Swedish elections 2014
Sep. 15th, 2014 08:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kjnSo the elections were done yesterday. The final result won't be here until Wednesday at the earliest (and even later for the regional and municipal elections), but the preliminary result should be solid with only minor adjustments.
And Sverigedemokraterna, a fascist party, more than doubled in size and received 13% of the votes. Every other party in the parliament either lost support or pretty much trod water.
In one way, this can be viewed as that Sweden joins the "European normal" with some sort of ultra-nationalistic party at around 10-20% of the electorate. But viewing this as something bound in natural law goes against everything I believe in.
I don't have any answers, but I do have a few factors that I think contributed in various ways. But as a starting point, I think of no better one than Charlie Stross's essay Political failure modes and the beige dictatorship—Sweden doesn't fit every part of it, but you can recognise every part.
In Sweden, no party can be said to more fully embody the beige party than the Social Democrats. During the last 30 years, they've moved steadily rightwards while their popular support has eroded and their internal political culture (from what I can tell) has stayed static.
Then we have the classic centre-right opposition, which managed to gain the majority in the elections of 2006 and 2008. Part of it was because of a new set of polished and rhetorically very skilled leaders on their part, part of it a collapse of Social Democratic leadership entirely of their own making.
The centre-right coalition ("Alliansen") set out to systematically change, deregulate, and privatise (read: dismantle) the publically managed parts of Sweden: schools, primary care centers, hospitals, pharmacies, day care… The list goes on. The process had been started by the Social Democrats, but it accelerated and turned into dogma.
With primary care centers, it seems to have worked decently, partly because the old care centers stayed in place and because most of the new care centers were run by medical people. The rest has been disasters. The schools have been especially bad.
Two things happened now. People became worried, and afraid. And the beige dictatorship hit full force: the rhetoric of the Social Democrats and Alliansen in some way managed to remove every single point of contention between them, while they still shouted at each other.
When the need for political leadership was the greatest, we got nothing at all.
In one way, this can be viewed as that Sweden joins the "European normal" with some sort of ultra-nationalistic party at around 10-20% of the electorate. But viewing this as something bound in natural law goes against everything I believe in.
I don't have any answers, but I do have a few factors that I think contributed in various ways. But as a starting point, I think of no better one than Charlie Stross's essay Political failure modes and the beige dictatorship—Sweden doesn't fit every part of it, but you can recognise every part.
In Sweden, no party can be said to more fully embody the beige party than the Social Democrats. During the last 30 years, they've moved steadily rightwards while their popular support has eroded and their internal political culture (from what I can tell) has stayed static.
Then we have the classic centre-right opposition, which managed to gain the majority in the elections of 2006 and 2008. Part of it was because of a new set of polished and rhetorically very skilled leaders on their part, part of it a collapse of Social Democratic leadership entirely of their own making.
The centre-right coalition ("Alliansen") set out to systematically change, deregulate, and privatise (read: dismantle) the publically managed parts of Sweden: schools, primary care centers, hospitals, pharmacies, day care… The list goes on. The process had been started by the Social Democrats, but it accelerated and turned into dogma.
With primary care centers, it seems to have worked decently, partly because the old care centers stayed in place and because most of the new care centers were run by medical people. The rest has been disasters. The schools have been especially bad.
Two things happened now. People became worried, and afraid. And the beige dictatorship hit full force: the rhetoric of the Social Democrats and Alliansen in some way managed to remove every single point of contention between them, while they still shouted at each other.
When the need for political leadership was the greatest, we got nothing at all.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-15 02:58 pm (UTC)In a political system of proportional representation, a party that can articulate a message appealing to enough of these cranks (their ideas are not monolithic but they do tend to have certain strong commonalities) can win seats.
In a vote-by-district system, like we have in the US, it's tougher for this lunatic fringe to win a seat because they must take a majority of a district. With the tyranny of our two party system their chance of winning directly is close to zero. So instead they influence politics at the party level. Usually this makes for colorful party politics without resulting in the election of the lunatic fringe. But, occasionally, when the message of the fringe candidate(s) is especially timely, some of them do win office for a term or two.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-15 04:49 pm (UTC)I also believe fear is a more likely cause for the rise of wide-spread fascism than anger. Anger does play a role, but I doubt it can shape large swathes of society the way fear can.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-15 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-15 08:21 pm (UTC)The demographic shape of Sverigedemokraterna also tells an interesting story. The leadership is well educated and very sophisticated. But their popular support is primarily based on people from a working-class background, sometimes unemployed, living in rural areas. This used to be a core constituency of the Social Democrats, but now abandoned by the changes in rhetorics and politics.
(Now, this changed to a degree in this election, and Sverigedemokraterna made inroads in the major cities. I'm talking very broad trends here.)
But this also means that there is nothing "ordained" about a 10% "lunatic fringe". It's a group that has been created and shaped.