Sweden's election Sunday, the far right, and the struggling center

Sweden had a national election Sunday. The press coverage in Europe and America was focused largely on how well the far-right, xenophobic Sweden Democrats would do.

This Spiegel Online count (Wahl in Schweden 2018: Ergebnisse im Überblick 09.09.2018) breaks the results down this way (rounded here):

Social Democrats 28%
Moderates (a centrist party) 20%
Sweden Democrats 18%
Center Party (liberal in European sense) 9%
Left Party 8%
Christian Democrats 6%
Liberals (in European sense) 6%
Greens 4%
Other 1%

Polls had been showing a potential for as much as a 25% vote for the Sweden Democrats. So even though the party gained significantly over the previous election, it didn't achieve what for democracy supporters would have been the worse scendario of 25%.

It's dilemma enough as it is.

Sweden's current government headed by Prime Minister Stefan Lofven is a coalition of Lofven's Social Democratic party with the Greens, tolerated by the Left Party, which means the Left Party doesn't vote to change the governing coalition but is not a coalition partner and doesn't get ministries.

Nick Rigillo and Amanda Billner run through various post-election coalition options in , A Guide to Sweden’s Next Government After Its Inconclusive Election Bloomberg News 09/108/2018.

It's particularly notable that the two largest vote-getters in the election, the center-left Social Democrats and the center-right Moderates, did not win enough seats to be able to form a majority government by themselves.

Marco Giuli makes an important point.

Would appreciate to see it reported this way: in EU country with largest number of refugees per capita, 82% of voters did NOT vote for far-right nativists #SwedenElection #VAL2018

— Marco Giuli (@MarcoGiuli) September 9, 2018

In the 2015/early-2016 surge in immigrants and refugees into Europe, Germany famously accepted the largest number. But per capita relative to population, Sweden accepted the most, Austria second, and Germany third.

As I dig into immigration statistics in Europe, I've become more aware of the different ways refugee numbers can be parsed. I assume that Giuli is referring to net number of refugees. The numbers can also be parsed by gross numbers of immigrants. There is also a difference among the various concepts of refugees, political refugees, asylum seekers, economic refugees, and immigrants. The xenophobic groups in Austria and Germany prefer to talk about "migrants", to minimize the amount of distress from war and climate change that drives current immigration into Europe. "Migration" invokes less of an image of desperation than, say, "people fleeing for their lives beause they were about to get murdered in a civil war because of their religion."

One of the things that polls in Germany, Austria, and the United States show repeatedly is that people who live in areas where there are immigrants present in significant numbers and people who have personal contact with immigrants are less likely to support anti-immigrant parties than those who do not. There is a strong inverse relationship, in other words, between familiarity with living breathing immigrants and support for anti-immigrant parties and policies.

As imporant as it is to recognize the limited nature of the Sweden Democrats' win Sunday, it doesn't mean that there aren't serious problems for the established parties going forward. Jon Henley discusses this in Real story of Sweden's election is not about march of the far right Guardian 09/10/2018:

The real story of Sweden’s election is not, as the prevailing narrative has it, the irresistible onward march of Europe’s far right but the continuing decline of the major parties of government, the fragmentation of national votes and the rise of a number of smaller parties.

In a trend visible across Europe, the electoral base of the leading mainstream parties is shrinking. “The bigger parties are getting smaller and the smaller parties getting bigger,” said Sarah de Lange, a political scientist at the University of Amsterdam and a specialist in Europe’s radical right.

Across the continent, mainstream parties and alliances that once dominated national politics are in retreat, most notably on the left, making coalition-forming harder – even in countries, like Sweden, long used to coalition government – and producing weaker, potentially shorter-lived governments.

The neoliberal economic and social paradigm that both center-left and center-right parties have embraced over the past two decades and more, the Reagan-Thatcher notion of TINA, i.e., There Is No Alternative to pro-corporate and anti-labor policies, has failed in many ways. The EU's brutal and reactionary handling of the Greek debt crisis is probably the single most dramatic example.

I would argue that the failure of this model is also seen in the inability of the EU to achieve a practical and humane collective policy to address the chronic immigration crisis that has been here since at least 2011.

Since it was the traditional base of the center-left parties that have been the most obviously hurt by neoliberal failures, those parties have shown their loss of voter support more than the center-right in the last 15 years. But the trend is hitting the center-right parties, as well. As Henley notes of Sunday's election in Sweden, "the big established parties of the centre-left and centre-right, the Social Democrats and the Moderates, lost 6.3 points between them."

Violence in Sweden

This is a small example of the kind of discussions we need to see about political violence, or in this case violence with political significance that needs to be understood on multiple levels. Julia Herrnböck writes about last week's riots in Sweden (Jugendkrawalle in Schweden: Tickende Zeitbomben Der Standard 23.05.2013).

She observes that the violence seen in the Swedish rioting lacks any clear goal, in contrast to a protest over a particular issue. (That would hold for a protest that for whatever reason turns violent, as well; there is some definable goal at stake.) She writes:

Brennende Autos und fliegende Ziegelsteine stehen nicht für klare Ziele. Sie sind ein Akt der Verzweiflung und der blinden Wut. Keine Frage, die Gewalt, die wie ein Buschfeuer von den Vororten in die Städte Schwedens zieht, ist unentschuldbar. Nur: Welche Forderung soll ein junger Mensch auf sein Schild schreiben, der jetzt schon den Verdacht hat, nicht gebraucht zu werden? Der weder Halt noch Anerkennung in der Gesellschaft findet?

[Burning autos and flying pavement stones do not stand for clear goals. They are an act of desperation and blind fury. No question, the violence that rushed like a bush fire in the suburbs in the cities of Sweden, is unforgiveable. Only: What demand can a young man write on his sign, who now already has the suspicion that he isn't needed? Who finds neither a place nor recognition in society?]

But wait, Americans might say. Isn't Sweden one of the richest countries? And don't they have extensive social services?

Well, yes, they are and yes, they do. But they also have 25% youth unemployment. And: "Sweden, known for its strong welfare state and egalitarian society, has had the biggest surge in inequality of any Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country over the past 25 years, according to a recent publication by the global economic watchdog." (Rioters burn vehicles and buildings in Sweden Aljazeera English 24.05.2013) Yes, distribution of income matters. A lot.

And they have a very permissive immigration policy, more so they any other EU nation. (Bernd Parusel, Schweden: Migration für Markt und Menschenrechte Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 5/2013) A policy which for better or worse is likely to become more controvesial after last week.

Aljazeera English reported after the second night of rioting, Riots in Sweden continue after police shooting 05/21/2013:

As Aljazeera's reports note, what touched off the riots was a police shooting of a 69-year-old man. Such incidents were often the trigger for the urban riots in the US of the 1960s, as well.

This BBC video report (sorry, I couldn't see a way to embed it) does a brief and rather cynical analysis of the cause of the riots, a superficial one focusing on immigration, What lies behind Sweden's riots? BBC News 05/24/2013.

And this RT report ('Multiculturalism failing': Violent riots engulf Stockholm suburbs 05/22/2013) also focuses on immigration and "multiculturalism", basically highlighting only the views of the anti-immigrant National Democrats Party, a splitter party that got too few votes in the last election to win representation in the Swedish Parliament, the Riksdag. The anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats won 6% and thereby representation in the Riksdag. The two largest parties, the Social Democrats and the Moderate Party - the latter having a name David Brooks would love - have up until now supported the open immigration and asylum policies.

Sweden has also been affected by the neoliberal plague, as Johan Sennero and Johan Ahlander report for Reuters in Sweden's capital hit by worst riots in years 05/22/2013:

After decades of practicing the "Swedish model" of generous welfare benefits, Sweden has been reducing the role of the state since the 1990s, spurring the fastest growth in inequality of any advanced OECD economy.

While average living standards are still among the highest in Europe, governments have failed to substantially reduce long-term youth unemployment and poverty, which have affected immigrant communities worst.

The left-leaning tabloid Aftonbladet said the riots represented a "gigantic failure" of government policies, which had underpinned the rise of ghettos in the suburbs.

"We have failed to give many of the people in the suburbs a hope for the future," Anna-Margrethe Livh of the opposition Left Party wrote in the daily Svenska Dagbladet.

Tags: austerity economics, eu, euro, european union, sweden