Danish politics underwent a number of radical changes from the 1970s. The number of parties in the Folketing doubled, while the parties’ membership figures fell significantly. The average age of Folketing members fell drastically, and the number of women increased, but then stagnated at around 40% since the turn of the millennium. In the period after 1973, the Social Democrats lost their traditional first right to form a government, and the Social Liberals could no longer maintain their position as the dominant kingmaker party with the power to decide whether the government should be right-wing or social democratic – a role they had enjoyed throughout most of the twentieth century. At the same time, value politics became increasingly decisive, particularly concerning the question of how Denmark should regulate its relationship with the rest of the world.

The 1973 'earthquake election'

The 1970s was a decade of political upheaval, resulting in Folketing elections every two years between 1971 and 1981. Nothing symbolised this upheaval more than the so-called ‘earthquake election’ in 1973, which marked a decisive break with the parliamentary patterns that had evolved throughout the twentieth century. At this election, ten parties were elected to the Folketing, which meant the number of elected parties in the Danish parliament doubled in a single stroke. This remained the norm into the twenty-first century. The change was closely connected to general developments in society, where growth in the education sector and the welfare state, as well as the emergence of a larger and broader middle class, loosened the class structure and made voters less loyal to particular parties. Political preferences became increasingly governed by attitudes towards single issues such as tax, the environment and the EC – and later immigration – rather than by social affiliation and identification.

All the established parties lost votes at the 1973 election, while the new parties, especially the Centre Democrats (Centrum-­Demokraterne) and the Progress Party (Fremskridtspartiet), surged forward. As described in the previous module, the Centre Democrats, led by Erhard Jakobsen, were a splinter party of the Social Democrats that rejected the increasingly leftwards orientation of society and wanted better conditions for car- and home-owners. Like the Centre Democrats, the Progress Party was largely a single-issue party, led and dominated by the tax lawyer Mogens Glistrup. In 1973, it stormed into the Folketing with twenty-eight seats and became the second-largest party in Denmark.

The success of the Progress Party was partly due to its attack on the growing, tax-funded welfare state, which had increased the tax burden to such an extent that Denmark was on its way to becoming one of the most heavily taxed countries in Western Europe. Glistrup himself boasted that he paid no tax, and he applauded tax evaders, whom he likened to saboteurs during the Second World War. He was particularly blunt in his political rhetoric criticising pedantic bureaucrats and paper-pushers. This rhetoric made Glistrup a hit in the media, particularly on television, which became an important medium for communication between politicians and voters in the 1970s.

Co-operation across the centre

Representatives of the other political parties initially found it difficult to cope with Glistrup’s style and provocations, and both the right wing and the Social Democrats viewed Glistrup as politically dangerous and unreliable. Despite attracting many votes, the Progress Party remained marginalised, as incumbent governments sought to establish majorities across the centre of Danish politics. The prime ministers of the time, Anker Jørgensen (Social Democrat, in office 1972–1973 and 1975– 1982) and Poul Hartling (Venstre, in office 1973–1975), managed to enter into many broad agreements, particularly political-economic crisis agreements, in spite of the highly fragmented parliament. However, these compromise agreements failed to address most of the major economic challenges.

It was for this reason that the Social Democrats and Venstre joined forces to form a coalition government with Anker Jørgensen as prime minister in a historically rare act in 1978. The intention was to create a government so strong that it could take a meaningful stand against the country’s increasing economic imbalances. This did not succeed. The government was in office for only one year and demonstrated the difficulty of building bridges between the views of the Social Democrats, dominated by the interests of the trade union movement and employees, and those of Venstre, the traditional farmers’ party, who believed that economic recovery should be paid for by wage restraint among employees.

The ‘red’ 1970s and the (mildly) neoliberal 1980s

Despite the success of the Progress Party and the Centre Democrats, and despite the fact that most of the political agreements of the 1970s were made across the centre of the political spectrum, the 1970s can be seen as a ‘red’ or left-wing decade. Young voters tended to vote left, including left of the Social Democrats, which explains why parties such as the Communist Party of Denmark (Danmarks Kommunistiske Parti), the Left Socialists (Venstresocialisterne) and the Socialist People’s Party (Socialistisk Folkeparti) all had seats in the Folketing. Although these parties together had fewer seats than the Progress Party, left-wing agendas dominated wider public debate. One could say that the power of political definition – or even the spirit of the time – lay to the left, which shows that the effect of the 1968 revolution actually took hold in the 1970s.

The 1970s was a decade characterised by strikes and demonstrations, by Marxism and occupation in the universities, by the creation of alternative societies in Thy (northwest Jutland) and Christiania (Copenhagen), by grassroots mobilisation of international solidarity with the world’s oppressed and by opposition to nuclear power and the EC.

Coalition politics

The main objective of the early Schlüter governments was economic recovery. It was also difficult to create a majority in the Folketing during the 1980s. The governments were all minority governments that demanded either support from the Social Liberal Party or votes from the Progress Party. The Progress Party now appeared less anarchistic but was internally divided, between ‘pragmatists’ (slappere) and Glistrup’s traditional ‘fundamentalists’ (strammere). The former group was largely created by Pia Kjærsgaard, who became influential in the party when Glistrup was sent to prison for tax evasion in 1982. The pragmatists were generally more willing than the fundamentalists to co-operate with the government, but it was not easy for Schlüter to count on the support of the Progress Party.

His main support came from the Social Liberal Party (Det Radikale Venstre), which entered government between 1988 and 1990. However, support from this party was also problematic. Although it supported the government’s economic recovery policy, between 1982 and 1988 it consistently sided with the left-wing opposition on matters related to foreign and national security policy. The existence of this so-called ‘alternative majority’ created severe problems for the Schlüter governments during the NATO ‘footnote period’ (described in more detail below); it persisted because Schlüter chose not to step down and because there was never a majority for a vote of no confidence.

A scandal over the family reunification of Tamil refugees in Denmark during the Sri Lankan civil war finally marked the end of the Schlüter government. Schlüter decided to step down in January 1993, when a legal investigation made it clear that the government – and, in particular, the conservative justice minister Erik Ninn-Hansen – had administered cases of family reunification for Tamil refugees in violation of the law. During the lengthy investigation process, which the press covered intensely, Schlüter declared to the Folketing that the government had not acted incorrectly and that nothing had been ‘swept under the carpet’. The legal investigation disagreed, however, and Schlüter thus felt that his position was untenable. Just like Anker Jørgensen in 1982, Schlüter and his government resigned without calling a new election.

Political upheaval in the 1990s

After the resignation of the Schlüter government, there was once again a period of governments led by the Social Democrats, and the Social Liberal Party continued to play a decisive role. It was included in all four governments led by Poul Nyrup Rasmussen between 1993 and 2001. In addition, the party also played an important part in the Social Democrats’ dramatic internal leadership battle. In 1992 Svend Auken was forced out to make way for Poul Nyrup Rasmussen as leader, and thus candidate for prime minister. Auken’s defeat paved the way for governmental collaboration between the Social Democrats and the Social Liberal Party, which lasted almost nine years. This collaboration was primarily based on a relationship of trust between Nyrup Rasmussen, Finance Minister Mogens Lykketoft, and the Social Liberal leader Marianne Jelved.

The stable relationship between the Social Democrats and the Social Liberals in the 1990s stood in contrast to the relationship between Venstre and the Conservative People’s Party. Venstre had great difficulty accepting Schlüter’s decision to dissolve the Venstre–Conservative government without calling a new election, and for a few years the relationship between the two parties was tense. The balance of power between the two parties had also changed considerably. Whereas the Conservative People’s Party had been the largest party in the 1980s, Venstre assumed this role in the 1990s. At the election in 2001, Venstre won more than three times as many seats as the Conservatives – fifty-six as opposed to sixteen. However, the Conservatives’ downfall was very much selfinflicted. After Schlüter’s departure, the party ended up in a veritable leadership crisis, where one leader after another departed as a result of internal political struggles – not to mention an embarrassing drink-driving scandal, in which an accident on the motorway between Helsingør and Copenhagen forced Hans Engell to retire in disgrace in 1997.

The Progress Party was also affected by internal struggles. In 1990, Mogens Glistrup left the party in protest over the pragmatists’ growing influence and policy of collaboration. This put a temporary lid on tensions between the two groups, but they exploded again during a tumultuous party conference in 1995, during which Pia Kjærsgaard and the pragmatists’ line was defeated. After this, Kjærsgaard, along with Kristian Thulesen Dahl and others, formed the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti), the political platform of which was based on scepticism towards the EU and opposition to immigration. These policies won the party twenty-two seats at the general election in 2001, while the Progress Party slipped away from parliament.

Contract politics, bloc politics and value politics after 2001

As mentioned above, Venstre achieved a major election victory in 2001. For the first time since 1920, it became the largest party in the Folketing, with the new party leader Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the helm. Fogh Rasmussen had replaced Uffe Ellemann-Jensen in 1998, and profiled himself as pursuing a strong centre-oriented line with rhetorical support for the welfare state. This was a turnaround that marked a clear departure from the neoliberal and ideological profile he had represented in the 1980s and early 1990s. In hindsight, Fogh Rasmussen’s about-face seems more rhetorical than practical. His government put tax breaks and tax cuts high on the agenda – initiatives that, over time, have affected Denmark’s ability to finance welfare spending.

Up until the election, Fogh Rasmussen had made himself a spokesman for a form of contract with the voters. This meant that, on a number of points, a Venstre-led government would not deviate from basic promises in the areas of health, taxation and welfare after the election. Contract politics was continued by Fogh Rasmussen’s subsequent governments, which was possible because the governments functioned on a solid coalition basis, among other reasons. Despite their junior role, the Conservative Party – under yet another party leader, Bendt Bendtsen – chose to enter into government with Venstre, while the Danish People’s Party agreed to vote for the government’s policies. In this way, contract politics also became bloc politics, since Fogh Rasmussen’s governments did not need to appeal to the centre in order to form a majority, but could govern alone.

The Danish People’s Party supported the Fogh Rasmussen government in its economic and redistributive policies because the latter was willing to accommodate the Danish People’s Party in areas vital to it, such as value and identity politics. The party was more aligned with Venstre than with the Social Democrats in such matters. Fogh Rasmussen had recently declared a cultural battle against what he alleged was left-orientated cultural hegemony in Denmark. The Danish People’s Party participated enthusiastically in this, criticising ‘red bias’ in the Danish Broadcasting Corporation’s productions, the ‘tyranny’ of experts, the Social Democrats’ ‘appeasement policies’ during the footnote period in the 1980s and the blessings of a multicultural society. It is in this light that the Danish People’s Party, with reference to 1901, described 2001 as a (new) system change (systemskifte) in Danish politics.

New political shifts after 2011

Anders Fogh Rasmussen left Danish politics during the financial crisis of 2009 to take up the position of Secretary General of NATO. His successor was Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who became the third prime minister in a row to have the surname Rasmussen. However, Løkke Rasmussen’s first period in office was brief, and Helle Thorning-Schmidt became the first female prime minister to take office in 2011. With this, power was once again transferred to the Social Democrats – or rather to a coalition government consisting of the Social Democrats, the Social Liberal Party and the Socialist People’s Party, with Minister of Economic Affairs and the Interior (later to become EU commissioner) Margrethe Vestager of the Social Liberal Party as the government’s second strongest woman.

The government’s parliamentary basis was fragile, as it relied on support from the far left in the form of the Red–Green Alliance (Enhedslisten), which made it more difficult to continue contract politics. The Social Democrats in particular were criticised by the right-wing parties and the right-wing press for ‘political breaches’. This criticism was not unfounded, but it failed to take into account the limited room for manoeuvre the prime minister had to implement her policies. Lars Løkke Rasmussen also faced problems pursuing bloc politics when he assumed the role of prime minister again in 2015.

The challenges faced by both ends of the political spectrum can be partly attributed to a more fundamental factor – namely that the voters found it increasingly difficult to tell the difference between the red (the left-wing) and blue (right-wing) blocs in power. Both blocs had similar economic policies, which included tight budgetary management, tax cuts, privatisations and adjustment to international competition. This resulted in increased political fragmentation, which could be seen in the creation of the parties Liberal Alliance and later the Alternative (Alternativet), both of which were offshoots of the Social Liberal Party. This problem also compromised the cohesion of Thorning-Schmidt’s government when the Socialist People’s Party publicly withdrew from government in 2014 in protest over the decision to sell a large stake in the state-owned energy company DONG Energy to the American investment bank Goldman Sachs. After this, the Social Democrat–Social Liberal government persisted until the election in 2015.

Rebellion from the periphery

The high level of political fragmentation continued under Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s subsequent government, which took office in 2015. The right-wing blue bloc won by a narrow margin, voters changed parties to an extent only surpassed by the earthquake election of 1973, and regional voting patterns were so pronounced that the election came to be called a ‘rebellion from the periphery’ (oprør fra udkanten). In Denmark the periphery in this context consisted of areas outside the two economic and urban growth areas of Copenhagen and east Jutland. Many of the votes from the periphery went to the Danish People’s Party, which was particularly successful in the southern parts of Jutland. Here it won almost 29% of the votes, up to ten percentage points more than in east Jutland and north Sjælland. The Danish People’s Party received 21.1% of votes at the national level, which was enough to make it the largest party in the blue bloc and the second-largest party in the Folketing after the Social Democrats.

Together, the blue bloc managed to obtain the required ninety seats for a majority in the Folketing, but despite their position as the largest party in the majority, and contrary to custom, the Danish People’s Party declined to lead the government negotiations. Instead, Løkke Rasmussen took on the job, and Venstre formed a minority government. This government became difficult to manoeuvre politically, not only because of the narrow majority of the blue bloc, but also because of internal divisions between the ultra-liberalism of the Liberal Alliance at one extreme of the blue bloc and the Danish People’s Party’s welfare demands at the other. Issues such as the prioritisation of tax cuts and the size of the public sector seriously divided opinion.

Politics in difficult times

Oppositions within the blue bloc gradually became so large that, in 2016, Løkke Rasmussen felt compelled to include the Liberal Alliance and the Conservative People’s Party in the government. The resulting government proved to be surprisingly long-lasting and sat for the rest of the election period. This was mainly because the leader of Liberal Alliance, Anders Samuelsen – who was appointed as minister of foreign affairs – became more willing to seek compromise. While in opposition, the Social Democrats moved closer to the position of the Danish People’s Party, particularly on the issue of immigration policy.

This move showed that value and identity politics, especially the question of how Denmark regulated its relationship to the outside world, was still a key dynamic point in Danish politics. This was further underlined by the ‘no’ vote in the referendum on the partial lifting of the Danish opt-out on EU justice and home affairs, which was held in 2015. The ‘no’ signalled that a majority wanted to retain national control over justice and asylum policy, and therefore declined to enter into supranational co-operation in these areas. There was a clear battle here between the process of Europeanisation and national attempts to keep that process at bay (see more in later sections).