OL GRÄVER
CRASH COURSE IN SWEDISH POLITICS
Crash Course in Swedish Politics TEXT ALEXANDRA ANDERSSON ILLUSTRATION ANASTASIA ANGELI
Soon it begins. Bus stops, lampposts and billboards will be covered with posters conveying messages from the left to the right. It is election year, and on the second Sunday in September millions of Swedes will go to make their voices heard. Both the left and right side see this election as crucial for Sweden’s future, so what is it all really about? The 11th of September is the day. Around 6.5 million Swedish citizens are expected to use their right to vote, to influence how the 349 seats of the Swedish parliament Riksdagen are distributed. Then it is the Riksdag’s task to elect a prime minister, who will lead the new government. After the last election in 2018 this took 134 days, which by far was the longest government formation in Swedish history. The answer to why it took such a long time can probably be used to explain why many voices are raised for the importance of this election.
government, while Socialdemokraterna and the green party Miljöpartiet were hoping to stay in the government. However, none of the traditional alliances got enough votes to keep the two outer edge parties Sverigedemokraterna and the left party Vänsterpartiet away from influence. After 134 long days the social democrat party leader Stefan Löfven was elected prime minister and led a government with Miljöpartiet, supported by Centerpartiet, Liberalerna and Vänsterpartiet through a 73 items long agreement.
In recent years, the world has shifted towards a more polarized political landscape, and Sweden has not been spared. According to some Swedes it all started in 2010. That was when Sverigedemokraterna, a social conservative nationalist party, got into the Riksdag. Campaigning on radical ideas, they were isolated by the other seven parties in the parliament. In 2018 Sverigedemokraterna got 17.5 percent of the votes, making them Sweden’s third largest party, and they became hard to ignore.
The 44th item on the list however caused a government crisis in July 2021, when Vänsterpartiet together with Sverigedemokraterna, Moderaterna and Kristdemokraterna voted to depose the prime minister, and Löfven became the first Swedish prime minister ever to resign after a declaration of no confidence. However, no one could propose another government tolerable by the Riksdag, so after intense negotiations Löfven was actually reelected, but only four months later resigned voluntarily. Socialdemokraterna’s Magdalena Andersson took his place, supported by Centerpartiet who did not want to cooperate with Vänsterpartiet, Miljöpartiet who would prefer not to cooperate with Centerpartiet, and Vänsterpartiet who wanted more influence
In the same election, the liberal conservative party Moderaterna, together with Kristdemokraterna, Centerpartiet and Liberalerna, was aiming to form a center-right
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if they accepted Andersson as prime minister. The weak government conditions meant that the government did not have support for their budget, so a few hours after she was elected prime minister, Andersson lost the budget vote against the opposition. The revised budget only redistributed around 15-25 percent of the government’s budget, but it had been negotiated together with Sverigedemokraterna. Governing on a budget that had been influenced by the right-wing party was completely against Miljöpartiet’s principles, so they decided to leave the government. Due to the changed government conditions Andersson had to resign from the post only seven hours after she had been elected. A few days later she was accepted as Sweden’s first female prime minister for a second time. Now that the election is only months away, many people hope that the result will change the locked positions in the Riksdag. Right now Socialdemokraterna’s confidence is higher than ever during this electoral period, but nothing can be taken for granted. On their side is Miljöpartiet, who in recent opinion surveys are below the 4% threshold to keep their place in the
