Alliance for Sweden
Encyclopedia
The Alliance formerly Alliance for Sweden , is a political alliance in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

. It consists of the four centre-right
Centre-right
The centre-right or center-right is a political term commonly used to describe or denote individuals, political parties, or organizations whose views stretch from the centre to the right on the left-right spectrum, excluding far right stances. Centre-right can also describe a coalition of centrist...

 parties
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...

 in the Riksdag
Parliament of Sweden
The Riksdag is the national legislative assembly of Sweden. The riksdag is a unicameral assembly with 349 members , who are elected on a proportional basis to serve fixed terms of four years...

. Although it was formed while in opposition
Opposition (parliamentary)
Parliamentary opposition is a form of political opposition to a designated government, particularly in a Westminster-based parliamentary system. Note that this article uses the term government as it is used in Parliamentary systems, i.e. meaning the administration or the cabinet rather than the state...

, it achieved a majority government in the 2006 general election
Swedish general election, 2006
A general election was held in Sweden on 17 September 2006, to elect members to the Swedish parliament. All 349 seats were up for election: 310 "fixed seats" in 29 constituencies and 39 members at a national level for what are called "adjustment seats", used to ensure that parties have...

 and a minority government in the 2010 general election
Swedish general election, 2010
A general election to the Riksdag, parliament of Sweden, was held on . The main contenders of the election were the governing centre-right coalition the Alliance and the oppositional centre-left Red-Greens coalition A general election to the Riksdag, parliament of Sweden, was held on . The main...

 forming the current government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

 of Sweden.

Members of the Alliance

The Alliance consists of the four centre-right parties in the Riksdag (Sweden's parliament
Parliament
A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...

). The members are:
  • The Moderate Party
    Moderate Party
    The Moderate Party is a centre-right, liberal conservative political party in Sweden. The party was founded in 1904 as the General Electoral League by a group of conservatives in the Swedish parliament...

    led by Fredrik Reinfeldt
    Fredrik Reinfeldt
    John Fredrik Reinfeldt is the Prime Minister of Sweden, leader of the liberal conservative Moderate Party and former President of the European Council...

    , a liberal conservative
    Liberal conservatism
    Liberal conservatism also known as progressive conservatism is a variant of political conservatism which incorporates liberal elements. As "conservatism" and "liberalism" have had different meanings over time and across countries, the term "liberal conservatism" has been used in quite different...

     party currently with 107 of 349 seats (30.06%) in the Riksdag.
  • The Liberal People's Party
    Liberal People's Party (Sweden)
    The Liberal People's Party is a political party in Sweden. The party advocates social liberalism and is part of the governing centre-right coalition The Alliance, which achieved a majority in the general election of 17 September 2006...

    led by Jan Björklund
    Jan Björklund
    Jan Arne Björklund is a Swedish politician. He is the leader of the Liberal People's Party and serves as Minister for Education and Deputy Prime Minister in the Swedish government.- Education and military career :...

     (Lars Leijonborg
    Lars Leijonborg
    Lars Erik Ansgar Leijonborg is a Swedish politician, Minister for Higher Education and Research 2006-2009 and Head of the Ministry of Education and Research 2006-2007...

     during the campaign and subsequent election), a social liberal
    Social liberalism
    Social liberalism is the belief that liberalism should include social justice. It differs from classical liberalism in that it believes the legitimate role of the state includes addressing economic and social issues such as unemployment, health care, and education while simultaneously expanding...

     party currently with 24 of 349 seats (7.06%) in the Riksdag.
  • The Centre Party
    Centre Party (Sweden)
    The Centre Party is a centrist political party in Sweden. The party maintains close ties to rural Sweden and describes itself as "a green social liberal party". The ideology is sometimes called agrarian, but in a European context, the Centre Party can perhaps best be characterized as social...

    led by Annie Lööf (Maud Olofsson
    Maud Olofsson
    Maud Elisabeth Olofsson is a Swedish politician, the former leader of the Centre Party of Sweden between 2001-2011, and the former Minister for Enterprise and Energy between 2006 and 2011...

     during the campaign an subsequent election), a liberal
    Liberalism
    Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

    , former farmers' party currently with 23 of 349 seats (6.56%) in the Riksdag.
  • The Christian Democrats
    Christian Democrats (Sweden)
    The Christian Democrats ) is a political party in Sweden. The party was founded in 1964 but did not enter parliament until 1985 in an electoral cooperation with the Centre Party and on the Christian Democrats' own accord in 1991. The leader since April 3, 2004 is Göran Hägglund. He succeeded Alf...

    led by Göran Hägglund
    Göran Hägglund
    Bo Göran Hägglund is a Swedish politician and the current leader of the Christian Democrats of Sweden . He was elected Party Leader on 3 April 2004, succeeding Alf Svensson...

    , a Christian democratic
    Christian Democracy
    Christian democracy is a political ideology that seeks to apply Christian principles to public policy. It emerged in nineteenth-century Europe under the influence of conservatism and Catholic social teaching...

     party currently with 19 of 349 seats (5.6%) in the Riksdag.

History of the Alliance

Swedish politics
Politics of Sweden
Politics of Sweden takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic constitutional monarchy. Executive power is exercised by the government, led by the Prime Minister of Sweden. Legislative power is vested in both the government and parliament, elected within a multi-party...

 had been dominated by the Social Democratic Party
Swedish Social Democratic Party
The Swedish Social Democratic Workers' Party, , contesting elections as 'the Workers' Party – the Social Democrats' , or sometimes referred to just as 'the Social Democrats' and most commonly as Sossarna ; is the oldest and largest political party in Sweden. The party was founded in 1889...

 for over 70 years. They had been in government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

 for all but nine years (summer of 1936, 1976–1982, 1991–1994) since 1932. The opposition parties decided that this was partly because they did not present a clear and viable alternative government. At a meeting held in the Centre Party leader Maud Olofsson's home in the village of Högfors, the four party leaders decided to form an alliance. The meeting ended on 31 August 2004 with the presentation of a joint declaration outlining the principles under which the four parties intended to fight the election. A year later a similar meeting was held at Christian Democrat leader Göran Hägglund's home in Bankeryd
Bankeryd
Bankeryd is the second largest locality situated in Jönköping Municipality, Jönköping County, Sweden with 8,711 inhabitants in 2005.Bankeryd is situated on the western shore of the lake Vättern about 7 km north of the municipal city Jönköping. It is mainly residential with some industries, and...

, resulting in the affirmation of the alliance and another declaration.

Aims and policies of the Alliance


Alliance for Sweden aimed to win a majority
Majority
A majority is a subset of a group consisting of more than half of its members. This can be compared to a plurality, which is a subset larger than any other subset; i.e. a plurality is not necessarily a majority as the largest subset may consist of less than half the group's population...

 of seats in the 2006 Riksdag elections and form a coalition government
Coalition government
A coalition government is a cabinet of a parliamentary government in which several political parties cooperate. The usual reason given for this arrangement is that no party on its own can achieve a majority in the parliament...

.
In order to do this, the member parties decided to issue common policy
Policy
A policy is typically described as a principle or rule to guide decisions and achieve rational outcome. The term is not normally used to denote what is actually done, this is normally referred to as either procedure or protocol...

 statements and to have a joint election manifesto. Each individual party still had its own manifesto and policies, but these will build up from common proposals in the Alliance's joint proposals. The Alliance has policy working groups for six areas: economic policy
Economic policy
Economic policy refers to the actions that governments take in the economic field. It covers the systems for setting interest rates and government budget as well as the labor market, national ownership, and many other areas of government interventions into the economy.Such policies are often...

, education policy
Education policy
Education policy refers to the collection of laws and rules that govern the operation of education systems.Education occurs in many forms for many purposes through many institutions. Examples include early childhood education, kindergarten through to 12th grade, two and four year colleges or...

, foreign policy
Foreign policy
A country's foreign policy, also called the foreign relations policy, consists of self-interest strategies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests and to achieve its goals within international relations milieu. The approaches are strategically employed to interact with other countries...

, the welfare state
Welfare state
A welfare state is a "concept of government in which the state plays a key role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of its citizens. It is based on the principles of equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for those...

, employment
Employment
Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. An employee may be defined as:- Employee :...

 and business
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...

 policy, and policing.

An example of this policy cooperation was the budget
Budget
A budget is a financial plan and a list of all planned expenses and revenues. It is a plan for saving, borrowing and spending. A budget is an important concept in microeconomics, which uses a budget line to illustrate the trade-offs between two or more goods...

 proposal that the Alliance parties put forward on 2 October 2005. The core proposal was a tax cut of 49 billion Swedish kronor, which is 1.9% of GDP and 3.3% of the total income of the public sector
Public sector
The public sector, sometimes referred to as the state sector, is a part of the state that deals with either the production, delivery and allocation of goods and services by and for the government or its citizens, whether national, regional or local/municipal.Examples of public sector activity range...

 in 2005. Each individual party also proposed its own policies in addition. For example, the Liberal People's Party want to spend 1bn kronor extra on tertiary education and the Christian Democrats want to have more benefits and tax deductions for families.

On 14 June 2006 Alliance for Sweden agreed a common energy policy. It will apply over the next parliamentary term (2006–2010), and includes a promise not to shut down any more nuclear reactor
Nuclear reactor
A nuclear reactor is a device to initiate and control a sustained nuclear chain reaction. Most commonly they are used for generating electricity and for the propulsion of ships. Usually heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid , which runs through turbines that power either ship's...

s during that period (Barsebäck 2
Barsebäck nuclear power plant
Barsebäck is a closed boiling water nuclear power plant in Sweden, which is situated in Barsebäck, Kävlinge Municipality, Skåne. Located just 20 kilometers from the Danish capital, Copenhagen, the Danish government pressed for its closure during its entire lifetime. As a result of the Swedish...

 was shut down in 2005). The proposal is that no more reactors are to be built, that the nuclear phase-out law will be repealed and that all forms of energy research will be legal and able to receive state grants (research on nuclear power
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...

 is currently forbidden in Sweden). An Alliance government would also grant any applications to increase the output of the existing plants, provided that it would be safe to do so. This has been hailed as a historic step, as disagreement over nuclear power has long plagued the centre-right in Sweden: the Centre Party opposes nuclear power, the Moderates and Christian Democrats support its continuing operation while the Liberal People's Party want to build more reactors. Some doubts have been raised about the long-term survival of this compromise, as neither the Centre Party nor the Liberal People's Party have changed their fundamental positions on nuclear power.

On 5 July 2006, during the politics week at Almedalen
Almedalen
Almedalen is a park in the Swedish city Visby on the island of Gotland. It is well known in Sweden as the central site of the annual Almedalen Week....

 on Gotland
Gotland
Gotland is a county, province, municipality and diocese of Sweden; it is Sweden's largest island and the largest island in the Baltic Sea. At 3,140 square kilometers in area, the region makes up less than one percent of Sweden's total land area...

, the Alliance parties announced a plan to abolish property tax
Property tax
A property tax is an ad valorem levy on the value of property that the owner is required to pay. The tax is levied by the governing authority of the jurisdiction in which the property is located; it may be paid to a national government, a federated state or a municipality...

. Their agreement promises to freeze taxable values at the current level (so that the revaluation that is being carried out will not apply), and to reduce the rate of tax on apartments from 0.5% to 0.4% of their taxable value. A ceiling of 5000 kronor will also be imposed on the taxation of the value of a house's plot. The parties are also agreed on the abolition of the tax and its replacement with a municipal charge independent of the value of the property; this reform is planned to be carried out in 2008. Property tax is estimated to bring in 28.1 billion kronor in 2006, rising to 30.2bn in 2007 and 32.2bn in 2008 (as taxable values rise). The first stage of the Alliance's plan (freezing property values, capping the tax on land value and reducing the rate for apartments) is estimated to cost around 4-5 billion kronor. The financing of this is to be revealed in the Alliance's manifesto
Manifesto
A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...

 in August 2006.

Alliance for Sweden released its election manifesto, entitled More people at work - more to share , on 23 August 2006.

The result of the election was clear enough on election night for Moderate Party
Moderate Party
The Moderate Party is a centre-right, liberal conservative political party in Sweden. The party was founded in 1904 as the General Electoral League by a group of conservatives in the Swedish parliament...

 leader Fredrik Reinfeldt
Fredrik Reinfeldt
John Fredrik Reinfeldt is the Prime Minister of Sweden, leader of the liberal conservative Moderate Party and former President of the European Council...

 to declare himself the victor and for Göran Persson
Göran Persson
Hans Göran Persson was the Prime Minister of Sweden from 1996 to 2006 and the leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1996 to 2007. Conceding defeat in the September 2006 general election, he announced that he would resign as party leader, and Mona Sahlin was elected to succeed him as...

 to announce his resignation as Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Sweden
The Prime Minister is the head of government in the Kingdom of Sweden. Before the creation of the office of a Prime Minister in 1876, Sweden did not have a head of government separate from its head of state, namely the King, in whom the executive authority was vested...

 and as leader of the Social Democratic Party
Swedish Social Democratic Party
The Swedish Social Democratic Workers' Party, , contesting elections as 'the Workers' Party – the Social Democrats' , or sometimes referred to just as 'the Social Democrats' and most commonly as Sossarna ; is the oldest and largest political party in Sweden. The party was founded in 1889...

. The four centre-right
Centre-right
The centre-right or center-right is a political term commonly used to describe or denote individuals, political parties, or organizations whose views stretch from the centre to the right on the left-right spectrum, excluding far right stances. Centre-right can also describe a coalition of centrist...

 parties of Alliance for Sweden formed a government with Fredrik Reinfeldt as Prime Minister, which was presented to the Riksdag
Parliament of Sweden
The Riksdag is the national legislative assembly of Sweden. The riksdag is a unicameral assembly with 349 members , who are elected on a proportional basis to serve fixed terms of four years...

 on 6 October.

The Alliance in government

Minister for Finance
Minister for Finance (Sweden)
The Minister for Finance of Sweden, officially Cabinet Minister and Head of the Ministry of Finance , is a member of the Swedish cabinet and head of the Ministry of Finance. It is often considered the most powerful office in Swedish politics after the Prime Minister.- List of officeholders :...

 Anders Borg
Anders Borg
Anders Erik Borg is a Swedish economist and politician, currently serving as Minister for Finance in the Swedish government. He is a member of the Moderate Party.- Youth and education :...

 presented the government's first budget on 16 October 2006. The budget contains many of the proposals that were prominent in the Alliance's election campaign: both the job deduction in the income tax, which will also be larger for old people to encourage them to remain in the labour market, and the "fresh start jobs" with reduced payroll tax for companies employing people who have been unemployed for more than a year will come into effect from 1 January 2007. Tax reductions for companies hiring young people and for domestic services are to come into effect on 1 July. The tax reductions announced in the budget total 42 billion Swedish kronor, of which the income tax deduction is 38.7 billion. Other changes include the ending of employers' co-financing of sickness benefit after the second week and reduction of unemployment benefit. Unemployment benefit will remain 80% of previous pay for 200 days then drop to 70%. Benefit will be payable for a maximum of 300 days, or 450 if the recipient has children.

External links

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