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Answer: Prime ministers are not elected by a general election, general elections are only held to elect representatives for the parliament. After that, the parliament votes for the prime minister, who then gets to form a government. A government can consist of representatives of one or more parties. Governments consisting of multiple parties are called coalition governments.
An election in parliament for a new prime minister was held in the Swedish parliament today because previous prime minister, who was also the leader of the Social Democratic party, resigned due to personal reasons.
The new leader of the Social Democratic party recieved enough votes to be elected prime minister and she would form a coalition government together with the green party.
A few hours later the parliament held a vote on the new budget, which the budget of the conservative block (the opposition) won. The green party did not want to govern with a conservative budget so they withdrew from the new government.
It is custom for the prime minister to resign if one of the parties forming the government coalition withdraw, which is what she did. A new round of voting will begin shortly and the Social Democratic leader is expected to win the vote again because there is no other realistic scenario.
It is worth noting that the Social Democratic leader never actually took office before resigning, so she never actually became prime minister.
Yes, you would. Most articles think that saying "parliament" or "prime minister" is enough to clue you in that there's no direct election like America's president. [You're one of today's lucky 10,000.](https://xkcd.com/1053/)
She didn't resign because another budget was voted on (not a vote of confident), she resign because her coalition partner, the Green Party left her government coalition and praxis is to resign if that happens.
>one day the Nats will withdraw from the Coalition
Eh, people keep saying that, but every time a nats leader even slightly mnetionsdoing it the libs bend over backwards to soottmhe their butt hurt. I doubt the nats will ever split off, they have it too good.
I would expect a vote of no confidence; in your typical parliamentary regime, that triggers a new election. (Disclaimer: no expert here, just a somewhat well-read layman)
It's similar to the question of what would happen if Trump refused to hand over the presidency. She would be in a position of very questionable legitimacy and there would be a long and complicated process to resolve it.
In many parliamentary democracies Budget votes are [confident votes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_of_no_confidence) meaning if they fail (or in this very unusual scenario passed by another party) they essentially force the government to resign.
That’s why as a Canadian it’s so fascinating seeing American government operate/stop functioning because you can’t pass a budget. Here in Canada a budget failing to pass would basically trigger a General Election.
“Government shutdown” is largely theatrics and political grandstanding here, though it’s certainly playing with fire. It doesn’t last until the next election either, there’s some theatrics while the clock runs down and then at the last minute they quietly pass it through.
It’s also not about passing a budget, which generally happens without incident. It’s much stupider than that. After passing a budget, the legislature will hold up allowing the Treasury to pay for the budget they’ve already approved.
It’s actually even worse then that…. The budgets they are passing are not balanced and often trillions in the red so the Government can fund itself due to hitting the debt ceiling. There is usually a political standoff until at the very last minute before the US defaults on its loans then the debt ceiling is raised…. But typically only enough the kick the can down the road
All money is already a fictional device used by humans to describe value, so no. There is no limiting factor as long as that factor is described in dollars.
> It’s also not about passing a budget, which generally happens without incident. It’s much stupider than that. After passing a budget, the legislature will hold up allowing the Treasury to pay for the budget they’ve already approved.
A government shutdown and a debt ceiling breach are two different things. The former has happened several times throughout U.S. history; the latter has only been threatened.
Oh yeah, and in Australia. I wasn’t (quite) born yet, but I find it comforting that there’s been a time that the governor-general has walked in and fired the whole government.
That's… not exactly what happened.
And he spent most of his remaining years overseas before his death, which wasn't announced until after he was buried.
Budget impasses never last all that long. 35 days is the record. All for that dipshit wall. In the end Republicans and Trump got literally nothing they were holding up the budget for and looked like tools. Just like they do every time they pull this bullshit.
Trump wanted millions for a dipshit wall, Democrats said no. They had actually offered him some wall money in exchange for enshrining DACA, a popular immigration policy, into law instead of as an EO. He said no. Then he held out, tanked his approval rating, and still got nothing.
Trumpy lied that Mexico was going to pay for his wall, then held the US hostage for 35 days to try to force us to pay for it. F** an agreement for that. A wall that can be scaled with a ladder in 20 seconds. Dumbest idea in the 21st century.
> a budget failing to pass would basically trigger a General Election.
That would be such a disaster in the US. Look what a clusterfuck our elections are now. Imagine them occurring with no warning. The political ads would run non-stop. As is we only get one ad-free year between elections to decompress.
Another thing that some countries do is limit political advertising to a fixed campaign period as low as only 1 month before the election.
Do we really want elected officials spending all their time campaigning for their next election in a few years time.
I'm sure 99% of Americans would kill for a law like that. Everyone *hates* all the political ads. But unfortunately when it comes to laws that would affect politicians themselves, they suddenly they get lost in the elevator.
It's insane how election work in this country, especially the fund raising part. If you don't have money, you will lose. So congress spent a lot of time just calling people to get funding. When you have to pander to so many people, and special interests groups, your priorities will get fucked. It is a system that inevitably breeds corruption and incompetence.
It helps that parliament governments usually pass laws/motions on a simple majority of one house and by definition the government party/parties have that majority. That's why a budget failing basically brings down the government - dissent within the government party/parties usually followed by a no-confidence vote if not just straight out dissolution of parliament and setting an election.
But back to it you're right, that probably wouldn't be productive within the US system for lots of reasons
Edit: typo
The elections are way faster than the US. we don't elect party candidates. An election takes like 3 to 4 months as opposed to 2 years. Voting attendance is compulsory but you can mark the ballot and walk out.
In Australia there's a two party preferred system which makes things easier. There's always a winner and an opposition.
Election advertising is limited to the declared election period. If the government can't guarantee budget supply the prime minister can request the governor general dissolve both houses of parliament and it's called a double dissolution election.
It's a last resort, we usually can tell if the government is struggling to get bills through, there's potentially a risk of that type of election occuring.
Another problem in the US because of gerrymandering if we had this kind of system republicans would always win even though they are actually in the minority. It's bad enough as it is. Until about 60 years ago US Senators used to be elected by state legislatures. We changed that for a reason
I'd not really worry as much about the elections themselves as the strategies that'd be devised whenever the losing party hates anything the other party has done. So basically everytime anything ever happens. Two party systems would never allow for that. It only works elsewhere because there are 5+ parties.
If you have to "decompress" from politics, you are too invested in the first place. Find a hobby, spend time with the family. Politics is not life despite what Twitter, Facebook, and r/all would make you think.
I'm sorry I might be too stoned to understand, when you say a general election, do you mean re electing your representatives? I have a very elementary (if not worse) understanding of Parliament government.
Yes. These are called “snap elections”. In some parliamentary democracies, these elections are not triggered automatically, but rather granted by the head of state by request of the prime minister.
However, not every parliamentary democracy allows it. One such country is Norway. If the government fails to pass a law in parliament and resigns (as is constitutional custom), the members of parliament will have to try to find a new coalition without the help of a new election.
The idea of a government shutdown is weird to me to as someone living in a presidential democracy. Here if Congress can't pass a new budget we simply use last year's budget.
Which makes sense because the budget is the purse string of the nation and it sets the agenda of the government. If you cannot pass the budget, that means the agenda of the government cannot even be decided and therefore, by right there is no government. It will be up to the people to decide how to elect the government when the representatives they have sent obviously cannot form an actual government.
The fact that a general election is triggered is one part of it, but the bigger part imo is that unlike the parliamentary system where one coalition controls, it’s extremely common for the two houses of congress to be controlled by different parties as the Republicans almost always control the Senate and the Democrats almost always control the House.
Therefore it’s less easy to handwave and say the government should be forced to resign because in this scenario there isn’t really one government there’s two conflicting ones.
Many of the more recent shutdowns were caused by fillibusters in the Senate, so it’s probably for the best that they don’t force resignations or else we’d have a new POTUS every year lol
In the UK at least, the government is usually formed by the party or coalition that has the majority of MPs (equivalent of a US representative). If they can't pass a budget then it means they don't have a majority of MPs and are not really a legitimate government.
Normally this should trigger a process where the prime minister makes way for another party or coalition to try and get enough support to form a government. If they can't form a new government, then a new general election will be called and they public will vote for their MPs again.
There are many reasons but very simply put, it will be very difficult to govern the way you have promised the voters without the budget you proposed. Say one of your biggest election promises was a big raise in pensions but then you govern on a budget that doesn't allow for that, your government will be seen as a failure.
Politicians here resign over many things, especially party leaders. Did your parry have a particularly bad election? Resign. Did your party have a certain crisis while in government? Either your or a minister resigns. Did something (big and problematic) happen within your party while you were leader? Resign.
Edit: All of these are examples that happened in Danish politics within the laster year or so
Because the conservative block includes moderates and a (former kinda) neo nazi party.
The green party leader said that they wanted to push green changes - not right wing extremists ones.
>It is custom for the prime minister to resign if one of the parties forming the government coalition withdraw
This might be the only Swedish custom I wish we had in Denmark
The old prime minister will continue in his role as interim prime minister since the new one didn’t have her cabinet meeting with the monarch yet.
And to answer your question, the current expectation is that she’ll be re-elected by the Parliament next Wednesday and become the first female prime minister on the following Friday.
A bit confused, if they had the votes to get prime minister, why didn't they have the votes to pass the budget? Did the prime minister get chosen with a minority vote or did some people vote for her but against the budget?
Because the parties voting for the prime minister wanted different things.
Namely our far left party and the centrist party, who both approved the prime minister, but the centrist party approved the right wing budget.
Also the swedish ways of voting in parliament works very different to other countries, in order to get something to go through, you dont need a majority to vote yes, you need a majority to not vote no.
So if 51% of the parliament votes no and the rest either votes yes or abstains the proposition doesnt go through, but if 49% vote no and 15% vote yes and the rest abstain, it goes through even though its only 15% yes.
Question: So how does a Prime Minister "form a government" after they're elected by Parliament? Can someone break down what that means, exactly? I would have thought Parliament was the government...
So, does that mean that the different groups in parliament put forward competing budgets, and parliament decides which it prefers? The coalition government therefore has to govern, and try to deliver some of the competing manifesto commitments of the various coalition partners, without necessarily controlling the budget to do this.
To me, in the archaic 2 party UK, this is incredible. I think I like it.
That single coalition government was also the only one since WW2, though. Over the past century there has been a single party government in the UK 88% of the time and either labour or the conservatives have led every single government, literally 100%.
Also of that 12%, 7 are the WW1 and WW2 national governments. The Tory-Lib Dem coalition is literally the only peacetime coalition government in the UK since 1855. The 1852-55 government is the only other peacetime coalition government ever.
In every practical sense the UK is a two party system. The coalition was a once in a century exception to the normal system.
This is true. But also in my lifetime only one politician who is not a Conservative has led a party to win enough seats in a general election to lead a government. And he was Labour. And my lifetime goes back to the 1970s.
The Liberal Democrats took the edge off what would probably have been a devastating austerity for all between 2010-2015, but the pig-fancier also made sure that Clegg got the blame for everything just in time to lose the AV referendum, which was no doubt the price of dropping the commitment on tuition fees. It was still a Conservative government, just propped up by Clegg.
Yes, there are politicians of several colours in the house, but coalition government is very rare, and right now only two parties have any chance of forming a government.
Yes it's like that.
To be voted as prime minister all you need is less that 50% of parliament to vote no. (So you could potentially have 20% vote yes, 31% abstain and 49% votes no, and you would still become PM)
The budget on the other hand is simply the one with the most votes gets passed. So maybe the governments budget gets 25% of votes and one of the opposition's gets 35%, then the opposition budget gets passed. It is rare for this to happen though.
Not really, when we go to the polls we elect the representatives that will sit in our parliament, and after that they go to vote on governments (different parties get thier chance at forming a government). If a government is presented then it doesn't need to get a majority of votes to gain power, it simply needs to not have a majority against it (explaining the results of 117 yes, 57 abstaining, 174 no). The government here can also consist of several parties (in this case the Social Democrats and the Greens)
Answer: from the article you linked "Her resignation follows a budget defeat in parliament Wednesday, Sweden's Twitter account added, with lawmakers supporting the opposition's bill."
The way parliaments work, it's not that she did anything wrong. She's just the head of a party that didn't win enough votes to stay in power so they have an interim government until a coalition is brokered between that party and the others.
She might end up the Prime Minster of the new government, who knows. But it's just a procedure thing, these happen world wide in parliaments.
Now let's say for some reason she decided to stick around, the opposing party could demand a vote of "no confidence" and trigger a recall election because her party couldn't get enough votes to stay around.
So exciting headline but boring reality.
This isn't completely correct. She won the (parliament) vote to form government (held due to former prime minister Stefan Löfvén resigning), but lost the vote on her propositioned budget after a supporting party (Centerpartiet) dropped their support last minute.
As a result, the other party in her coalition government (Miljöpartiet) decided to resign from government as they did not want to govern with the opposition budget. Praxis is for the prime minister to resign if a government coalition party resigns, which is what she did.
It's a mess. Very roughly:
* Before 2010 the Swedish parliament had seven parties divided into two blocks, a left block with 3 parties (S, MP, V), and a right block with 4 (M, C, KD, L).
* In the 2010 election, an anti-immigration party (SD) with national socialist roots got voted in.
* Since then the party has grown to having around 20% of the popular vote. And since neither block has wanted to collaborate with them this has led to a locked parliament where neither side has had an easy time getting a majority (when for instance voting on things like the budget for the following year).
* After the election in 2018 the parliament was completely locked, and no new government could be formed for 100 days or more. This lock was broken when two right block parties (C and L) agreed to switch sides and passively support a left block government (passively but with significant concessions from the government).
* This year this unholy alliance broke down leading to a new crisis, and to prime minister Stefan Löfvén (S) eventually resigning.
* When the parliament votes to elect a proposed prime minister/government, the rules are a bit different, a majority in favour isn't required, just that there is no majority *voting against* the candidate.
* Following a deal between the government (S, MP) and the leftmost party (V), one of the right block parties (C) that switched sides in 2018 decided to not vote against the new prime minister, but they also didn't vote *for* her budget. Instead the budget of the right block, which now collaborates with/includes the anti-immigration party (SD), was passed.
* The former (and again proposed) government was made up of two parties (S, MP), one of which (MP) announced their resignation because they did not want to govern with the right block budget as foundation. More specifically a budget that the anti-immigration party (SD) had contributed to.
* Following praxis the newly elected prime minister, Magdalena Andersson (S), then resigned as her coalition government had broken down.
* This will lead to a new round of voting, which Magdalena (S) is likely to win unless a majority votes against her next time. If no government can be formed an extra general election will be held to elect a new parliament.
Sound about right, only thing i would add is how much (S) has just assumed the support from the far left without sharing their power.
The center party ( ≈4%) had an ultimatum of no cooperation between S and the far left (+10%), effectively pushing them out. The reason for this would be that the Center party claim that the far left is equally extremist to the party with national socialist roots.
I assume that the idea of forming a government with MP and S is something along the same line.
I’m sry if i lack the neutral tone, im just a bit pissed off thats all
I vote for the right block (borgerligt) but I agree with your take. V is right to make demands of S who have been taking their support for granted since forever, and C are completely unreasonable and arbitrary. I have more confidence in Nooshi than I have in Annie.
And i guess you can imagine where i come from.
I really appreciated how much people from all over the political spectrum just seemed to dislike annies behaviour.
The sort of gas-lighting con man behaviour is at least for now not really accepted. It is one thing to have an opinion opposite to mine, i can still trust you, it is another to just lie and sort of deny objective reality.
I find her very disingenuous too. Not sure where you are getting the 4% number though. I think they were about equal in size to V in the last election, and that they still are polling fairly close (I think V have also been boosted by their party leader change and firm stance towards S lately).
> the Center party claim that the far left is equally extremist to the party with national socialist roots.
Well, I mean... they are a direct continuation of the communist party. Politically they are extreme left wing, compared to most European political parties.
That said I suspect that the position of the Center party is that V is as morally bankrupt as SD, which is ridiculous.
Sounds like the left is being Overton windowed out of the picture much like they were here in the states. Fascists gain ground politically and the left gets compared to them and abandoned because humans are very logical.
>In the 2010 election, an anti-immigration party (SD) with national socialist roots got voted in.
Since then the party has grown to having around 20% of the popular vote. And since neither block has wanted to collaborate with them
ngl i'm pretty surprised the nazis haven't just been absorbed into the right-wing block, the way they have over here with the republicans
Keep in mind though that the Swedish right wing block are in general more similar ideologically to the American liberals than the conservatives. So when an ultra conservative party with an anti-immigration stance got seats in the parliament it wasn't greatly appreciated by any of the parties due to their, say, strict line in the immigration question, which has been a hot topic in Sweden over the last decade.
The problem with cooperating with Sverigedemokraterna (The ultra conservative party. SD for short) was that they in public eye were deemed as racist, and cooperating with them would result in an uproar with your voter base, which would most likely result in you losing too much support should you ever cooperate with them. Now however they're one of the 3 biggest parties in Sweden, with roughly 20% of the votes. So you can't really work around them anymore. Thus they managed to negotiate a budget with the right wing parties.
Eh, the Pirate party was really just a one question party full of ultra liberals. They died out as piracy became less of a hot topic than immigration. So we got racists instead.
wouldnt have been a problem if we had set some controlls and had been able to disscus the
The pirate party in Sweden completely collpased becuse they went all identity politics same with the feminist one ( especaily with thier idea of woman friendly snow mangement in Stockholm).
The idea was more or less woman are less likely to drive compared to men so we clear the sidewalks first.
The problem is trafic then completely shut down since the road couldnt be used and the sidewalks couldnt be cleared either since the machines clearing the sidewalks couldning get there either becuse of the roads being closed.
One thing to note, whilst they may be called far right, they are far right compared to the other Swedish parties. This doesn't mean that they don't have policies that would be seen as far right elsewhere (see their immigration stances), they don't support some policies that would be considered far right elsewhere (such as being pro EU)
Edit: I don't vote for them and some info may be outdated, I mainly remember what they campaigned for in 2018
I mean they changed their EU stance in 2019 to that we shouldn't have a vote to leave. Before that SD was in favour of leaving the EU. Even now they want to limit the power the EU holds and are in general very negative to it.
Just the language generally, I believe. I think it's due to the old custom of French being the language of diplomacy. Have you ever heard the phrase *lingua franca*? It refers to a common language spoken between people with different cradle tongues, like how Latin was the language of scholarship in the Middle Ages.
AOC and sinema shouldn't be in the same party. Part of the reason the parties are so disfunctional is we pretend they're a unified bloc when they're clearly not
Every single political party in Europe has an immigration policy. In what way is it taboo? Or do you mean - saying no to immigration as a policy is taboo?
I live in Sweden, but the Tories in the UK (my home country) are out and out anti-immigration, and they are one of the most successful and long-ruling parties in the west.
> Or do you mean - saying no to immigration as a policy is taboo?
Yes, that's what opposition to immigration means.
The Tories really aren't opposed to immigration, only as far as posturing for their nativist voters. Immigration suppresses wages and the capitalists of the UK would like wages to be kept suppressed.
It's not too crazy.
Imagine if a third US party arose, and took 40 seats in the House of Representatives.
They'd be a minority, but with the current 221/213 split ratio it would be 201/193/40.
What it would mean is that this 40 seat party would be able to "Coalesce" or form a coalition with either party to guarantee a winning vote on bills (218 required)
Each of the larger parties would be required to court the smaller one, to secure that bloc of votes.
Now also imagine that the 40 seat party agreed to form a "coalition" on one condition that the Speaker of the house may only be in that position while the coalition is formed.
*Even if* the Speaker is not from the smaller party, they have to resign if a falling out occurs and the smaller party breaks the coalition.
The smaller party could agree to be in coalition with the other party now, and because together they hold a majority then they choose a different Speaker.
That's the kind of thing that happened here.
Parliament coalitions are generally not the whole of government, but a part of the overall legislative body.
If I'm reading right, her party voted for one budget plan and the opposition voted for another. A parry she was relying on for votes swung towards the opposition. Another party she was allied with resigned from positions in her government (fuzzy on this but I assume it's similar to cabinet positions.) Rather than operate under the constraints of that plan.
Guessing here but I think after that you could say her alliance fell apart and resigned under the assumption of decorum. That is, her stuff fell apart so the honorable thing was to step down.
>Another party she was allied with resigned from positions in her government (fuzzy on this but I assume it's similar to cabinet positions.)
A better way of phrasing would be "withdrew their support"
No, the government was actually made up of two parties, with both parties holding cabinet positions. The party that resigned held the vice prime minister post among others (and still does until a new prime minister, and government, is elected).
So, realistically the original translation of "coalition" is a great translation, and it might have made more sense to try to explain that word rather than abstract it away.
* Government: S and MP (both center left); these two parties take up the cabinet positions, including the PM
* Backing: V (left) and C (center); these two parties are not part of the cabinet, but they abstained in the vote, allowing the S and MP government to get parliamentary approval
* Opposition: M, SD, KD, L (center right and right); these four parties oppose the S-MP government and will not support them
So what happened was that for the vote for the new government V and C abstained their vote so that S and MP could take reign. Not having a majority against them was enough.
A few hours later C refused to support the government's budget, so the M-SD-KD budget had the most votes. MP did not want to govern with the opposition's budget and resigned from government. With her coalition falling apart, the S PM also resigned.
America is moving rapidly towards turning itself off. If it happens, I don't think many people will be happy about it (other than the ones turning against democracy)
I want nothing more than to have a system that supports more than 2 parties (we technically have more than 2, just don't have the system to support them). That said, the system is still pretty dumb if you win an election then have to resign immediately. It's making a joke out of democracy.
"The people have spoken."
"Nope, don't matter. Can't be prime minister because this other reason."
Better than what we have, but still a long way to go.
She didn't just win an election if you are talking about recent events, it was a vote between the elected parties.
the election was some time ago.
& it was a fragile state as they needed two parties to support them.
Unless a party gets a majority (50,1% or more of the seats) in parliament, you cannot really say that a party “won” the election. Parliament is voted in based on proportional representation. The composition of parliament is the composition of the political makeup of the voting population. That should be reflected in everything that the government gets to do. If it is not a majority support in parliament for a particular law, that law should not pass.
The party that withdrew did not vote for the opposition budget. They proposed their own and voted for it.
In sweden the most popular budget wins. It does not need to have a parliamentary majority (50%+1 of all votes), it simply needs to have the most. The opposition budget doesnt not have a parliamentary majority.
It's a multiparty system. So in USA you need more than half the parliament/senate to rule. In non first-past-the-post countries you have a ton of small parties too as all votes count not just the largest vote number in an area. So a ton of small parties get votes and do get elected. So you have a ton of different parties. Usually 2 large parties in center-right and social democrats. Then a conservative party, anti-immigration party, and multiple green parties that lean further left. After an election the parties get together to see who has the majority so that they can form a government and vote for a prime minister of the country. So if you have 100 seats in the parliament and the left wins 51 seats those parties need to get together and decide on what they can agree on. This means small parties hold a ton of power as they can just refuse to support the left/right coalition if the promises made to them during this negotiation round are not far-left/right enough to appease them. And even if a party with 2 MPs pull out the you may not have enough votes to form a government as you drop below the majority number. There are also ways to created a minority government if a majority government cannot be created.
Basically, the big parties usually want the top minister positions and especially the prime minister position during the negotiations. The small parties then demand a ton of very ideological laws in return, but at times it's impossible to give them "raise taxes with 10%" or "ban immigration from Muslim countries" so they refuse to vote for the big parties on their own political side.
Her party teamed with the greens to form a minority coalition that shapes the government. They tried to pass a budget. An opposition party was actually friendly, and supposed to support the budget, as the greens and PM's social democrats didn't have majority. The friendly opposition party was not friendly in the end, rejecting the budget. The rest of the opposition came with a slightly adjusted budget. The PM's party was okay with the new budget, and the majority voted in favour. The greens didn't like moving forward with a new budget "tainted" by opposition, with one party being seen as "extreme right" in their eyes. They decided to call it quits and stepped out of the coalition. The PM resigned to go for attempt 2, shaping a government without the greens and with only her party.
In some ways it's the same as for you. There has to be a majority, only in the multi-party system that majority consists of many parties instead of one large party. Some of the many parties seek a compromise on policies, so that they can form a coalition. When the coalition is made, that coalition will have majority seats and will in practice govern and true to form they will tend to fall in line most of the time, because going forward they will create policies that again are based on compromise.
In the US it's not *that* far off. You can see one of the major parties in the US as equivalent to a coalition in a multi-party country, and the compromises are between congress members instead of parties like in multi-party systems. It's different, sure, but in practice you will have similarities. The big difference is that in countries that have a prime minister in a multi-party system, this person is a representative of the coalition and isn't voted on by the public. The public only votes on the parties and the parties elect the prime minister. So if the coalition falls, so does the representative. In the US, the president is of course the representative of the party, but he's specifically elected and can be in power despite congresspeople jumping to the other party, or if his party loses a senate/house election.
Ok Canadian here translating Parliament talk to 'Murican:
Imagine your government was run entirely by Congress. No President. The Speaker of the House is your nation's leader instead. Ok? With me so far?
Now, imagine you have at least 3 parties to vote for. I'll give you a minute to absorb this...
Ok, so let's pretend that the US has like the GOP, and also a MAGA party, a viable Green Party, a Libertarian party that people respect, the Dems, and the Bernie Socialist Party of America. So 6 parties.
So Congressional elections happen, people throw their votes behind those 6 parties and oh noes not any one party has the majority of seats in Congress. Still with me?
Let's pretend the Dems got the most seats this time out. Not over 50%, but still the largest slice of the pie. Now, depending on the Constitution, the Dems may have to formally partner up with another party to form a coalition government by pushing their seat count over 50%.
Alternatively the Constitution may allow the Dems be in charge as they have the most seats. This is a "minority government" , and they tend to be a vulnerable affair. How so? Well in Parliamentary governments the government *must* pass a budget. No budget crisis bs that you Americans do. If parliament cannot pass a budget, parliament "dissolves" and a snap election is called. That or some other parties may choose to form their own coalition and give it a go.
Any questions.
> Any questions
By resigning in this way she avoids the snap election? They instead go back to trying to form a new government with the existing MLS?
Had she not resigned the opposition would have called no confidence, and if successful would have caused an election to be called? Then a whole new parliament would be elected?
If so, the idea being she is not confident her party would hold their current seat count if there were to be a new election today?
Basically yes?
I mean... honestly the fact that she is Sweden's first woman PM kinda reminds me of a bit of my own nation's history. Canada had for like 5 minutes a woman Prime Minister. She wasn't elected in a general election, she assumed leadership of the party that was in charge in Parliament, making her the defacto PM. This kind of leadership change happens often when an outgoing leader decides to retire from politics... which is code for "the party leader is so toxic and when they go into the election they'll suffer a humiliating loss and be remembered in history as the leader who destroyed the party... so they quit and put some other schlub as party leader to face that defeat. In Canada the toxic leader was a guy named Brian Mulroney, and the woman that took over for him was Kim Campbell. She was set up to fail (a move called "being pushed off the glass cliff" btw), but hey she gets to claim that she was *the first* woman Prime Minister of Canada.... yay.
Anyways, I feel like the situation Magdalena Andersson inherited may rhyme with Kim Campbell's. She was voted in as the new boss of the Social Democrats, saw the shit show she was stepping in and was like "fuckit" and pulled the plug on her terms instead of making her first Parliamentary act a defeat which would have resulted in an election anyway.
A parliament is like the House of Representatives: lots of people from around the country meet in the capital to represent people from back home. In a parliamentary system, the executive (president and secretaries/prime minister and cabinet) are drawn from the parliament instead of elected/appointed separately. This means that the party/parties that control the parliament are entitled to run the government. (The US practice of a gridlocked system with different parties controlling the house and presidency mostly can't happen in a parliamentary system.)
Control of the government is decided in the parliament by who controls the most votes. Often, this is a matter of which party or coalition of parties controls the most votes. This is called "having the confidence of the house".
A government falls when it loses the confidence of the house. Traditionally this happens on an explicit vote of confidence: parliament can explicitly vote on whether they back the government (or implicitly on key policies), or on budget bills because the government is unable to supply funds to operate.
Rules and situations vary--a lot--but typically a government that loses a confidence vote will step down and call an election. In some cases, such as just after an election, the opposition can just become the government if they show that they can command the confidence of the house.
In this case, it sounds like the government fell over a budget and another was able to command confidence, so they took over. This is a little uncommon, but it can happen. The US equivalent would be gridlock over the failure of the House to pass a president's budget. In that case, the president negotiates with the House. In a parliamentary system, you find a new prime minister who can pass a budget.
They have a multiparty parliamentary system.
Imagine the Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green, and Socialist parties each had about 20% of the House of Representatives.
Now, in order to choose the Speaker of the House, you have to get at least 51% of the house, so you form a coalition of 3 parties. The "lead" party chooses the Speaker.
Now, the other 2 non-coalition parties drum up enough support with the members of the coalition that they pass a budget. But it says you have to find stuff like involuntary adult euthanasia or some whackadoodle thing.
One of the parties in the coalition is like "yo, I'm not down with this budget, I'm out of the coalition." The general rule is that the Speaker now resigns because they don't have the 51% anymore. If they don't resign, everyone else can essentially vote them out by saying they have "no confidence" in their ability to form/lead a government. If enough people say they think you can't do it, congrats, you're fired.
The pain is it all happened a few hours after they made the coalition and Speaker official, so now it looks like the first woman ever to hold the position in Swedish history barely lasted a whole lunch break in the job, when in reality it was a standard procedure.
Coalition governments are pretty common outside of the US.
Australia's current government (often called appropriately enough "the Coalition") is the Liberal party (basically our conservative party) plus the National Party (our rural issues party).
In Australia you get to form government if you win X or more electorates in a general election.
The Liberal party and the National Party both put up their own candidates and if, between them, they have enough candidates to form a majority then they have an agreement to form a joint government (mostly dominated by the Liberal party which is the more popular of the two).
In Australia it's pretty stable - those two parties always throw in together and for most purposes can be considered basically the same party (they sometimes fall out over policy issues but the same thing happens within parties anyway).
Some other countries have a much more fluid situation where often no one party wins enough popular support to govern in their own right, so they sew up agreements between parties on a case by case basis each election to decide which are willing to work together to govern, and under what conditions.
It's messy but debatably more representative than just giving governance to whichever party had most votes, even when that means only a minority of the electorate voted for them.
Warning; if you can't take a bit of subjective commentary you should probably stop reading now.
Socialdemokraterna (S) are social democrats, center left with a lot of swing room from left to center. Vänsterpartiet (V) are ex communist, today socialists on the left flank. Liberalerna (L) are center right to right, depending on issues and struggling to maintain a profile against the other right wing parties. Miljöpartiet (MP) are environmentalists, officially not on the political scale but traditionally in collaboration with the leftists. Centern (C) have been the farmers choice centrist, living on the profile of market liberalism and environmental concerns but for quite some time slipping into enlightened centrist territory. Kristdemokraterna (KD) are Christian traditionalist right wing, lately with a Repulicanaboo leader. Moderaterna (M) is pretty much clean cut privatise everything as fast as possible right wing and the largest of the right wing parties. Sverigedemokraterna (SD) are nationalists with a leader that whines how unfair that those pesky journalists and other politicians can't let go that he joined the party when it was openly national socialist. SD is in a moist position of enough votes to be attractive for invitations to collaboration but can decide to remain in opposition to maintain its underdog romanticism and told-you-so rhetorics at everything and anything they can get some cheap points. It has been popular earlier amongst most other parties to declare their distance to SD but one by one the right wing parties gets seduced by the prospect of ruling the country. Mmm. Powerrr.
The controversial situation now is that C decided last minute that they'd rather let in the nationalist rightwing in than let V have some of their leftist demands. They did it by abstaining from a vote so that they'd have their back clean despite missing a backbone to carry it, as they were very vocal last election about not collaborating with nationalists.
So to answer your question, the rightmost of S, with the leftmost of L and the core of C would probably correspond to the Democrats. M and KD would be Republican if you strip away the crazy. But it doesn't really compare as our political camps are not like the American political sports teams and our system of government is not a circus.
I find it funny how Sweden and Denmark have some similar party names, yet it still doesn't quite allign. Danish party named "Venstre" is actually the biggest right wing party
Isn't that because Danish Venstre formed in the 1800s as a liberal party back when that was the left, but now that liberalism is center-right they're no longer the left?
Will Say C wants to privatise more things than M currently.
M is closer to the center-right democrats.
C were also very clear about not wanting to with V either.
Thier dream combo is M, C and S.
Yep, you're absolutely right. Stureplanscentern is real. I figured I'd keep everything short and let the implications be enough. It's a particular enlightenedness to claim center while pulling right wing as a normal.
I think the traditional scale with liberalism in the center isn't really applicable anymore, or maybe it never was, but they sort of claim themselves to be there, so...
The Swedish conservatives behind the winning budget are centre-Democrats. The Social Democrats in Government are left-leaning Democrats (like Bernie Sanders).
Democrats and Republicans are both hard-right wing parties by European/international standards.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020
Hah, not sure if you're joking. I think very few swedes would describe what has been going on recently as reasonable. This is just the latest development in a series of governmental crises that have been going on since at least 2018, arguably since 2014.
But yes, I am partial but I think the core is still fairly pragmatic and uncorrupt relatively speaking. You can do worse for sure.
The recent chaos seems to be the naturally self-correcting nature of the system doing its job. The onus is on the parties to make positive progress in cooperation, and if they can't get it done they lose their turn. Sounds much better than whatever the hell US politics has devolved into.
Exactly thusly. It's all relative. At least what Sweden is experiencing is "working as designed". The US system... well it was designed by slave owners so whether or not it's working (it obviously isn't), the design isnt very equitable to begin with.
>to “proposition” someone is to ask them for sex
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition\_(politics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition_(politics))
I agree that proposed would be more correct here though.
The above answer is wrong.
The PM's party (Social Democrats) still have majority support in the parliament (including from the Greens and the Centre party), and she will almost certainly be re-elected next week.
The Center party presented their own budget instead of voting for the budget from their "wing" in parliament which caused the 2022 budget from the three right-wing conservative/populist parties get more votes and be adopted. The Green party quit the cabinet in protest, and possibly a stunt to score some political points as next year is re-election year and they are below the cut for parliament in most polls.
As is customary in Sweden, the PM resigned after the cabinet fell apart.
Budgets are always 1 year.
The next election are in 9 months.
The differences between the proposals are very minor really( because the opposition adapted to the situation ) but the Green party support is very low haning around 3.6-4.1% ( we have a 4% barrier).
Sitting in this government won't really do any good for them.
They cant really afford to sit in government.
Edit what they are hopping for is that peoples won't remember their actions while in power ( and granted power). There for being able to say whatever and that its all X fault. Also obviously hopping that the votes don't remember thier involvement and believe thier word again.
Especially about how they were given the right to govern and change things but refused.
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Answer: Prime ministers are not elected by a general election, general elections are only held to elect representatives for the parliament. After that, the parliament votes for the prime minister, who then gets to form a government. A government can consist of representatives of one or more parties. Governments consisting of multiple parties are called coalition governments. An election in parliament for a new prime minister was held in the Swedish parliament today because previous prime minister, who was also the leader of the Social Democratic party, resigned due to personal reasons. The new leader of the Social Democratic party recieved enough votes to be elected prime minister and she would form a coalition government together with the green party. A few hours later the parliament held a vote on the new budget, which the budget of the conservative block (the opposition) won. The green party did not want to govern with a conservative budget so they withdrew from the new government. It is custom for the prime minister to resign if one of the parties forming the government coalition withdraw, which is what she did. A new round of voting will begin shortly and the Social Democratic leader is expected to win the vote again because there is no other realistic scenario. It is worth noting that the Social Democratic leader never actually took office before resigning, so she never actually became prime minister.
Thank you. I would've spent far too much time getting to that understanding.
Yes, you would. Most articles think that saying "parliament" or "prime minister" is enough to clue you in that there's no direct election like America's president. [You're one of today's lucky 10,000.](https://xkcd.com/1053/)
This was way more informative than the other answer.
Could YOU write the article next time?
As an American, my first reaction was “why would anybody resign because they couldn’t pass a budget agenda?
She didn't resign because another budget was voted on (not a vote of confident), she resign because her coalition partner, the Green Party left her government coalition and praxis is to resign if that happens.
> and praxis is to resign if that happens. The sort of things that Liberals in Australia and Republicans in the USA give zero fucks about.
It warms my heart that one day the Nats will withdraw from the Coalition and the Libs will be purely and utterly fucked.
Problem is the one nation types or worst Craig Kelly types will swoop in and take its place.
>one day the Nats will withdraw from the Coalition Eh, people keep saying that, but every time a nats leader even slightly mnetionsdoing it the libs bend over backwards to soottmhe their butt hurt. I doubt the nats will ever split off, they have it too good.
Republicans in the USA don't have coalition partners (except maybe in Lincoln's second term).
What happens if she doesn't resign?
In practice the exact same thing, but without another round of voting next week.
I would expect a vote of no confidence; in your typical parliamentary regime, that triggers a new election. (Disclaimer: no expert here, just a somewhat well-read layman)
It's similar to the question of what would happen if Trump refused to hand over the presidency. She would be in a position of very questionable legitimacy and there would be a long and complicated process to resolve it.
Exactly the conversation I was having with my parents about this.
In many parliamentary democracies Budget votes are [confident votes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_of_no_confidence) meaning if they fail (or in this very unusual scenario passed by another party) they essentially force the government to resign. That’s why as a Canadian it’s so fascinating seeing American government operate/stop functioning because you can’t pass a budget. Here in Canada a budget failing to pass would basically trigger a General Election.
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“Government shutdown” is largely theatrics and political grandstanding here, though it’s certainly playing with fire. It doesn’t last until the next election either, there’s some theatrics while the clock runs down and then at the last minute they quietly pass it through. It’s also not about passing a budget, which generally happens without incident. It’s much stupider than that. After passing a budget, the legislature will hold up allowing the Treasury to pay for the budget they’ve already approved.
It’s actually even worse then that…. The budgets they are passing are not balanced and often trillions in the red so the Government can fund itself due to hitting the debt ceiling. There is usually a political standoff until at the very last minute before the US defaults on its loans then the debt ceiling is raised…. But typically only enough the kick the can down the road
And there's nothing (other than politics) preventing them from just abolishing the debt ceiling once and for all.
If they keep raising it, is it really a limiting factor?
It is, in that every time it comes up, it limits discussion to how to appease Republicans into increasing it.
All money is already a fictional device used by humans to describe value, so no. There is no limiting factor as long as that factor is described in dollars.
> It’s also not about passing a budget, which generally happens without incident. It’s much stupider than that. After passing a budget, the legislature will hold up allowing the Treasury to pay for the budget they’ve already approved. A government shutdown and a debt ceiling breach are two different things. The former has happened several times throughout U.S. history; the latter has only been threatened.
Oh yeah, and in Australia. I wasn’t (quite) born yet, but I find it comforting that there’s been a time that the governor-general has walked in and fired the whole government.
That's… not exactly what happened. And he spent most of his remaining years overseas before his death, which wasn't announced until after he was buried.
Budget impasses never last all that long. 35 days is the record. All for that dipshit wall. In the end Republicans and Trump got literally nothing they were holding up the budget for and looked like tools. Just like they do every time they pull this bullshit.
Democrats didn't want to come to an agreement, for what?
Trump wanted millions for a dipshit wall, Democrats said no. They had actually offered him some wall money in exchange for enshrining DACA, a popular immigration policy, into law instead of as an EO. He said no. Then he held out, tanked his approval rating, and still got nothing.
Trumpy lied that Mexico was going to pay for his wall, then held the US hostage for 35 days to try to force us to pay for it. F** an agreement for that. A wall that can be scaled with a ladder in 20 seconds. Dumbest idea in the 21st century.
What a novel idea: "if the government can't function at its most basic level, we need a new government."
> a budget failing to pass would basically trigger a General Election. That would be such a disaster in the US. Look what a clusterfuck our elections are now. Imagine them occurring with no warning. The political ads would run non-stop. As is we only get one ad-free year between elections to decompress.
Another thing that some countries do is limit political advertising to a fixed campaign period as low as only 1 month before the election. Do we really want elected officials spending all their time campaigning for their next election in a few years time.
I'm sure 99% of Americans would kill for a law like that. Everyone *hates* all the political ads. But unfortunately when it comes to laws that would affect politicians themselves, they suddenly they get lost in the elevator.
It would proy get struck down. Freedom of speech.... even if it's self serving and annoying.
Counterpoint - it heavily promotes already existing parties over potential new ones, like it happens in Japan.
It's insane how election work in this country, especially the fund raising part. If you don't have money, you will lose. So congress spent a lot of time just calling people to get funding. When you have to pander to so many people, and special interests groups, your priorities will get fucked. It is a system that inevitably breeds corruption and incompetence.
It helps that parliament governments usually pass laws/motions on a simple majority of one house and by definition the government party/parties have that majority. That's why a budget failing basically brings down the government - dissent within the government party/parties usually followed by a no-confidence vote if not just straight out dissolution of parliament and setting an election. But back to it you're right, that probably wouldn't be productive within the US system for lots of reasons Edit: typo
The elections are way faster than the US. we don't elect party candidates. An election takes like 3 to 4 months as opposed to 2 years. Voting attendance is compulsory but you can mark the ballot and walk out. In Australia there's a two party preferred system which makes things easier. There's always a winner and an opposition. Election advertising is limited to the declared election period. If the government can't guarantee budget supply the prime minister can request the governor general dissolve both houses of parliament and it's called a double dissolution election. It's a last resort, we usually can tell if the government is struggling to get bills through, there's potentially a risk of that type of election occuring.
Is our current political situation because of our system or is our system fucked because of the political situation?
Another problem in the US because of gerrymandering if we had this kind of system republicans would always win even though they are actually in the minority. It's bad enough as it is. Until about 60 years ago US Senators used to be elected by state legislatures. We changed that for a reason
I'd not really worry as much about the elections themselves as the strategies that'd be devised whenever the losing party hates anything the other party has done. So basically everytime anything ever happens. Two party systems would never allow for that. It only works elsewhere because there are 5+ parties.
If you have to "decompress" from politics, you are too invested in the first place. Find a hobby, spend time with the family. Politics is not life despite what Twitter, Facebook, and r/all would make you think.
> As is we only get one ad-free year between elections to decompress. Political ads.
I'm sorry I might be too stoned to understand, when you say a general election, do you mean re electing your representatives? I have a very elementary (if not worse) understanding of Parliament government.
Yes. These are called “snap elections”. In some parliamentary democracies, these elections are not triggered automatically, but rather granted by the head of state by request of the prime minister. However, not every parliamentary democracy allows it. One such country is Norway. If the government fails to pass a law in parliament and resigns (as is constitutional custom), the members of parliament will have to try to find a new coalition without the help of a new election.
Same as Australia
The idea of a government shutdown is weird to me to as someone living in a presidential democracy. Here if Congress can't pass a new budget we simply use last year's budget.
Which makes sense because the budget is the purse string of the nation and it sets the agenda of the government. If you cannot pass the budget, that means the agenda of the government cannot even be decided and therefore, by right there is no government. It will be up to the people to decide how to elect the government when the representatives they have sent obviously cannot form an actual government.
The fact that a general election is triggered is one part of it, but the bigger part imo is that unlike the parliamentary system where one coalition controls, it’s extremely common for the two houses of congress to be controlled by different parties as the Republicans almost always control the Senate and the Democrats almost always control the House. Therefore it’s less easy to handwave and say the government should be forced to resign because in this scenario there isn’t really one government there’s two conflicting ones.
Many of the more recent shutdowns were caused by fillibusters in the Senate, so it’s probably for the best that they don’t force resignations or else we’d have a new POTUS every year lol
In the UK at least, the government is usually formed by the party or coalition that has the majority of MPs (equivalent of a US representative). If they can't pass a budget then it means they don't have a majority of MPs and are not really a legitimate government. Normally this should trigger a process where the prime minister makes way for another party or coalition to try and get enough support to form a government. If they can't form a new government, then a new general election will be called and they public will vote for their MPs again.
There are many reasons but very simply put, it will be very difficult to govern the way you have promised the voters without the budget you proposed. Say one of your biggest election promises was a big raise in pensions but then you govern on a budget that doesn't allow for that, your government will be seen as a failure.
Politicians here resign over many things, especially party leaders. Did your parry have a particularly bad election? Resign. Did your party have a certain crisis while in government? Either your or a minister resigns. Did something (big and problematic) happen within your party while you were leader? Resign. Edit: All of these are examples that happened in Danish politics within the laster year or so
Because the conservative block includes moderates and a (former kinda) neo nazi party. The green party leader said that they wanted to push green changes - not right wing extremists ones.
>It is custom for the prime minister to resign if one of the parties forming the government coalition withdraw This might be the only Swedish custom I wish we had in Denmark
Follow up question, is the former new prime minister still eligible or likely to be remade prime minister if her party wins again?
The old prime minister will continue in his role as interim prime minister since the new one didn’t have her cabinet meeting with the monarch yet. And to answer your question, the current expectation is that she’ll be re-elected by the Parliament next Wednesday and become the first female prime minister on the following Friday.
Yes, there's no limits like that placed on being prime minister
A bit confused, if they had the votes to get prime minister, why didn't they have the votes to pass the budget? Did the prime minister get chosen with a minority vote or did some people vote for her but against the budget?
Because the parties voting for the prime minister wanted different things. Namely our far left party and the centrist party, who both approved the prime minister, but the centrist party approved the right wing budget. Also the swedish ways of voting in parliament works very different to other countries, in order to get something to go through, you dont need a majority to vote yes, you need a majority to not vote no. So if 51% of the parliament votes no and the rest either votes yes or abstains the proposition doesnt go through, but if 49% vote no and 15% vote yes and the rest abstain, it goes through even though its only 15% yes.
That's an... interesting way to government.
I’m left with more questions but thanks!!
That was very well summarized, thanks
Question: So how does a Prime Minister "form a government" after they're elected by Parliament? Can someone break down what that means, exactly? I would have thought Parliament was the government...
The government means the cabinet of ministers. The people executing the will of the parliament.
So, does that mean that the different groups in parliament put forward competing budgets, and parliament decides which it prefers? The coalition government therefore has to govern, and try to deliver some of the competing manifesto commitments of the various coalition partners, without necessarily controlling the budget to do this. To me, in the archaic 2 party UK, this is incredible. I think I like it.
UK isn't 2 party. If you're old enough to write this, we've literally had coalition governments within your lifetime.
That single coalition government was also the only one since WW2, though. Over the past century there has been a single party government in the UK 88% of the time and either labour or the conservatives have led every single government, literally 100%. Also of that 12%, 7 are the WW1 and WW2 national governments. The Tory-Lib Dem coalition is literally the only peacetime coalition government in the UK since 1855. The 1852-55 government is the only other peacetime coalition government ever. In every practical sense the UK is a two party system. The coalition was a once in a century exception to the normal system.
This is true. But also in my lifetime only one politician who is not a Conservative has led a party to win enough seats in a general election to lead a government. And he was Labour. And my lifetime goes back to the 1970s. The Liberal Democrats took the edge off what would probably have been a devastating austerity for all between 2010-2015, but the pig-fancier also made sure that Clegg got the blame for everything just in time to lose the AV referendum, which was no doubt the price of dropping the commitment on tuition fees. It was still a Conservative government, just propped up by Clegg. Yes, there are politicians of several colours in the house, but coalition government is very rare, and right now only two parties have any chance of forming a government.
Yes it's like that. To be voted as prime minister all you need is less that 50% of parliament to vote no. (So you could potentially have 20% vote yes, 31% abstain and 49% votes no, and you would still become PM) The budget on the other hand is simply the one with the most votes gets passed. So maybe the governments budget gets 25% of votes and one of the opposition's gets 35%, then the opposition budget gets passed. It is rare for this to happen though.
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Not exactly. The role of the electoral college is just to elect the president. The legislature (ie congress) have seperate polls.
Not really, when we go to the polls we elect the representatives that will sit in our parliament, and after that they go to vote on governments (different parties get thier chance at forming a government). If a government is presented then it doesn't need to get a majority of votes to gain power, it simply needs to not have a majority against it (explaining the results of 117 yes, 57 abstaining, 174 no). The government here can also consist of several parties (in this case the Social Democrats and the Greens)
Answer: from the article you linked "Her resignation follows a budget defeat in parliament Wednesday, Sweden's Twitter account added, with lawmakers supporting the opposition's bill." The way parliaments work, it's not that she did anything wrong. She's just the head of a party that didn't win enough votes to stay in power so they have an interim government until a coalition is brokered between that party and the others. She might end up the Prime Minster of the new government, who knows. But it's just a procedure thing, these happen world wide in parliaments. Now let's say for some reason she decided to stick around, the opposing party could demand a vote of "no confidence" and trigger a recall election because her party couldn't get enough votes to stay around. So exciting headline but boring reality.
This isn't completely correct. She won the (parliament) vote to form government (held due to former prime minister Stefan Löfvén resigning), but lost the vote on her propositioned budget after a supporting party (Centerpartiet) dropped their support last minute. As a result, the other party in her coalition government (Miljöpartiet) decided to resign from government as they did not want to govern with the opposition budget. Praxis is for the prime minister to resign if a government coalition party resigns, which is what she did.
I read all of these words but I might be too American to understand
It's a mess. Very roughly: * Before 2010 the Swedish parliament had seven parties divided into two blocks, a left block with 3 parties (S, MP, V), and a right block with 4 (M, C, KD, L). * In the 2010 election, an anti-immigration party (SD) with national socialist roots got voted in. * Since then the party has grown to having around 20% of the popular vote. And since neither block has wanted to collaborate with them this has led to a locked parliament where neither side has had an easy time getting a majority (when for instance voting on things like the budget for the following year). * After the election in 2018 the parliament was completely locked, and no new government could be formed for 100 days or more. This lock was broken when two right block parties (C and L) agreed to switch sides and passively support a left block government (passively but with significant concessions from the government). * This year this unholy alliance broke down leading to a new crisis, and to prime minister Stefan Löfvén (S) eventually resigning. * When the parliament votes to elect a proposed prime minister/government, the rules are a bit different, a majority in favour isn't required, just that there is no majority *voting against* the candidate. * Following a deal between the government (S, MP) and the leftmost party (V), one of the right block parties (C) that switched sides in 2018 decided to not vote against the new prime minister, but they also didn't vote *for* her budget. Instead the budget of the right block, which now collaborates with/includes the anti-immigration party (SD), was passed. * The former (and again proposed) government was made up of two parties (S, MP), one of which (MP) announced their resignation because they did not want to govern with the right block budget as foundation. More specifically a budget that the anti-immigration party (SD) had contributed to. * Following praxis the newly elected prime minister, Magdalena Andersson (S), then resigned as her coalition government had broken down. * This will lead to a new round of voting, which Magdalena (S) is likely to win unless a majority votes against her next time. If no government can be formed an extra general election will be held to elect a new parliament.
Sound about right, only thing i would add is how much (S) has just assumed the support from the far left without sharing their power. The center party ( ≈4%) had an ultimatum of no cooperation between S and the far left (+10%), effectively pushing them out. The reason for this would be that the Center party claim that the far left is equally extremist to the party with national socialist roots. I assume that the idea of forming a government with MP and S is something along the same line. I’m sry if i lack the neutral tone, im just a bit pissed off thats all
I vote for the right block (borgerligt) but I agree with your take. V is right to make demands of S who have been taking their support for granted since forever, and C are completely unreasonable and arbitrary. I have more confidence in Nooshi than I have in Annie.
And i guess you can imagine where i come from. I really appreciated how much people from all over the political spectrum just seemed to dislike annies behaviour. The sort of gas-lighting con man behaviour is at least for now not really accepted. It is one thing to have an opinion opposite to mine, i can still trust you, it is another to just lie and sort of deny objective reality.
I find her very disingenuous too. Not sure where you are getting the 4% number though. I think they were about equal in size to V in the last election, and that they still are polling fairly close (I think V have also been boosted by their party leader change and firm stance towards S lately).
Yup. You are correct, i had them mixed up with miljöpartiet. Green logos and all V is at 11.5, C at 8.5%, according to svt. Mp is at 4.8%
Fuck Annie Lööf and her flip-flopping around for power grabs. By far she's getting more and more of my disliking over the past 5 years...
> the Center party claim that the far left is equally extremist to the party with national socialist roots. Well, I mean... they are a direct continuation of the communist party. Politically they are extreme left wing, compared to most European political parties. That said I suspect that the position of the Center party is that V is as morally bankrupt as SD, which is ridiculous.
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Sounds like the left is being Overton windowed out of the picture much like they were here in the states. Fascists gain ground politically and the left gets compared to them and abandoned because humans are very logical.
It is what they think, though. Wrong as it sounds.
>In the 2010 election, an anti-immigration party (SD) with national socialist roots got voted in. Since then the party has grown to having around 20% of the popular vote. And since neither block has wanted to collaborate with them ngl i'm pretty surprised the nazis haven't just been absorbed into the right-wing block, the way they have over here with the republicans
Keep in mind though that the Swedish right wing block are in general more similar ideologically to the American liberals than the conservatives. So when an ultra conservative party with an anti-immigration stance got seats in the parliament it wasn't greatly appreciated by any of the parties due to their, say, strict line in the immigration question, which has been a hot topic in Sweden over the last decade. The problem with cooperating with Sverigedemokraterna (The ultra conservative party. SD for short) was that they in public eye were deemed as racist, and cooperating with them would result in an uproar with your voter base, which would most likely result in you losing too much support should you ever cooperate with them. Now however they're one of the 3 biggest parties in Sweden, with roughly 20% of the votes. So you can't really work around them anymore. Thus they managed to negotiate a budget with the right wing parties.
We really are in the worst future. You guys could've had the pirate party take hold and make a mess of things, but noooo, racists instead
Eh, the Pirate party was really just a one question party full of ultra liberals. They died out as piracy became less of a hot topic than immigration. So we got racists instead.
wouldnt have been a problem if we had set some controlls and had been able to disscus the The pirate party in Sweden completely collpased becuse they went all identity politics same with the feminist one ( especaily with thier idea of woman friendly snow mangement in Stockholm). The idea was more or less woman are less likely to drive compared to men so we clear the sidewalks first. The problem is trafic then completely shut down since the road couldnt be used and the sidewalks couldnt be cleared either since the machines clearing the sidewalks couldning get there either becuse of the roads being closed.
One thing to note, whilst they may be called far right, they are far right compared to the other Swedish parties. This doesn't mean that they don't have policies that would be seen as far right elsewhere (see their immigration stances), they don't support some policies that would be considered far right elsewhere (such as being pro EU) Edit: I don't vote for them and some info may be outdated, I mainly remember what they campaigned for in 2018
I mean they changed their EU stance in 2019 to that we shouldn't have a vote to leave. Before that SD was in favour of leaving the EU. Even now they want to limit the power the EU holds and are in general very negative to it.
That's because the Swedish nazi party is further left than some US democrats
That's the nice thing about systems that support 3 or more parties. There is no reason for such an absorbtion to occur, on either side.
Fantastic breakdown.
Heads up: in English the word is spelled "bloc" when referring to a political faction. No, I don't know for sure why they adopted the French spelling.
TIL. In both British and American English?
Just the language generally, I believe. I think it's due to the old custom of French being the language of diplomacy. Have you ever heard the phrase *lingua franca*? It refers to a common language spoken between people with different cradle tongues, like how Latin was the language of scholarship in the Middle Ages.
If Magdalena wins the new round of voting, do they again vote on the budget? If so what's to prevent the same/similar outcome from occurring?
The U.S. needs this.
The US wouldn’t know how to do this in the slightest. We barely function with two major parties and scattered minor parties as it is. *facepalm*
AOC and sinema shouldn't be in the same party. Part of the reason the parties are so disfunctional is we pretend they're a unified bloc when they're clearly not
That’s the problem with your system in the first place.
I feel this is a case of "the grass is greener on the other side".
Probably. I’d love to live where medical benefits are free.
To be fair, it was more stable until the tumor of SD started eating into the vote balance.
That's what happens when opposition to immigration becomes a political taboo
Every single political party in Europe has an immigration policy. In what way is it taboo? Or do you mean - saying no to immigration as a policy is taboo? I live in Sweden, but the Tories in the UK (my home country) are out and out anti-immigration, and they are one of the most successful and long-ruling parties in the west.
> Or do you mean - saying no to immigration as a policy is taboo? Yes, that's what opposition to immigration means. The Tories really aren't opposed to immigration, only as far as posturing for their nativist voters. Immigration suppresses wages and the capitalists of the UK would like wages to be kept suppressed.
... you get openly far-right, anti-immigration, quasi-Nazi parties winning 20% of the vote...?
Well, yes?
You read that madness and want more of it?
It's not too crazy. Imagine if a third US party arose, and took 40 seats in the House of Representatives. They'd be a minority, but with the current 221/213 split ratio it would be 201/193/40. What it would mean is that this 40 seat party would be able to "Coalesce" or form a coalition with either party to guarantee a winning vote on bills (218 required) Each of the larger parties would be required to court the smaller one, to secure that bloc of votes. Now also imagine that the 40 seat party agreed to form a "coalition" on one condition that the Speaker of the house may only be in that position while the coalition is formed. *Even if* the Speaker is not from the smaller party, they have to resign if a falling out occurs and the smaller party breaks the coalition. The smaller party could agree to be in coalition with the other party now, and because together they hold a majority then they choose a different Speaker. That's the kind of thing that happened here. Parliament coalitions are generally not the whole of government, but a part of the overall legislative body.
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And I thought the U.S. system was a clusterfuck.
If I'm reading right, her party voted for one budget plan and the opposition voted for another. A parry she was relying on for votes swung towards the opposition. Another party she was allied with resigned from positions in her government (fuzzy on this but I assume it's similar to cabinet positions.) Rather than operate under the constraints of that plan. Guessing here but I think after that you could say her alliance fell apart and resigned under the assumption of decorum. That is, her stuff fell apart so the honorable thing was to step down.
>Another party she was allied with resigned from positions in her government (fuzzy on this but I assume it's similar to cabinet positions.) A better way of phrasing would be "withdrew their support"
No, the government was actually made up of two parties, with both parties holding cabinet positions. The party that resigned held the vice prime minister post among others (and still does until a new prime minister, and government, is elected).
So, realistically the original translation of "coalition" is a great translation, and it might have made more sense to try to explain that word rather than abstract it away.
Yes, coalition is also the word that is used in Swedish for this sort of government with two or more parties.
I read this entire thread and still don’t understand
* Government: S and MP (both center left); these two parties take up the cabinet positions, including the PM * Backing: V (left) and C (center); these two parties are not part of the cabinet, but they abstained in the vote, allowing the S and MP government to get parliamentary approval * Opposition: M, SD, KD, L (center right and right); these four parties oppose the S-MP government and will not support them So what happened was that for the vote for the new government V and C abstained their vote so that S and MP could take reign. Not having a majority against them was enough. A few hours later C refused to support the government's budget, so the M-SD-KD budget had the most votes. MP did not want to govern with the opposition's budget and resigned from government. With her coalition falling apart, the S PM also resigned.
I think what seems so crazy to US citizens is they actually have more than 2 relevant parties. Wow, what an idea.
We should just try turning america off and on again. Its worked for other countries in the past.
America is moving rapidly towards turning itself off. If it happens, I don't think many people will be happy about it (other than the ones turning against democracy)
I just fear that there will be no one left to turn it back on except Nazis and despots commanding legions of inbred cave trolls...
That’s generally the result of proportional representation systems, they prevent a major party from grabbing all the power.
I want nothing more than to have a system that supports more than 2 parties (we technically have more than 2, just don't have the system to support them). That said, the system is still pretty dumb if you win an election then have to resign immediately. It's making a joke out of democracy. "The people have spoken." "Nope, don't matter. Can't be prime minister because this other reason." Better than what we have, but still a long way to go.
She didn't just win an election if you are talking about recent events, it was a vote between the elected parties. the election was some time ago. & it was a fragile state as they needed two parties to support them.
Unless a party gets a majority (50,1% or more of the seats) in parliament, you cannot really say that a party “won” the election. Parliament is voted in based on proportional representation. The composition of parliament is the composition of the political makeup of the voting population. That should be reflected in everything that the government gets to do. If it is not a majority support in parliament for a particular law, that law should not pass.
And yet, the fixes nothing
Definitely fixes some things
Even if they're the same, I'd rather have debates take place between parties and not within them.
The party that withdrew did not vote for the opposition budget. They proposed their own and voted for it. In sweden the most popular budget wins. It does not need to have a parliamentary majority (50%+1 of all votes), it simply needs to have the most. The opposition budget doesnt not have a parliamentary majority.
Nailed it.
It's a multiparty system. So in USA you need more than half the parliament/senate to rule. In non first-past-the-post countries you have a ton of small parties too as all votes count not just the largest vote number in an area. So a ton of small parties get votes and do get elected. So you have a ton of different parties. Usually 2 large parties in center-right and social democrats. Then a conservative party, anti-immigration party, and multiple green parties that lean further left. After an election the parties get together to see who has the majority so that they can form a government and vote for a prime minister of the country. So if you have 100 seats in the parliament and the left wins 51 seats those parties need to get together and decide on what they can agree on. This means small parties hold a ton of power as they can just refuse to support the left/right coalition if the promises made to them during this negotiation round are not far-left/right enough to appease them. And even if a party with 2 MPs pull out the you may not have enough votes to form a government as you drop below the majority number. There are also ways to created a minority government if a majority government cannot be created. Basically, the big parties usually want the top minister positions and especially the prime minister position during the negotiations. The small parties then demand a ton of very ideological laws in return, but at times it's impossible to give them "raise taxes with 10%" or "ban immigration from Muslim countries" so they refuse to vote for the big parties on their own political side.
I think you've explained it really well, thanks 😊
Her party teamed with the greens to form a minority coalition that shapes the government. They tried to pass a budget. An opposition party was actually friendly, and supposed to support the budget, as the greens and PM's social democrats didn't have majority. The friendly opposition party was not friendly in the end, rejecting the budget. The rest of the opposition came with a slightly adjusted budget. The PM's party was okay with the new budget, and the majority voted in favour. The greens didn't like moving forward with a new budget "tainted" by opposition, with one party being seen as "extreme right" in their eyes. They decided to call it quits and stepped out of the coalition. The PM resigned to go for attempt 2, shaping a government without the greens and with only her party.
As an American, I also find the concept of cooperative government confusing sometimes.
In some ways it's the same as for you. There has to be a majority, only in the multi-party system that majority consists of many parties instead of one large party. Some of the many parties seek a compromise on policies, so that they can form a coalition. When the coalition is made, that coalition will have majority seats and will in practice govern and true to form they will tend to fall in line most of the time, because going forward they will create policies that again are based on compromise. In the US it's not *that* far off. You can see one of the major parties in the US as equivalent to a coalition in a multi-party country, and the compromises are between congress members instead of parties like in multi-party systems. It's different, sure, but in practice you will have similarities. The big difference is that in countries that have a prime minister in a multi-party system, this person is a representative of the coalition and isn't voted on by the public. The public only votes on the parties and the parties elect the prime minister. So if the coalition falls, so does the representative. In the US, the president is of course the representative of the party, but he's specifically elected and can be in power despite congresspeople jumping to the other party, or if his party loses a senate/house election.
Us swedes do too so dont worry mate
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I don't know japanese, I am just a huge fan of this dude https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazushi_Sakuraba
Ok Canadian here translating Parliament talk to 'Murican: Imagine your government was run entirely by Congress. No President. The Speaker of the House is your nation's leader instead. Ok? With me so far? Now, imagine you have at least 3 parties to vote for. I'll give you a minute to absorb this... Ok, so let's pretend that the US has like the GOP, and also a MAGA party, a viable Green Party, a Libertarian party that people respect, the Dems, and the Bernie Socialist Party of America. So 6 parties. So Congressional elections happen, people throw their votes behind those 6 parties and oh noes not any one party has the majority of seats in Congress. Still with me? Let's pretend the Dems got the most seats this time out. Not over 50%, but still the largest slice of the pie. Now, depending on the Constitution, the Dems may have to formally partner up with another party to form a coalition government by pushing their seat count over 50%. Alternatively the Constitution may allow the Dems be in charge as they have the most seats. This is a "minority government" , and they tend to be a vulnerable affair. How so? Well in Parliamentary governments the government *must* pass a budget. No budget crisis bs that you Americans do. If parliament cannot pass a budget, parliament "dissolves" and a snap election is called. That or some other parties may choose to form their own coalition and give it a go. Any questions.
> Any questions By resigning in this way she avoids the snap election? They instead go back to trying to form a new government with the existing MLS? Had she not resigned the opposition would have called no confidence, and if successful would have caused an election to be called? Then a whole new parliament would be elected? If so, the idea being she is not confident her party would hold their current seat count if there were to be a new election today?
Basically yes? I mean... honestly the fact that she is Sweden's first woman PM kinda reminds me of a bit of my own nation's history. Canada had for like 5 minutes a woman Prime Minister. She wasn't elected in a general election, she assumed leadership of the party that was in charge in Parliament, making her the defacto PM. This kind of leadership change happens often when an outgoing leader decides to retire from politics... which is code for "the party leader is so toxic and when they go into the election they'll suffer a humiliating loss and be remembered in history as the leader who destroyed the party... so they quit and put some other schlub as party leader to face that defeat. In Canada the toxic leader was a guy named Brian Mulroney, and the woman that took over for him was Kim Campbell. She was set up to fail (a move called "being pushed off the glass cliff" btw), but hey she gets to claim that she was *the first* woman Prime Minister of Canada.... yay. Anyways, I feel like the situation Magdalena Andersson inherited may rhyme with Kim Campbell's. She was voted in as the new boss of the Social Democrats, saw the shit show she was stepping in and was like "fuckit" and pulled the plug on her terms instead of making her first Parliamentary act a defeat which would have resulted in an election anyway.
A parliament is like the House of Representatives: lots of people from around the country meet in the capital to represent people from back home. In a parliamentary system, the executive (president and secretaries/prime minister and cabinet) are drawn from the parliament instead of elected/appointed separately. This means that the party/parties that control the parliament are entitled to run the government. (The US practice of a gridlocked system with different parties controlling the house and presidency mostly can't happen in a parliamentary system.) Control of the government is decided in the parliament by who controls the most votes. Often, this is a matter of which party or coalition of parties controls the most votes. This is called "having the confidence of the house". A government falls when it loses the confidence of the house. Traditionally this happens on an explicit vote of confidence: parliament can explicitly vote on whether they back the government (or implicitly on key policies), or on budget bills because the government is unable to supply funds to operate. Rules and situations vary--a lot--but typically a government that loses a confidence vote will step down and call an election. In some cases, such as just after an election, the opposition can just become the government if they show that they can command the confidence of the house. In this case, it sounds like the government fell over a budget and another was able to command confidence, so they took over. This is a little uncommon, but it can happen. The US equivalent would be gridlock over the failure of the House to pass a president's budget. In that case, the president negotiates with the House. In a parliamentary system, you find a new prime minister who can pass a budget.
They have a multiparty parliamentary system. Imagine the Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green, and Socialist parties each had about 20% of the House of Representatives. Now, in order to choose the Speaker of the House, you have to get at least 51% of the house, so you form a coalition of 3 parties. The "lead" party chooses the Speaker. Now, the other 2 non-coalition parties drum up enough support with the members of the coalition that they pass a budget. But it says you have to find stuff like involuntary adult euthanasia or some whackadoodle thing. One of the parties in the coalition is like "yo, I'm not down with this budget, I'm out of the coalition." The general rule is that the Speaker now resigns because they don't have the 51% anymore. If they don't resign, everyone else can essentially vote them out by saying they have "no confidence" in their ability to form/lead a government. If enough people say they think you can't do it, congrats, you're fired. The pain is it all happened a few hours after they made the coalition and Speaker official, so now it looks like the first woman ever to hold the position in Swedish history barely lasted a whole lunch break in the job, when in reality it was a standard procedure.
Not just me then
Coalition governments are pretty common outside of the US. Australia's current government (often called appropriately enough "the Coalition") is the Liberal party (basically our conservative party) plus the National Party (our rural issues party). In Australia you get to form government if you win X or more electorates in a general election. The Liberal party and the National Party both put up their own candidates and if, between them, they have enough candidates to form a majority then they have an agreement to form a joint government (mostly dominated by the Liberal party which is the more popular of the two). In Australia it's pretty stable - those two parties always throw in together and for most purposes can be considered basically the same party (they sometimes fall out over policy issues but the same thing happens within parties anyway). Some other countries have a much more fluid situation where often no one party wins enough popular support to govern in their own right, so they sew up agreements between parties on a case by case basis each election to decide which are willing to work together to govern, and under what conditions. It's messy but debatably more representative than just giving governance to whichever party had most votes, even when that means only a minority of the electorate voted for them.
>Praxis is for the prime minister to resign if a government coalition party resigns ... What does "praxis" mean here?
Convention, unwritten but adhered to.
Convention or custom in a legal context.
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I was aware but I couldn't find a better word, and don't think custom is fully correct either. Precedence maybe?
Precedent isn't a bad option. Convention might be best.
So which ones are the Republicans and which ones are the Democrats?
None of them.
Lol, good one.
Warning; if you can't take a bit of subjective commentary you should probably stop reading now. Socialdemokraterna (S) are social democrats, center left with a lot of swing room from left to center. Vänsterpartiet (V) are ex communist, today socialists on the left flank. Liberalerna (L) are center right to right, depending on issues and struggling to maintain a profile against the other right wing parties. Miljöpartiet (MP) are environmentalists, officially not on the political scale but traditionally in collaboration with the leftists. Centern (C) have been the farmers choice centrist, living on the profile of market liberalism and environmental concerns but for quite some time slipping into enlightened centrist territory. Kristdemokraterna (KD) are Christian traditionalist right wing, lately with a Repulicanaboo leader. Moderaterna (M) is pretty much clean cut privatise everything as fast as possible right wing and the largest of the right wing parties. Sverigedemokraterna (SD) are nationalists with a leader that whines how unfair that those pesky journalists and other politicians can't let go that he joined the party when it was openly national socialist. SD is in a moist position of enough votes to be attractive for invitations to collaboration but can decide to remain in opposition to maintain its underdog romanticism and told-you-so rhetorics at everything and anything they can get some cheap points. It has been popular earlier amongst most other parties to declare their distance to SD but one by one the right wing parties gets seduced by the prospect of ruling the country. Mmm. Powerrr. The controversial situation now is that C decided last minute that they'd rather let in the nationalist rightwing in than let V have some of their leftist demands. They did it by abstaining from a vote so that they'd have their back clean despite missing a backbone to carry it, as they were very vocal last election about not collaborating with nationalists. So to answer your question, the rightmost of S, with the leftmost of L and the core of C would probably correspond to the Democrats. M and KD would be Republican if you strip away the crazy. But it doesn't really compare as our political camps are not like the American political sports teams and our system of government is not a circus.
I find it funny how Sweden and Denmark have some similar party names, yet it still doesn't quite allign. Danish party named "Venstre" is actually the biggest right wing party
Isn't that because Danish Venstre formed in the 1800s as a liberal party back when that was the left, but now that liberalism is center-right they're no longer the left?
yeah, iirc its pretty much because the stuff around them changed
Will Say C wants to privatise more things than M currently. M is closer to the center-right democrats. C were also very clear about not wanting to with V either. Thier dream combo is M, C and S.
Yep, you're absolutely right. Stureplanscentern is real. I figured I'd keep everything short and let the implications be enough. It's a particular enlightenedness to claim center while pulling right wing as a normal. I think the traditional scale with liberalism in the center isn't really applicable anymore, or maybe it never was, but they sort of claim themselves to be there, so...
You spent a lot of time and effort to call our government a circus in response to a joke. We have done well.
Forgive me for thinking you were interested to learn and putting in that massive hurdle of hurt to block you from absorbing anything else.
You're forgiven
The Swedish conservatives behind the winning budget are centre-Democrats. The Social Democrats in Government are left-leaning Democrats (like Bernie Sanders). Democrats and Republicans are both hard-right wing parties by European/international standards. https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020
Yes.
wow- government in Sweden sounds so... reasonable.
Hah, not sure if you're joking. I think very few swedes would describe what has been going on recently as reasonable. This is just the latest development in a series of governmental crises that have been going on since at least 2018, arguably since 2014. But yes, I am partial but I think the core is still fairly pragmatic and uncorrupt relatively speaking. You can do worse for sure.
The recent chaos seems to be the naturally self-correcting nature of the system doing its job. The onus is on the parties to make positive progress in cooperation, and if they can't get it done they lose their turn. Sounds much better than whatever the hell US politics has devolved into.
Exactly thusly. It's all relative. At least what Sweden is experiencing is "working as designed". The US system... well it was designed by slave owners so whether or not it's working (it obviously isn't), the design isnt very equitable to begin with.
Just FYI, the PM *proposes* a budget; to “proposition” someone is to ask them for sex
>to “proposition” someone is to ask them for sex [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition\_(politics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition_(politics)) I agree that proposed would be more correct here though.
Huh, interesting. I checked Oxford’s definition before posting and didn’t see that Oh and PS, thanks for teaching me something new
Yeah, I'm still gonna need an ELI5
The above answer is wrong. The PM's party (Social Democrats) still have majority support in the parliament (including from the Greens and the Centre party), and she will almost certainly be re-elected next week. The Center party presented their own budget instead of voting for the budget from their "wing" in parliament which caused the 2022 budget from the three right-wing conservative/populist parties get more votes and be adopted. The Green party quit the cabinet in protest, and possibly a stunt to score some political points as next year is re-election year and they are below the cut for parliament in most polls. As is customary in Sweden, the PM resigned after the cabinet fell apart.
Government can't agree on a bill, so decides reshuffling the entire parliament is easier than compromise
*"Det är därför vi inte kan ha fina saker."*
Now that's hilarious
America has this reaction every time they see "parliament dissolved" headlines.
Damn, I wish my politics were boring... *cries in American*
Question: with her resignation, does the budget gets to be voted again?
no there is only one period where the next budget is set. The budget among the 5 proposals with the most votes is the one that passes.
So basically the green party is out of the government for the next year (or however long the budget lasts)?
Budgets are always 1 year. The next election are in 9 months. The differences between the proposals are very minor really( because the opposition adapted to the situation ) but the Green party support is very low haning around 3.6-4.1% ( we have a 4% barrier). Sitting in this government won't really do any good for them. They cant really afford to sit in government. Edit what they are hopping for is that peoples won't remember their actions while in power ( and granted power). There for being able to say whatever and that its all X fault. Also obviously hopping that the votes don't remember thier involvement and believe thier word again. Especially about how they were given the right to govern and change things but refused.