Culture and Christmas

I am not a Christmas person. Basically I am a religious agnostic - someone who just does not feel a strong urge to believe in what I cannot know. I find religions sometimes fascinating and sometimes just disgusting. Of course, I enjoy Christmas traditions in the family - up to a point. But it may be worth pondering that the Mass for Christ is not only a great celebration for the Christian church and a wonderful experience for our children and family, it is also part of a loosely spun structure that gently controls the Western world, just like other invisible behavior codes control other civilizations.

I am not talking about the Christian religion, because the church and its many denominations and sects is a narrower set. My reference is to all the people who tend to follow patterns of behavior typical of the Western world. That is most of those born into it. They – we - follow these patterns because we have learned that this is what you should do and how you do it. In the widest sense, traditions and social habits – or culture - are what Clifford Geertz called “sets of control mechanisms” (1973). Instead of instinct, which humans hardly possess, Geertz argues that culture serves that function for us. To keep us from becoming unpredictable and even dangerous to each other we need simple, basic guidelines in all of our daily lives that nudge us back onto the beaten path whenever we are apt to wander. The church and other religions have those rules written down, and usually have a long list of sanctions for transgressions (“sins”), but many other cultures do not work that way. The unwritten rules of a culture – whether religious or just social - are much less explicit than the law, but often there are social sanctions instead of courts, such as being frozen out.

Among the many social control mechanisms in the Western world there is Christmas. Ideas about how to celebrate Christmas guide your doings from Christmas Eve (or even from the beginning of the Advent season) until January 6 – or perhaps even January 13. You do not just do things haphazardly. You follow tradition, although tradition has otherwise mostly seemed to have vanished from our lives. Within the traditions there are sub-traditions, and these can be like worlds apart. Christmas in my home country, Norway, for example, is strongly defined by what you eat for dinner on Christmas eve. I grew up with fresh boiled cod, which is a strong coastal tradition. But other parts of the coast eat mutton (“pinnekjøtt”) and inland they eat “lutefisk”. To move from one of these cultures to another (as when people marry) can be a painful experience. You lose your bearings, somehow.

All of this is a matter of course, just something we don't think that much about. But shift it to the more general level of rules, not for a holiday season or a religious feast, but rules for living as it is during the rest of the year for most people – and you see the outline of something much more consequential. Geertz insisted that humanity is not one global entity, it is multiple. There is no underlying global humanity, he argued. There is just this large number of different cultures – different sets of control mechanisms – that we find coexisting around the world.

Or better, they need to coexist, to find ways of living with each other. But they have a hard time of it, the more they meet the more they quarrel. Fanatics seem to win out. What puzzles me under these circumstances is the curious lack of influence of Geertz' notion of culture in later writings on that subject. I suspect it is because Geertz rises above them all, he makes each of them just one among many, and that is an offense to most of their adherents. He even refuses to recognize western liberal humanism as unique or as a standard for all.

I find his thinking refreshing even forty years later, when the ability of cultures to get along is much more on trial than it used to be.

Puzzle of Catalonia's Independence Elections Nov 25

Catalonia's extraordinary parliamentary elections on November 25 was a big let-down for the initiator, President Artur Mas. The point of having a snap election was to have his party benefit from a presumed new wave of support for independence from Spain. That has now proved a mirage. And Mr. Mas had really gone out on a limb during the campaign, promoting his scheme with bold words, raising unfounded prospects of immediate EU membership for an independent Catalonia and offending the Madrid government along the way with brazen statements – all of which now puts his failure in an even worse light.

As it turned out, his center-right party, CiU (Convergència i Unió), lost dramatically, dropping from 62 to 50 seats in the 135-seat parliament. At the same time the leftist republican independence party ERC (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya) had a very good election result, doubling their number of seats and recapturing the strength they had before 2010.

For two parties with the same main goal to come out with opposite results is, indeed,  strange. It becomes even stranger by the biases at work in the reporting. Many news headlines in Spain and around the world pronounce CiU the winner. Of course, CiU does come out way ahead of all other parties, twice as big as the next party. The only thing is, CiU was even bigger before.

What is remarkable in these election results is that CiU, the strongest independence party, finds itself rejected, while there is still a majority of seats won by parties in favor of independence. Actually, the proportion is almost exactly the same it was before the elections (independence parties CiU + ERC 72 seats until Nov 25, 71 seats after). The strength of independence opinion is also seen in the shares of votes cast: about 57% in favor of independence from Spain if you add in the smaller parties - ICV-EUiA (Greens) with 10% of the vote, and CUP (Candidatura Unitat Popular) 3,5%. Previously, during the election campaign the figure 57% in favor of independence from Spain was measured in polls conducted during November. (Hence, my previous blog on this subject was in error regarding this statistic.) There is, in other words, an undeniable sentiment favoring independence in Catalonia, and it has not become weaker. 

Nevertheless, given all the loud campaigning in favor of a push for a referendum, this election must be deemed a failure for that cause. No wonder Mas has called for a moment of reflection.

In the meantime Catalonia needs a government. There are three other parties that have enough seats to bring about a majority, but only one of those (ERC) is in favor of independence. That is, conservative CiU has no other potential partner to govern with than leftist ERC. The latter's leader, Oriol Junqueras, sounds like he is favorable to a collaboration with CiU, despite their ideological differences. The project of a referendum on independence is still one on which the two parties have the same view. They also have it within their power to bring it about, although such a coalition itself would be unprecedented.

However, the future for an independent Catalonia no longer seems as bright as before. EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso has said in no uncertain terms that a new state seceding from an existing EU member state will not automatically become an EU member. It will first have the status of «third country» with respect to the EU, and will have to apply for membership like any other non-member. New members will need the affirmative vote of all existing members, including Spain. Obviously, a runaway former province of Spain will not receive that crucial vote.

Wisely, by this announcement the EU has dampened the independence zeal of many a discontented province in its member countries, among which may currently be counted at least Scotland and the Flemish part of Belgium.

The GOP in US Politics: Where Do Old White Elephants go?

63 per cent of the over-60 white vote qualifies for that distinction. But off to die in the elephants' graveyeard? Wishful thinking – or needless fear, as the case may be. Early Republican despair at the loss of the presidential election was slightly excessive, as if their side had been the more likely winner. Many leading Republicans now call for party reform (see, e.g., William Saletan, Washington Post, November 18). Here is a transatlantic view of the outcome of November 6, 2012.

I doubt the GOP will go into reform. The loss was by no means that serious, and the party core is too entrenched. In particular, the closeness of the race reveals the continuing strength of the Republicans and the depth of the division in the country – very much one of culture – between Obama's voters and Romney's. Obama's win was only by 50.66 per cent to 47.69 per cent. A 3 per cent loss for Romney is hardly a landslide for Obama, only just enough to be a convincing victory. Then, of course, the House of Representatives remains solidly Republican and in control of the all-important budget.

Many Republican bloggers suggest ways in which the Republicans can make themselves more attractive to younger voters in the future. Go for the gay vote (which evidently was a significant help to Obama); court the immigrants, pursue the women's vote. Such ideas may make theoretical sense, but I don't think these groups are likely to be more favored by the GOP in the future than they have been until now, unless there is a GOP candidate who personally embodies such values. At most there might be a female candidate - in the Palin mode? Hardly a winning card. Condoleezza Rice? Not unthinkable, but a long shot for the nomination in a party that still hides a lot of racism. Other types of off-the-beaten-track Republican candidates seem unlikely to me.

As for religion and abortion, one cannot shift the GOP stance on questions like these without undermining core Republican convictions. All told, it seems that when the Republicans score, they do so less on issues than on basic ideology and appealing to people's aspirations to be rich some day. As many have already pointed out, if this had been only the party of the rich it would hardly have had a chance to win this election. In sum, my guess is that GOP reform is not going to happen.

There is another reason why I think so. The present mode of inside GOP politics is (to my guess) more in tune with the Tea Party people and the huge jungle of lopsided right-wing media reporting than any reformed party platform is likely to be. The Republican Party had a dominant elite in the 1950s and -60s that was intellectual and moderate in its leanings. It is pretty clear that this former moderate Republican consensus at the top was broken gradually during the two decades before 1980. What I believe happened was that a widespread set of fundamentalist populist views started simmering up from the Republican small-town and countryside communities, first to the state level - most prominently in California with Governor Ronald Reagan during the 1970s, then moving on with Reagan to the national level. This is no research finding, just a collection of personal impressions.

I remember being very surprised during my first year in the US (1961-62) to encounter the fundamentalist Republican views typical of my small, friendly Iowa host town. My surprise was due to their fairly uniform and rigid views on «socialism» («socialized medicine» especially) and religion, which to me seemed very different from the impressions I had had of the public image of Eisenhower Republicans at the national level. Then, two years later, along came Barry Goldwater, the Arizona fundamentalist representing the Republicans opposite Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential elections. The controversy within the Republican party over the Goldwater candidacy and his poor showing was immense. Such primitive views, one gathered, were not to be launched again by the GOP in a nation-wide campaign.

Also indicative of the moderate stance at this time was the fact that the term «conservative» was not in use in Republican US politics, except by the curious phenomenon William Buckley, who showed up in the talk shows in the late 1960s. He turned out to be much before his time (though many of us then thought the opposite). And true enough, Nixon won in 1968 with a much more subdued Republican message than Goldwater four years before. Not until 1980 did the small-town, Goldwater brand of conservative Republicanism reappear, this time making a smashing success. The personality of Ronald Reagan was of course very much part of the reason for this success.*

Since then, the fundamentalist base has ruled the GOP. Demographic change is eroding it, but it is still very much alive. Just look at the states Romney won. There is still plenty of space between the coasts for Republican fundamentalism. 

One reason why Republicans might also look to the future with some confidence at this time could be that the midterms of 2014 are not so far away. The Five-Thirtyeight Blog of the New York Times gives figures (November 18) from US mid-term elections since 1946. These simple statistics show convincingly that the President's party – Republican or Democrat – almost always loses the House of Representatives in the subsequent mid-terms. Good news for the GOP, uncertainty for the US as a whole.

Clearheaded leadership is required not just from the President, but also from those who oppose him and hold the key to a sensible way out of the jam they have all been in for too long. Even we on the outside are getting tired and dismayed by the long trend of fundamentalism in US politics, which is distracting the country from playing constructively in world politics. 

Fortunately, good sense won at least the top post in this election. And it is reassuring to learn along the way that there are still people around who call themselves «liberal Republicans» - and who voted for Obama.

* See also "How the Republicans Got that Way" by Sam Tanenhaus, New York Review of Books, May 24, 2012.

Catalonia's Challenge to Spain

Is this a soap opera? Four Spanish EU parliamentarians send a letter to the EU Commissioner Viviane Reding asking for protection by the European Union against the Spanish government – their own government! We Europeans know about the claims to independence of Basques and Catalans. These are claims of considerable minorities in the Basque Country and even of a majority in Catalonia, if we discount the wide split between Catalan parties of the left and parties of the right.(*) These claims have been heard for decades, nay for centuries. Their fate has been like that of any other political demands that keep being repeated, but are ultimately not acted upon. Such claims may be (as in these cases they are) respected as legitimate, but in the end not taken seriously; they are filed away as curiosities. This is how Europe has dealt with the aspirations of the Basque Country and Catalonia whenever they have turned up.

So what is different this time? How can an admittedly major region of a major European country suddenly raise such a ruckus about its autonomy that threats of countermeasures of all kinds – bar none, even military intervention - begin to fly?

The notice of Catalan President Artur Mas of an advance election to the Catalan legislature, el Parlament, on November 25 has injected additional nervousness into Spanish politics at a time when there already existed intense pressure from street protests and the hardship of the economic crisis in the country at large. The jittery state of the reactions has to do with the election being a step in the reassertion of the old Catalan claim to independence, previously never taken completely seriously. This time, however, it appears to be different, not least due to Spain's exposed situation in the euro crisis.

The background is the fact that the Spanish system for collecting taxes and dividing authority between the central government in Madrid and the regional governments in the 19 autonomous communities was only sketchily designed from the start (in the 1978 constitution). The legislation and executive provisions of the financial authorities seem at a glance to be adequate, but have obviously not been followed up in practice. This gap in executive follow-up has allowed the regions and their underlying governing levels – the provinces and the municipalities - to amass debt, way beyond what they should have. As long as the economy was booming there was no visible problem, but after the turn of the tide that is all different. The fiscal system has been put to an extreme test in the current hardship and appears not to be able to survive it without major revision. And coping with crisis and revising the system at the same time is not a good approach.

Most of the autonomous communities (regions) of Spain are currently unable to service their debt. Madrid this year set up a sizable relief fund to help them out. Catalonia and most other regions have requested a share of that fund, which they will probably receive. However, Catalonia has later come back and asked for as much more, which would, if granted, leave them in possession of more than half of the entire fund. That second request has (understandably) been denied. Then Catalonia asked for – and was denied – the same fiscal status as two other autonomous communities, Pais Vasco (the Basque Country) and Navarra, who for historical reasons have a so called “fiscal pact” with Madrid.

This is where Spain is most at fault at the central level, and where the constitutional system fails. Catalonia claims to be a victim of an unjust system because they pay much more to the central government than they get back. But for starters, this is a much used system in developed industrialized countries. Among countries with a similarly decentralized structure as Spain, Germany has it, Switzerland has it, Canada and Australia have it. Moreover, in more simply structured, smaller centralized countries like Norway, Sweden and others, rich municipalities pay into a redistribution system that benefits the poorest municipalities. In all of these countries, the richer communities pay more into the country's governmental system than they receive back. Mind you, many of them don't think it is fair, and they all grumble. But it is standard governmental practice within the OECD. Moreover, studies of well-being in the Spanish autonomous communities show that Catalonia's living conditions place it among the four best endowed regions in Spain (figures for 2000 and 2006, Jurado & Perez-Mayo, Social Indicators Research, 2012). It is thus not surprising that they are asked to contribute more to their less favored compatriots.

A cross-national comparison of five countries with similar systems of redistribution (Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain and Switzerland) shows Spain to be quite ordinary among the rest, and indeed less harsh than other systems. In fact, Spain has the second softest of the tax transfer arrangements among these five countries. On the other hand, the monetary effects of these transfers are also less than in the four other countries except Switzerland. In other words, Spain has a fairly benign system with comparatively less impressive transfer results. (See the study by Hierro et al, Revista de Economía Aplicada, 2010.)

What is the problem then? Is Catalonia complaining without reason? Not as I see it. The complaints are just aimed at the wrong target. Where the Spanish system has gone wrong – in addition to not overseeing the communities' observance of the rules in force - is in allowing some of the regions, for historical reasons, to have a more advantageous organization than the others. The foral system has left Pais Vasco and Navarra in what one study has characterized as a “scandalously favorable” situation (Ángel de la Fuente, “Sobre el Pacto Fiscal y el sistema de Concierto.” Fundacion SEPI, 2012).

Although Angel seems to be speaking Catalonia's case, he is actually giving a quite even-handed evaluation in which his first judgment is that no government in a similar situation has allowed its subordinate regions to decide on their tax collection system by themselves. All other Spanish regions have offices of the central tax ministry (Hacienda) located throughout their territories. Not Pais Vasco and Navarra. Their agencies collect the taxes on behalf of the central government. The central government, therefore, is not participating in these communities' tax collection process. Hacienda are just handed over the money bags “at the border”, as it were.

My conclusion is therefore that Catalonia has a point, but the resolution is not to give them the same exceptional system. Rather, the solution must be to remove the foral system in Navarra and Pais Vasco and instate instead the one in force in the rest of Spain. That, of course, would be to challenge all the forces of nationalism in these regions and unleash a new battle of the regions.

Poor Spain.

(* Correction here of previous text. Catalan opinion favoring independence according to polls in November 2012 is 57%, similar results found in election of November 25, 2012, though  people holding this view were split between four parties of both left and right.)

Romney and Europe

Just a few weeks more to go to the US presidential elections 2012. In the last leg of the race I've been thinking maybe Mr. Romney could use our help and support, "we" in this case being European conservatives. 

But wait a minute. While I've been thinking, Mr. Romney has been talking.

Some of the people he has talked about are Europeans, people who in his view exemplify exactly what NOT to be, or do. He is talking about socialists, of course. Now, we must admit there are people in this part of the world (Europe) who do deserve – or even claim - the label Socialist, and who have done much over the years to complicate – if not to say damage - the economies and social systems of our region. There are loads of people over here who have been allowed to make a living on government money (mostly legally, that's the rub), and who see it as their right to have others finance their life. The pattern Romney describes as all-European is familiar to us.

But it is not all-European. The European welfare state - introduced way back when by liberals and socialists (and supported only grudgingly by conservatives) - is embattled as never before, now that the world-wide economic crisis has caught up with it. And those of us who oppose the careless spending trend are not just marginal groups: among those in power today you will find the German Christian Democrats, the British Conservatives, the Swedish Moderates and the Finnish Moderates, to mention just a few. (No, I have not forgotten the French, the Greeks and the Spaniards – I just prefer to pass them by in silence at this point, for various reasons not explored further here).

Of course, in the US Republican worldview a European conservative is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. And one does not lightly provoke the adopted Truth in those quarters. Nor does Mr. Romney. He toes the line. As I perceive the GOP candidate, he is not in essence a leader, he is more like a follower, a successful follower of Republican core beliefs, who has succeeded in winning the nomination by following the right hints and leads during the primary season. So, Mr. Romney follows the inherited line and describes us Europeans, across the board, as a bunch of good-for-nothing welfare recipients. In this way he converts the symbol we represent (lazy welfare bums) into political energizers for his party's core.  Romney's use of the label "Europe" is a provocative red flag to stir his party friends, a muleta in Spanish terms, to rouse the fury and energy of the Republican toro and stop his recent slide in the polls. Good to know we can be useful for something.

More troubling to Mr. Romney is the sneaky revelation by his Democrat opponents that he has talked confidentially this spring about being willing to forgo the support of the “47” per cent of the electorate who pay no federal income tax. Apparently his intention was to identify a large segment of the electorate he felt were not his to win in any case, those he considered automatic Obama supporters. Unfortunately for Romney, his way of singling out such a segment happened to include a lot of his own potential supporters.

There is something here that seems to be part of Mr. Romney's inner persona – an intelligent man, yet sometimes bumbling or tripping when he seeks to express concepts and ideas. He may still be a good man in the presidency, if you feel comfortable with a probabilistic kind of leadership. That was Ronald Reagan's style. Roughly right, but not precisely, and at times ambiguous. If leadership is the standard, it may be pertinent in this connection to mention Romney's family dog, which he put in a wind-sheltered cage on the roof of his car for 12 hours going to Canada on vacation. The story has led the journalist who first published it to say it shows that Romney "functions on logic, not emotion" (Neil Swidey, Boston Globe, January 8, 2012.) A probabilistic leader who functions on logic sounds like something of a challenge to those he is to lead.

Is Mr. Romney, then, a thinking conservative? (In Europe we like to believe that politicians have brains and use them.) Apparently he thinks, and from a European perspective his views on redistribution, in particular, are interesting. Redistribution is something we Europeans have fought over for generations – how much should there be - more, or less? European conservatives definitely think there should be less. In the US, apparently, the concept itself is anathema. Only Democrats even consider it. Mr. Romney said the other day, "I know some believe that government should take from some to give to the others. I think the president [Mr. Obama] makes it clear in a tape that was released today that that’s what he believes. I think that’s an entirely foreign concept. ... The president is borrowing about a trillion more than we’re taking in every year. It’s a pathway that looks more European than American, in my view, and it’s one that I know some Americans are drawn to,” Romney said. “I think they’re wrong.” (LA Times, Sept 18, 2012). Notice the term “foreign” in “foreign concept”. Strange, weird, in other words.

Actually, according to the Republicans themselves, US public debt as of end 2011 outstrips the total debt level of the EU by a wide margin [http://plbirnamwood.blogspot.com.es/2012/04/us-debt-compared-to-europe.html]. So European borrowing habits cannot really be just the way Romney describes them.

Indeed, facts may not be all that relevant. Winning US presidential elections is mostly about shaping people's way of thinking about you as a candidate. Fortunately for the Republicans, many US voters evidently don't care about fact-checking. At the Republican National Convention that even was a point of boasting. Republicans don't check facts, they vote on ideology. To me this seems a bit of a let-down in a country that spent so much time and resources fighting communism.

Ultimately, convincing the electorate of one's leadership abilities is thought to be the way to win. Hence, types of leadership may be what many voters think of as essential. Personal leadership is highly regarded in the US, in politics as well as business. The same goes for Europe, but with an important difference of nuance. In a European perspective, politics is often seen as more complex, not simply a matter of individual effort. Of course, there are always exceptional people, and some of them end up as head of government or head of state. European parliamentary politics also focuses a lot on the leaders of parties, but they are not to the same extent considered – or expected to be – supreme, individual leaders.

That makes political credit and responsibility in Europe more diffuse, for better and worse. Not so in the United States. Credit is easily granted to politicians for successes they had no direct hand in, and blame is liberally dished out for failures most Europeans would never pin on his or her Prime Minister. In Europe, politics is more like the weather. In US politics, there is always someone to blame.

I may exaggerate, but I do think there is some kernel of truth in this. A probabilistic assessment ...

Judgement Day for a Right-Wing Terrorist

Norway's notorious mass killer was sentenced in court today to the country's maximum penalty for murder, 21 years, with subsequent «forvaring» (literally, «custody»), a system not well known outside Norway, which entails his continued imprisonment after 21 years under the same conditions, with the possibility of a prison sentence lasting until his death. This, in other words, is not simply a 21-year sentence.

After the 21 years, the killer will be evaluated by the court for a possible 5-year extension of the punishment, and every 5 years thereafter the same evaluation will be repeated, potentially for the rest of his life. The criteria for release are the chances of recidivism and the danger to society of his/her release. Both were determined by the court today to be exceedingly high. These pronouncements will be the main criteria in evaluating his degree of «progress» after each 5-year period. As the Norwegian system is set up, these evaluations will begin already after his 10^th year in prison.

Although the Norwegian penal code has not even considered the possibility of anyone committing crimes like those at issue here, the custodial system (rarely used) recovers much of what the normal system misses – provided the court takes a strict rather than a lenient line in its follow-up decisions every 5 years.

In a country where the politically dominant center-left has previously tended to view criminals as victims of an unjust and vindictive society, this is not a sure thing. Still, one may hope the fact that the massacre was directed just at the Labour Party's youth organization may turn people in that political segment to a more realistic way of thinking, so that future generations of Norwegians can have a more balanced view of crime and punishment.  

What is on Trial in Oslo - the Actions of a Mass Murderer or His Ideology?

The ideology in question is that of right-wing extremism, a way of thinking usually typified by five characteristics: nationalism, racism, xenophobia, anti-democratic views and calls for a strong state.* In this case the perpetrator has shown in both written and verbal statements that his attitudes coincide with most of these criteria, and especially the aspects relating to what may be called «cultural racism», a strongly negative view of Islam seeing Muslims as «invaders» of Europe. The mass killer glorifies Norwegian and European historical traditions linked to Christianity. He claims to have defended these values by killing 77 people who were all somehow in his mind affiliated with the ruling political system in Norway, responsible for the country's openness to Muslim immigration. (Norway has 13% immigrant residents; the city of Oslo has 23%.)**

The case has triggered long debates both in Norway and in other countries, about right-wing extremism, political violence, freedom of expression, xenophobia, police surveillance, hand-gun control, bomb-making, etc. Media have focused to a great extent on the dangers of right-wing extremism. Still there is not much clarity about what is essential in the case, except the issue of the perpetrator's sanity and whether he can be held legally responsible for his actions. The court will decide on this in due time.

My question in all of this is: Could his actions make his particular attitudes (i.e., right-wing extremism) more dangerous – more attractive to other psychopaths like him - than previously thought? And are these attitudes more dangerous than other extremist views?

My view on both counts is, No. The European Left seems convinced that this mass murderer is only the tip of an iceberg of right-wing extremism. That's as faulty as thinking all terrorists are muslims. The danger lies in the demonstration of method and commitment to goal-oriented political mass-murder, a side-effect and possibly even a conscious purpose in which the killer has subsequently been greatly aided by the media. 


Extremist views of whatever nature, which advocate violence and attack democratic values, are all dangerous, and a democratic system has the right to defend itself against them with appropriate means. Extremist movements must all be countered and restrained, by democratic means if possible and by effective and continuous police action if necessary. There is no greater need to watch right-wing extremism than left-wing extremism or religious (including islamist) extremism or animal-rights extremism.

In other words, I disagree with the tendency in the debate about the Oslo/Utøya case to assign particular blame to right-wing extremism. I disagree especially with the tendency to see this as a simple extension of ordinary conservative and islam-critical views. Indeed,  I agree with the view recently put to me by a distinguished former colleague, that in contrast to what many people seem to think, conservatism (at least mainstream European conservatism) is not akin to and is not a more moderate form of right-wing extremism. Conservatism, especially in the tradition of Edmund Burke, is democratic, non-violent, anti-revolutionary and stands for cautious, incremental reform. Granted, there are other forms of conservatism that are authoritarian and reactionary, but they are rarely democratic. In any case, the proper focus of attention here is the violence, not the particular strain of thought.


In our time politically motivated violence increasingly overlaps with religious violence, to the extent that a distinction between the two is becoming meaningless. There is in my view nothing essential that separates this mass killer from the German and Italian left-wing terrorist killers of the 1970s and -80s or from the islamist mass killers (including suicide bombers) of today. It is not the particular type of extremism that is to blame, but the inhuman impulse to kill, and kill on a massive scale.


It is evidently the case that such an impulse to kill often has a theoretical or abstract motivation – political and/or religious – and this is why political surveillance of all kinds of extremism unfortunately is necessary. In my view, the attractiveness of the ideology is much less dangerous than the attractiveness of the methods, which all crackpots can use.

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* See, e.g.: Cas Mudde, «Right-Wing Extremism Analyzed», European Journal of Political Research 1995, 27, 203-224.
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=cas_mudde

** Immigrants: Residents who are foreign-born plus their children born in Norway. Only about half of these immigrants are non-European, however. Source: SSB Statistics Norway.

Unsustainable Spanish Practices

(Note that by 2015 many of the generous social benefits described below have been removed by the conservative government of Mariano Rajoy.) 

Like those “blood-red”, conservative Americans, South Europeans hate to pay taxes. The only difference is, they don't talk about it. Unlike US conservatives, South Europeans have never raised their anti-tax convictions to the level of ideology. When it comes to VAT, they just don't pay. Other taxes are shunned if possible. That's why Greek, Italian and Spanish practices are undermining public finance and becoming a threat to US investors and other international financial market operators that “decide” whether the euro survives.


Beyond this paradox, however, there is a truth to be faced by the South Europeans. Their generous welfare states are built on sand. Spain, probably the best organized of the three, proves the point.

Who wouldn't like to have free medication for all chronic illnesses and heavily subsidized prices for practically all medicine? What insecure 20-year-old wouldn't jump for joy at the chance of having a free nose job or breast implant? Who wouldn't love to have Spanish job security, with up to 45 days of severance pay for each year worked? Who indeed, except employers – who in turn survive by ignoring the obligatory value-added tax (VAT) on their sales.

For that matter, who wouldn't like to be a government employee in a regional government like that of Valencia or Catalonia, where mid- to upper level employees have an official car at their free disposal - on or off duty, including vacations? Who would be afraid to be unemployed in a country where (provided you have had a steady job until then) you have two years of unemployment benefits to the tune of 500 euros per month for a single person and 1200-1400 euros for a family? Where you can turn down a job offer from the employment office and still retain your benefits? And where you, after receiving your unemployment benefit, could buzz off to your black-economy job around the corner without a chance of getting caught?

Surely, all of this cannot be true? But as far as I can tell, it is.* Of course, the unemployment benefit will only keep you minimally afloat; you will need some other assistance or income. And, naturally, it happens that the VAT is paid. In larger companies income tax and social benefit contributions are regularly withheld by employers. But in the Spanish medium-sized town near where I live, only the cafés and restaurants and bigger stores seem to pay VAT. Very few of the other shops and businesses give you a receipt unless you ask for it. Plumbers and electricians never even mention VAT unless you ask. Gardeners, who are still among the busy people in Spain, apparently never ask for VAT. To pay by bank transfer is unusual.

Today 4,5 million Spaniards are registered as unemployed, and a general strike is on to protest their plight. A study published by the Spanish savings banks' association FUNCAS last year estimated that the Spanish black (unofficial or “submerged”) economy provides jobs for 4 million people, and stands for 17% of the GDP. The study was conducted by economists at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, near Madrid. (Source: Typically Spanish, March 3, 2011.) 

Of course, this is unsustainable. In an article entitled “Don't forget my invoice!” (la Informacion, March 12), the Federation of Municipalities and Provinces of Valencia was quoted to the effect that “practically all” the municipalities of the region were asking for the bailout offered by Madrid to cover their unpaid bills, money owed to local businesses and self-employed people. A printed version of the same story said more starkly that without this aid, 80% of the municipalities in the Valencia region would go broke during 2012. Pharmacies are no longer able to furnish many brands of medication because their bills have not been paid by the regional government. The city of Valencia has not paid its own electricity or gas bills in years.

The general strike that started March 29 (2012) protested the labor reform of the conservative Partido Popular government of Mariano Rajoy. His measure is (inter alia) to draw down the severance pay from 45 to an average of 33 days per year worked. If you have worked 5 years for your employer you get 5 x 33 days' extra pay when you are laid off. The EU standard is nowhere near that high. A welfare state like Norway offers no more than one month's pay in a similar situation.

When workers are neither paid nor dismissed because there is no money for either – and they continue to work just to maintain their salary claim (BBC World, March 29, 2012) – things are not what they seem. Something is fundamentally wrong. A glance at similar tendencies in Italy and Greece tell me it will not be easily corrected.

Am I too pessimistic? A Sunday last summer my wife and I stopped for coffee in a little town in Valencia's Ebro Delta and were puzzled by the sight of a big official car from the city of Barcelona (clearly marked) – far away from home – that tried to park at the curb next to us. The car, loaded with beach gear and children, was clearly not there on official business. Bystanders were not slow to react. In a flash, jeering locals told the driver what they thought of his audacious presence and chased him away. Some sense of moral obligation evidently survives, in other words, at least when it comes to conspicuous over-consumption of “public” goods. Let's hope it grows to a broader vision encompassing more of Southern Europe.

*Until the Rajoy government started its reforms.

European Union: Foundations Shaking

For decades the EU has had a history of existing in near-constant crisis. This makes it difficult to properly assess each new crisis that comes along. Given the long succession of previous crises the EU has survived, it is easy to dismiss the seriousness of the next one.

The first – and supreme - danger to the EU at present is, of course, the euro failing. But part of what could make it fail is not usually recognized as a euro threat – that danger is the lack of political legitimacy at the European center. Part of the problem now is that EU leadership seems more to be a German affair than a joint affair. The ability to make decisions hangs on what Germany wants, more than on any collective will to decide. As I have noted before, German leadership (usually masked as German-French) is good for Europe – up to a point. But it is not acceptable for the European integration project in the longer term to be dependent on one member dragging the rest along.

Moreover, when determined leadership entails severe friction and even sentiments of public rage between countries, this is deplorable, but needs to be overcome. More important than the fact of the rage is the need for the target to be the collective decisionmaking center and not this or that other member country. As seen from the streets of Athens now the EU is a multiheaded monster, manipulated by Germany. The extremity of Greek opinion may be due to a mentality common in Greece (see my previous blog), but it may also be that other countries would produce similar manifestations of public discontent if they were put under similar pressure.

The lack of EU legitimacy is widespread and serious. The Slovak parliament at first refused to endorse the second Greek rescue package because their average income is lower than that of Greece. Who could fail to understand them? As seen from Copenhagen, the EU has long been a barely tolerable creature that has to be kept at arm's length with a stack of legal caveats to protect remaining Danish freedoms. The spirit of resistance, though more tempered, resembles the Greek. In Sweden the EU Commission's intervention in national wildlife policy has a considerable part of the population up in arms, literally, to resist what they see as improper decision-making over the heads of the Swedish government, stipulating the number of wolves and bears to be kept in freedom around their country. Hungary has collided head-on with both the EU and many member countries in deciding to change their constitution in an illiberal direction. We may not want a return to authoritarian ways, but there is also a limit to well-meaning intervention. (It should be added that the Commission has its allies in all of these member countries, so it is not entirely a one-sided affair.)

The examples could be multiplied. Indeed, as a Norwegian I cannot help noticing that most of these cases of conflict between member countries and Brussels coincide with the sentiments that twice led the Norwegians to reject membership in the EU. These cases reflect the most basic conflict involved in international integration, that between the national and the supranational. If you appreciate national values and customs (without therefore being an ugly nationalist), then this conflict can be painful, even enraging. At the same time, if European integration is to succeed (and the euro to be saved), national resistance must ultimately yield on many significant points, many more, even, than we can see on the agenda today.

Spain and Italy have ignored the obligations and pressures of the EU as much as they can. France has been shrugging them off for more than a generation (the Common Agricultural Policy, the Stability Pact for the Euro). This, to me, is a South European posture. Garner the advantages as long as you can, postpone the fulfillments as long as you can. Indeed, Greece is not alone here.

But ok, so I'm biased. I believe the Northern member states have done lots more to fulfill their obligations than the Southern ones have. I look to the Finns to find inspiration for those who resist repayment of their debts, even unfair ones, such as the Finnish war debts to the Soviet Union, repaid at express speed by the victim of aggression to the aggressor. Finnish Finance Commissioner Olli Rehn is a good man to have in Brussels.

Am I biased because these are «my» people? Not at all. I'm just an old square who thinks the EU without unison attention to joint obligations is a hopeless project. There is no opening here for a compromise. The laggards simply have to be brought up to speed. My new home country, Spain, has to be one of the first to make that turnaround. But sooner or later, it will be France's turn. I can't wait to see that struggle.

Greece and the Euro – Balkan Tribe meets Northern Barbarians

Understand the Greeks? Do we have to? I resist the impulse to seek an “explanation” that takes in the whole Greek nation, as if it were one person. And at this late stage, maybe I should just leave it alone after so many others have been heard on the subject. But then again, living in the euro zone it's hard to be indifferent to something very likely to affect your own future – affect it considerably. So my hesitation and resistance yield to curiosity.

First, like many visitors to Greece, I have always found their lifestyle and personal ways irresistibly charming, at least what they reveal to visitors. A Greek wants to be your friend, and he expects to be reciprocated. You will be won over. Millions of visitors to Greece will testify to the same thing. That is also why it is hard to be critical. However, in a serious situation like this one has a duty to give one's view as it is.

What is visible to us outsiders in Greece is public political life. From my profession I have learned there's a limit to what is worth observing there, compared to what is hidden behind the curtains. Still, judging from what little that is visible, and like most other observers, I find the behavior patterns of Greek politicians over time curious. Whether or not Greece ultimately defaults, I am utterly convinced that the Greek parliament and government have all along – for two years now - had the ability to quickly agree, accept the terms, implement them and thus resolve the crisis. That way Greeks could have gotten on with their lives, and left the rest of us to ours. In Greece it would have been a tougher life than before, no doubt, but not forever.

Compare Greece to Latvia, or Iceland, to offer just two examples of how it might have been. The Latvians have taken their medicine, several times, in fact, according to the dictation of the EU and the IMF, and now they are well on the way to recovery. Greek politicians, however, just haven't had the inclination.

The evident determination of the unions and large parts of the population to resist a solution dictated to them is perhaps admirable if seen in isolation. Yet the mentality seems to be that “we have done nothing wrong, and then these outsiders come in here and tell us what to do”.

Facts apart, this kind of closure to an us/them mode is interesting. Of course it is nothing extraordinary to a group under pressure, nothing specific to Greece. It still occurs to me, though, that there is an entirely different quality to it in Greece. I shall draw on a couple of points relevant to this tendency.

One is the Balkan thing. I always have to be reminded by my Greek friends when I come to Greece that they are a Balkan country; they are quite aware of this - and many are proud of it. But it does not fit our Western image of the country we regard (in a facile way) as the cradle of our European culture. To a Western mind the Balkan image does not bring up pleasant associations. Hence, we non-Greeks tend to suppress the knowledge that Greece is a Balkan country, and we expect them to behave according to our standards. But whatever they perceive themselves to be is what counts, it shapes their behavior. The rest of us need to adjust our own view to take that into account.

That identification of Greece as a Balkan country, and the established record of Greek negotiating behavior, bring to mind another Balkan negotiator, one who also had Western leaders in agony and rage over his style – Slobodan Milosevich. There was never a way he could be bound to finalize an agreement. He thought his procrastination was a way to win, but - as we all know and he learned too late - he misjudged his opponents. That tendency finally provoked NATO's attack on Serbia. It should not be forgotten that in the Kosovo War of 1999, the Greeks - though members of NATO - opted out of participating in NATO's military operations out of sympathy and solidarity with their Balkan brothers. Greek public opinion was massively against the war.

To say this is not to suggest that Greek politicians would condone the kind of violence previously long accepted by their Serb counterparts. But their style of negotiating is very similar. It reveals a basic attitude of defining an interlocutor – the person one negotiates with - as always an opponent to be beaten, combatting him and resisting him to the bitter end even over matters not vital, and by any means available, including mendacity if it saves Greek honor. Greek politicians demonstrate that to them negotiating is a game to win, not a way to settle differences. Many observers therefore argue that Greek political culture is not really of the West.

Most of us on the outside have tended to see Greece in this crisis as unified, of one ilk, with only its government (possibly) on the side of Western sanity. The Greek people see it the other way around, with only themselves representing sanity, their government caught in the middle, and the whole world outside ranged against them. Keep in mind, it was the Greeks who invented the word “barbarian”. Guess who's at the gates once more.

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Spain's Rajoy: Asleep at the Helm?

Sorry to go on about Spain, but it is really a crucial country in the current set of European circumstances. In my last blog, I ended by saying - “... this can only work well if Rajoy comes out as a stronger visionary than he has appeared to be in the past.” Today, I'd say, even a visionary needs to share his vision.

With a comfortable absolute majority in the Congress after November's general elections, Spain's new Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was in the best conceivable starting position to fix his country's economic troubles. As the weeks go by, however, one begins to wonder what he's making of it.

For one thing, he is literally nowhere to be seen. Though he is known to be somewhat reserved, by the third week of his governance people started talking about his absence. “Mariano who?” - “Has Rajoy been kidnapped?” His deputy fields all the media, and she's undeniably competent. On election night, she was the one who first appeared on TV to acknowledge the victory. At the formation of the government a month later, Rajoy showed up at the press conference to read out the list of ministers, then left without even answering the single question he had consented to hear. The remainder of the session was handled by Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria. The deputy also runs the government's weekly press conferences. The Prime Minister himself waited three more weeks before he appeared and gave a speech at a party meeting in Malaga. Making himself scarce seems to be his tactic.

Still, the nation wants to see its elected leader once in awhile. Moreover, it's his duty to hold the government together. Leaving that task to a deputy is not good practice, even if the deputy's name sounds like a prayer. Now the ministers have started contradicting each other in public.

The background is that Rajoy decided to split the former Finance Ministry in two (Ministerio de la Economia, and Ministerio de la Hacienda) when he formed his government on December 21. Though a significant change, it was not a huge surprise, since this was the way it was the last time his party ruled the country (1996-2004). But today the change may have crucial implications. After all, the Ministry of Finance is the “Crown Jewel” of any serious-minded government anywhere seeking secure control of its own policy implementation. Under the current circumstances, Rajoy was expected above all to bring the country under tighter fiscal and financial control. The decision to split the ministry seems to be a step in the other direction. Rajoy's calculation may be that this way he makes it easier for himself to control economic policy from the top. If so, he may be wrong; at least he's liable to be wrong before he's right.

The reason I say this is that the two ministries are now competing publicly, both in the media and – more serious - apparently also in the execution of their functions. The misson of one, Economia under Minister Luis de Guindos, is to focus on the broader lines of policy and the internal and external financial relations of Spain. The other, Hacienda, under Minister Cristobal Montoro, focuses on the implementation of fiscal measures to control actual spending and collect taxes, including handling the relations with the autonomous regions in this regard.

Hence, one can discern the outline of two very different constituencies for these two ministries: the first speaks to the markets abroad and the other governments of the EU and the IMF, but also to the private banking sector at home. The second speaks to the autonomous regional governments of Spain and their underlying structures (provinces, municipalities) that deliver taxes to Hacienda in Madrid. Both ministries are to some extent dependent on their constituents. Spain needs credibility abroad for its public debt to be supportable, inter alia through the regularly repeated international auctions of government bonds (which on Jan 12 went unexpectedly well for Spain). The policies of Economia are primary in serving that end, and they need to look tough. De Guindo gave support to foreign anticipation when he told the Financial Times recently that strict budgetary controls were to be instituted whereby each autonomous regional budget had to be subject to prior authorization from Madrid.

A few days later his rival Montoro in Hacienda told a gathering of representatives from Spain's autonomous regions (in a speech given wide circulation) that they would receive “the full respect of the Partido Popular regarding their economical, political and financial autonomy”, and would be treated the way the EU (eurozone) treats its member states. Given the decentralized structure of the Spanish governmental system, controlling expenditures in the regions is more a matter of persuasion than dictation, and so Hacienda finds itself conducting diplomacy - rather than exercising power - among the regional governors. That notwithstanding, the system will not be without sanctions even under Montoro's Hacienda. If Montoro has his way, those who exceed the limits set by the center will be punished by fines, on the model of the EU system for member countries in the eurozone. (Does that model seem ominous?)

It seems to this writer that had the two units been under one hat as a Ministry of Finance, the diverging missions they now have could more easily have been synchronized without losing the rigorous control necessary for a healthy economy. In any case, the prior control model seems to require considerably more bureaucracy, not an easy thing to introduce under current conditions. In short, the budgetary horse has been out of the ministerial stable for years and is not about to come back soon.

At the moment Rajoy is said to be working on a new law to revise the present free-wheeling status of the autonomies in economic affairs. That might be why he's so invisible. In that case, we should all, in the name of eurozone stability, wish him good luck. And hope that he finds time for a break once in awhile to pop out his head and say hello to his countrymen. They'd love to hear what's keeping him so long.

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