![]()
1
Introduction
Scandinavian politics between myth and reality
Anders Wivel and Peter Nedergaard
The rebirth (or rebranding?) of Scandinavia
Scandinavia has become a symbol of advanced postmodern societies. Building on their particular versions of the welfare state and acknowledged for their United Nations activism and respective contributions to Third World development and dĂŠtente, the Nordic countries self-consciously positioned themselves as a âThird Wayâ between communism and capitalism during the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing âAmerican World Orderâ together with increasing globalization and market competition resulted in a collective âidentity crisisâ in the Nordic welfare states and threatened their positions as model societies.
Consequently, the Scandinavian societies have reinvented themselves in two, sometimes contrasting, ways. On the one hand, the Nordics have actively adapted to the rapidly globalizing and Europeanizing economic and political structures in which they are embedded. This process has entailed the normalization of some of the allegedly particular Nordic characteristics of their societies, such as welfare and labour market policies, in order to increase their economic competitiveness and financial resilience and maintain political stability through the rethinking of the flexibility and security elements (often called âflexicurityâ). This process has introduced new challenges, such as increased migration and a widening gap between cosmopolitan urban elites and more traditionalist rural constituencies, which affect policies as well as public opinion. On the other hand, in the face of waning Scandinavian distinctiveness, the political and cultural elites of the Scandinavian countries have actively and deliberately worked to reinvent âNordicityâ. This reinvention includes the showcasing of aspects of Scandinavian societies, such as gender equality and equal access to education and health services, as well as promoting the distinctly modernist and functionalist Scandinavian design and architecture as well as food and drink linked to the Nordic terroir. In addition to rebranding Nordicity, Nordic policy-makers have attempted to reinvigorate Nordic cooperation by commissioning a number of high-profile reports exploring its relevance and potential in a Europeanized and globalized context (Stoltenberg 2009; Strang 2012; Wetterberg 2010).
At least when it comes to the (re-)branding of Scandinavia and Norden, this has proven a success. Thus, whereas a prominent observer of Scandinavian politics argued in a 2007 article on âbranding Nordicityâ in the premier journal on Scandinavian international relations that the decline of Nordic exceptionalism and the melding of European and Scandinavian practices had undermined the Nordic brand (Browning 2007), this no longer seems to hold true. In contrast, the rebranding of Nordicity has provided part of the foundation for â and been further strengthened by â a resurging interest in Nordic politics, economics and culture and a comeback for these societies as âNordic lightsâ showing others the way in a time of conflict and crisis. Examples of this successful rebranding abound. In 2013, for instance, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC hosted a festival featuring 700 Scandinavian artists celebrating so-called âNordic coolâ: âUsing a smart mindset on power, the Nordics show that both soft and hard power capacities, part of one power toolbox, are the critical components that comprise a nationâs global brand ⌠Together they are a formidable little giant to be reckoned with both economically, culturally and militarilyâ, as reported by AndrĂĄs Simonyi and Erik Brattberg from The Johns Hopkins University (Simonyi and Brattberg 2013). Nordic (re-)banding is also evident in both theoretical and practical political discourse. One of Americaâs most influential political thinkers and public intellectuals, Francis Fukuyama, argues in his magisterial account of the development of the political institutions of the world that the central challenge is âgetting to Denmarkâ, a country that Fukuyama sees as characterized by stable, accountable and democratic institutions (Fukuyama 2014). In May 2016, US President Barack Obama hosted a state dinner for heads of state and government from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden (Roberts and Heil 2016). At the dinner, Obama toasted the âenormous, positive influenceâ of the Nordics on the United States and underlined how, in the eyes of the US administration, these countries âpunch above their weight. In their values, in their contributions, not just to making their own countries function well, but to make the whole world a better place makes them one of our most valuable partners everywhere in the worldâ (Obama 2016).
The celebratory approach to Scandinavia is by no means limited to the United States. The Reputation Institute, an international research and advisory firm, has carried out interviews with 26,000 persons from the G8 countries, consistently ranking the Nordic countries in the top ten in the 2010â15 period. Other indexes, such as the Country Brand Index and the Good Country Index, also place the Scandinavians in the top tier.1 In the context of the Sustainable Solutions Development Network (SSDN) commissioned by the UN Secretary General, a group of independent experts has written the World Happiness Report, where all of the Nordic countries placed in the top ten of the 2016 edition, Denmark taking first place, followed by Iceland (3), Norway (4), Finland (5) and Sweden (10) (Helliwell et al. 2016). In the Institute for Economics and Peace 2015 Global Peace Index measuring a wide range of factors threatening the lives and well-being of citizens at home and abroad, Iceland and Denmark are ranked 1 and 2, with Finland (6), Sweden (13) and Norway (17) also faring well (Institute for Economics and Peace 2016). To be sure, this strong brand is by no means a recent phenomenon. As early as 1936, Marquis W. Childsâ classic Sweden: The Middle Way provided a bestselling and still influential account of how societal reforms regulating capitalism allowed the budding welfare state to ensure that the domestic economy would âserve the greatest good of the greatest numberâ (Childs 1936: xii). More recently, the Scandinavian states were celebrated as examples of âconsensual democraciesâ (Elder et al. 1982),2 successful âcorporatistâ small states (Katzenstein 1985) and international ânorm-entrepreneursâ (Ingebritsen 2002), adding to the Scandinavian brand as a region that was at the same time different from and better than the rest of Europe and the world; an assessment largely shared by Scandinavian elites and electorates (WĂŚver 1992).
The aim of the book
The main objective of this book is to provide a critical assessment and comprehensive overview of Scandinavian politics provided by leading experts in the fields of Scandinavian comparative politics, foreign policy and public administration. We seek to explain and understand contemporary Scandinavian politics by critically discussing the state of the art in the field and identifying the main characteristics of contemporary Scandinavian politics together with the most important trends.
An important secondary aim of this volume is to provide a nuanced account of our understanding of Scandinavian politics today and over time by unpacking the similarities and differences between the Scandinavian countries and tracing how these similarities and differences developed over time. As documented by the contributions to this volume, there are important similarities and variations among the Scandinavian countries no matter whether we focus on the organization of their polities, the political landscape and how societal actors navigate it in individual countries or the concrete policies. On the one hand, the Scandinavian countries share a number of characteristics. They are welfare states with comparatively generous welfare provisions and high taxes and free and equal access to education and health for all citizens. In all five countries, the political and societal elites responded to the economic crisis of the 1930s with a fundamental bargain combating poverty and unemployment with extensive social programmes, public works projects and subsidies, thereby laying the foundation for the Scandinavian welfare state.3 All of the Scandinavian countries have strong civil societies and contribute actively to the maintenance and development of international society in areas such as conflict resolution and climate politics. The Scandinavian countries are affluent and well-organized, characterized by effective bureaucracies and very low levels of corruption. In issue areas such as peacekeeping and labour market policies, it has even become commonplace to speak of a Nordic âmodelâ, both in the prescriptive and descriptive senses of the word.
On the other hand, there are notable differences among the Scandinavian countries. Even when we speak of a Nordic model, in some issue areas there are important developments over time and notable differences between the Scandinavian countries. Typically, three of them â Denmark, Sweden and Norway â tend to share more characteristics with each other than with Finland or Iceland, reflecting the long-shared political, diplomatic and administrative histories of these countries. In external relations, however, the foreign policy activism of Denmark is much more closely coupled to the United States than to that of Norway or Sweden, which remain wedded to a more traditionally Scandinavian, UN-based activism. Finland allows a much greater role for the EU, while Iceland is notably less activist than the other countries (Wivel 2014). The dividing line between NATO founding members Denmark, Norway and Iceland versus non-aligned Sweden and Finland continues to structure the opportunities for and demands on national Nordic defence policies, even though the increasing use of ad hoc coalitions in military affairs and the rise of Nordic defence cooperation in recent years have softened the effects of this divide (Forsberg 2013). In EU politics, there is a divide between insiders Denmark, Sweden and Finland on the one side and outsiders Norway and Iceland on the other, although these boundaries tend to be blurry in policy areas such as justice and home affairs and security policy, with the outsiders sometimes playing a more active role than the insiders (Grøn et al. 2015; Miles 2005). Moreover, some issue areas that previously served as part of a solid foundation for developing the Scandinavian brand have in recent years been overtaken by European developments. Thus, for example, beginning in the late nineteenth century, tri-annual Nordic Lawyersâ Meetings underpinned the creation of a Nordic legal culture, but in the 1990s this development was undermined by developments in the EU, which crowded out Nordic legal cooperation and shifted the focus of legal innovation and cooperation in the Nordic region away from Scandinavia and towards Brussels (Letto-Vanamo and Tamm 2016). More generally, the Europeanization of classic Scandinavian high-profile issue areas such as conflict resolution, international development, human rights and environmental protection has led to the apparent âeclipseâ of Norden in international affairs, although this may also be interpreted as the successful âNordificationâ of the international profile of the EU (Laatikainen 2003). In this context, the recent increase in the ambition and activism of the Nordic Council of Ministers, focusing on the âincreasing usefulnessâ of Nordic cooperation, may be interpreted as a pragmatic reinvention of Nordic cooperation tacitly accepting that, on most aspects of Scandinavian politics, these countries do not constitute a community or an alliance but are more accurately described as a cluster of states sharing a number of affinities moulded by centuries of political interaction and interdependence, but only rarely developed into a coherent political platform.4
This book does not aim to asse...
