IS SOCIAL DEMOCRACY DYING IN SCANDINAVIA?

...Thus the Danish election somehow became, implicitly, a warning against the Great Society program in the United States...

...In this decade, the Agrarian parties of Sweden, Norway, and Finland recognized the consequences of that development and changed their names to Center parties, a logical step unless they were prepared to sink into political oblivion with the rapidly declining farm vote...

...But it revealed that even in the inner councils of conservative parties a liberal image is now considered essential for victory at the polls...

...This offers a positive clue to the Social Democrats as they prepare to embark on their future course...

...In foreign affairs, this consensus has already been almost fully achieved...

...The welfare state is irreversible, confining the Radical Liberals to arguing about ways of running it more cheaply...

...After this account of Social Democratic decay, presumably the reason why Danish voters turned to the right, Huntford's characterization of the Radical Liberal Party must have taken American readers aback: "In social policy, there is little to distinguish the Radical Liberals from the Social Democrats...

...By their own spectacular successes as reforming government parties, they have raised the working class from its former deprivation and compelled the older parties to embrace the social democratic welfare state...

...What seems to be emerging in Scandinavia is a large bloc of progressive conservative forces on the right and a large bloc of social democratic liberal forces on the left...

...What the socialist planners cannot accept, in Denmark or here," preached the Tribune, "is that as people grow better off (for reasons which usually have nothing to do with socialism), the need for welfare programs declines...

...They have to develop a new image of themselves, an image whose appeal cuts across the now obsolete divisions of society...

...Ideologically doctrinaire liberal parties have never found significant support among Scandinavian voters, no more so than ideologically doctrinaire socialist parties...

...Next September the Swedes go to the polls to elect a new lower chamber, and it seems likely that when the returns are in the Social Democratic Labor Party will find itself in the unaccustomed role of an opposition party for the first time—if we ignore a brief period in 1936—since 1932...

...It was time for a change...

...In any case, since the two conservative parties in that trio before the election held sixty-nine parliamentary seats to the Radical Liberals' thirteen, the claim was preposterous...

...The question, therefore, is not whether social democracy is on the way out in Scandinavia, for it is clearly not...

...By identifying the former exclusively with the latter, they introduce a fundamental assumption which today is grossly inaccurate...

...The social and economic reforms promoted and enacted under Social Democratic sponsorship since the 1930's narrowed the gap between rich and poor, between social classes, and between political extremes...

...The result was the jolt administered to it by the voters in September 1965, Labor's worst election defeat since 1930...

...The clear implication of this lead paragraph was that the current misfortunes of the socialist parties spring from their championship of the welfare state...

...Whatever the names of the parties, which often are misunderstood by Americans, the most "conservative" wholly embrace the social welfare state which is the now ripened fruit of the long years of effort of the Social Democrats...

...A number of conservative American newspapers were quick to draw self-serving lessons from the Danish experience...

...In September, 1965, the Norwegian electorate rejected the Labor Party's bid to stay in power for another four years...

...Not only did reporters contradict each other, but they frequently contradicted themselves...

...They had performed their reforming tasks so well that they themselves, as political organizations, were no longer indispensable to the future development of social democracy...

...Any political party which dares to campaign on a platform advocating the dismantling of the social democratic welfare state would slit its own throat...

...By equating the defeat of a Social Democratic government at the polls with the decline or even bankruptcy of social democracy, they misinform the American public dangerously...

...Gunnar Myrdal, the internationally known Swedish sociologist, has observed, almost plaintively, that "in our new welfare state there are fewer burning social problems, discontents, and political struggles...

...one of them, covering relations between Finland and Germany 1940-41, will be published in English later this year by the University of Wisconsin Press, their own contexts and addicted to analyzing such events exclusively within its own narrow framework, announced triumphantly that the Danes had finally discovered the truth: Socialism does not work...

...Scandinavian youths today satisfy their craving for engagement by identifying with American Black Power advocates, the Vietcong, and any other fighting underdogs they can locate abroad...

...The strength of the Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish Social Democratic parties remains formidable today, even though their grip on the reins of government is slipping...

...In domestic matters, it can never approach such complete harmony, but the old fighting issues are nevertheless decreasing in number and potency...

...The truth is that the social welfare concept is so deeply entrenched and so totally accepted by all parties in Scandinavia that it is no longer a political issue...

...The Danish party has held a simple parliamentary plurality since 1924...

...It had led them into "a trap of their own devising," and they were getting out...

...The Finnish party first emerged as that country's largest in 1907, a position it has held since except for brief periods in 1948-51 and 1962-66...

...For him, "Sweden has become rather boring," and he envies those countries which still have "problems and dramatic fights" (like the United States and the underdeveloped countries...

...Through the first two decades of this century, they threw their weight behind the drive for political democracy and universal suffrage led by the agrarian and middle class liberal parties...

...The fact is that the outcome of the Danish election this year did not, any more than did the outcome of the Nor"They have to develop a new image of themselves, an image whose appeal cuts across the now obsolete divisions of society...

...According to The Chicago Tribune, the Danes "tossed out the socialists" (as the Norwegians "threw out" theirs) because the costs of social security had "soured them on the alleged benefits of the welfare state...

...the Danish election has a single message," wrote Roland Huntford in his post-election analysis, "it is that liberalism has become an accepted concept in opposition to social democracy...

...And the Norwegian party has enjoyed the same position since 1927, with an absolute parliamentary majority in 1945-61...

...He is the author of two books in Finnish...

...That was the strategy adopted in Norway for the first time in 1965, and it worked...

...On the basis of past performance, the Social Democrats have the inside track in this race, and anyone prepared to assign them to imminent oblivion on the basis of their current difficulties is judging hastily...

...As the Scandinavian countries move toward consensus politics, the number of parties which can stay in contention is likely to decrease...

...The Swedish party has enjoyed unbroken supremacy since 1914, and it had an absolute parliamentary majority in 1940-44...

...And in the intensifying economic crises spawned by World War I and culminating in the Great Depression, they proved able to come up with practical solutions where the older parties had failed...

...It was Denmark's third parliamentary election since September, 1964, and its second in fourteen months...

...Americans are likely to think so, unless they have access to more accurate information than they read in their newspapers or hear on the radio...

...It would be hard to form any other impression on the basis of the coverage which the Danish election received in this country...

...If the Social Democratic parties are to be among these survivors, they must move quickly to attract the liberal voters away from the Liberal parties...

...Social democracy in the Scandinavian countries has come to stay...

...Are we observing the decline and fall of social democracy in Scandinavia...

...Anyone who read the election programs and public statements issued by the victorious "non-socialist" parties during the latest election campaigns in Denmark and Norway knows that their strategy was indeed, as Fred Coleman of the Associated Press noted in his analysis of the Danish vote, to steal the fire of the Social Democratic voter appeal by promising to run the established welfare schemes better and at lower cost...

...The clue is strengthened by the findings of recent socio-political investigations conducted in Scandinavia...

...The time will perhaps soon come when Norway's Labor Party must consider a name change, lest it chain its future fortunes to a declining "labor" vote...

...Only its operational details are disputed...

...In these three countries the Social Democrats can be defeated only if the "non-socialist" parties bury their differences and gang up on the Social Democrats...

...A coalition of the Center (formerly Agrarian), Conservative, Liberal, and Christian People's parties took over the responsibilities of government which Labor had carried since 1935 (except for a twenty-five-day interlude in 1963...

...The image for which the Scandinavian Social Democratic parties are now searching must fit the needs of the last third of the Twentieth Century...

...In the recently elected Danish parliament, in which six parties are represented, the Social Democrats hold sixty-two of the 179 seats (if we count the four non-party seats filled by separate elections in Greenland and the Faeroe Islands...

...While the Social Democrats would pay ceremonial lip service to socialist doctrines on May Day, they have always been pragmatic in their political practices...

...And Alexander Kendrick, who in his London days had an opportunity to develop a reasonably sound perspective on Scandinavian affairs, intoned funereally on his CBS Dimension program, "Tonight, Denmark joins Norway and Sweden as Scandinavia retreats along the socialist trail it once blazed...

...The Radical Liberal leader Hilmar Baunsgaard has no significant differences with the Social Democratic leader Jens Otto Krag in the area of social policy...

...How then, in view of the similarities between the victor and the loser, can the outcome of the Danish election be described as a consequence of Social Democratic decay or a hostile reaction to the welfare state...

...This was a superficial observation, based presumably on the pre-election claim of the victorious three-party coalition that it offered a "liberal" alternative to "socialism," although the only discernible difference in program might be a slightly heavier liberal emphasis on private enterprise...

...At the same time, they had been in power for so long that they were growing arrogant and stale...

...It signified quite the opposite...

...The Social Democratic parties have dominated the Scandinavian political scene for a very long time...

...The Chicago Tribune, pathologically incapable of viewing foreign events in H. PETER KROSBY is associate professor of history and Scandinavian studies at the University of Wisconsin...

...With that statement, Huntford is on safe ground...

...If "Ironically, the Social Democratic parties of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden can blame their current predicament on their spectacular success in selling their nations on social democracy...

...Which of these two forces will be the larger could depend on which bloc succeeds in attracting support from the Liberal parties at the center...

...Like most political parties in a multi-party system, they began their careers as class interest parties, dedicated to the political and economic emancipation of the workers...

...No longer could the Social Democratic parties claim monopoly rights to the principles they had pioneered and implemented...

...One explanation could be that "socialist" defeats anywhere are welcomed in the United States with grim satisfaction, and reporters and editorial writers are quick to draw sweeping conclusions which could be drawn only by Americans...

...It consolidated a number of existing social welfare programs, such as pension plans, and extended them to cover everyone in the country...

...According to these, the trend is toward the center, to consensus politics...

...Ironically, the Social Democratic parties of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden can blame their current predicament on their spectacular success in selling their nations on social democracy...

...Other parties no longer resisted them...

...There was a rising popular suspicion that the Social Democrats had become more concerned with the problem of remaining in power than with the ideas for which they ostensibly stood...

...After the shock of spending twenty-five days in opposition in the early fall of 1963, Norway's Labor Party saw the writing on the wall and tried to improve its standing by making a turn to the left: It attempted to revive its spirited revolutionary image of the 1930's, but Labor had badly misinterpreted the temper of the electorate...

...Only in Iceland has the party always remained a small minority party...

...Whatever the end result of the current political realignment, Americans must understand that the entire political spectrum in Scandinavia—left, right, and center—is considerably to the left of the range in the United States...

...Some managed to do so in the same story...

...But it will take a willingness to turn the reins of leadership over to a younger generation attuned to the present, and it will require a new and relevant image pointing toward the future...

...On the other hand, it is quite legitimate to ask whether the Social Democratic parties are on the way out...

...In Norway, the four-party "bourgeois" electoral coalition even promised to expand welfare coverage, and after its victory it proceeded to steer through parliament the biggest social reform in the history of Norway: the compulsory and all-inclusive National Insurance Act of 1966...

...Roland Huntford, who covers Scandinavia for The Observer of London and whose copy is picked up and distributed in the United States by The Washington Post, drew the following lesson from the Danish election result in his first story on it: "This probably means the end of the Social Democrats in Denmark, and almost the end of social democracy in Scandinavia...

...The Danish opposition parties did the same this year, and again it worked...

...These conclusions reflect a complete misreading of the political signals...

...The Washington Post drew the conclusion that socialism is "on the wane" in Scandinavia...

...For there is not, it would appear, a promising future in Scandinavia for political parties which present themselves as the exclusive champions of special interests...

...In 1916-17 it held an absolute majority in Finland's 200-member parliament...

...And in the Swedish 233-seat Second Chamber elected in 1964, the Social Democratic Labor party with 113 seats is only four short of an absolute majority over the other four represented parties...

...The main achievement of these regimes over the past few decades, according to Hunt-ford's (presumably sarcastic) verdict, "was the perfection of the welfare state, with its compulsory medical insurance, retirement pensions and general paternalistic pattern for regulating lives and saving people from themselves...

...Then, with all of their potential voters enfranchised, the Social Democratic parties came into their own...

...The flagrantly contradictory statements made by reporters and analysts about the facts and the portent of the Danish election provided grist for editorial writers of all political hues...

...A coalition government comprising the Radical Liberal, Agrarian, and Conservative parties was sworn in February 2, the first non-socialist cabinet since 1953...

...In Norway's 150-seat parliament, the Labor Party occupies sixty-eight—eight short of an absolute majority over the other five parties...

...In a post-election analysis, Fred Coleman of the Associated Press noted that the political fortunes of the socialist movement, which he defined as "the non-Communist parties that champiort big government spending and the welfare state," are suffering sweeping setbacks throughout Western Europe...

...Furthermore, reporters generally make no effort to assist American readers to understand the distinction between social democracy as a political philosophy and Social Democratic parties as electoral organizations...

...If Americans are now under the impression that the Scandinavians are abandoning as a dead end the social democratic middle way they have traveled for almost four decades—their compromise between cut-throat capitalism and collectivist socialism—no one can blame them...

...Scandinavia's Social Democratic parties have come to a crucial crossroads, and they must soon decide which road offers them the best prospects of survival as major parties...

...But the intrepid readers who got through the entire story would discover, in the final paragraph, that socialist defeats would have no effect on their welfare programs...

...If we add the fifteen seats held by two dissident left-wing socialist parties, whose votes the Social Democrats can normally count on for crucial issues, Denmark's socialists are today only thirteen seats short of an absolute majority...

...The class or vested interests on which the different Scandinavian political parties originally rested have either changed or become partly indistinguishable...

...By mid-century, Social Democratic ideas had achieved respectability...

...That the Swedish "bourgeois" parties will follow suit in September now seems clear, provided they can agree on a common platform and on a candidate for Prime Minister...

...If the Scandinavian Social Democratic parties use their opportunities as opposition parties wisely, they can face future elections confidently...

...wegian election in 1965, signal the defeat of social democracy...

...indeed, they adopted them as their own...

...In perhaps the strongest tribute to the socialists, other parties have adopted these ideas, in some cases stealing the fire of socialist voter appeal...

...Whatever the direction of the Social Democratic parties, however, social democracy is a permanent and firmly rooted reality in Scandinavia...

...by H. PETER KROSBY Denmark's voters went to the polls January 23 and—to the surprise of no one who has been following Danish politics—turned their Social Democratic minority government out of office...

...The bill sailed through with the unanimous endorsement of all parties...

...He is a native Norwegian and has written extensively on Scandinavia for such journals as Political Science Quarterly, American History Review, and International Journal...

...The Danish Social Democrats tried the same left turn in November, 1966, by amalgamating with the Social Peoples Party, the direct descendant of the Communist Party—and this January they suffered their worst setback at the polls in fifteen years...

...Baunsgaard has served in two Social Democratic-Radical Liberal coalition governments in recent years, the last of them headed by Krag, the man whom Baunsgaard has just replaced as Prime Minister...

...In a subsequent analysis, Huntford saw the Danish election as an event which "punctuated the decay of socialist regimes in Scandinavia...

...Here, then, is the heart of the current predicament of the Scandinavian Social Democratic parties: They can no longer take it for granted that "the labor vote" will automatically be theirs, and that this vote will keep them in power...