source: https://tinyurl.com/bddyepfp
We know so little. We don’t know why the universe exists. We don’t know why we fall in love, or why prime numbers are so weird, or even why ice is slippery. We also don’t know who’s in charge of Sweden right now.
Ulf Kristersson’s right block won the election nearly a month ago, but they haven’t managed to actually field a winning team yet. Kristersson pops up like a human Ulf-in-the-box and says “nothing’s ready until it’s all ready” and then ducks back down again. Meanwhile, the Social Democratic party keeps holding press conferences on Nord Stream like the governing party they aren’t, really.
Who will sit in the government is a great unknown. We do know, however, that the Sweden Democrats will be chairing several heavy-weight committees: the justice, business, employment, and foreign affairs committees. These positions look important and eminently respectable – and therefor elevate the Sweden Democratic party several huge steps from its dirty, extremist history. The parliamentary system of government in Sweden, however, makes committee work slightly more visible than powerful.
The deets
In Sweden, elected members of parliament become members of one committee or another: Here the details and wording of motions and propositions are negotiated. There are 15 committees, plus one for the EU. In each committee there are 17 members seated proportionate to their respective strength in parliament.
The chair
The chair of each of these committees wields the gavel, but can largely only bang on the desk. The real work of passing budgets and laws in Sweden is done by the government. For example, it was not a problem for the last Social Democratic government that some committees were chaired by Moderates. The government got its will through committees with nary a bleat from the parties or the press.
The government sits on, and has the advantage of access to, enormous investigative and information resources (what fun would it be otherwise?). In many cases, and even now, we can assume, many questions have been worked out in advance. The members of the committees can be expected to bring them up and work together to get them done.
This isn’t to say that chairing a committee is only symbolic. Chairing a committee does have pluses, but as is so often the case, also more work. The chair arranges the agenda, arranges for guests to address the committee, meets and greets, is sometimes the only person in the committee to meet a source, and through all of this, gets training, practice, and insight. It’s valuable, in other words, but mostly indirectly advantageous. It’s the long game.
In addition, being the chair gets lots of visibility when reporters crowd around wondering what the committee is talking about. Being a chair but not in the government also handily allows them to not have to take the fall if the results don’t work out. A win-win for the Sweden Democrats.
In tied cases, the chair of a committee will be the deciding vote. What party holds the chair will then very much decide what goes forward to parliament. But it is the parliament where the final decision on a budget or law’s final yea or nay is decided.
In Sweden’s parliament the right-led block has a majority now – but not a strong one. Lots of interesting things can happen but they’re not likely going to come from a committee chair position.
Where they will come from is just another thing we don’t know.