THE NORDIC MODEL OF DEMOCRACY
Final report of Nordic Spaces projects
Nicholas Aylott, project leader
2012-08-15



1. What was the aim of the project and has it been fulfilled? Has the project plan been adjusted?

Given their small size, the societies in Nordic countries - Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden - have attracted far more academic interest than might have been expected. While there are unquestionably gaps between rich and poor, those gaps are relatively small in an international perspective. There are also material differences between other social groups, including men and women; but, again, those gaps are mostly (though not always) considerably smaller than in other countries. This relative equality is partly promoted by the structures and actors within the respective Nordic labour markets, but probably even more by states that exact comparatively very high taxes on income and consumption and then proceed to transfer that wealth to certain groups - the less well-off, the less healthy, the old, the jobless, families with children. Apart from this social security, the public provision of goods like transport and infrastructure is also extensive. Put simply, people who value material equality between citizens highly - people whom North Americans call liberals and Europeans call social democrats -
have obvious reasons to look positively at the Nordic countries.

The point of departure in our project, however, has been not so much the outcomes that Nordic politics have tended to engineer, but rather the processes of politics themselves. For these processes have also attracted a lot of attention, and much of that has also been positive. The results of public policy themselves, of course, might be seen as reflecting well on how public policy is conducted. But besides what they produce, Nordic political systems have frequently been characterised as working both efficiently and equitably. Debate is free and open; important groups have their voices heard; compromise is the watchword; and yet stable decisions do get taken and implemented. All this amounted, some argued (or perhaps assumed), to a specifically Nordic way of managing politics - a Nordic model of democracy, in fact.

Our next step was to ask what influence this perceived model has had on a collection of neighbouring countries, namely, the Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. We sought, as we wrote in our original project application, "to examine whether an 'export version'...of this model has developed - that is, whether recognisably Nordic traits in the development of institutions and practices in the Baltic states can be identified." A second objective was "to investigate the cultural climate, or discursive context, in which political decision-making occurs
- that is, how Nordic discursive influences matter in the way that political institutions and processes work." We saw our cases "as being 'most likely' to exhibit institutional and procedural diffusion, given the commonalities between the Baltic and Nordic regions."

Overall, it would be fair to say that our progress towards the goals of the project has been satisfactory, but probably no more than that. Aside from the constraints encountered by
members of the project group (see below), the main difficulties that we have faced instead have been both theoretical and methodological.

Underpinning our work has been a thesis of institutional diffusion - that is, that the construction of political institutions in one place will, under certain circumstances (such as the period of flux and institutional rebuilding that the Baltic states experienced after the recovery of independence), be influenced by the character of similar institutions in certain other places. As we put it in our application, "Investigating the extent to which this expectation is verified lies at the heart of the project's purpose." We knew that this investigation would not be easy. As we proceeded in our research, however, it became clear that actually being able to argue plausibly that this sort of diffusion had taken place would be even harder than we had appreciated. The basic problem has been that, even when institutional similarity is suggestive of some sort of diffusion from Nordic to Baltic institutions, it has been very difficult, sometimes impossible, to exclude the possibility of other factors having had causal effects that were at least as strong.

We have got closer to such an objective in a couple of our studies. One way of constructing a strong argument about the effects of one polity on another is to assemble a wealth of observations. Detlef Jahn's chapter in our book uses the contents of political parties' election manifestos, coded and converted into a well-known dataset, as his observations. The scale of the dataset means that the transfer of ideas and emphases between polities can be traced across space and over time with a pretty strong degree of confidence that no other explanatory factor can be responsible. Karl Magnus Johansson's contribution, meanwhile, takes a quite different approach. Rather than being drawn from a dataset, his observations are what have been called
"causal-process observations"- in other words, pieces of qualitative evidence that some chain of events has occurred, which links one operationalised concept, the cause, to another, the
outcome.

Even in these two contributions, though, we can only claim so much. Jahn's focus is on outcomes, and less so on the mechanisms by which ideas spread between political parties in different countries. Johansson's approach is the reverse: his painstaking archival research and interviews demonstrate persuasively that links between parties occurred, without being so concerned about the concrete political results that the connections produced. In the other more empirical chapters, moreover, the need for caution in interpreting findings is even more apparent.

Still, overall, we feel that we achieved much that was worthwhile in our collaborative research. For one thing, the project team now knows far more about the way politics works in the Baltic states than it did before. (This applies to the project leader more than anyone.) This is a very simple but rather important step forward. These achievements are discussed more fully in the next section.

We also adjusted the aims of the project as we proceeded in order to make them more realistic. We emphasised the descriptive and exploratory character of the project overall, while allowing for stronger causal statements in some of the studies that it encompassed (especially Jahn's). In addition, we have changed the project's constellation of sub-studies somewhat. The original
idea was that it would include work on four "sub-projects": (a) delegation and democracy in the
Baltic states' constitutional structures; (b) Nordic and Baltic parliamentarism and scrutiny in the light of European integration; (c) political parties - power, organisation and international networks; and (d) the discursive context of political processes. The latter two sub-projects remained largely intact and, indeed, became three separate studies. The first two, however, were replaced by a more general one on the nature and vitality of Baltic democracy in relation to democratic theory.




2. What are the three most important results of the project?

The term results can be interpreted in different ways. If we take it to mean "outcomes" or
"consequences" of our work, the following could be picked out.

(1) An impressive database of the political discourse used by Estonian politicians has been built up by two project members, Kadri Simm and Külliki Seppel, which will be the foundation of several publications, including a chapter in our forthcoming book. The database covers published texts written by the politicians and media interviews with them. The media include three major daily newspapers (one of them a tabloid) and a weekly newspaper. Also mined are party documents containing "direct speech", websites and party newspapers with speeches and the like.

(2) The connections between project participants has enhanced all of our research networks, including contacts across both national and disciplinary boundaries (Simm and Seppel are, respectively, from philosophy and sociology). Through project meetings, extended visits, discussions via electronic media and, not least, participation in academic conferences, our work has consistently been taken forward. As a result of this project, for instance, my own connections with political scientists in Latvia, Lithuania and especially Estonia have been greatly improved. Collaborative work with some of these new contacts has produced several conference papers. I can also see scope for continuing work with the Estonian and Latvian colleagues who have worked in our project.

(3) Finally, the book in which our team will produce contains studies that make useful contributions to their respective areas of academic literature.

Results could also be taken to mean "findings" in a more scientific sense. Here, the following could be emphasised.

(1) Although we expected that politics would work quite differently in the Baltic states to the way that it works in the Nordic states, the differences were probably greater than we had expected.

As Kjetil Duvold shows in his contribution to our book, democracy is much less participatory in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. While there are signs of falling participation in the Nordic countries, this is from a high level. Participation in the Baltic states has never been very deep. Restricted citizenship, which means that some among ethnic minorities have been constrained
in their formal right to participate, is one part of it. However, full citizens are also less liable to participate in politics. Party systems, especially in Latvia and Lithuania, are much more still much more fluid and unstable than those in the Nordic countries (and, interestingly, in Estonia, too). With the partial exception of Latvia, they also feature much weaker left wings in the respective national political spectrums. Third, the Baltic party systems are more complex than most, if not all, of the Nordic ones, in the sense that more dimensions of competition than just left-right are relevant to the mechanics of co-operation and competition.

(2) As for diffusion, the empirical investigations show limited support for the thesis. In three chapters, different aspects of possible diffusion are studied. As discussed above, Johansson shows convincingly that the mechanisms through which diffusion might have occurred
certainly existed, but not necessarily that it really did occur. Jahn, on the other hand, shows that while diffusion of the policy ideas contained in parties' election manifestos does seem to have taken place, it is only under certain circumstances. Nicholas Aylott, J?nis Ikstens and Emelie Lilliefeldt's examination of internal party processes, meanwhile, finds little similarity between Nordic and Baltic practice. The differences that they find are mostly attributable to the social and political circumstances in which democracy was established and, perhaps even more so, to the institutional incentives offered by the respective national electoral systems.

(3) Why is the evidence of institutional diffusion weak? Perhaps the Nordic countries in
general, and the Nordic model of democracy in particular, are less generally admired than some of the description in the academic literature might have suggested. In a way, this might be seen as unsurprising, given the very different challenges that the Baltic countries faced when they recovered their independence, which were quite different to those that the rich, stable, secure mature democracies over the water were facing.

But what Simm and Seppel's study indicates - and this is certainly one of the most interesting findings of our project - is that while leading political figures in Estonia, at least, were well aware of the politics and policies prevailing in the Nordic countries, many were also quite clearly sceptical about them. Again, this perhaps ought not to be so surprising. At that time, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Nordic economies were experiencing severe economic crisis, which were widely attributed to high taxes and large public sectors. In other words, the very features that had made the Nordic model of democracy so attractive to some observers both before and subsequently were, at that time, widely seen as burdens rather than assets. The importance of timing in social and political development is thus underlined.



3. What results have been achieved in terms of publications (including open access publications): monographs, peer review articles, book chapters, conference papers, and others?

The forthcoming book with Ashgate in which our studies and findings are collected will certainly comprise our project's foremost publication. Over its duration, Jahn has published various journal articles and book chapters that reflect his interest in the topic and his association with the project team. Aylott, Johansson and Simm's contribution to the 2011 yearbook of the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation is in a similar category of publication.

A PhD thesis, successfully defended by Lilliefeldt in 2011, contained a case study of a Latvian political party. Research on that was partially facilitated by our project.

Otherwise, our output has been mostly in the form of conference papers. Some of these have realistic chances of maturing into journal articles, in addition to those that have already done so.

Our list of scholarly publications is in Appendix A.



4. What academic activities such as seminars, workshops, conference panels and similar have been conducted?

In addition to the conferences organised by the Nordic Spaces programme, there were several academic events organised by our project group.

In October 2008 our project team ran a two-day workshop jointly with political scientists from the University of Tartu in Estonia. It provided an excellent opportunity to enhance our contacts with the research that was ongoing in that department. In September 2011, two project members, Aylott and Lilliefeldt, organised another two-day workshop at Södertörn University, in which we pursued some of themes related to political parties in both Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe that our project had addressed. Several participants had become known to us through our work in the project.

There were also two conference panels that the project group organised. The first was at the conference of the International Council for Central and East European Studies in Stockholm in June 2010, in which Aylott, Jahn, and Simm and Seppel presented papers. The second was at the Nordic Political Science conference in Vaasa in August 2011, in which Aylott, Duvold, Seppel and Simm presented papers.

Also worth mentioning are the five months that Jahn spent as a visiting professor at the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies at Södertörn University in 2010-11. This allowed for numerous discussions about the project in general and his own study in particular.

Our list of academic activities is in Appendix B.



5. What results have been achieved in terms of outreach activities such as newspaper articles, interviews, seminars, lectures, web pages and others?

In addition to the Nordic Spaces programme website (www.nordicspaces.com), our project group has had its own website (www.nmd-project.net), both for collection of information within the group and for outreach purposes.

Aylott took part in the launch of the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation's yearbook at the Almedal week on Gotland in July 2011. Johansson will speak about our project at the
"Research Square" (Forskartorget) at the Göteborg Book Fair on 28 September 2012 in
Gothenburg.

Our list of outreach activities is in Appendix C.



6. Has the project generated any new research problems?

At present, the diffusion thesis will probably not be taken much further. A possible exception is Jahn's work on party-programmatic change, in which the thesis is most measurable. The theoretical and methodological difficulties outlined above are formidable in other fields, such as the study of political institutions.

On the other hand, project members, the project leader in particular, have become increasingly intrigued with how party politics in the Baltic states work. What the process of candidate selection reveals about internal party power structures, and particularly party leadership, is a question that deserves further exploration through comparison of parties in younger and older European democracies.

Seppel and Simm are likely to use their database for further research, probably with less of a
Nordic focus.



7. Has the project generated any spin-off effects (for example, new research collaboration, new research ideas and applications)?

As mentioned above, the connections made between researchers within the parameters of the project has been one of its main successes. New project applications that involve several members of the current project are likely to be developed during autumn 2012 and spring 2013. Party politics and political leadership is one probable initiative.



8. How has co-operation within the project team, with other Nordic Spaces projects and with other researchers or research teams functioned?

Simm, one of the core team members, took maternity leave twice during the project, which set us back somewhat. In addition, another team member became ill for an extended period, which also slowed progress. That largely explains why our project ended six months behind the original schedule, and why our book is not quite completed.

There has also been a degree of turnover among the other scholars associated with the project. Originally, it was intended that Magnus Blomgren (Umeå University, Sweden) would be a core member, with his research time funded from project resources, in addition to Aylott (Södertörn University, Sweden) and Simm (University of Tartu, Estonia). Around late 2009, however, it became clear that Blomgren had become over-committed (the system of research funding being as unpredictable as it is). The solution was to draft in Johansson (Södertörn) in his place at the
centre of the team. As for other contributors, some of those who had been associated with the original application never became involved in its activities. Instead, and as the form of our book became progressively clearer, Duvold (Södertörn), Ikstens (University of Latvia) and Lilliefeldt (Södertörn) were recruited as contributors, although with project funding limited to conference participation and short field-trips. Above all, Seppel (née Korts), an associate of Simm's at Tartu, became a very important member of the project group. Contributions from Jahn (University of Greifswald, Germany), meanwhile, have been consistently, exceedingly valuable since the inception of the project.

Despite this turnover, relations and communication within the group have been excellent. The same has applied to the group's relations with the two directors of the Nordic Spaces research programme who have served during its duration. Contacts with other project groups have been mostly limited to the conferences and other meetings that the programme directors have arranged.



9. Has the project received complementary funding from sources outside the Nordic
Spaces framework?

All costs associated with the workshop in Tartu in 2008 were covered by a grant from the
Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies (Östersjöstiftelsen).

Costs associated with the workshop at Södertörn in September 2011 were covered by a grant from Södertörn's Centre for Baltic and East European Studies and from funds provided by the Swedish Network for European Studies in Political Science.



10. Financial accounts. Are there any major divergences from the original plan? In that case, which ones and why?

The only real deviation was in the extension of our project by six months, to mid-2012. The two parts of the project budget, one run from Södertörn, the other from Tartu, have been used pretty much as expected, although the final accounting has yet to be completed.



11. Other comments.

Although the project's achievements in terms of publications have been somewhat limited, all its core team members feel that they have gained a great deal from their collaboration. The management of the research programme has been exemplary.