Chapter 12: Governments & RadiosThe attitude of political parties to representative democracy; Government is a radio set and The Government Party twiddles the knobs; Catholics and Protestants but no Deists; Politicians and Structuralists; Communists, Christian Democrats and Greens as Structuralists.
Up until now, we have been taking a still picture of the structure of Sweden’s mass politics, which means its party and election politics. Let us now shift our focus and begin the job of making sense of the dynamics of Sweden’s elections. This will require some discussion of the attitude of politicians and hence their parties and their party supporters to the representative democracy game. Not all take the views being put forward in this essay.Some political parties work within the mould of current political convention. These are the knob twiddlers, the fine tuners. They move deck chairs around on the deck of the Titanic.
They tend to argue that their party should be given the task of keeping the radio on the station because the other knob twiddlers will make a mess of the job so that instead of a programme we will be subjected to discordant noise, overlapping transmissions and unsatisfactory reception.
This will make us unhappy. And could even cause us to switch off the radio altogether. It will certainly use up a lot of battery and that will be expensive. Sometimes in their more private moments they might even argue amongst the faithful that it does not matter which damn programme it’s on as long as it’s properly tuned in, they control the tone and the volume knobs and not any other party. And…here the shopping list comes out…And provided people don’t have to listen to rock and roll all day. The devil’s music!
Government is a Radio Set. The Government Party controls the Radio Set. The little individual has the loudspeaker fixed into the wall of his sitting room and it has no controls. He could find the wires and disconnect them, but that will be ‘against the law’. He could go into another room but the bass will penetrate the wall and the walls are so thin that he can hear the jangle from next door. He could leave his home. He could go out for a long walk. But he cannot walk for ever. There Are loudspeakers everywhere he turns. And besides, he likes his home. Silence was once a Commons. Everybody had a right to silence. Nobody was permitted to inflict noise upon others without their approval.
Government is a Radio Set. Elections determine which party twiddle the knobs. But who makes the programmes? Who gets to use the transmitters? Who has the microphone? And who says I have to have a loudspeaker in my home anyway?
Some political parties are less sanguine about the usefulness of controlling the knobs on the radio set. They want to own franchises and make the programmes. To this degree they give the appearance of challenging the structure of the political agenda.
But this is the limit to the changes they demand. Not for them such ideas as turning off the loudspeakers, pulling the plug out of the microphone, or questioning the happiness that the radio set is assumed to bring. Both the knob twiddlers, the Politicians, and the would-be radicals, the Structuralists, believe in the basic rules of the mass political game. Reverting to our ecclesiastical metaphor, we have the Catholic Church, and we have their challengers the Luthers and the Calvins. But there is not a Thomas Paine in sight. No political deists are out there yet brandishing The Age of Reason and damning radio sets, broadcasting and the radio journalists. The Politicians are content with the status quo. Their only wish is to compete in a regulated market place with preferably one other party which plays by the same rules.
In Sweden, three of the parties are Politician Parties, three of the parties are Structuralist Parties and one party is currently wavering between the two. Let us look more closely at the reasonableness of this statement by exploring in a little greater depth the political philosophies underpinning the Communists, the Christian Democrats and the Greens, the three parties being classed as Structuralists.