Nicholas Aylott

Towards a two-party system? The Swedish parliamentary election of September 2006

The Swedish Social Democrats are one of the most successful political parties in the democratic world. Between 1932 and 2006 they were out of government for just over nine years, and had not needed a coalition partner since the 1950s. The result of Sweden’s election of 17 September 2006, then, must count as something of an electoral earthquake (see Table 1). The Social Democrats suffered their worst score in a parliamentary election since 1920 – that is, since the advent of fully democratic politics. Göran Persson, prime minister since 1996, immediately announced his resignation as party leader – the first time in the Social Democrats’ long history that a leader had resigned after electoral defeat. By contrast, the result was a spectacular success for an unprecedented alliance of four opposition, right-of-centre parties, led by the new prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt. His Moderate Party achieved its best result since 1928 and the biggest jump in support between elections enjoyed by any party in Swedish history. The four allied parties duly formed a coalition government three weeks later – the first Swedish administration formally based on a parliamentary majority since 1981. The election outcome had one ostensibly puzzling feature. The conventional wisdom is that booming economies favour incumbent parties, while stagnant ones favour the opposition. In a post-election article, Persson (2006) pointed out that, among other shining economic indicators, inflation in Sweden was negligible; the public finances would probably enjoy a surplus that year of 3 per cent; and the economy had grown in the second quarter of 2006 by a remarkable 5.1 per cent. Why, then, when the Swedish economy was apparently performing so impressively, did the governing party nevertheless suffer such a profound defeat? In this article, we describe and explain the election result. In the following section, we outline the background to the campaign, with a review of events

After the Divorce Social Democrats and Trade Unions in Sweden

Well-known theories of party organization and behaviour suggest that the mass parties of Western Europe have evolved into new models, with more powerful and autonomous leaderships and weaker memberships and collateral organizations. However, these theories have not really been tested in in-depth case studies - particularly beyond the national level of the parties. This article examines the mass party par excellence, the Swedish Social Democratic Party and focuses on the partys traditionally close relationship with the blue-collar trade unions. There is evidence to support the theories of party change, but these organizational developments are patchy at the local level. Moreover, various data deployed in support of the theories may be understating the enduring influence of collateral organizations within parties.

Polarising Pluralism: The Swedish Parliamentary Election of September 2014

The parliamentary election in Sweden on 14 September 2014 resulted in defeat for the four-party centre-right coalition that had governed for eight years. It was displaced by another coalition, comprising the Social Democrats and the Greens. The new government rested on a very narrow parliamentary base, however, and its prospects looked uncertain. Its weakness was in large part due to the strong electoral performance of the far-right Sweden Democrats.

A meeting of social science and football : Measuring the effects of three points for a win

In this essay, we examine the introduction of three points for a win in senior football, a reform that eventually became universally adopted. We have two objectives. First, we seek to answer the question of whether the effect of the new system has justified its proliferation. The second objective is to present a methodological discussion about how to measure this effect, which involves judgments that many would say are entirely subjective and which, at best, are hard to operationalize – a problem that is not unusual in social science. We measure the ‘excitingness’ of football through constructing an index of two distinct features of any match. We then apply the index to our data by combining quantitative analysis with strategic case-selection. Our preliminary findings are that three points for a win does seem to boost footballs excitingness, but that the improvement takes four to five years to take full effect.

Between Europe and unity: The case of the Swedish social democrats

Sweden voted in November 1994 to approve EU membership. Although the Social Democratic Partys leadership advocated approval, the membership was badly divided. Against the backdrop of two Nordic sister parties’ similar difficulties, this article examines the leaderships management of the internal conflict. It analyses the evolution and main elements of its management strategy, the most important being an attempt to accommodate rather than confront the partys Eurosceptics. As the leaderships two goals for 1994, an election victory and a ‘Yes’ in the referendum, were both achieved, the strategy must be considered a qualified, short‐term success.

Managed Intra-Party Democracy : Precursory Delegation and Party Leader Selection

The question of how party leaders are selected has recently, and belatedly, come under systematic comparative scrutiny. If it is the location of intra-party power that interests us, however, it might be that some of the more observable indicators in such processes, such as the identity of the selectorate, are not actually the most revealing ones. Using a delegation perspective, we thus present a framework for analysing prior steps in leader selection and relate it to various ideal-typical constellations of intra-party power. The framework encompasses, first, what we call precursory delegation, with focus especially on an agent that, formally or informally, manages the selection process before it reaches the selectorate. Second, the framework takes account of the degree to which the process is managed rather than left open to free competition between leader candidates. We illustrate the framework primarily with instances of leader selection in two Swedish parties.

The Swedish Greens: a big step forward – and several steps back

The parliamentary election of 14 September 2014 induced decidedly mixed feelings in the Swedish Green Party (Miljöpartiet de gröna). It led to the ejection of the centre-right government and the installation, for the first time, of Green cabinet ministers. However, the party also experienced a small but unexpected loss of votes compared to its score in the previous election. Moreover, partly because a far-right party built impressively on its breakthrough into the national parliament in 2010, the new government rests on a precariously narrow parliamentary base.

A Question of Priorities: Candidate Selection in Estonian Political Parties

This article addresses political-party organization in Estonia, especially candidate selection. Its first objective is to describe the ways in which the main parties chose their candidates before the 2011 parliamentary election. A second objective is to evaluate those procedures in light of expectations generated by established theory. The focus is on two conditions: the institutional framework, particularly the electoral system, and the relative youth of Estonian democracy. The evidence confirms these expectations only partially, which suggests that an individual party’s ideological, organizational and strategic circumstances, in addition to structural and institutional conditions, are critical to understanding why it performs this basic function as it does.

The Swedish Social Democratic Party

The Swedish Social Democratic Party is often referred to in English by its acronym, SAP, from its name in Swedish, Socialdemokratiska Arbetarepartiet. SAP can justifiably lay claim to being Europes most successful political party. By 1998 it had been in government for a remarkable 61 years since universal suffrage was established in Sweden in 1921, all but ten without the need of a coalition partner (excluding the national government that governed during the Second World War, see Table 15.1). Twice, in 1940 and 1968, it won a majority, not just a plurality, of votes cast. As recently as 1994 it was capable of winning an impressive 45.3 per cent. However, maintaining its political hegemony will be an immense challenge for the party.

Sweden: Power to the Parliamentarians?

This final empirical chapter brings us to Sweden, the third EU member among the Nordic states. Sweden joined the Union at the start of 1995. Accession followed a referendum in October the previous year, in which the electorate approved the terms of membership by a fairly narrow margin. After that, opinion polls consistently showed Swedes to be among the EU’s least enthusiastic citizens. Although outright opposition to membership gradually diminished (Tallberg et al. 2010: 86–94), Euroscepticism remained represented in the party system.