Do your parties behave very differently in regional legislatures than they do nationally? Do they form unseemly coalitions?

11 comments

1. Well the “favourite” coalition partners of the parties are the same on the federal and on the state level but if there is no majority, they tend to be more flexible on the state level.

2. For the most part, they usually don’t but they definitively can. Politics aren’t usually too different on local or regional level compared to national except like its different political areas. The core remains the same for the most part but can definitely vary from the national level

   I can’t remember all regional Parliament seats coz there are 21 regions, some even have regional parties that do not participate on a national level or local level. Spicing up the regional or local coalitions.

   On a national level Mp, V and S are to the left. They usually cooperate with each other, while M, KD, L and C who lean to the right usually cooperate. But since the 2018 election it’s been mixed with. Now V, Mp, S and C are kinda grouped togheter but not a coalition. M, KD, L and SD have grouped togheter on a national level.

   But most local levels still have the former, the usual coalitions we had before you know. Some have switch ups like my municipality where Mp works with M, KD, L and C instead of S and V. There are one municipality where SD and M alone cooperate if I remember correctly. It’d be hard to go through all possibilities, as there are 21 regions and 290 municipalities

3. Not really; Danish partiets tend to be, more or less, run from the secretariats and central organisations. There are some differences, since local politics are much more about making the day-to-day state functions function, while national politics is more about setting policy and such. So local politics aren’t really the place for the grandest campaign promises.

   Coalitions tend to follow the national dividing lines; perhaps a little more clearly than at national level. At a national level, the centre is kinda muddled, with what is in practice a right-wing party, the Social Liberal Party, aligning with the broad left, while at local levels, you’re much more likely to see the Social Liberal Party align with their more natural allies in the Liberal and Conservative parties. Though many municipalities also have Social Liberals who align with the broad left.

   In Copenhagen, following the electoral success of the Red-Green Alliance, the Danish post-communist party, you did see a reshuffle, as Social Democrats allied with the right, to contain the influence of the Left… something something _wer hat uns verraten?_

   _e:_ to expand on the last point. There is a solid left-wing majority in the Copenhagen Citizens Representation, which is like… a special municipal government since Copenhagen is a special municipality, but instead of working with the left, the social democrats would rather work with the right.

4. Well, the right-wing parties don’t cooperate with the most left party, and all other ones don’t cooperate with the most right-wing one. Besides that, coalitions are more mixed in the states, but nothing that is unusual in any way. In some states there are parties that are only present in some. (In Schleswig-Holstein the SSW, representing Danish minority interests, they were part of the State Government from 2012-2017, currently 3 out of 73 seats in the State Parliament and polling at 4.5% (which translates to 3 out of 69 seats in a projection). In other states the Free Electors, which is a combination of local conservative election initiatives that are very much rooted in local politics, got into parliaments (Bavaria, where they are part of the Government, currently 27 out of 209 seats, polling at 8% (which translates to 16 out of 180 seats in one projection), aswell as Rhineland-Palatinate, where they got into parliament just last year with 6 out of 101 seats). There also exists a seperate party called “Brandenburgian United Citizen Initiatives/Free Electors” (BVB/FW), which is – so I read atleast – a little bit more social oriented, they are active in Brandenburg as the name suggests, and are in Parliament with 5 out of 88 seats, currently polling at 8% (which translates to 7 out of 88 seats according to some projection). The BVB/FW and the normal Free Electors do cooperate though. The SSW is also represented with one member in the Bundestag, since – as a national minority party – they don’t need to pass the threshold of 5% of the total second votes or win three constituencies. The Free Electors failed that hurdle, but still got 2.4%) It’s always interesting when these parties do win seats in state parliaments. Besides that, in cities or mumicipalities you far more often have small parties not represented in any parliament or local electoral groups, whom the national parties locally may also go into colition. The only other thing that is weird is when a national party votes with the AfD, the most right wing party with whom – as mentioned above – all parties have pledged not to work together anywhere, either against someone or for someone. The last time I remember was when a local district mayor in Berlin, from the most left-wing party, was elected with votes by the AfD.

5. Yes they tend to behave differently. Part of it is due to the fact that regional governments are formed proportionatly not by forming a coalition. So the largest parties all get positions in the regional govegnment. There tend to be coalitions or one party dominating by absolute majority, but the regions tend to be much more consensus oriented compared to our federal level.

   Also there may be weird coalition variants like the Social Democrats forming a coalition with far right parties or conservatives with greens (oh wait thats our federal government).

6. In the UK, slight variation and more obvious since Welsh and Scottish devolution.

   Labour in Wales tends to be slight more left wing then Labour nationally, and that is more because Welsh people’s Overton window is more left wing then the national Overton window and the main rival is Plaid Cymru which is a social democratic party.

   In Scotland, the Conservatives were more centrist then the Conservatives nationally and that were certainly obvious under the leadership under Ruth Davidson compared the national leadership under David Cameron. Again this because the Scottish Overton window is more left wing and they were battling the social democratic SNP.

   Also for the Conservatives it was even more noticeable immanently after the Brexit vote, as the Scottish Conservatives supported a much softer Brexit then the national Conservatives when wanted the hardest Brexit possible. It should all be noted that the far right Eurosceptic parties e.g. UKIP did poor in Scotland and that Scotland voted strongly to remain.

   In Ireland, you can see that Sinn Féin in the North is more left-wing then Sinn Féin in the Republic and again it is more because who is the opponent. In the Republic, they are competing against centrist-agrarian Fianna Fáil and centre-right Fine Gael, while in the North their main opponent is the social democratic SDLP for the nationalist vote.

7. Yes they can be very different, they are often way more moderate than their national counterparts and often have very different ideas. For example CDA (Christian Democrats) is pretty conservative and speaks out for farmers, while in provincial and municipal elections I have seen them speak out for nature preservation and even being very progressive on environmental issues. Municipal parties are way closer to each other because they deal with very different things that often can be easily agreed on.

8. yes, this is nothing unusual here, coalition on national level can be different than on regional level.

   as other said, they deal with complete different things than in parliament on national level.

   also not every party is in every voting everywhere so sometimes it is just a logical result from what was available

9. In Finland, on city level (and I guess regional level, but we’ve only started having regional level elections this year, so it’s completely new) there’s no opposition. Almost all parties are represented in the executive branch, so the executive organ (the board) looks more like a parliamentary committee than like a national cabinet. Of course sometimes they disagree, but then they vote on what to do. For example, all current government parties and the two biggest opposition parties are represented in the 15-member city board of Helsinki.

10. In Ireland, there are some smaller niche parties such as Republican Sinn Fein which only have representation on the local level but generally speaking the major parties operate on all levels of Irish governance. I do seem to notice that independents tend to be far more common on the local level but that could be wrong.

11. There definitely is regional variation, e.g. was the Bern-Zürich divide in the Swiss People’s Party quite notable for a long time. The “Bernese wing” was more moderate and agrarian, the “Zürich wing” more populist and focused around anti-EU, anti-immigrant and economic liberalist points. In the Social Democratic Party there are more centrist and more socialist canton parties, e.g. the Social Democrats in Vaud and Basel-Stadt where a left-majority government is/was in power for a long time are more moderate – the latter being called “Switzerland’s New Labour” by NZZ.

    In CH there aren’t really coalitions in the traditional sense: The Federal Council (our government of 7 co-equal ministers) is comprised of members of the four major parties, from left to right. The canton governments are elected directly and often also have ministers of all major parties in them.