As “promised” I have written a bit about Norwegian politics:
The political mishmash
For the edification of Eric, and anyone else that can be bothered to read this, here’s a sort of an explanation (probably simplified and probably using innacurate terms in trying to translate concepts from Norwegian) of the Norwegian political system interspersed with my highly biased notes on people and policies:
As Norway is a monarchy, the Prime Minister is, in effect, the head of state (the King, obviously, is the official head of state, but he only has power to veto a proposed law for 3 years, and hasn’t used this right in donkey’s years). We have parliamentary elections every four years, and whoever manages to get a majority in the house to support them get to be in government. After WW2, the labour party had a simple majority for many years, enabling them to rule pretty much without interference. However, as we have a multi-party system, the situation now is such that no party has a clear majority, and every election is followed by weeks of discussion between the parties to
create formal or informal coalitions (by formal coalitions I mean several parties being in government together, sharing the ministerial positions between them, by informal, I am referring to deals such as “we will support your attempt to form a government in return for your support on this proposed new motorway”, or similar). Naturally, politics being politics, anything but a clear majority for one party is liable to instabilities. Coalitions have collapsed over fairly major things, such as whether or not to attempt to join
the EU, but also over seemingly niggling little conflicts.
At present we have a coalition of three parties (one of which doesn’t actually even have seats in parliament this period – go figure!), supported variously by different parties to have a majority (which party tends to differ from one bill to the next). The three parties are:
Kristelig Folkeparti (“The Christian People’s Party” (KrF)) – who have a supposedly Christian foundation for their platform (it is not always very prominent, though), and who have “provided” us with the current PM, Kjell Magne Bondevik.
Høyre (“The right” (H) = the conservatives) – the closest we get to an equivalent of the British conservative party or the US republicans, in favour of such things as free trade and tax cuts and privatisation.
Venste (“The left” (V)) – Not “Left” at all (they’ve been around for a while), they are somewhere right of the middle, and pretty similar to the conservatives, though with a slightly more apparent focus on things like the environment. They’ve been in and out of parliament the last few decades, at the moment they are out – but have wrangled seats in the government (I don’t quite get this part myself).
Supported, most of the time, enough to stay in power, anyway, by Fremskrittspartiet (“The Progress Party” (FP)) – the Norwegian far right, of whom I am perennially suspicious. Their actual politics don’t differ overly much from the government coalition, but this is the one party who can occasionally come up with such ideas as castrating muslim immigrants to prevent them “multiplying” – not as official platform policy, mind you, but even contemplating it seems crazy enough to me. Also fond of finding scapegoats, and have blamed various groups, for example single mothers, at one point or another for all the ills of society. Obviously the party in favour of the strictest immigration laws. Luckily they seem to spend most of their energy quarreling among themselves, unluckily this does not prevent voters supporting them.
Then we have Senterpartiet (“The Center Party” (SP) – traditionally the farmers’ party), the most staunchly anti-EU, and the ones who shout most about keeping the districts alive through subsidies and such. They seem to have become more environmentally minded over the last decade or so.
Arbeiderpartiet (“The Labour Party” (AP)) is just that, traditionally, largely responsible for building the Norwegian wellfare state. Lately they seem to be moving further to the “right”, privatisation is no longer a four letter word, and free trade is not necessarily a bad thing. The party platform still focuses on the welfare state, sustainable development, workers rights and child support of various kinds, though a lot of their faithful voters are becoming disillusioned and moving away from the party – they’ve lost the ability to govern alone (even with a minority but supported by one other party), but have not yet resigned themselves to the idea of being part of a coalition, it seems.
Sosialistisk Venstreparti (“Socialist Left-wing Party” (SV)) – is pretty much what it sounds like. In favour of most things meant to make life better for everyone as long as it’s environmentally friendly (naivistic summary). Can get rather unrealistic at times, but at least they mean well, and it seems to me they are the only major party where the majority of the MPs are in politics because they believe in an ideal of sorts rather than because it’s an interesting career. But that’s just my impression.
Rød Valgallianse (“Red Election Alliance” (RV), basically the communist party) – until recently (and possibly still, I haven’t checked) they had “armed revolution” as part of their official platform, which seems a bit odd. A mixture of “old-time” communists and young anarchists of the No Logo persuasion. I don’t think they’ve ever had more than on MP at a time, at the moment they have none.
The “odd one out” is Kystpartiet (“The Coastal Party” (KP)), which was started some years ago by Steinar Bastesen to defend the rights of fishermen and whalers in the north of Norway. It now seems to have taken over the role of the labour party for a lot of people in this region.
That’s a run-down of the parties that are either in Parliament or in with a fighting chance of getting there. In addition we have The Pensioneers’ Party, The Natural Laws Party and several more or less weird ones, more or less sincere. Some of the smaller parties are represented at at county level, even if they don’t have a chance in the national elections. The oddest of these was started prior to the election last year by two comedians, and is called Det Politiske Parti (“The Political Party”). It’s what you may call a protest against traditional politics, and one of their main ideas is to keep the website and possible phone-lines open so that their voters can reach them at any time with issues they want raised, for example in the Parliament “Question hour”. They also planned on letting the people vote on-line in issues of national importance, in order to make sure they were really speaking the mind of their voters. As it was, they never got the chance to test their theories, but they did manage to create quite a bit of fuss…
To find out more about the Parliament as an institution, visit Stortinget’s web-pages in English.
And now for the really opinionated bit: You’ve probably realised that I’m left-wingish in my views. I’m also rather disillusioned by the whole political shebang. Half the politicians seem to be in politics just to be in politics, which brings me back to Douglas Adams (“Anyone who can persuade other people to make them president should on no account be allowed to do the job”). Take our current government, for example. KrF actually had “Kjell Magne as Prime Minister” as their main “issue” in the last election, to the exclusion of everything looking remotely like an actual issue. They won through with it, too, but one wonders what causes they had to give up or postpone in order to co-operate peacefully with Høyre. Well, I wonder, anyway. To anyone from the US this might not seem so strange, considering US elections are a lot more about persons in the first place, but although politics are always going to be about personalities, admitting that the main purpose of the party is to “get into power” in and of itself, rather than “getting into power in order to fight for these issues”, seems to me to be somewhat different. Or maybe I wouldn’t have minded so much if I actually agreed with them on the issues. Who knows.