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Основы и особенности социальной демократии: норвежский опыт Fundamentals and peculiarities of social democracy: the Norwegian experience
Лопатников Святослав Николаевич
Магистр
Факультет международных отношений Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет
Санкт-Петербург e-mail: pomorren@gmail.com
Lopatnikov Sviatoslav Nikolaevich
Master's degree Faculty of International Relations St. Petersburg State University St. Petersburg e-mail: pomorren@gmail.com
Аннотация.
В статье раскрываются ключевые особенности такого политического направления как социальная демократия. Начиная исследование с экскурса в историю возникновения демократии, автор раскрывает ключевые социально-политические процессы, оказавшие влияние на дальнейшее развитие демократии как политического режима. Отдельное внимание уделяется социальной демократии, как достаточно молодому и пользующемуся популярностью идеологическому течению. Автор на теоретическом уровне рассматривает ключевые особенности социальной демократии, проводит сравнение данного политического учения с социализмом, а затем обращается к эмпирическому опыту, в деталях представляя политическое устройство современной Норвегии. Статья может представлять интерес для специалистов по региону Северной Европы, а также для всех тех, кто желает подробней узнать об особенностях социальной демократии в Норвегии.
Annotation.
The article reveals the key features of such a political trend as social democracy. Beginning the study with an excursus into the history of the emergence of democracy, the author reveals the key socio-political processes that influenced the further development of democracy as a political regime. Special attention is paid to social democracy as a rather young and popular ideological trend. The author analyzes the key features of social democracy on a theoretical level, compares this political doctrine with socialism, and then turns to empirical experience, presenting in detail the political structure of modern Norway. The article may be of interest to specialists in the Nordic region as well as to all those who wish to learn more about the features of social democracy in Norway.
Ключевые слова: социальная демократия, скандинавская модель, политическая система Норвегии.
Key words: social democracy, Scandinavian model, Norwegian political system.
Democracy as a political regime is not something fundamentally new for mankind: we can observe the first forms of a democratic system in ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. This form of social organization that once emerged in city-states was a mechanism through which the citizens could participate in the political life of their city: to decide questions of war and peace, trade, urban planning, education, and other urgent problems. However, an important difference in comparing today's states with those of antiquity was the fact that ancient cities had a fairly small population, which allowed the inclusion of a relatively large number of people in the political sphere of life. Then the forms of democracy began to change.
With the advent of the Middle Ages, rulers in many states moved away from democratic forms of government in favor of the absolute power of the monarch. Gradually, however, the situation began to change, and we began to see the first attempts at implementing democratic procedures in the system of government. We are talking first of all about popular assemblies, where citizens could make decisions about the future of their settlement, which then became the prototype of the national parliament, which in turn already characterized a representative democracy.
However, monarchies of many European countries continued to exist until the IXX - XX centuries, and then gradually began to give way to the republican form of government, which guaranteed the electability of the main bodies of power in the state. The necessity of changing the form of government from monarchy to republic was mostly dictated by the change in social relations and the increase in the level of education and welfare among citizens, which demanded an effective policy from the point of view of national interests. Many monarchies were not ready to meet the new reality, which generally caused a situation in which kings and emperors lost their power.
We began by discussing the origins of democracy, but in this study, it is also worth mentioning how social democracy came into being. It happened much later than the standard representative democracy in antiquity. The scientific community considers the origin of social democratic ideas to be the second half of the nineteenth century, associating these ideas with such names as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as well as Eduard Bernstein. Many people associate these names primarily with socialism and communism, which is generally true.
The ground for the emergence of the idea of social democracy was prepared by the Industrial Revolution, which took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in different countries. One of the outcomes of the Industrial Revolution was the industrialization of cities, where factories and plants began to appear and where people began to arrive from all over the country in search of work and a better life for themselves. All this accelerated the process of urbanization of cities, and then the formation of a new large-scale social class: the workers.
At first, people were willing to work under very difficult conditions, with low wages and long shifts, but as factory personnel increased, workers began to assert the need to regulate labor relations and the importance of respecting worker's rights. Educated people could not ignore these trends, which led to their ideas of a fairer and better world, which in turn gained considerable popularity with the working population because they stood up for their rights in the first place.
Ideas of socialism found great support in Imperial Russia, which then became the leading socialist state, the USSR. It is worth noting that at the very beginning of the birth of this ideology, social democracy was difficult to distinguish from socialism (although some people still quite often confuse these directions of political thought).
These political currents had the same basic ideas: freedom, equality, and solidarity. The view of the economy was also similar, both schools believed that the state must have public ownership of the means of production, which necessarily led to the format of a planned economy, which proved ineffective later, after World War II.
However, a significant change in the differences between these political ideologies occurred after World War II. The social democrats, having studied well the elements of the planned economy, decided that this economic formation was not the most effective and came to the idea of limited state intervention in free economic relations. They considered Keynesianism, named after John Keynes, whose ideas had helped the Roosevelt government overcome the Great Depression in the United States, a good example of this approach.
Likewise, after World War II, the Social Democrats were able to take advantage of the favorable economic situation and began to implement a broad system of social support for citizens, after which the states where this system was applied became known as the "welfare state."
After the 1970s and up to the present day, a new stage in the development of social democracy began, which was caused by a kind of crisis of the welfare state model, the reasons for which were very objective factors: the aging of the population and the decrease in the share of working people in the total number of citizens, social idleness, and considerable expenses on maintaining the social insurance system in a workable state. However, despite these challenges, social democracies did not disappear but managed to adapt and find their place in the global system of political-economic relations.
When it comes to modern social democracies, many people think of the Scandinavian countries, which of course is true. Scandinavian countries are bright representatives of social democracies; the form of their state structure is called
the Nordic model because Denmark, Sweden, and Norway have many common features, but there are also differences. In this study, we will examine modern social democracy with the example of one of the Scandinavian countries, Norway.
The first workers' political party appeared in Norway in 1884 and was called Vort Arbeide. It is worth noting that the party began its activities even before Norway's independence in 1905. Since the establishment of the first social democratic party in Norway, this political idea has played a fresh role in the state system of the northern country.
In the entire period from the mid-1930s to the end of the 1960s, the Norwegian Workers' Party received more than 40 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections. From 1945, the party had a clear majority in the parliament for 16 years and, with an interruption of three weeks in 1963, continuously held government power until 1965.
When talking about the political system of modern Norway, it is important to emphasize that it is a unitary state in which the form of government is a constitutional monarchy. The monarchy in Norway is more of a symbolic one, since the monarch does not have any great power in the country. In terms of its political regime, Norway can without any limitations be described as a democratic state, and delving deeper into the features of democracies, it can even be stated that Norway is a social democracy. Norway, like many other countries, adheres to the principle of separation of powers, and the head of the executive is the Prime Minister, elected for a term of four years. The main decision-making body in Norwegian politics is the parliament, called Stortinget. Therefore, we can also note that Norway in turn is also a parliamentary democracy.
We have already mentioned that social democracy is characterized by a large number of services that are guaranteed to citizens and free of charge. Let us look at the features of these social services in Norway.
The Norwegian welfare state is very comprehensive and characterized by universal welfare rights, which means that everyone has equal rights to social benefits. The opposite is the means-tested or selective schemes, which are granted to those who, for example, live below a set income rate.
It should be made clear that this universality applies primarily to social welfare services: Norwegians with high and low incomes have the same access to public health care, education, etc. On the other hand, public transfers above a certain minimum level are usually classified according to income, with a few exceptions, such as child benefit.
In Norway, an important principle is that universal services should maintain such high quality that people with higher incomes do not feel obliged to buy other services on the private market. The fact that most people use public services is a prerequisite for supporting the welfare state.
In Norway, the welfare state is largely financed by general taxation, that is, taxes on income, consumption, and wealth that are not directly linked to social benefits. Most public services are free or are subject to only a small deductible.
Because those with the highest incomes pay the most taxes and because public goods are relatively evenly distributed among the population, the Norwegian welfare state has a significant redistributive effect. The extensive welfare state is one of the most important reasons why income inequality in Norway is much lower than in many other countries.
What makes it possible to provide an extensive program of social guarantees (free education, health care, paid leave, parental leave, a pension system, and much more) in Norway is a progressive taxation scale, which provides the process of redistribution of funds from the richer segments of the population to the poorer, which is reflected in the low level of income inequality in Norway. A low level of income inequality in turn ensures stability in the state, which affects the whole system of social relations.
An important link in the Norwegian system of social democracy is the municipalities. They have played a particularly important role in the Nordic welfare model, particularly in Norway, and this role has also changed over time. At the earliest stage of welfare development, municipalities played an entrepreneurial and leadership role. In the development of the welfare state after the war, the municipality was an important agent of state welfare policy. During
this period, the relationship between the state and the municipality was characterized by strong integration and "soft" management, with an emphasis on financial incentives to encourage municipalities to increase efforts in priority areas. The relationship was characterized by extensive contact and cooperation between line ministries and local service sectors.
Since the 1980s, this integration has gradually waned. After economic growth slowed in the 1970s and there was less money to distribute, economic incentives were replaced by framework management and stronger governance through legislation. This weakened integration and established a more hierarchical relationship between levels of government. Incentives were replaced by mandates, and since the early 1990s, municipalities have faced a number of new challenges. Framework funding meant that there was no direct link between tasks and funding. This, in turn, allows municipalities to spend more efficiently, adjusting the budget to the current needs of citizens.
Labor unions play a very important role in Norwegian politics. Approximately one million people in Norway are members of a labour union of some kind or another. Unions are the agents of workers' will, they regulate the relationship with the employer, and they even set the minimum wage in some area or another. Through unions, Norwegians show solidarity, which is one of the most important pillars of social democracy. The union is an organization that greatly enhances the political activism of citizens.
When talking about the Norwegian economic system, it is called a mixed economy. This system is a mixture of two extremes: a market economy and a planned economy. Both are economic systems that, in their extreme forms, are difficult to find in practice. The closest it comes to the Keynesian model is that it has a significant amount of government regulation that coexists with a free market.
Private individuals own a large part of the means of production, but the state as well as municipalities also own companies. In Norway, however, it is now increasingly common for the state to convert its companies into joint-stock companies, but it still holds the majority of shares (more than 50%). This applies in particular to such areas as banks and insurance companies, factories, some stores, land, forests, hospitals, schools, and communications. A special mention should be made of the state's considerable control over the energy companies, which contribute a considerable part of Norway's revenues to the budget.
Here we see that business life in Norway can be divided into two parts or sectors: the public sector and the private sector. The public sector has traditionally been thought of as businesses owned and operated by the state, county councils, or municipalities. The public sector accounts for more than 16% of GDP. The private sector is the rest of the business world: private industrial companies, agriculture, fishing, trading companies, private banks, and so on.
Hence we can say that in modern Norway we can observe all the basic features of social democracy: the level of freedom in the country is one of the highest in the world, social inequality is comparatively small (both in income and in issues of equality of race, gender, etc.), and the public is consolidated (mainly through trade unions and municipalities). Accordingly, ideas like freedom, equality, and solidarity are fully reflected in the Norwegian political system. There is a broad base of social guarantees that are universal and available to every citizen, but in order to secure them, the state intervenes in the economy through fiscal policy with a progressive taxation scale and then redistributes the benefits. The Norwegian state regulates economic relations through its shareholding presence in many of the large companies that generate a significant portion of Norway's GDP. Thus, Norway is today one of the brightest representatives of social democracies, whose example can be used as a basis for building a social-democratic state in other countries.
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