The Danish Political System by Stig Bondrop

The political system

Parliamentary government

Parliamentary government means that the majority of votes decide. That meaning, that if you don’t have the majority of votes then you can’t get a Bill passed by Parliament and it can not become law. In the Danish Parliament there are 179 members so if you want a Bill passed, you would need 90 of these members to vote for you. This also means that you, in order to be in government you must have 90 members or more on your side. This doesn’t necessarily have to be one party. Often governments are a joint venture of parties who (can) agree on curtain points.

The members

We, the people of Denmark, choose some people to fight for our opinions in Parliament. These people are often connected to a party, but they don’t have to be. Once in 1994 a Danish comedian named Jacob Haugaard, was elected a member of Parliament.

Ideologies

An ideology describes how you want your society to be ruled. How much influence should the government have? This question has divided Danish political parties in two, right wing parties and a left wing parties.

The right wing

The right wing parties are supporters of liberalism and capitalism; ideologies in which you want the government influence to be small. An example of this is the USA where the taxes are low and so are the costs of the government. Instead you pay some money to private sectors, such as health care, education and such. These are all things that, in Denmark, are paid through very high taxes. The right wing is associated with the color blue.


The left wing

The left wing parties want the government to have a large influence. These parties want everybody to be equal. Some of these left wing parties are supporters of socialism and communism. This is a kind of government that was practiced during the rule of the Soviet Union also known as the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) in this form of government where no one owns anything, and the state owns everything. The right wing is associated with the color red.

The middle
During the last 20-30 years most of the parties have, despite their differences moved towards the middle. There are a lot of reasons for this; one of the main ones is greed. Because all the parties want the power very badly this means that they move towards the middle in order to attract more voters, but by doing this, they are abandoning their believes and ideologies.


Written by:

Stig Bondrop