PR, Negative Parliamentarism, and Sweden’s Budget Vote

On 3 December, Sweden’s Riksdag effectively rejected the budget proposed by Prime Minister Stefan Löfven’s government. In response, Löfven announced that he would call a snap election, which is scheduled to take place on 22 March. Löfven cannot officially call for a new vote until 29 December; but this means that, less than three months after going to the polls, Sweden must begin preparing for another general election.

Budgets are variously proposed or announced. In the United States, the President submits a budget request to Congress between each January and February. This request is referred to the House and Senate Budget Committees, who submit budget resolutions which their respective chambers are expected to pass by the middle of April. However, the House of Representatives and the Senate may submit their own budget proposals; and they are not obliged to pass the budget resolutions they are submitted. Even if both chambers do pass budget resolutions stemming from the original request submitted by the President; and even if the differences between the two chambers are then reconciled; the resulting budget resolution is not binding, but serves as a guide to be enacted by Appropriations Committees and appropriations acts. In short, the passing of the budget in the United States is a complex and adversarial process, which has been characterised throughout the Obama administration by gridlock and the prospect of government shutdown.

In the United Kingdom, by contrast, the budget is announced in the House of Commons by the Chancellor before the end of each March and – owing to the tendency for the first-past-the-post electoral system to produce majority governments – is usually passed by parliament with little fuss. Annual tax measures are passed as a matter of course on the very day of the budget announcement; and further resolutions are passed after four days of debate in the Commons and a more limited debate over a single day in the Lords; although the Finance Bill which ratifies these measures will work its way through parliament over the course of the next several months. Whatever, in both the United States and the United Kingdom, the passing of the budget is not fundamental to the formation of government. The situation which has arisen in Sweden – where a budget vote has not only halted parliamentary proceedings, but has effectively brought about a new parliament’s dissolution – owes to Sweden’s electoral system and its process of investiture.

Elections in Sweden to the unicameral Riksdag take place using a modified form of the Sainte-Laguë method of proportional representation. This is a highly proportional electoral system, which in its modified form is slightly weighted in favour of large and medium-sized parties. More, in Sweden there is a 4% election threshold, which a party must reach to secure representation. Back in September, the Feminist Initiative failed to reach this threshold, taking 3.12% of the vote – a significant increase on the 0.4% they managed in 2010, but not enough to secure a seat in the Riksdag. Finally, of the 349 seats on offer, 310 are fixed constituency seats; while the remaining 39 are classed as ‘adjustment seats’, apportioned to ensure that each party in the Riksdag takes a share of the seats proportional with their national share of the vote.

In practise, for the 2014 Swedish general election which was held on 14 September, this system saw the following results:

2014 Swedish General Election Results

Again, the Feminist Initiative, despite a surge of support, missed out on representation in the Riksdag with 3.12% of the vote; the Pirate Party took 0.43%; and a host of parties smaller still took 0.10% or less.

These figures show why Stefan Löfven and his Social Democratic Party have struggled to form a government. The four centre-right parties now in opposition – the Moderates, the Centre Party, the Liberal People’s Party, and the Christian Democrats – have worked together since 2004, as a coalition called the Alliance for Sweden. The Alliance governed Sweden after the general elections of 2006 and 2010, first as a majority then as a minority government, and with Fredrik Reinfeldt of the Moderate Party serving as Prime Minister. Though governing as a minority after 2010, the Alliance only missed out on a majority in the Riksdag by two seats, and were still able to pass legislation efficiently. In order to challenge the Alliance, the three left-wing parties – the Social Democrats, the Green Party, and the Left Party – had banded together to form a coalition named the Red-Greens. The Alliance took 173 seats to the Red-Greens’ 156, while the far-right Sweden Democrats – shunned by the mainstream parties – entered parliament for the first time with 20 seats.

Though the Red-Greens coalition was dismantled following the defeat of 2010, and the three parties did not campaign together prior to this year’s general election, the fact that the left bloc won more votes in September than the centre-right bloc comprising the Alliance allowed the left bloc – and the Social Democrats, as the party with the most votes by some margin – to form government. This remained the case even though the Social Democrats refused to join with the Left Party in coalition. Instead, forming a coalition with just the Green Party, Löfven stated his intention to woo some of the centrists: in particular, members of the  Centre Party and the Liberal People’s Party.

It is useful for a full understanding of the outcome of the September election to note that it did not mark a return to a Social Democratic hegemony. Indeed – while their share of the vote has fallen significantly over the last twenty years – the Social Democrats have received more votes than any other single party at every Swedish general election going back to September 1917: a history I recounted in the immediate aftermath of this year’s polls. Even in 2006 and 2010, when the Moderate Party saw a surge of support and the Alliance were able to form successive governments, the Social Democrats still led the polling. At the same time, even if the Social Democrats had opted to form a coalition with both the Green Party and the Left Party in September, this would have left them with 43.62% of the vote and 159 from 349 seats – some way short of an overall majority. That they have even been allowed to initiate a government from a smaller coalition suggests a tradition of electoral determination in Sweden which rests upon a reading of the political spectrum and the popular will, rather than a narrow consideration of the mathematics conducive to the strongest government.

With only the Greens affording their immediate support after September’s general election, Löfven’s new government was built upon 37.9% of the vote, holding only 138 from 349 parliament seats. This is a perilous position for any government, and only rendered possible because Sweden follows a system of negative parliamentarism.

The concepts of ‘positive parliamentarism’ and ‘negative parliamentarism’ typically imply the process of investing a government: that is, the process of confirming a new leader and a new government’s right to hold office. In some countries – such as the United Kingdom – there is no formalised investiture vote. Positive parliamentarism indicates that a new leader and a new government must win a majority of parliamentary support for their positions to be confirmed. Negative parliamentarism, on the other hand, indicates that a new leader and a new government will be confirmed provided that a majority of parliament does not vote against them.

So on 2 October, the Riksdag approved Löfven as Sweden’s new Prime Minister; but remarkably, with only 132 members of parliament explicitly voting to approve his position. Setting a record for a lack of support shown towards a new Prime Minister, against the 132 Social Democrats and Green Party members who voted to approve Löfven, all 49 Sweden Democrat members of parliament voted against him, while 154 opposition members – from the Left Party as well as the Alliance – abstained, with 14 members absent.

Barely clinging to the veil of legitimacy, this already looked bleak for the government’s prospects come the budget vote in December. Yet Löfven still hoped to sway the centrists, or to at least win their temporary support so that his first budget could pass. As with the investiture vote, Löfven and the Social Democrat-Green Party governing coalition did not need to win a majority of support for their budget; they just needed to ensure that a majority of parliament did not vote against it. With the budget vote to take place on the first Wednesday of December, on Tuesday Löfven was still seeking cross-party support. His failure to achieve this – with the Alliance remaining resolute – left his government at the mercy of the Sweden Democrats.

The far-right Sweden Democrats – who campaign on a firm anti-immigration ticket; who have gained support significantly through their steadfast opposition to the mainstream, traditional parties; but whose capable leader, Jimmie Åkesson, is currently on a leave of absence, which he began in October, citing chronic fatigue – demanded decisive talks on immigration with Löfven in return for allowing his government’s budget to pass. Löfven refused such talks. On 3 December, separate budgets were proposed by the government; by the Alliance; and by the Sweden Democrats. When the Sweden Democrats’ budget fell in the first round of voting, in the second round, rather than abstaining, they opted to vote with the Alliance. Thus the government’s budget took only 153 votes – with just the Left Party siding with the Social Democrat-Green Party coalition – while 182 members of parliament voted for the budget forwarded by the Alliance.

After the budget vote, there were several slender avenues still open to Löfven. In theory, his government could have continued to function, but following the Alliance budget: a possibility, but a palpable absurdity for a new government. More realistically, he could have sought a new vote after another round of negotiations and an earnest attempt to compromise. Instead, he immediately called a snap election.

The Social Democrats and the Green Party have accused the Alliance of allowing the Sweden Democrats to hold the government to ransom. The impact of the Sweden Democrats at this juncture raises questions for other countries who follow or may wish to follow a proportional electoral system, and face rising powers on the far-right. In the context of electoral reform in the United Kingdom, there have been proposals to use the Sainte-Laguë method towards an elected House of Lords. Meanwhile, an Alternative Vote system has been proposed as a semi-proportional alternative to the use of first-past-the-post at general elections. Those in the UK who would have supported a more proportional system five years ago, when the Liberal Democrats were on the ascendancy on the left of politics, would now face the prospect of proportionality playing into the hands of UKIP.

The Alliance have refuted the Social Democrat and Green Party’s allegations of ‘unprecedented’ irresponsibility. Instead, they have accused Löfven of reneging on early promises and refusing to make compromises. The Sweden Democrats have, in turn, criticised the collective arrogance of the political mainstream. In a press conference immediately following the budget vote, Löfven stated that new elections in March would allow the Swedish public to ‘make a choice in the face of this new political landscape’. The Social Democrats and the Green Party will campaign as one ahead of these elections, hoping that the public will recoil from the perceived obstructionism of the right, and provide them with a strong mandate upon which to govern.

Update: On 27 December – with the news coming as a surprise just two days after Christmas, following a series of covert inter-party talks – Stefan Löfven’s government announced that a budget deal had been reached with the four parties of the Alliance, thereby curtailing plans for a snap election in March. Löfven’s minority coalition, comprised of the Social Democrats and the Green Party, will therefore remain in power.

Under the terms of the deal – which Löfven dubbed the ‘December Agreement’ – from 2015 until 2022 parties in opposition will abstain from voting against the government’s budget. This prevents the scenario which occurred in early December, when with the two main groupings in parliament voting for their own budget proposals, the right-wing Sweden Democrats effectively held the balance of power – and opted to vote to bring about the government’s defeat. In essence, the deal ensures that a minority Swedish government will be able to function.

As part of the deal, Löfven’s government will follow a modified Alliance budget for the remainder of the year. The government and the Alliance will also seek further cooperation in the areas of immigration policy, pensions, energy, and defence. Presented as a responsible compromise between Sweden’s mainstream parties, the deal serves to castigate and marginalise the Sweden Democrats. It equally sidelines the Left Party, whose leaders were also absent from the announcement.

Speaking alongside the leaders of the Green Party, the Moderates, the Centre Party, the Liberal People’s Party, and the Christian Democrats, Löfven stated ‘Sweden has a proud tradition of solving difficult problems across party boundaries: a tradition which doesn’t exist in any other country’. Annie Lööf, leader of the Centre Party, echoed the sentiment, noting that Sweden has possessed a minority government for all but eight years since the end of the 1970s.

In related Swedish political news, on 10 January Anna Kinberg Batra was confirmed as the new leader of the Moderate Party, officially replacing Fredrik Reinfeldt, who stepped aside following his two terms as Sweden’s Prime Minister.