Scandinavian Democracies: Disintegrating or in Good Health?

By Hege Skjeie and Anette Borchorst

The Norwegian study of power and democracy was rounded off in August with a broad presentation of findings; the Danish study was concluded with a major hearing in October. On the Norwegian side, the research group in charge of the study parted company in the final phase, when two members, Siri Meyer and Hege Skjeie, each wrote individual statements, whilst the Danish steering group was in agreement in the concluding report.

 

The mandates of the studies

 

The Danish power and democracy study was motivated by the Danish parliament’s concern that the parliament had lost democratic influence as a conse­quence, among other things, of interna­tionalisation, decentralisation and the formation of large State-run corpora­tions. The motivation was thus first and foremost the fear that the national democracy was in a process of disinte­gration. The mandate for the Norwegian study was not as full of apprehensions as the Danish one was. Here, processes of change which “affect and challenge rep­resentative democracy” were listed as fol­lows:  internationalisation, new technol­ogy, changes in public opinion-making, environmental issues and new multi-cultural issues, and finally, political process­es of decentralisation, deregulation and privatisation.

Pressure from “supplemen­tary democracy”

The Norwegian “majority” report was, however, filled with apprehensions. Baldly and gloomily, it stated that democracy is indeed “disintegrating”. Many processes of change were inter­preted as pointing in the same direction. The traditional majority rule in demo­cratically elected bodies is under pres­sure from new forms of “supplementary democracy”: “rights-based democracy, actionist democracy, consumer democ­racy, lobby democracy, barometer demo­cracy”. In the Norwegian majority report, the increase in legislation on cit­izen rights  was seen as contributing to a trend in which courts take control of political issues. Human rights conven­tions are incorporated in Norwegian law, and the rulings of international courts become increasingly important in defining the limits of national politics.

 

Healthy, but with flaws

 

When the report containing the princi­pal findings from the many different projects was published at the end of October, the Danish steering group con­cluded that Danish democracy was in surprisingly good health and functioned relatively efficiently. The political parties have been weakened, but the political participation of the population is higher than ever. After the publication of the report, this largely positive state of affairs gave rise to critical responses, from both the media and right and left wing parties. The left wing regretted that there had not been a more thorough analysis of economic power, and Danish media has discussed whether the report has painted too rosy an overall picture.

 

However, in their quest for grand stories of power trajectories commenta­tors have overlooked the fact that the steering committee of the power study also indicated flaws in Danish democra­cy: it was especially stressed that the con­sequences of europeanisation were an important problem. A democratic deficit has emerged because the Danish population (like the populations of the other EU nations) do not feel part of a European political community. At the same time, however, Danes are becom­ing more and more oriented towards Europe. The problem is, though, that EU decision-making processes are non­transparent and only to a limited extent subject to democratic control. At the national level, the Danish parliament has difficulties in controlling processes related to negotiations on extensive pro­posals from the European Commission. Another problem for the Danish demo­cracy is that new divisions have arisen where some of the least privileged groups are subject to serious social rejec­tion. The steering committee also point­ed out that in Danish politics gender equality is frequently not regarded as a legitimate basis for regulation.

 

The “diagnosis” expressed in the Danish study is still markedly more pos­itive than the Norwegian conclusions. The obvious question is, why? A rela­tively diplomatic explanation was aired at the hearing on the Danish study at Christiansborg, home of the Danish parliament: it was pointed out that Denmark was hit by economic crisis, which resulted in drastic parliamentary change, earlier than Norway. The oil crisis came at the start of the 1970s, fol­lowed by the landslide election in 1973, and this resulted in far-reaching changes in the Danish parliamentary system. Both politicians and population have adapted to these new conditions. The same is the case with respect to interna­tionalisation: Denmark has been strong­ly affected by europeanisation for the past thirty years. Juridification of politics is connected with a freer style of inter­pretation with respect to both national and international courts. This may entail a diminishment of the Danish parliament’s self-determination, but should also be seen in the context of unclear sig­nals in various forms of legislation.

Majority rule and human rights

In the Norwegian majority report, the relation to the EU treaty was presented as part of a general analysis of juridifica­tion, the expansion of rights policies and the concurrent internationalisation. The report states that there is an increasing gap between democracy as a state form, with popular influence exerted via elect­ed channels, and the expansion of indi­vidual and collective rights in various areas of society.

 

This construction of a democratic gap between “rights” and “politics” is criticised by Hege Skjeie in her report on democracy, power and human rights.1 Many types of rights policies concern basic rather than “supplementary” forms of democracy. They address the signifi­cance of the law as a guardian of rights, the rights of minorities to non-discrimination, and the democratic self-commitment of majorities. Several contribu­tions to the Norwegian power study have discussed in detail the unresolved relation between democracy in numeri­cal form, as majority power, and the pro­tection of human rights as these are defined in international law. Many of the study’s gender-power projects are rooted in international feminist debates, and several empirical projects discuss the consequences of internationalisation for women. They have thus provided an important corrective of focus for the power study genre, which otherwise tends to invite a vigorous cultivation of “national characteristics”.  

The significance of rights-based politics

The political meaning of doctrines of rights is first and foremost about the pos­sibilities for individual and collective empowerment. As when the equal right to vote is accompanied by an equal right to political presence; when equal opportu­nities legislation is accompanied by fair social security. Internationally, politics of rights thematises with increasing force what can be called parallel discrimina­tion cultures: sexism, racism, and homo­phobia. But at the same time, the poten­tial for conflict between different human rights guarantees becomes increasingly evident, for example in the relation between religious-based group rights and protection against gender discrimina­tion. The relation between religious free­dom and women’s freedom is a “multi­cultural headache”.2 In the Norwegian context this is manifested in current exemptions from the Equal Opportunities Act: the Act applies to all areas of society excepting the “internal affairs” of communities of faith, i.e. questions of teaching and religious prac­tice. Transnationally, however, the UN Convention Against all Forms of Dis­crimination Against Women (CEDAW) does not regard the relation between reli­gion and women’s rights as a legitimate area of exemption. Rather, it insists that the human rights of women apply with­out restrictions. The CEDAW conven­tion has also been an important anchor for equal rights work within Islamic legal reform. This strives to separate the Koran from the concrete historical processes of interpretation which produced the patri­archal family law.

 

The UN human-rights system has thus become an important point of refer­ence for women’s organisations across the world in terms of political mobilisation, and in terms of concrete legal demands. The Norwegian parliament wishes to incorporate the UN conventions on both gender and race discrimination into Norwegian law in the same way as other conventions are incorporated through human rights legislation. The incorpora­tion processes raise many important questions. But these do not merely, or mainly, address changes in institutionally based decision-making power. They address substantial democratic issues of justice and fairness, and both the state’s and international communities’ contin­ued responsibility for securing and bal­ancing individual and collective rights.

 

The significance of rights politics has thus triggered quite different interpreta­tions of power and democracy in the Norwegian study. It highlights the im­portance of making explicit the norma­tive and analytical bases of  researchers’ analyses. The same point is stressed in Siri Meyer’s dissenting pronouncement in the Norwegian study. The distance to the research majority’s perspectives, she writes, is only superficially a difference of opinion or disagreement about certain facts; the distance is based on different horizons of understanding.

 

The experiences from both power studies reveal that power can be viewed and analysed through a variety of lenses which produce very different and nuanced versions of the bases of power. An analysis of different approaches and concepts of power in the many projects under the Danish study demonstrates that analytical and theoretical diversity is strength. However, the multi-facetted approach to power is generated, to some extent, at the expense of providing unambiguous answers to the question of the localisation of power and its paths, which was the starting point for both power studies.

 

 

Notes

Christiansen, Peter Munk & Lise Togeby (eds.) (2003). På sporet af magten. [On the trail of power] Århus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag.

Togeby, Lise, Jørgen Goul Andersen, Peter Munk Christiansen, Torben Beck Jørgensen & Signild Vallgårda (2003). Magt og demokrati i Danmark – hovedresultater fra magtudredningen, [Power and democracy in Denmark: the principal conclusions of the power study] Århus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag.

NOU (2003). Makt og demokrati. Sluttrapport fra Makt- og demokratiutredningen, [Power and democracy: the final report from the Norwegian Power  and Democracy Study], NOU: 19.

Østerud, Øyvind, Fredrik Engelstad & Per Selle (2003): Makten og demokratiet. En sluttbok fra Makt- og demokratiutrednin-gen.[Power and democracy: the findings of the power and democracy study] Gyldendal Akademisk.

 

Notes

1 This statement can be read in Norwegian on KILDEN’s web site under ”Kjønnsmakt”; see www.kilden.forskningsradet.no

2 The expression is Tordis Borchgrevink’s, from Sand i maskineri­et – makt og demokrati i det flerkulturelle Norge (2003) (Sand in the machinery – power and democracy in multicultural Norway)

 

First published in NIKK magasin 3 2003 © NIKK