For years Sweden has tried to reduce the influence of parties at the fringes of the spectrum, so far with modest success. Denmark is now showing how it’s done with its central government. However, the decisive politicians had to jump over their own shadows.
The Danish Social Democrat Mette Frederiksen (centre) presents her new government, flanked by the heads of her conservative coalition partners, Jakob Ellemann-Jensen (left) and Lars Lökke Rasmussen (right).
“Breaking election promises is the prerequisite for our parliamentary system to be able to move forward” – this is the provocative theory of the Danish system, summed up in a catchy formula Political scientist, journalist and spin doctor Noa Redington. But Redington knows what he’s talking about; he has years in the engine room of Danish politics behind him. From 2008 to 2015 he was an advisor to the top social democratic politician Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who was the first woman to lead a government in Denmark from 2011 to 2015.
As Redington recently explained to Danish Radio (DR), for the past fifteen years or so there has been a panic among the major parties that their voters will accuse them of breaching their word. This situation caused a political standstill, because no one dared to make a big leap.
Minority governments and strict bloc politics
There were several reasons for this. One is that the Danish political system favors minority government. In fact, the country last had a majority government three decades ago.
Between 2015 and 2019, the bourgeois party leader Lars Lökke Rasmussen showed how successfully one can muddle through. Back then, he managed to get through an entire legislative period with an alliance that did not even come close to having a majority within reach. He fell back on a silent coalition partner or, depending on the business, on changing ad hoc alliances.
The social democrat Mette Frederiksen ruled in a similar way after him, also for almost a full term. It was only at the end that there was a rift with one of the support parties, so that new elections were due.
A second important feature of the period described by Redington was that politics followed a fairly strict classic left-right pattern. There was the “red block” with the Social Democrats and various small left-green parties. This was opposed by the “blue bloc” with the bourgeois party Venstre as the leading force and a kaleidoscope of formations ranging from liberal to nationalist-conservative. There was a deep gulf between the blocs, across which there was only a certain consensus on a restrictive migration policy.
An epochal political step
Against this background, what has happened in Denmark in recent weeks is downright epochal: After her election victory on November 1, the Social Democrat Mette Frederiksen announced that she wanted to form a centrist government, even though the “red bloc” she led was one achieved a wafer-thin majority. And while the Venstre party leader Jakob Ellemann-Jensen had insisted before the elections and for a while afterwards that he would “never” go into a coalition with the Social Democrats, he finally broke this promise in a spectacular way. Because since Wednesday he has been in a government alliance with the Social Democrats and the Moderates, Lars Lökke Rasmussen’s new party, where he is the defense minister.
Frederiksen gave the reason for her concept of a centrist government that in times of crisis like the current one, broader political support than usual is necessary. The argument is certainly correct, but the shrewd tactician Frederiksen must have had other things in mind. After almost four years of driving with four smaller parties, she wanted to free herself from being dependent on their special requests.
If the “blue bloc” had won the November elections, Jakob Ellemann-Jensen would have faced the same problem. He would have needed the votes of all seven parties in this camp; including three formations that are pointedly right-wing conservative and would undoubtedly have announced their special requests. Without certain contortions, the bourgeois party leader would hardly have gotten away with it.
Because, as the political scientist Noa Redington explained to DR: There are twelve parties in parliament today with twelve different ideas about which policy is the right one. If you want to bring about even one single decision that moves Denmark forward, Redington said, there is always someone who has to break their word in such circumstances.
Will Sweden follow?
Compared to the voters, who are still sitting in the “red” and “blue” political trenches that have been fortified for decades, the social democrat Frederiksen and the middle-class Ellemann-Jensen have now decided to “break their word” instead of staying within their respective camps and having to make countless smaller compromises there. It is a liberation that takes them out of the dependency of the parties that populate the political fringes. Mogens Lykketoft, a veteran of the Social Democrats, attested to party leader Frederiksen’s solid political work.
That’s an interesting contrast to Sweden. Not only is the political system very similar there to Denmark, but also the dynamics of the party landscape. For ten years, Swedish politicians have been struggling with how to deal with the right-wing Sweden Democrats. The original consensus was to marginalize them. But the bill didn’t add up.
Elections were also held in Sweden this autumn, with a similar stalemate result as in Denmark. But in Stockholm neither the social democrats nor the bourgeoisie were willing to abandon the traditional bloc politics. Today, the right-wing nationalists are the second largest parliamentary force after the social democrats, but ahead of the bourgeois party. And not marginalized, but as part of the ruling power bloc.
“Is Denmark showing us the way again?” asked a commentator in the Swedish newspaper “Aftonbladet” after the government was formed in Copenhagen. With a little delay and actually against their own will, Sweden tends to land where Denmark has already arrived. Whether it’s about tightening the asylum policy or fighting gang crime more energetically, Sweden has long turned up its nose at both cases. Or, as is the case now, a government based on the “broad center”.