2011-02-11

Is the Swedish democracy working?

"Working", as in representing the will of the people.

Most of the time, it is. When the system with two chambers in the national parliament was replaced in 1971 with one with a single chamber the number of seats was set at 350. And sure enough: The 1973 elections gave each bloc the same number of seats. Whereupon several decisions were mady by lottery. The government thus had a random chance of getting its proposals accepted.


Well, soon thereafter the number of seats was reduced to 349.

A few days ago the question about if and how foreigners are permitted to hunt grouse in the Swedish mountains. The current government, which thinks it's OK to let EU citizens hunt there as well as Swedes, has a slight minority and there's one party which doesn't want to belong to either bloc. The opposition is opposed, so normally the government should have lost with three votes.

But one member claims he pushed the right button but that the vote wasn't registered, one member didn't vote at all due to some "misunderstanding" and one who wasn't supposed to have voted did so anyway. (The last is because there's a sort of "fair play" system which means that if a member is absent this is reported and someone from the other bloc abstains.)

So the result wasn't exactly like the voters had a right to expect, was it?

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