I think there is an interesting realignment underway in the Swedish party political system. Parties, and even factions within parties, are no longer just positioning themselves along the traditional left-right axis, but also in terms of how global their perspectives are — along a nationalist-internationalist axis, if you will. The result is some interesting similarities in outlooks between parties not traditionally neighbors on the left-right axisJohan Norberg, when trying to choose how to vote on June 13, is in effect weighing which party is the most internationalist among the center-right offerings. (He has no permalinkage: scroll to June 7.), and, more worryingly, opportunities for nationalist parties to conquer terrain on the opinion landscape that is being vacated by larger political parties, whose elites are (albeit slowly) migrating towards global perspectives for policymaking.

This migration may explain the surge in violence on June 6 [Swedish] in Gamla Stan between what looked like the extreme left and the militant right. In fact, the altercation is better understood as a battle between extreme internationalists and disenfranchised nationalists.

While the left-right axis, roughly, aligns parties according to class loyalties or income redistribution preferences, the nationalist-internationalist axis aligns parties according to the scope of these allegiances. Is it just Swedish farmers whose interests a party should represent, or those of farmers in the rest of Europe or even the third world? Should the workers of Sweden unite, or the workers of Sweden, Poland, the Baltics, and the rest of the world? Where you fall on such questions makes huge differences in policy recommendations, even among people of the same left-right persuasionBoth Gudmundson [Swedish] and Norberg (June 8) link to this just released Timbro report on voting records of MEPs, and while individual voting records vary, among Swedish parties the Social Democrats have the best free trade record. (!).

It used to be very simple, and in many countries it still is: Parties should represent the interests of their voters, and these voters may be left, center or conservative, but they are all, say, French. The resultant political system is one where, ideally, utility is maximized for the greatest number of Frenchmen, without regard for such niggling externalities like policy induced poverty abroad Yes, I’m talking about CAP again, my apologies. or the needs of political refugees from from abroad.

For parties migrating to an internationalist perspective, this is no longer an ethically defensible position. If the value of non-citizens’ lives is the same as that of citizens, then an ethical party policy position should try to maximize utility for all “ideological brethren,” regardless of where they may live. Defending the rights of unionized labor at home by denying opportunities for fellow working-class members across the Baltic Sea (through restricted immigration, say) becomes problematic.

It appears to me that among Sweden’s left-of-center parties, youth wings are the ones keener to adopt this internationalist approach, whereas the party apparats, older and with more union baggage, are resistingCould the pro-free trade voting record of Social Democrat MEPs be explained by their relative youth? Unfortunately, the Timbro report does not have MEP’s ages. It would make for an interesting correlation study.. The old guard may also be more pragmatic, electorally: Patronage gets you elected, whether you like it or not, but with it come expectations that have nothing to do with ideological consistency. They may also understand that the electorate is not nearly as inclined to adopt a global perspective on utility maximization: This SvD article [Swedish] from a few days ago reports that a rising trend of Swedes, now over half, want Sweden to take in political refugees at a lower rate than is currently the case.

The irony of this entire situation is that in many cases parties are faced with a false dilemma. With respect to trade, for example, free traders know that their prescription for trade policy leads to the greatest possible utility for both the importing country and the exporting country. Unfortunately, the theory of comparative advantage is one university course removed from being self-evident, and it is in this gap that nationalist protectionists set up camp.

These “napros” do have potential natural allies: While the total utility of a country improves when it embraces solidly pro-globalization policies, individual groups within the country may lose out — auto workers in the US, for example, or farmers in Sweden. These groups, some of them traditionally heavily unionized, are the easiest targets for napros, and nationalist parties will try to coopt their interests. Gudmundson has already nailed one such example: the nationalist SverigeDemokraterna and their Swedish-meat-only-in-schools policy. My guess is that this wins votes with farmers because they empathise far more with fellow Swedes than with fellow subsistence farmers in Senegal.

An example of nationalist protectionism on the left is the reprehensible poster campaign by the Byggnads contruction workers’ union a few months back. Their members are also waiting to be captured by a nationalist party.

What are the policy implications of a migration by traditional parties towards global perspectives for policy making? There are lessons to be learned from Flemish politics: In an effort to contain the nationalist Vlaams Blok, all other parties threw up a cordon sanitaire, in effect voluntarily vacating the entire nationalist half of the opinion landscape, and leaving it all to the Vlaams Blok. The result: one third of the vote in Antwerp now goes to Vlaams Blok.

I don’t think, however, that the solution is to remain nationalist in perspective, but that preëmptive policies should be introduced which prevent the nationalist option from becoming appealing. In Sweden, concretely, this means redirecting union umbrella group LO‘s funding, massively, towards retraining those groups at risk of losing their livelihood because of globalization. Whatever happens, a nationalist party should not capture groups like Byggnads union members. Also, let’s not forget the average age of the black-T-shirts I saw milling around on the edge of Slussen on June 6: They looked barely out of high school. These people need to get a job in a job-producing economy so they have no time to blame their failures on somebody else.