The Great Nordic Thread

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Didn't know that the monarchy still has a role in Danish politics, as opposed to the Swedish situation. What does your Queen exactly do?

In theory the Queen still dissolves parliament, and leads the government formation process (not so much in practice) while in Sweden those powers are either decided by the constitutional fixed term¹, the PM², and/or the Speaker³ depending on the issue in question.

<sup>1) Elections are according to law always held on the second Sunday of September every fourth year, so no need to dissolve parliament if it expires by itself.

2) The PM can call early elections, though no PM has gone through with it since 1956. It should be noted that this doesn't change the fixed term and an ordinary election will always be held four years after the last regular election.

3) The Speaker leads the government formation process, if no government can be formed early elections are held.</sup>

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Just ftr, we should probably avoid the acronym "SD" on this thread.

You are my hero! ^^

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

the acronym always used for the Danish Social Democrats

Isn't their short form A? I've actually only seen them referred to as SD in international texts.

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Not much of a connotation as the Social Democrats have never been referred to by the acronym SD in Sweden. Actually, I can hardly think of any countries where Social Democratic parties acronyms are "SD" It's SDP in the UK, SPD in Germany, SPÖ in Austria, and so on. Even in the Nordic countries,  it's SDA in Iceland, SDP in Finland, S in Sweden, and AP... in Norway. Clearly the Danes are the odd birds out, and as noted above SD isn't even their official acronym. 

Giving the Sweden Democrats the acronym SVD, would also not fit with the established tradition of how acronyms for political parties in Sweden are formed. Three letter acronyms for parties are almost unheard of for any major party, except the very historically outdated SAP.

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You shouldn't, I just like to grind your gears.

Obviously there are other Danish parties that share acronyms with ideologically different parties, such as Venstre and Vänsterpartiet, and Liberal Alliance and Left Alliance in Finland, so I think we can cope with this one as well.



 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Here you see what happens when xenophopic right-wing populist party which labels itself as "working class party without socialism" attacks the unions in the cabinet at the same time with refugee crisis.

Being put in an actual role of responsibility tends to be kryptonite to most xenophobic populist parties. Look at the state of Frp at the moment, or what happened to FPÖ after their participation in the Schüssel-government.

It's actually so that I wish we could hand over the reigns of government to the Sweden Democrats for a year and watch them crash and burn and destroy themselves and we could finally move on and have actual political discussions again in this country.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

It wouldn't work, at least not yet. The True Finns or the Progress Party are a more diverse party than SD at least in policies. If you vote for SD you do it for one reason and one reason only, while you can vote for TF or PP for many other reason than immigration. As such SD only need to deliver on one point to say they have kept their promises. Of course they will likely lose a few votes, but you won't see a SD collapse. Also where would SD voters go? They want a harder line against immigration and there's no one else in Sweden delivering on that point.

SD voters aren't some zombie-like creatures. They can't eat restrictions on immigration. They can't work at restrictions of immigration. Even if it's true that people only vote for them for one reason, they still has to be successful in other areas as well. Their poor working-class voters aren't going to just accept the cuts they propose to welfare in their budgets even if they get rid of a few immigrants. Nor are previously Moderate voters going to accept bad handling of the economy.

People can vote for SD solely on a single issue because they can imagine that SD will fulfill everything they wish for, but when that bubble breaks it's much harder to vote only on the issue of immigration. Which is exactly why responsibility is kryptonite  to these sorts of parties. They are huge coaltions that unite lots of people that only have a single thing in common, immigration. When it comes time to deliver on more issues, it's just not possible for them to please all their voters, which causes them to tremble.

As to the idea that "they can't go anywhere else", it should be noted that that is equally true in Norway. All the non-governmental parties there are pro-immigration. Doesn't keep Frp from declining does it? 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

snip

I could answer you, it's some good point you bring up, but honestly DavidB brought most of the points up. Through there's one thing I will say again SD is not Progress Party or the True Finns, they're quite different from SD, which have more in common with the Danish Progress Party than either.

I don't entirely disagree with David either. Obviously I don't say that SD would disappear forever. Most parties have an ability to regain support after a bad period in government and a spectacular election loss. Though it would limit the problem for some time.

I also agree as far as the Progress Party goes, they are a different thing compared to SD. But what is PS except stricter immigration, anti-EU, and anti mandatory Swedish in Finnish schools? Besides the mandatory Swedish thing, those are the exact same pillars as SD stands on. I doubt that there is anyone who really votes for Soini except for those issues. And I'm aware that PS casts itself as the defenders of the welfare state and the working man and what not., but so does SD. That's (as you noted) hardly the reason their voters vote for them.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

I also agree as far as the Progress Party goes, they are a different thing compared to SD. But what is PS except stricter immigration, anti-EU, and anti mandatory Swedish in Finnish schools? Besides the mandatory Swedish thing, those are the exact same pillars as SD stands on. I doubt that there is anyone who really votes for Soini except for those issues. And I'm aware that PS casts itself as the defenders of the welfare state and the working man and what not., but so does SD. That's (as you noted) hardly the reason their voters vote for them.

There are actually plenty of people who voted for PS because of welfare issues and rural issues. Take for example, the party's strongest municipality, Kihniö, where the party got 53 percent in 2011 and 48 percent in 2015. Almost all of that is support for a former Rural Party (Finns Party's predecessor) politician Lea Mäkipää who was elected Finns Party MP in 2011 and who hardly even speaks about immigration but rather about welfare issues and services in the rural ares. Furthermore, in the Kihniö council the local Finns Party group actually supported establishing a refugee accomodation centre in the municipality (even if they qualified it by saying that they wanted to choose what kind of refugees are coming).

If it were rural issues they might as well vote for the Centre Party, and if it were welfare there are two left-wing parties. The fact that individual politicians have shifted for one or another reason doesn't really prove that PS is different from SD. There was a prolific local Moderate politician who became an MP for SD because he felt SD had better Defense policy and didn't like the Moderates cuts to the military. A parliamentary candidate for the Christian Democrats switched because she felt SD was more anti-abortion. That doesn't mean that more than a handful people actually cast their votes for SD because the military, or that many people did so because of their view on abortion. Likewise the people who voted for PS because the Social Democrats or the Left Alliance are to Green must be neglectful at best.

There are people that vote for SD for all kinds of strange reasons, but 90% of those who do, have immigration and the EU as their reason. The same I'm certain is true for PS.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Using this logic we might also presume that all religious Christians vote for the Christian Democrats. But that is not the case. In fact, the Conservative Laestadians (the most fundamentalist Lutheran revival movement; doctrine includes, for example, banning birth control and television watching as sinful) overwhelmingly vote for the Centre Party.

Now you're obviously just willfully misinterpreting what I actually said. Where exactly is the Centre's rural policies different than PS? What difference is there where someone who cares deeply about rural issues would choose to to vote for PS over KESK based ob their rural policies. I'm not saying I find it weird that rural people vote for PS, I'm saying they're probably not doing it for their policies on rural affairs. That's obviously not the same as all people of the same faith voting for the same party, as a common faith doesn't mean people have the same political opinions.

The idea that PS is somehow a more well-rounded party than SD is absurd. SD also has other policies than their immigration policy, but that isn't the reason people vote for them, and neither is PS rural policy the reason people choose to vote for them.



 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Yeah, breaking with over 100 years of cross-national Nordic association law and established precedence to disadvantage a single organisation doesn't seem like a well-thought out idea.

Though the authoritarian, Soviet-like party structures of DPP in Denmark or SD in Sweden are rather frightening and says a whole lot about those parties, policy and legislation shouldn't be created around a single organisation.

In all of the Nordic countries (as far as I'm aware off) parties count as regular non-profit organisations, and non-profit organisations are in the Nordic countries free to organize any way they please. You'd either have to make parties a whole different group of organisations, or impose the same governing structure on all non-profit organisation, which would be greatly problematic in relation to churches with distinct leadership organisation, orders, and so on.

Besides, do we even want these parties to allow crazy grass-rots take over their party. I'm not sure how that would actually be beneficial to anyone.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

It's not my impression that SD is as top-down as DPP... yet.

Yes, I'd say so as well. Not that the SD leadership doesn't want to have the same power over the party as the DPP does, but the current SD leadership didn't get to create the original rule book in difference to the DPP leadership. They're instead left trying to reform the old rules, but that still has to be done with the consent of  their party congress. Of course they've come very far at solidifying power when they can cut off their entire youth wing with-out asking their congress for permission.

I never understood the inherent merit of parties being internally democratic.

I personally wouldn't want to be part of a party that wasn't internally democratic. If I cannot effect party policy why bother being a member. Nor would I entrust my vote or give my support to people who cannot even take debate and discussion with people who have close opinions to their own. If an organisation can't foster good attitude towards democracy with-in themselves, how can I trust them to do so in society.

But as for parties I'm not a member or supporter of, I support their right to organize as they see fit. Just don't expect me to approve of your organisation. ^^

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

But honestly while we may like to see the party structure of DPP as a sign inborn authorianism in the party, I think it's reaching. Instead it exist for both historical and practical reasons. DPP was founded after a chaotic annual congress for the Progress Party worse than anything I remember in my lifetime. Pia Kjærsgaard who was leader of the Progress Party and her fraction of the party decided to leave the party, the other parliamental fraction left the party some years later, but didn't set up a new party. It tell you something how bad the Progress Party were, when the two warring MP fractions both leave the party. DPP leadership never wanted to see the same thing again, so they set up the party structure to avoid the old Progress Party members entering the party and creating the same chaos in DPP.

But there's also another group DPP want to avoid, when you're right wing anti-immigration party, you really want to avoid the Nazis and want to be able to throw them out again, if they enter anyway.

Interesting, I didn't know that about DPP's history.

I obviously understand why the leadership of both SD and DPP feel they need to control their organisations rigidly. I have no idea how DPP handles that power,  so I will assume they do so responsibly.

In SD however, though keeping nazis and crazys out is the official motivation, it does feel like they abuse their power over the party to punish people who don't kiss the leadership's behind, rather than as a tool to keep the crazies out. 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Shouldn't be that surprising. During the 2015 general election, their campaign posters featured slogans like "Stramme asylregler og flere krav til indvandrere". (Strict rules for asylum and more demands for immigrants, too translate it a bit awkwardly.)

I know, I followed that campaign I just didn't think they would ever double down on that "promise", especially since I thought people that are more "soft" on immigration had gained power within the party after HTS's defeat.

That might very well be so, but "soft on immigration" politicians in Europe has generally had an awful time outside and with-in their parties after the refugee crisis culminated, so it's natural that such politicians would either have to adopt a new position, or risk falling out of favour. (i.e. see the Swedish government for referens how quickly left-wing pro-immigration positions can falter in times like these.)