In the gap between redistribution policy and value policy
European politicians, at least Western European and from the established parties, have been thrown into a new political era, which they have rightly and wrongly translated the sign of – and that out of ignorance and belief in their own excellence. Victories in elections and government formation have become guidelines for thought and handling. Both in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, the social democrats have had considerable power over time and the parties have had a large support. But things change.
The winning recipe in Denmark
At the general election in Norway on 13 September last year, Erna Solberg (H) had to give up government power, and Ap and Sp took over together with the support party SV. But this government, as is known, is doing extremely poorly, according to the subsequent opinion polls. Ap has soured over three measurements in the 19th century, the question is whether the fall will continue, while Sp can perhaps start steeling for the barrier limit. “Most people” feel let down by this government, at the same time that rich people are leaving us. This does not just mean that tax money disappears, but eventually probably also production and thus fewer jobs. SV, on the other hand, which is more after the money of the rich, is doing well, but it also does not like it well for the government now, when SV has to negotiate with them about the state budget. Høyre is (again) by far the country’s largest party and FrP is also on the rise. If Ap and Sp do not manage to snu skuta, they can look a long way for continued trust in 2025.
In Sweden’s elections to the Riksdag (September 11), the governing coalition, the Social Democrats and the Green Party with the supporting parties Vänsterpartiet and Centerpartiet, lost the majority with 173 representatives, while the Sweden Democrats, Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals gained a total of 176 representatives. Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, who despite leading the country’s largest party with 30.3 percent, admitted defeat, but without admitting that her government has failed to solve the enormous challenges the country is facing, not least the development of crime. The Director of the Riksdag (Speaker) has instructed M leader Ulf Kristersson to form a new government, even though M with its 19.1 percent became the second largest party on the bourgeois side. SD with 20.5 percent was the largest. A new government is still not in place, which in all likelihood is about how to give SD least possible political power. But what was startling in the Swedes’ election was that all the biggest parties agreed Danish political line with the watchword: stricter and more value-conservative.
In Denmark, there will be an election on 1 November after the Radicals have pressured the Social Democratic Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to call for new elections. The election can be a bit of a “horror”, as a lot has happened in Danish politics after the election in 2019, and it is between the blocs. It has also come to several new parties, for those formed by ex-Left representatives who can rush right into the Folketing. It is Inger Støjberg’s Danmarksdemokratene, which is around 10 percent, and Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s Moderates, which nobody really knows where they are, either politically or in support. They have been around 3 percent, but in the survey, which was taken up after a new election that became known on Wednesday, they make a jump to over 6 percent. The Social Democrats also do well with just under 27 percent, more than they got in the last election (25.9 percent). The Danish People’s Party, for its part, fought against the barrier border. In the 2019 election, it caused a stir among researchers that the Social Democrats won and that they have done well.
The British social scientist Matthew Goodwin, professor of political science at the University of Kent and author of several books on the causes and effects of political populism, believes that Mette Frederiksen’s winning recipe is that she has managed to take a party on the left to the right in value politics.
In other words, completely at odds with what Jonas Gahr Støre and Magdalena Andersson are doing with their parties and social democrats.
The voters vs the politicians
– With the exception of Denmark, which is a famous deviation from the norm, most parties on the left wing – due to progressive activists in the hinterland – are unable to move to the right in value politics, says Matthew Goodwin in a debate interview with Berlingske.
But why do we have to go to the right in value policy? Yes, it’s about what the voters want, Goodwin can explain.
– If you look at the average voter, for example in Great Britain, he is a little to the left in distributional politics and a little to the right when it comes to value politics. You want the state to intervene to make the economy fairer, but you also want the state to protect and secure national borders, have a moderate level of immigration, and protect and preserve the nation and the national community, says Goodwin.
Because voters don’t just want to talk about jobs, wages and energy, they also want to talk about things that have become more relevant since the 1980s – and which go right into value policy.
– This applies to migration, culture and borders, and how we raise our children related to sex, gender and race, states Goodwin.
The average voter in the Western European democracies thus strives for a social democratic distribution policy, national unity and a conservative value policy. But here is not the average politician, according to Goodwin.
– The average politician is far more liberal, both when it comes to economics and culture. Basically, there is a lot of research that shows that the political class during the last 50 years has not been well educated, but extremely highly educated. They like to have doctorates, they are rich and they live isolated from the rest of the population, says Goodwin, and continues:
– This applies especially to left-wing parties, which have become home to highly educated people. Over time, the politicians have come to represent a liberal and well-educated minority, which perhaps makes up 20-25 percent of the population. And this has led to a large group of people not feeling represented by a new ruling political class.
Perhaps it is precisely this that explains the Ap/Sp government’s stomach-churning with “most people”. Most Western European countries tend to look towards the political center both to capture “the majority of the people” and to keep the extreme parties, both on the left and the right, out of power as far as possible. We see this in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. For the latter, this point has become abundantly clear recently, as Løkke Rasmussen’s Moderates are founded on the idea of a government across the established parties in the blocs, and when Mette Frederiksen launched the new election, she surprised by announcing that (also) her updated government is across from the red and blue block in the middle – even with herself in the lead, even if she didn’t say it outright.
But from Goodwin’s analysis, it is no longer easy to find this political center. In addition, European politicians and the electorate have gradually distanced themselves so far from each other that they no longer agree on how the middle in Western democracy should be defined in general. And it gives another result:
– It results in the emergence of new parties and the dissolution of old coalitions. It simply makes it increasingly difficult for the parties’ efforts to hold together voters and old alliances, says Goodwin.
Coalitions and extremes
We see that parties try to stay in the middle to keep the extremes away, both in Europe and the USA, where national populist parties have consolidated as a serious political force, says Goodwin. We also see that established parties, both on the left and the right, lose large voter shares to either new parties or, especially for working-class voters, become sofa voters, he continues. In other words, one tries something new, perhaps in despair or curse, or gives up politics. Many simply feel abandoned by the politicians who seem more concerned with their own position and political power than anything else.
Countries in Europe have met these political challenges in somewhat different ways. For example, both the Netherlands and Germany have made great efforts to create fragile majorities across the middle, thereby isolating the outer wings. We saw the same in Sweden at the 2018 election (to keep SD out), and in Norway there was some doubt as to whether Sp would choose the red or blue side. The latter could lead FrP into government again. But instead of dismissing populist parties and their voters as either amoral racists or some kind of temporary defect in the political system, Goodwin sees the rise of parties such as the Alternative für Deutschland, the Sverigedemokraterna and the Rassemblement National in France as an outgrowth of a growing trust gap between politicians and voters. He could also be cited as an enormous success for the Danish Democrats, who in a few months have established themselves at around 10 percent of the voters.
– The populist parties may not always win elections, but they change the basic rules of the game in politics. If we look at it in a longer perspective, it is ultimately because many of today’s political parties were established to function in a completely different historical era, says Goodwin.
In France, Emmanuel Macron came to power in 2017 when he consolidated his grip on the center with the party, or rather, the liberal movement «En Marche», which Macron believes unites the right and the left. He then swept the other parties off the field, but in this year’s presidential election he was severely weakened compared to Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National. In last year’s German elections, the grand coalition between the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) failed to retain power. Instead, the SPD has formed a government with the left-liberal environmental party De Grønne and the liberal party FDP. A government that is struggling, while Alternative für Deutschland is doing well in the latest opinion polls. In other words, it is an extremely difficult exercise to keep the voters away from the extremes.
The explanation is perhaps, as Goodwin analysed, that it is a pervasive trend in Western democracies that identity, culture and values have become more important than the distinction between red and blue redistributive politics.
– We have now entered a new phase of modern democracy, where the dividing line is no longer between the economic left and right wing. It is also about a minority consisting of social liberals and a majority consisting of cultural conservatives. These are the two groups that are currently fighting to define the political future, says Goodwin.
With us in this battle we also find a number of other “challengers”, namely new forms of media, TV channels, newspapers and social media. The established media struggle with much of the same as the established parties, they do not keep up with the changing times. The voters’ attitude to immigration, Islam, the national community, control of national borders and identity politics are not captured well enough by the media, perhaps on the contrary, as our established media, especially the state channel NRK, belong to the liberal elite. NRK believes that they can prove their existence by trying to court the youth, but since they have not realized that young people in Sweden, primarily young men, voted for the Moderates and SD. Could it have something to do with changing times?
We may know something else about how important value policy is; extreme parties on the left do not manage to grow significantly – even with all the world’s help from the established media about the climate crisis, hostility to immigrants, right-wing extremism and Islamophobia. This is how you set out the mentioned concepts and have also managed to make “controversial” a compliment.
The idea of forming governments across the party blocs is in any case to deviate from what has been the winning formula of the Danish social democrats, and as far as I know it exists as a successful government of the kind. But that makes it perhaps easier to meet the average voter’s wishes about economic distribution and the value policy than having to move one’s own voters in one direction or the other.