I have a couple of new papers coming out in anthologies.  One is with my good colleague, Karina Kosiara-Pedersen, "Change and stability in the Danish party system", in M. Lisi (ed.): Party system change, the European crisis and the state of democracy. London; N.Y.: Routledge, 2018, pp. 63-79 (Routledge Studies on Political Parties and Party Systems).


Here is from the introduction:

"When looking at the Danish political system in the first decade and a half of the new millennium, it is tempting to quote Lampedusa’s words from  Il Gattopardo: That everything must change so that everything can remain the same. New parties emerged, semi-old parties disappeared but, on the surface, most things seem largely the same. Yet that would to a large extent be to ignore some quite subtle but important changes, fi rst and foremost that the “quadropoly” of the “four old parties”, which has dominated Danish politics for a century, have declined in strength and given way to a much more fragmented and multipolar party system. This change has come about gradually. There is no particular revival after the economic or immigration crises and neither does the framing of new parties indicate a link. While these crises have had an impact on the political agenda and policies, they do not seem to have had an impact on the confi guration of the Danish party system.  The historic core of the Danish party system has declined. The four old parties won nine out of ten votes prior to the earthquake election of 1973 at which they gained only 58 percent. In the period under scrutiny here, the combined electoral base of these four parties has shrunk from three out of four in 2001 and 2005 to two-thirds in 2007 and 2011 and only just over half in 2015. While they still provide a core, they simply do not dominate the party system to the same extent as they used to. This decline in the support for the oldest parties is similar across the Scandinavian countries but more marked in Denmark."

"Since World War I, “social democracy” has been one of the most influential political ideas. It refers to a partisan political movement, an ideological orientation, and a set of political institutions. Common denominators are the extension of democracy to socioeconomic spheres and an expansion of government activities beyond those of merely providing national security, law and order, and a narrow set of public goods. However, such a program would seem problematic given a number of insights offered by public choice theory: All forms of majority decisions are sensitive to even small changes in the procedures and are likely to produce outcomes not preferred by a majority. Majority decisions also risk producing Pareto-inferior outcomes, especially when costs can be imposed on others. And the fewer constitutional limits on government activities there are, the larger the extent of rent seeking with associated welfare losses is likely to be. Together these points are significant challenges to a program that wants to extend majority decision to new spheres while simultaneously promising prosperity for all."

I have tried to do a bit of "forecasting" with my model for turn-out at May Day demonstrations (based in my "Public Choice" article "It's the weather, stupid! Individual participation in collective May Day demonstrations").  A simplified model including

• Average of min./max. temperatures (according to DMI's weather forecast, as of Friday, for Tuesday min. 6 degrees Celsius, max. 18 degrees = average 12 degrees)
• Bandwagon (last year's no. of participants = 55,000)
• Colour of government (not a "bourgeois" government, i.e. a dummy = 0)
• Post-Soviet collapse (dummy = 1)

Using these four variables, we get a forecast of 81,782 demonstrators in Copenhagen's Fælledparken (standard error of estimate: 42,000).  Using

I have a new working paper out (in a preliminary version), dealing with "election inversions" in Danish elections/government formations. That is: Do Danish voters get the government(-coalition) a majority wants? One would think so, but I show that there are (at least) two types of voting paradoxes that may manifest themselves and lead to election inversions, where a majority of the voters vote for parties supporting one government, but where the other side wins. I show that

Tillad mig at reklamere for, at jeg for nogle måneder siden udsendte bogen "Partier og partisystemer i forandring" (redigeret sammen med Karina Kosiara-Pedersen) som et festskrift i anledning af min chef og gamle lærer, Lars Billes, 65 års fødselsdag.

I bogen--der har indlæg fra en række prominente partiforskere (hvilket jeg ikke selv er)--skriver jeg sammen med mine estimerede kolleger Robert Klemmensen og Mogens N. Pedersen om, hvordan årtiers forskning i, hvor mange dimensioner, der er i dansk politik, stort set uanset hvilken metode, der anvendes, synes at give de samme resultater. Der er--uanset om man ser på politikernes afstemningsadfærd, deres taler, partiernes programmer, vælgernes vurderinger, politikernes egne vurderinger ... o.s.v.--stort set altid tale om en mere eller mindre forudsigelig "højre-venstre"-skala. Lidt pudsigt.

My most recent, published English-language academic article is this one, in Scandinavian Political Studies, dealing with the possible occurrence of "voting paradoxes" in Danish parliamentary elections. In many ways that study began with a much earlier finding of a "Condorcet cycle" in Danish voter preferences in this 2001-article.