Swedes aren’t sweating their recent shift to the political right

By Clayton Macdonald

On Sept. 17, 82 percent of the Swedish electorate went to the polls to elect the government that will dominate the nation’s legislative agenda for the next four years. They voted for (which does not necessarily mean they chose) a move toward the more business-oriented policy of parties that represent narrower, individual interests – the right. Given the boot were parties that represent broader, communal interests – the left.

Though Sweden has a parliamentary system with proportional representation, the mildly left Social Democrats have been able to dominate Swedish governments for most of the last 80 years either independently or through coalitions. Now, however, there has been a move to the right with socially conservative and business parties proactively working together under an umbrella political organization called Alliance for Sweden.

With a rather young and photogenic politician, Fredrik Reinfeldt, from the mildly right Moderate Party in the leadership role, and the use of strategy reminiscent of Labour’s recapture of the British parliament 10 years ago, the Alliance put together a politically dominant operation that effectively caught the right and just enough more voters to tally 48.24 percent of the returns. Together, the major left parties managed only 46.08 percent. The Social Democrats garnered their smallest percentage since the election of 1914, although they continue to have the largest number of seats in the parliament, 130 out of 349. Alone among the left parties, the Greens managed this year to increase their seats, from 17 to 19. As long as the Moderate Party is able to hold the Alliance together they will be able to control the parliament with 178 seats to the opposition’s 171.

In Sweden, to be awarded seats in the parliament a party has to either get four percent of the overall vote or 12 percent in one district. In total, 5.67 percent of the vote went to parties that did not achieve either threshold, and the greatest number of votes in that group, 2.93 percent of the total, went to the Swedish Democrats, a far-right, anti-immigrant nationalist party that is not part of the Alliance. Two left parties in the “other” category had modest showings: the Feminist Initiative with 0.68 percent and the Pirate Party with 0.63 percent. The standard analysis of the election seems to assume that the Social Democrats lost largely because the voters have become tired of them, that they simply felt it was time for a change. That change seemed to be embodied in Reinfeldt, who ran as a “New” Moderate with a promise to fine-tune the Swedish welfare model rather than disembowel it. The Social Democrats were seen as being weak in providing “real” employment and as having manipulated unemployment figures by counting as employed many who were “just” getting training or were engaged in social “make-work” programs.

These considerations do seem to account for some of the voter shift toward the right, but there is also a now worldwide pressure that is generated by a drumbeat of “growth” and “competitiveness” before all; those that fail to heed the drumbeat will be overrun by the Chinese or the Americans or the Europeans or the fill-in-the-blank. This fear is clearly present in many EU policies that explicitly emphasize a supposed need for competitiveness. This is especially so since the adoption of the Lisbon Strategy which calls for Europe to be the most competitive region on the planet by 2010. Combined with growing unease about labor migration and the changing limits of sovereignty, it is little wonder that Sweden is following the EU in the move toward a business-oriented, competitive model.

On the street, there appears to be little distress at the change in government. As in simple majority voting systems like the U.S., proportional representation tends toward dancing around some already established policy position. The Swedish reaction seems to be one of general unconcern, perhaps well represented by one voter’s analysis: “As the Alliance’s politics have become almost ‘Social Democratic’ in the past years I can’t really say the thought of them being in charge now really worries me. Perhaps they might sell out state-owned companies and introduce policies that are less fair across the board. On the other hand, I think the majority of Swedes won’t let the ruling Alliance take too many of the welfare advantages away. The one thing that worries me a lot, though, is their environmental policy - or rather lack thereof.”

How far to the right the Alliance wants to carry Sweden remains to be seen. How far the voters will allow themselves to be carried is also an open question. We’ll be sure to watch the government’s performance in the economic and environmental sector closely and how well the electorate tolerates it.

Former Tallahassee resident and Clayton Macdonald is currently living in Sweden. Stay tuned for more dispatches from a Land in the Midnight Sun (soon to be long winter nights…).