Sweden: Where “Losers” Form Coalitions
The election of a new government in Sweden owes as much to proportional representation as it does to the rise of the Sweden Democrats.
“Losers don’t get to form coalitions. Winners are the ones who form government.” — Former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Sweden’s national Riksdag election from last weekend will convince few in first-past-the-post voting systems to move to proportional representation. Three days after the election, Social Democratic Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson conceded her government’s defeat, and acknowledged that Moderate Party leader Ulf Kristersson will form the new government. A normal event in a democracy, until one considers that the Social Democrats had increased their vote from 28.1% in 2018 to 30.1%, while the Moderates, as leading opposition party, declined from 19.8% to 19.1%. Sweden uses a close to pure proportional representation system, where party lists contest elections across 29 constituencies and seats are allocated, for the record, using the “Sainte-Laguë” method.
Countries with first past the post voting systems often defend them with the argument that the unrepresentative legislatures and artificial majorities that result are a small price to pay for governability. In particular, these artificial majorities smooth the process of government formation. Observers in these countries mock places like Belgium, which took a year and a half to form a government that carried a parliamentary confidence vote after the 2019 national election, or Germany, where the Scholz government took office three months after the 2021 election, even though the makeup of the its coalition was already announced on election night. They contrast this with the United Kingdom, where a new prime minister receives the monarch’s commission the morning after an election.
In Sweden, as in any parliamentary system, governments derive their mandate from the confidence of the legislature, that is, the support of a parliamentary majority. The majority need not be drawn from just one party, nor is it necessary that the largest party in the legislature be part of, or even support, the government. Proportional representation systems, by design, lead to party systems in which multi-party alliances are necessary in order to form governments. Sweden’s analogue to a two-party system is one based on two party alliances, a “Reb Bloc” led by the Social Democrats, and a “Blue Bloc” led by the Moderates. The Social Democrats dominate their bloc, and have the support of smaller leftist parties such as The Left (former Communists) and the Greens. The Moderates lead a four-party bloc that includes Christian Democratic and liberal parties that are closer to equal in size than on the left. The Moderates have supplied the prime minister on four separate occasions, but the Social Democrats have been the largest group in every Riksdag since 1914.. Swedish election returns will track results by party, but alongside a running count of the totals for each bloc. While the Social Democrats built a ten-point lead over their closest rivals, the two blocs were in a virtual tie for the entire count, with the Red side losing its small lead as the count progressed, and the Blue Bloc eventually won 49.7% combined versus 48.8% for the Red Bloc. The Blues will hold a 176-173 edge in the Riksdag, which is what Swedes consider the final result of the election. It is not a stark change from the 2018 election, where the left-wing bloc won a single-seat majority that broke down over the course of the parliament.
So what changed in four years to cause a four-seat shift to end in such dramatic change? One can point to issues like the coronavirus pandemic (Sweden’s public health measures were among the least stringent in Europe and its death rate from COVID was among the highest) and an increase in gang-related murders in Swedish cities since the pandemic began. However, these did not appear to drive movement of voters between the blocs. Instead, there was fundamental change within each bloc. First of all, the Center Party, which for decades allied itself with the Moderates, switched its allegiance to the Social Democrats when it joined Andersson’s government to buttress its thin majority. The Center Party left its traditional home in response to the Moderates’ alliance with the Sweden Democrats, a party formed in 1988 as the political wing of a collection of neo-Nazi and white nationalist movements. Over thirty years it contested elections as a right-wing populist party focused on immigration. Its vote share grew consistently, and by 2018 was large enough at 17% to make it impossible for the Red or Blue blocs to win a majority on their own. Near the end of 2019, the Democrats began to negotiate an alliance with the Moderates.
The Sweden Democrats took 20.5% of the vote this year, and have become the second largest party in the Riksdag. In most systems, SD leader Jimmie Åkesson might claim the prime minister’s position, but the SD remains controversial enough that the rest of the Blue Bloc would not have held together. Again, Sweden does not have a tradition of the largest party necessarily claiming leadership positions–it seems that the SD will not formally join the government or hold cabinet positions, and will merely support a government consisting of parties smaller than itself.
The leading political story in Sweden for the next four years will surely be how the right side of the political spectrum evolves with the Sweden Democrats working in cooperation with a Blue Bloc government, and whether they are able to grow in support to a degree at which the government will need to include them to survive. But underneath these developments lies the importance of the structure of Swedish proportional representation and the related conventions of government formation.
References:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/losers-do-get-to-form-coalitions-constitutional-experts-1.519108
https://www.dn.se/sverige/magdalena-andersson-erkande-sig-besegrad-sverige-far-ny-regering/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/world/europe/sweden-election-result-right.html
https://www.riksdagen.se/en/how-the-riksdag-works/democracy/elections-to-the-riksdag/
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/senaste-nytt-om-svensk-politik-och-valet-2022
https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/val2022/pussla-ihop-sveriges-regering/
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2010/06/03/coalitions_of_losers_dont_get_to_govern_pm_says.html
https://valresultat.svt.se/2022/