Scandinavian social democracy

In elections held in Sweden recently, while the Social Democrats returned as the single largest party according to preliminary results, a fractured mandate left it with only 107 of the 349-seat strong Riksdag (Swedish legislature) and 30.33% of the vote share. This meant that the coalition that the Social Democrats were part of, which included the Centre Party, the Left Party and the Green Party, were left with 173 seats, as opposed to the right-wing coalition led by the Moderate Party, which bagged 176 seats. The Moderate Party itself won only 68 seats, two lower than its previous tally in 2018, but the major gains among the Right was made by the far-right Sweden Democrats who won 73 seats and 20.54% of the votes, according to preliminary tallies.

Incumbent Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson of the Social Democrats conceded defeat and resigned, even as Moderate leader Ulf Kristersson is expected to form the government with other right-wing parties offering support. Some members of the coalition — the Liberal party’s representatives — have expressed unwillingness to be part of a government that had the support of the Sweden Democrats and that has put a spanner in the works in the new government’s formation.

A threat to the Nordic model

The rise of the Sweden Democrats (SD), a party with origins in the neo-Nazi movement in the country, to the mainstream of the Swedish polity has much to do with the centring of the discourse over immigration in the country. Several voters have expressed their concerns with rising immigrant violence and control of crime. The SD has taken a strident position against immigrants — Sweden played a major role in allowing refugees fleeing the Syrian, Iraq and Afghanistan wars to seek asylum in the 2010s — by promising to make it extremely difficult for asylum seekers to enter the country. But does the rise of the polarising presence of the SD — which is not expected to be part of the new right-wing government but could lend issue-based support to it — threaten the political and social consensus driven Nordic model as it is called in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries? To answer that question, we need to understand what is meant by the Nordic model, or if U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’ version is accepted, “democratic socialism”.

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