KF would still not get any portfolios but it is possible that there were other spoils available.

However, with KF in the left alliance RV stood to gain by defecting to the right, while DF couldn’t lose by including RV compared to V-DFm even if V-DF-KF would be DF’s preference compared to V-RV-DF, This is because RV is larger than DF and would then take the second portfolio. Note that V-RV-DF-KF would have had the same benefit for RV, but KF would have been even further away from the portfolio so neither DF or KF would probably have had any motivation to include RV as long as KF was on board. With KF out, the gains for the right were more obvious.

Biut why did KF get away with defecting, while RV took all of the blame? Here we need to consider the ideological variable but even that doesn’t solve all problems. Neither the S-SF-EL-KF or the V-RV-DF coalition are ideologically connected – unless the Copenhagen Conservatives are placed to the left of the Social Liberals. It helps if the distance between S and KF is smaller than the distance between RV and DF – but then the question we need to answer is if RV’s main aim during the coming term should be to minimise DF’s influence rather than to maximise its own influence. (Remember: This is an “either-or” here).

But, as they say on Facebook: It’s complicated. And it definitively ain’t over ’till it’s over.

The story about the agreement in Bondam’s own words.

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.

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. [↩]

It is that time of the year electoral cycle again:

Assuming that the next government will be a coalition of CDU/CSU and FDP, we have an interesting situation because FDP is now much larger relative to the Union parties than between 1982 and 1998.

The situation is this:
CDU: 27,4% of the vote = 57% of votes for the coalition
CSU: 6,5% of the vote (living dangerously, are we?) = 13% of votes for the coalition
FDP: 14,5% of the vote = 30% of votes for the coalition

With 16 portfolios, this gives something like:
CDU: 9 or more likely 8 portfolios, allowing for the position of chancellor
CSU: 3
FDP: 5

Now if we look at the present portfolios we have (with my guesses included):

Chancellor – CDU
Minister of chancery – CDU
Foreign – FDP
Finance – CSU (question: Will the CSU like to lose Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg on Finance?)
Trade and Industry – FDP
Internal – CDU
Justice – FDP (alternatively: Internal: FDP, Justice: CDU)
Labour and Social Affairs – CDU
Consumer and Agriculture – CSU
Defence – CDU
Families, etc – CDU
Health – CSU (The reform of the sickness insurance is a bone of contention between the Union and FDP)
Transport and infrastructure – FDP
Environment – CDU
Education and research – FDP
Development – CDU

I don’t have Ian Budge and Hans Keman’s book on Parties and Democracy at hand, but I have used their arguments from memory. It will be fun to see how wrong or right I am.

Update: FAZ and Süddeutsche Zeitung speculate (in German).

1. Lowest turn-out since the creation of the Federal Republic in 1949.

2. Worst result for CDU/CSU since 1949.

3. Worst result for SPD in the history of the FRG.

4. Best result for all three minor parties since they were formed. Actually, “minor” may be the wrong description here.

5. Angela Merkel will be the first chancellor since Konrad Adenauer to survive a change in the composition in the federal government (save the representation of DSU for a short period in 1990-1991).

6. According to a snap poll for ARD, SPD’s main problem would be “economic competence”, but how does this square with the collapse of support for the SPD due to the Agenda 2010?

Historical results for the lazy.

I haven’t followed the campaign in any detail so these are scattered observations:

1. This is the first time since 1993 that a Norwegian government has survived a general election. 86 seats (of 169) should be a comfortable majority.

2. Turn-out was down from 77,4 to 73,5 per cent. Norway and Finland generally have lower levels of turn-out than Denmark and Sweden.

3. Opinion polls seem to have missed a lot of developments: The Conservatives and the Social Democrats did better than expected, the Progress Party and the Socialists performed worse. Support for the Liberals took a dive and the party lost 8 out of 10 MPs.

4. And re: The Progress Party. It is still by far the largest right-wing party in Norway with 22,9 per cent of the vote against the Conservatives’ 17,2, but it may have reached the limits of its electoral capacities.

Official result page.

As already said: I’m a sucker for these things. This is the Norwegian me:

Actually, it is Angela Merkel and Frank-Walter Steinmeier (some Danish commentator actually managed to change his name into Frank Waltermeier. Oh, well…), and the campaign is not for the leadership of the Danish Social Liberals but for the German Bundestag elections in a few weeks time.

Still, the impression left by these portraits in DeutschlandRadio (Merkel, Steinmeier) is that of two distinctly cerebral politicians fighting it out in a modern media landscape.

Not much Schnauze or Rock’n'roll here.