The relationship between the UK and Europe is an equally intriguing issue. To an outsider, it has long seemed obvious that the Tory right (supported by the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph) would prefer to leave the EU and better yesterday than today. The breakdown of the latest round of negotiations over EMU rescue packages actually makes a British exit from the de facto EU a likely prospect, even if I would expect Britain to formally stay in some kind of zombie-EU.

But the process and the outcome raise a lot of questions which I am not really competent to answer. Still, here goes:

1. How much of the breakdown was due to Cameron (and Downing Street, etc) being an incompetent negotiator? This report from the Economist more than suggest that Cameron s****d up in an epic way in presenting the British position – and if Cameron wasn’t incompetent in a technical sense, he surely miscalculated Britain’s influence completely.

2. While the Tory backbenchers will surely celebrate a breakdown of UK-EU relations in a very loud way, the question is if the UK financial sector (“The City”) will be equally happy over losing influence in the EMU. Will yesterday’s events undermine an alliance which has otherwise been fundamental to the strength of the Conservative Party?

3. The institutional design of the Euro17 or whatever the new arrangement will be named also raises some interesting questions. On the one hand, the Euro17 agreement will strengthen the supranational element in economic and fiscal policy compared with the present arrangements, but on the other hand the institutional setting will – at least de jure – be more intergovernmental than today’s EU, eg. with the European Commission being sidelined. This is very weird, given that Britain has always favoured an intergovernmental EU while France and Germany traditionally have pushed for more supranational government in the EU. But then again: EU politics always had a slightly absurd element to it.

As I say: I have no good answers so far, only questions.

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But as it turns out, there is one place where you will find people happy to make Denmark the object of crude jokes: Whitehall.

But then again: Are anybody really surprised to learn that the English – Ex-pats living in the Nordic countries and continental Northern Europe excluded. I mean: They did emigrate for some reason – are a bunch of arrogant a***s? The only slightly surprising element of the story is that Lord West is not a member of the Conservative Party but connected to the Labour Party.

PS: Why “Die dummen Dänen” and not “Die dumme Dänen”? Because the expression is unknown in Germany.

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As it is, The Guardian got wind of a story that the Veterinary and Food Administration had banned the sale of the stuff in Denmark as it is artificially enriched with Vitamin B and all hell broke loose in British media. Just look at these stories from the usually rational Guardian: This Marmite ban defies common sense, This will teach Danes to ban Marmite and – as the coup de crace – Marmite ban spreads consternation across Denmark by none other than Alexandra Topping (sic!).

Teh Internets weighed in and the Danish Embassy in London had to publish a statement saying that Marmite™ was not banned in Denmark. Rather, marketing just wasn’t authorised. (See also “How to market fortified food in Denmark“, The Daily Telegraph and Jon Worth).

The uproar in British media and on the internet hasn’t exactly generated any interest in Danish media which is curious, given that any stories about Denmark in foreign media are usually covered in a way which is usually blown out of proportions.

Anyway, the Marmite™ story raises some intriguing judicial and political issues. I am far from being an expert in EU legislation but the basis seems to be that Denmark applies an exception to EU regulations allowing Denmark to set higher standards for foods. I suspect that this goes back to the negotiations about the 1986 Single European Act where the promise of continued national standards with regard to food and environment played a major role in securing support for the single market in Denmark.

Similarly, Danish authorities and consumers have always been very sceptical about “enhanced” or “fuctional” foods and as mentioned above, the addition of Vitamin B technically puts Marmite™ in this category. (I will admit that I myself instinctively see any kind of food advertised as “enhanced”, “functional” or “healthy” as a modern kind of snake oil.

Some of the British media, most notably including The Guardian, have suggested that the Marmite™ “ban” was the latest in the Danish government’s and the Danish People’s Party’s attempts to discourage immigrants from staying in the country, but actually The Guardian got it wrong. Yes, Euro-scepticism was involved but it was of the left-wing, anti-corporate kind rather than the right-wing ethnic politics kind.

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First, we should note that the tendency to rapid growth in public sector expenditure measured as a share of the economy stopped sometime during the mid- to late-1970s. From then on, we have seen stagnation even if economic growth obviously means that expenditure has increased since the early 1980s.

Second, the growth in relative expenditure in the last years must be seen in the context of the global financial crisis which a) saw GDP fall in many countries and b) saw increases in unemployment which again meant that a share of the workforce had to rely on some kind of public support. This is what the Keynesians call automatic stabilisers.

Third, the economic policies of Republican administrations and congressional majorities in the US are a cause for concern. The idea that tax cuts are the solution to any problem is by now intellectually – but not politically – discredited and the massive deficits created by Republican policies are a major problem for the US and world economy. In fact, US economic policy is a major theoretical and practical headache.

Kurrild-Klitgaard is right that special interest groups (farmers, anyone?) create a lot of blocking points in the policy process and that it is easy to find cases where resources are being spent in a way which is inefficient in the short or long run due to government programmes (my own example would be the Danish Early Retirement Benefit but in the US defence spending could be used as a warning case). It is also correct that the demand for services and transfers is in principle inexhaustible.

But this does not necessarily mean that the public sector is dysfunctional or uncontrollable as a whole.

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That said, “The Ghost Writer” is more an effective classical thriller than a new “Chinatown” or The Political Movie of 2010. If you basically don’t subscribe to the conspiracy theory view of politics, the movie doesn’t tell you anything new about UK politics in general and Tony Blair’s decision to support the foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration. And if you are already convinced that Blair has sinister motives and that the Little Guy always gets caught in the dealings of the big and powerful – well, then there’s nothing new here as well.

So, the movie is extremely competent, has good actors and there are definitively worse ways to spend a couple of hours (you could be reading a run-of-the-mill Swedish crime novel, for instance), but after viewing it, I wondered if Polanski hadn’t spoiled the chance to make an even more interesting movie with Ruth Lang (played by Olivia Williams) as the central character. By now I’m probably not revealing a major secret by writing the Ms. Lang isn’t exactly what she originally appears to be: the bitter, neglected wife of a Very Important Man. Rather, she is the force driving the entire plot and I could imagine a very exciting piece of drama where Ms. Lang is actively trying to control the fall-out from her past and present activities.

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One should always be careful in predicting the demise of institutions (not that writers of airport books are) but as Patrick Dunleavy has pointed out, something strange is happening in the world of Westminster Systems. Now, if you know your Lijphart (which you will as a political scientist), the Westminster Model is the ideal type of government where one party due to the nature of the electoral system controls the relevant chamber of parliament and consequently forms one-party majority governments. The Westminsters have always been relatively rare but this haven’t stopped leading politicians from seeing Westminster as a better constitutional model than the coalition-based models found in most of the democratic world. Helmut Schmidt of Germany and Göran Persson of Sweden have voiced their preference for the Westminster model.

But what if you have a Westminster system where no single party controls the majority. Like in … India, Canada, the UK and now Australia?¹ In fact, none of the classical Westminster systems now has a Westminster type of government: New Zealand has replaced its electoral system and is now closer to the continental European model, India and the UK … yes, the UK … have coalition governments and Canada … well, Canada is in a bit of a constitutional mess as the political leaders still can’t get to grips with the changing political system. Finally, Australia is set for a parliament with no overall control.

So, the FPTP and AV systems may no longer bring safe majorities and in this way, the classical Westminster model is challenged. Aspirations of one-party majority die slowly, which is why both Conservatives and Labour in the UK will be opposing the proposed electoral reform in the coming referendum, but they could facing more profound forces changing the rules of the game.

The Australian election actually saw both major parties winning around 40 percent of the vote, but otherwise winning more than 35 percent of the vote looks increasingly difficult in both Westminster and – to use Lijphart’s term – Consocional systems. In Germany, CDU/CSU and SPD find it hard to get more than 35 percent of the vote and depend more than ever on coalition partners – even the CSU is struggling in Bavaria. In Sweden, the Social Democrats used to win around 45 percent of the vote but would consider themselves extremely lucky to keep the 35 percent from the 2006 election. In the Netherlands, the CDA is a mere shadow of its former self.

The British Liberal Democrats have been clever enough to buy themselves five years in government (which will serve to dispel fears of government instability, even if we shouldn’t completely discount the possibility of a breakdown of the coalition) while Australia could see a snap second election and a rebound for either of the major parties. Still, I suspect that we a facing an increased fragmentation of party systems in established democracies, both Westminster and Consocional. This does not necessarily mean that government will become less effective, but politicians will find negotiating skills increasingly important. This also raises the question if politics in both traditional Westminster and Consocional regimes is really becoming more “presidential” or “Americanised”.

Curiously, the US looks destined to go in a different direction due to the changes in the Republican Party which in many ways increasingly looks and acts like a European party with strong parliamentary discipline. Given the tendency towards more adversarial politics at the federal level, the US constitutional system which, due to the checks and balances (or veto points, if you like) otherwise relies on a working consocionalism, is headed for a major institutional crisis. US could be the New Europe, though not in the way US Republicans think of the concept.

1. Dunleavy includes New Zealand but as NZ has replaced the one-member constituencies, it is questionable if the country counts as a Westminster system.

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Okay, the title is slightly ironic. While walking the streets of London (or driving in buses) last week, I couldn’t help wondering just how many … how to put this in a gentle way … less than successful buildings one could find there. Sure, the Germans mush bear some of the blame but the Brits in particular seemed to have a rather unique way of making concrete very … concretey. I lived in a hotel next to Centre Point, which is the building pictured above, and kept wondering just what it reminded me of. It finally dawned upon me that it was somehow a cousin to the old Interhotel at Alexanderplatz in Eastern Berlin.

The hotel I stayed at (not pictured) was basic but okay (and it had a location to kill for) but I always had the feeling that it had been designed by Orcs, or alternatively the firm Orwell, Kafka and Partners. British brutalism is very brutalist indeed.

Add the ubiquitous CCTV cameras and Orwell’s ghost was always close.

Now, this may make you think that I hated every minute of my stay in London. I very definitively did not, but in some ways the city is a curious place.

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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.

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(The thing is that the UK does not know the concept of an informateur or a formateur. In this case, Brown could have tendered his resignation and continued as caretaker prime minister while Cameron conducted negotiations with the LibDems – and unlike the Dutch, you don’t have to spend months on forming a government).

It is obvious that the leaders of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats want to enter a formal coalition and we should assume that there is a substantial amount of consensus between the parties (if the latter does not apply, look here for an example of how you should not form a government).

But both the Conservative and Liberal Democratic leadership also need to anchor the decision with the relevant bodies – and in the case of the LibDems there is a triple-bind rule in the party statues to prevent the leadership from entering any kind of coalition without securing the consent of the party organisation – Nick Clegg needs support from a massive 3/4 majority in the party executive and 3/4 of the parliamentary group. If he does not, the agreement has to part a vote among the party’s members. If Clegg gets this level of support from the parliamentary party and the executive, we would expect it to be a good thing for the future stability of the coalition, but if he does not, we’re in really messy territory. By letting the announcement of the coalition be made public before the formal accept by the party bodies has been reached, Clegg is either brave or foolish – if he hasn’t put a great deal of effort into testing the waters in his party. (The Guardian says he has)

Needless to say, British media have pointed out that there are LibDem MPs and activists who would rather have died a very painful death than supported the Conservatives – at least before the results of the election were known last Thursday. We are in interesting territory here. And Clegg and the LibDems between a rock and a hard place.

Similarly, Cameron takes a risk, even if it is marginally smaller than Clegg’s. If the deal falls through, he will have to scrape through on support from the DUP and other minor parties and an election in the very near future is almost certain.

So, why did Gordon Brown announce his resignation before the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats had formally closed the deal? Was it a spontaneous initiative? (Hardly – surely the Cabinet Office would have prevented this) Did Cameron phone Brown to announce that he was ready to form a government? Or did Brown seize what was left of his initiative to put Cameron and Clegg into what the Germans call Zugzwang – (the ball is in your corner, now you must either deliver or make fools of yourself).

I expect that we will know more on Wednesday. But the signs look set for the first formal peacetime coalition government in the UK since the rather unusual 1931-1940 National Government. Political Science textbooks may have to be rewritten in the coming years.

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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.

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