There is an election for the Swedish parliament this Sunday, but I don’t have time to vote then, so I slipped down to the local library today and got it done, after a few weeks of painstaking research and soul-searching to decide what the hell I was going to vote for. But now it’s done and I have exercised my democratic privilege for the sixth time in my life. Feels good.
That’s all.
What all options/issues were there?
Wow. This is going to take a while. You my even be sorry you asked.
The system works like this: We have a parliament (legislative branch) consisting of 349 seats. It used to be 350, but in the seventies one bloc managed to get 175 seats and another bloc got 175 seats and important issues were decided by drawing lots… no jokes. A party needs 4% of the popular vote to get into the parliament.
The parliament appoints the cabinet (executive branch) and can depose it or any individual member of it, but this very rarely happens. In practice, the parliament doesn’t so much appoint the cabinet as formally approve of it, as a cabinet is suggested to the parliament and no-one is dumb enough to suggest a cabinet the parliament won’t approve of.
The Social Democrats used to be big enough to be able to form a cabinet all of their own, but no more. For a long time they’ve had to enlist the help of other parties to reach a majority in parliament and form a cabinet. This situation has created to blocs, one leftist and one rightist.
These are the major parties involved:
The leftist bloc:
Socialdemokraterna (The Social Democrats): Personifying the Swedish way of life since 1932. Since that year, they’ve been in power except for three three-year terms (1976-1982 and 1991-1994). Many people consider this a bad thing, but since I love where Sweden is right now, I can’t really complain about it.
Vänsterpartiet (The Left Party): The leftest mainstream party in Sweden. I doubt there’s an American analogue. They used to call themselves Communists; they don’t anymore, but there’s still some controversy about it (the current party leader called himself a Communist and there was an uproar about it). Their politics have become more and more centrist since the eighties, but they’re still as far left as you get while still having a chance to get into parliament.
Miljöpartiet (The Environment Party): I guess the closest American analogue is the Green Party, but I know little of the latter’s politics. Miljöpartiet’s politics are leftist even for Sweden, but with focus on the environment. One of the party spokespeople made the election very interesting when she said on TV that the party would not help Socialdemokraterna form a cabinet if they didn’t get a minister post out of it. This means, provided they keep their promise/stick to their threat, that if the leftist bloc wins we’ll se a cabinet with social democrats in it but not consisting entirely of social democrats for the first time since 1975. That will have a profound effect on Swedish politics, and is a big reason why I voted for Miljöpartiet.
The rightist bloc:
Moderaterna (The Moderates): The closest thing Sweden has to a mainstream conservative party. After the last election, the worst in many a year for this party, they redesigned their politics and image and have been marketing themselves as a new workers’ party.
Folkpartiet (The People’s Party, but it doesn’t sound quite so Sovietesque in Swedish): They call themselves liberals (which still means “anti-authoritarian” rather than “leftist” over here) and have had a bunch of good suggestions while unfortunately having zero skill in dealing with the press, which resulted in them being demonized over reasonable ideas such as having mandatory Swedish tests for immigrants.
Centerpartiet (The Centre Party): Once an association of farmers, now the rightist party that’s closest to being leftist. There have been talks of them helping Socialdemokraterna form a cabinet if the two small leftist parties prove intransigent, but those rumours were summarily dispelled by the party leader in a television interview recently.
Kristdemokraterna (The Christian Democrats): A fairly conservative party with Christian values. Opposes gay marriage, gay adoption and all that jazz. You all know the drill.
In addition to these there are fringe parties, such as a Communist party, a Nationalist party, a really interesting party called Aktiv Demokrati that I just might do work for next election, Piratpartiet that wants to legalize filesharing, and so on. They’re highly unlikely to get seats in the parliament.
The big issues were, I guess, crime (harsher penalties or not, rightists are for and leftists against; more police officers or not, no clear dividing line between rightists and leftists), gay adoption (rightists against, leftists for), immigration (but no-one mainstream is really saying they want to let fewer immigrants in, racism is a really hot button here), the property tax (rightists want to abolish and leftists stay as quiet as possible as the property tax is unpopular), mandatory splitting of parental leave between mother and father (leftists for, rightists against), nuclear power (we had a referendum on it in the eighties that decided to abolish it in the next twenty years or so; little progress has been made and popular opinion has shifted), privatized health care (rightists for, leftists against), privacy issues (bugging and the like), grades starting earlier in school (rightists for, leftists against), and government subsidies for services like housecleaning (complex debate, ask about it if you really want to know). I’m sure I missed a few.
That’s it in a huge nutshell. Sometimes when I read debates about American politics on this board (I read them a lot although I rarely post to them) I think about the huge differences in detail that exist between American and Swedish politics (while the general thrust remains the same), and I realize that those same differences probably exist between every country and every other country in the world and I feel very very very very tiny.
What’s the one about grades starting earlier in school? You don’t get graded for work till a certain age?
We start getting grades in the 8th year of school, at age 14.