[EM] Stable PR governments

[Herman Beun]

Hi Markus,

The words "never in history" in my last mail were indeed somewhat 
confusing.

On 23 Aug 99, at 22:53, Markus Schulze wrote:

> There have been extraordinary elections in Sweden
> in 1887, in 1914, in 1958, and in 1970.

Stimmt (probably), but I was merely thinking of Sweden under the 
present system, which dates from 1971 (unicameralism) or 1975 
(constitution) depending on the definition. I am just back from a 
visit to the Swedish parliament :-) and have here a (quite extensive 
BTW) 'faktablad' with info about 'extra val', quoting: "Extra val är 
ovanligt i Sverige. Efter demokratins genombrott har endast ett 
extra val förekommit. Det var valet till andra kammaren 1 juni 1958." 
(Extra elections are uncommon in Sweden. After the breakthrough 
of democracy there has been only one extra election. That was the 
election for the second chamber on June 1st 1958). 

The elections in 1970, ISTR, were held because in that year 
(actually on January 1st 1971) the Swedish Riksdag became 
unicameral. I don't know about 1887 and 1914, but I suppose the 
faktablad counts them as "innan demokratins genombrott".

Since 1971, several governments have fallen before the end of their 
term (Carlsson 1990, Fälldin 1978 and 1981, the present 
government Persson is weak but still there), but no new elections 
(extra val) were held and new coalitions were formed instead.

Herman

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Herman Beun              Arnhem, Gelderland, Nederland, EU 
CHBeun at worldonline.nl     http://www.euronet.nl/~in000622/
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Opschudding in D66: http://welcome.to/opschudding
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Representative democracy is a contradiction in 4 year terms
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