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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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It's election today in Sweden.

Despite what people might think, there seems to be less excitement or conflict internally in Sweden than usual, ime.

The two blocs have largely converged on a set of desired policies and the question is just where the focus should be and just how hard you should go. One might argue that this makes a large difference but I would say that this at the very least diffuses a lot of the drama surrounding the election itself. People kind of expect things to continue on largely as they have been regardless of who wins. We've had debates between the leaders of the two major parties where one says something and then for the other to just reply "I completely agree".

There is no side that doesn't want to restrict immigration, there is no side that wants to dismantle the nuclear reactors, there is no side that doesn't want to join NATO, there is no side that doesn't want to strengthen the police. Etc.

Interestingly, where people have radically different opinions about things it's within the blocs rather than between them. Both blocs have parties for and against private profit in the "public sector", both sides have parties for and against rent control and both sides have parties for and against lowering or keeping the current levels of unemployment income insurance.

Even the drama surrounding the Sweden Democrats (anti-immigration/xenophobic populists) has somewhat died down. It's still there to be sure and part of the peculiarities about this election and the likely issues with governing after it has to do with this, but the hysteria is mostly gone in my estimation.

So, who will win? Who knows. It's incredibly even and might come down to a few votes or one of the smaller parities unexpectedly not making parliament (there is one on each side in the risk zone).

More interesting to me will be how the actual formation of government and governance will shake out after the election. The social democrats have been able to govern on their own for the past 8 months or so with a very small number of votes directly supporting this (also having to use the right wing parties budget) and it seems unlikely to continue after the election if they win since this was kind of a bridge solution after a crisis last winter and the next election being so close.

On the other side there is the issue of the Swedish Democrats and how they will be incorporated in a ruling coalition. The other parties don't want them in the government, which they might be fine with, but there are pretty severe issues surrounding the fact that SD is in many ways more closely related to the social democrats policy-wise than the right, despite often being labeled as "far right". One salient example of this is them saying that lowering the unemployment insurance payments is a "red line" for them, but it's a campaign promise for the right... This is obviously not the only issue.

Regardless of who wins things aren't going to be easy but my analysis is that the internal contradictions are a smaller on the "right" but that the social democrats are skilled political operators and might do things like create bi-partisan agreements regarding some issues in order to sideline some parties on their side, kind of like what has happened with NATO.

There is no side that doesn't want to restrict immigration, there is no side that wants to dismantle the nuclear reactors, there is no side that doesn't want to join NATO, there is no side that doesn't want to strengthen the police. Etc.

All of this would seem like evidence of a general shift to a right-wing/conservative direction, no?

Depends on what one means by those labels.

Both blocs have shrunk to fuel SD's growth, but is SD right or left wing? They are anti-immigration for sure and plenty of their representatives are xenophobic but their economic and social security policy mostly aligns with the social democrats.

The biggest loser in Sweden the last 8 years is liberalism, which is kind of dead after it won fairly big back in 06 and ushered in massive changes in Sweden.

It seems the right bloc won the narrowest of victories, although we won't know for certain until Wednesday because it's so even. Perhaps a similar change will occur now. The social democrats seems to have been on board with rolling back many changes but couldn't do so due to their electoral coalition but I suspect they might quietly keep a lot of the changes the right bring about now if they win in 4 years.

It seems the winds of mild reaction has finally reaction has finally reached Sweden and it's a bit hard to tell where we'll be in 4 years. Or perhaps the left will pull out a truly astonishing comeback with the late postal votes and Swedes voting from abroad. We will see.

I've seen some Finnish politics nerds post their results from Aftonbladet's political compass thingy, and their presentation for party results from the compass seems to show SD on the right side of the of economic line.

I had not done that compass since I don't read the evening press but the results there seem a bit different from the other compasses I've tried and looking into it very briefly it seems like their methodology is different.

While the other compass makers have had the parties do the compasses themselves, Aftonbladet seems to source their answers from interviews etc. (Some of them pretty old) They also don't have any questions about social security which is peculiar.

I maintain that the primary identification of SD is populist. They promise both large increases in welfare and public sector and lower taxes. They want to finance this with cuts to immigration and foreign aid.

I don't think anyone really knows where exactly they stand, except that they are strongly against immigration. If the result stands we'll see where they are willing to compromise though.