Halfway through the last Swedish election TV debate, Goran Persson, the Swedish prime minister, looked sideways at his left wing partners, waved his hand and thereafter seemed to fade as if to say: actually I don’t really want to win anymore, not if it means dealing with these guys for three more years. For the last eight years the social democrats have ruled in a minority government that has taken parliamentary support from the greens and the former communists under an unspoken agreement: a single party government gives the social democrats the advantage of appearing strong, lone rulers, while the outrider parties peddle influence behind the scenes. In contrast, the right-of-centre opposition has often appeared a four headed, fractious monster.
This was now set to change: the Greens’ feisty party leader Maria Wetterstrand insisted on cabinet posts if the left coalition won again; the ex-communists, under the equally feisty Lars Ohly, had said it wanted to be included too.
In a moment of opportunistic footsy the large and bumbling Persson – who loves cooking and shopping for different kinds of sausage - metaphorically stretched his hand over and rested in it the lap of the most centrist opposition party. The agrarian Centre party’s strongwoman Maud Olofsson – described as the Pippi Longstocking of Swedish politics, aged 54 - crossed her legs said a decided and public no to leaving the of carefully forged alliance, headed by her crown prince, the young conservative leader and prime minister elect, Fredrik Reinfeldt, 41, who has spent two years creating a strong right-of-centre Alliance to dispel old memories of fractiousness..
Thus rejected, Persson seemed to sit back and contemplated his future partners in government, as if he had suddenly realized their radicalism for the first time: one of which wants to abolish nuclear power – “non nuclear and”, as opposed to Persson’s studied “non nuclear if” - the other which wants to leave the EU, he might have thought: well, being a land-owner living in a southern Swedish mansion with his new wife might not be so unappealing after all.
In the event,: the opposition won a convincing victory on Sunday night, but it not without its being preceded by moments of nail-biting anxiety in the closest competition in a generation: while the economy has been growing at a sturdy 6 percent a year, and life was good for those in work, the opposition accused the social democrats of presiding over Sweden’s slipping into a post materialist leisure society, a society of young bloggers - with the highest youth unemployment in the old EU – a figure, had the statistics not been massaged, that would probably have been even higher.
The fact that the head of the unemployment service carried out a number of statistical and methodological ruses to keep unemployment down and help the social democrats was one of the instances of a problem the new government has said it wants to deal with: the election was so close because the social democrats, who have ruled for 65 of the last 74 years – a world record – have filled Swedish civil society with social democrat placemen who have soaked the country in the ruling party’s values.
As a result, though generally regarded as tired on the job, and with few fresh ideas, the social democrats and their outriders – despite being on autopilot, and faced with an unusually hungry opposition - held the right wing alliance almost to the end.
Polls put the blocs within a percentage point of each other for months.
A Swedish prime minister has wide discretion in the appointment of the dozens of autonomous agencies/quangos/boards that run much of Swedish life, from the unemployment service to the social welfare agency, the integration board to national schools agency : they are all connected to the party - see picture of the spider's web with the party in the middle - the posts are not advertised and the criteria never specified. In a recent TV interview, Reinfeldt, the new prime minister, says that while it is not wrong that the government appoints people to carry out its work, and should have the final say, the process should be subject to transparency and the posts should be advertised, as in other European countries.
One of Persson’s good friends, Bo Bylund, runs the employment service, and has been accused of putting healthy people on sick rolls and capable people on stupid retraining programmes, and failing to applying European unemployment criteria to Swedish figures, making them much lower than really are. Another friend, a former deputy prime minister, runs state television, which was held by the largest newspaper Dagens Nyheter’s commentator as being “soft on the prime minister”, refusing to rein him when he attacked the opposition during a debate.
Many ambassadors and county sheriffs are former political figures, not civil servants or career diplomats. All of these agencies wield considerable sums of money to shape public opinion, disguised as “information”, which tilt Swedes towards a social democrat view of looking at things. A brief controversy erupted when, for the nationwide mock elections held in schools, pupils were given a CD with the political history of socialism to inform their choice. The head of the school board is another social democrat.
A lot of the patronage flows from the prime minister directly, who rules one of the most centralized, most executive based countries in Europe. Only a third of cabinet ministers are MPs – there is only chamber – and so have a political powerbase beyond the prime minister’s patronage. The rest are recruited directly from outside. One potential check, parliament, is extremely weak, since MPs are elected by party lists, because of the lack of polarities of religion and class, in Swedish societies; and much legislation comes from Europe – the chair in the council of ministers is the
Reinfeldt has promised to make changes to the selection system; and while reform of parliament’s powers compared to the executive might be some way off, a coalition government of four parties – effectively four firsts among equals – will inevitably dilute the power of the prime minister as never was during the Persson era. All this will be subject to discussion, and eagerly watched.
First though there is going to be a purge of social democrats the executive agencies – starting with the hapless Bylund.
This was now set to change: the Greens’ feisty party leader Maria Wetterstrand insisted on cabinet posts if the left coalition won again; the ex-communists, under the equally feisty Lars Ohly, had said it wanted to be included too.
In a moment of opportunistic footsy the large and bumbling Persson – who loves cooking and shopping for different kinds of sausage - metaphorically stretched his hand over and rested in it the lap of the most centrist opposition party. The agrarian Centre party’s strongwoman Maud Olofsson – described as the Pippi Longstocking of Swedish politics, aged 54 - crossed her legs said a decided and public no to leaving the of carefully forged alliance, headed by her crown prince, the young conservative leader and prime minister elect, Fredrik Reinfeldt, 41, who has spent two years creating a strong right-of-centre Alliance to dispel old memories of fractiousness..
Thus rejected, Persson seemed to sit back and contemplated his future partners in government, as if he had suddenly realized their radicalism for the first time: one of which wants to abolish nuclear power – “non nuclear and”, as opposed to Persson’s studied “non nuclear if” - the other which wants to leave the EU, he might have thought: well, being a land-owner living in a southern Swedish mansion with his new wife might not be so unappealing after all.
In the event,: the opposition won a convincing victory on Sunday night, but it not without its being preceded by moments of nail-biting anxiety in the closest competition in a generation: while the economy has been growing at a sturdy 6 percent a year, and life was good for those in work, the opposition accused the social democrats of presiding over Sweden’s slipping into a post materialist leisure society, a society of young bloggers - with the highest youth unemployment in the old EU – a figure, had the statistics not been massaged, that would probably have been even higher.
The fact that the head of the unemployment service carried out a number of statistical and methodological ruses to keep unemployment down and help the social democrats was one of the instances of a problem the new government has said it wants to deal with: the election was so close because the social democrats, who have ruled for 65 of the last 74 years – a world record – have filled Swedish civil society with social democrat placemen who have soaked the country in the ruling party’s values.
As a result, though generally regarded as tired on the job, and with few fresh ideas, the social democrats and their outriders – despite being on autopilot, and faced with an unusually hungry opposition - held the right wing alliance almost to the end.
Polls put the blocs within a percentage point of each other for months.
A Swedish prime minister has wide discretion in the appointment of the dozens of autonomous agencies/quangos/boards that run much of Swedish life, from the unemployment service to the social welfare agency, the integration board to national schools agency : they are all connected to the party - see picture of the spider's web with the party in the middle - the posts are not advertised and the criteria never specified. In a recent TV interview, Reinfeldt, the new prime minister, says that while it is not wrong that the government appoints people to carry out its work, and should have the final say, the process should be subject to transparency and the posts should be advertised, as in other European countries.
One of Persson’s good friends, Bo Bylund, runs the employment service, and has been accused of putting healthy people on sick rolls and capable people on stupid retraining programmes, and failing to applying European unemployment criteria to Swedish figures, making them much lower than really are. Another friend, a former deputy prime minister, runs state television, which was held by the largest newspaper Dagens Nyheter’s commentator as being “soft on the prime minister”, refusing to rein him when he attacked the opposition during a debate.
Many ambassadors and county sheriffs are former political figures, not civil servants or career diplomats. All of these agencies wield considerable sums of money to shape public opinion, disguised as “information”, which tilt Swedes towards a social democrat view of looking at things. A brief controversy erupted when, for the nationwide mock elections held in schools, pupils were given a CD with the political history of socialism to inform their choice. The head of the school board is another social democrat.
A lot of the patronage flows from the prime minister directly, who rules one of the most centralized, most executive based countries in Europe. Only a third of cabinet ministers are MPs – there is only chamber – and so have a political powerbase beyond the prime minister’s patronage. The rest are recruited directly from outside. One potential check, parliament, is extremely weak, since MPs are elected by party lists, because of the lack of polarities of religion and class, in Swedish societies; and much legislation comes from Europe – the chair in the council of ministers is the
Reinfeldt has promised to make changes to the selection system; and while reform of parliament’s powers compared to the executive might be some way off, a coalition government of four parties – effectively four firsts among equals – will inevitably dilute the power of the prime minister as never was during the Persson era. All this will be subject to discussion, and eagerly watched.
First though there is going to be a purge of social democrats the executive agencies – starting with the hapless Bylund.
