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7. Swedish Democracy: Crumbling Political Parties, a Feeble Riksdag, and Technocratic Power Holders?
- University of Michigan Press
- Chapter
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7 ✦ Swedish Democracy Crumbling Political Parties, a Feeble Riksdag, and Technocratic Power Holders? T O R B J Ö R N B E R G M A N A N D N I K L A S B O L I N Swedish democracy is changing once again. The parliamentary democracy originated with a separation-of-powers system that was far from democratic, but the “working constitution” (in Swedish, “den levande författningen”; see, e.g., Mattson and Petersson 2008) gradually became quite similar to the parliamentary democracy ideal type and the Westminster model. Today, Sweden is on the way back to a separation-of-powers system, but in a new Madisonian form (see chapter 1). The separation-of-powers constitution, from 1809, remained in force through 1974. It was based on a formal division between, on the one hand, the king and his cabinet and, on the other hand, the Swedish parliament, the Riksdag. However, by 1917, the principle that the political survival of the cabinet rested with the parliamentary majority was firmly established. Over the years that followed, the disparity between the letter of the constitution and constitutional practice continued to grow (Bergman 2003, 2004). The new constitutional practice was eventually further reformed and codified in a new constitution that came into force on January 1, 1975. The new constitution, the Instrument of Government, proclaims that all public power proceeds from the people (Article 1:1), and it declares that the parliament, the Riksdag, is the foremost representative of the people (Article 1:4). The Riksdag legislates and approves the national budget, and it is the political basis for the cabinet. In this constitutional design, there are few constraints on nationally elected politicians and the political parties that are central to representative democracy. Since the mid-1970s and increasingly during the last two decades, a new 251 252 ✦ T H E M A D I S O N I A N T U R N separation-of-powers (or Madisonian) system has emerged. However, this time, the separation and the ongoing power struggle are not between the cabinet and the Riksdag. Rather, the new division of power is between the national center and both the supranational and subnational levels of decision making. It is also between elected politicians and “experts,” such as those in the courts or at the central bank. These new divisions function in a way that questions and limits the ability of nationally elected politicians to govern the realm. Yet these developments are not in any direct sense forced on the national political center, as was the case when the king lost out to the parliament almost a century ago. Instead, elected politicians at the national level have actively promoted these developments. In this chapter, we focus on the national political chain in the context of such changes. The Party System We start with the party system. The Swedish parties have traditionally been split into two competing blocs—one socialist (left), the other nonsocialist. The left bloc has consisted of the Communist (now Left) Party and the Social Democrats, while the right bloc has included the Liberal, Center, and Conservative (literally, the “Moderate”) parties. In 1988, these five established parties were joined in the Riksdag by the Greens. In 1991, the Green Party lost their seats in the parliament, but two other newcomers were elected, the Christian Democratic Party and the populist New Democracy Party. By the 1994 elections, the New Democracy Party had disintegrated, and it lost all its seats in parliament. The Greens returned to parliament, and the Christian Democrats retained their presence in the Riksdag. Table 7.1 shows the vote share of each party over time. The parties are presented according to their position on the left-right scale (pro or con to public ownership ), as established in an expert study by Laver and Hunt (1992, 305). Since 1994, there have been seven parties in the parliament. But beneath the surface, the seven-party system is not perfectly stable (or “frozen”). The Left, Green, Center, Christian Democratic, and Liberal Parties have all, at times, been close to the national threshold of 4 percent of the vote that is needed for a party to get Riksdag seats. In 2008, what most observers label as a populist, right-wing party with anti-immigrant connotations, the Swedish Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna), hovered around this national threshold. Another very important change in the party system is the relative weakening of the previously dominant Social Democratic Party. Including...