by Manuel Alvarez-Rivera
Voters in Iceland go to the polls on Saturday, May 12, 2007 to choose members of the country's unicameral legislature, the Althing. Parliamentary elections in Iceland are carried out by proportional representation, and the electoral system - reviewed in Elections to the Icelandic Althing - bears strong similarities to the systems used in Scandinavian countries for national elections.
Although Iceland has a total population of only 300,000 inhabitants, the country has developed a lively multi-party system, broadly similar to those in place in other Nordic nations, yet distinct in a number of ways. First, unlike in the other Nordic countries, Iceland's party politics have been dominated by the conservative Independence Party, which has been the largest single party in every general election held in Iceland since 1944, when the country broke its union with Denmark and became a republic.
Second, until fairly recent times Iceland's Social Democrats were much weaker than their Nordic counterparts, and usually alternated in third place with the left-socialist People's Alliance. However, in 1999 the Social Democrats, the People's Alliance and a feminist group, the Women's Alliance, joined forces and established a social democratic Alliance, which went on to displace the agrarian-liberal Progressive Party as the country's second largest political force.
Third, right-left coalitions between parties that otherwise would be political adversaries have been a common occurrence in Iceland (but remain fairly rare in the other Nordic countries, with the notable exception of Finland). No party has held an overall parliamentary majority since the proclamation of the republic in 1944, and the country has been ruled by a succession of coalition cabinets. The Independence Party, which has taken part in most governments, has been in office since 1991, in coalition with the Social Democrats until 1995, and since then with the Progressive Party.
While the Alliance was largely successful in bringing together Iceland's diverse left-wing groups and emerged as a major challenger to the Independence Party in the 2003 Althing election, some members of the original parties (mainly from the People's Alliance) did not agree to the merger and established the Left-Green Movement as a leftist alternative to the Alliance. Both the Left-Green Movement and the Liberal Party - an Independence Party breakaway - have been represented in the Althing since 1999, along with the three larger parties.
Update
Iceland newsdaily Morgunblaðið ("The Morning Paper") reports complete results of the May 12, 2007 Althing election were as follows:
Independence Party (D) - 66,749 votes (36.6%), 25 seats
Alliance (S) - 48,742 votes (26.8%), 18 seats
Left-Green Movement (V) - 26,136 votes (14.3%), 9 seats
Progressive Party (B) - 21,349 votes (11.7%), 7 seats
Liberal Party (F) - 13,233 votes (7.3%), 4 seats
Iceland's Movement (I) - 5,953 votes (3.3%), no seats
The election had a voter turnout rate of 83.6%.
Although the opposition parties won an overall majority of the popular vote, the Independence-Progressive coalition government of Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde nonetheless survived by the narrowest of margins, hanging on to a one-seat majority in the Althing. Haarde's Independence Party improved its standing with respect to the 2003 parliamentary election, but the Progressives had their worst general election result ever and slipped to fourth place.
Iceland's main opposition party, the social democratic Alliance also lost ground in the election, but the Left-Green Movement polled strongly, becoming the country's third largest party. Finally, support for the Liberal Party remained stable, while the environmentalist-oriented Iceland's Movement failed to secure parliamentary representation.
Following the close election outcome, the Independence and Progressive parties chose to discontinue their coalition agreement, and the Independence Party subsequently reached an agreement with the Alliance to form a coalition government headed by Prime Minister Haarde.
Special Feature, The German Economy At A Glance
Welcome to the Global Economy Matters Blog. Below you will find the normal chronological blog posts. But first here is our Monthly Special Feature which in January 2008 focuses on Germany. Here you will find charts which provide background data on the German economy. We hope these will be of some help to the first time reader here, making it easier to contextualise, assess and get to grips with the general argument being presented on the blog. The big question which arose concerning the Germany economy in 2007 was whether or not the new found dynamism in German economic activity constituted some form of remaissance, and formed part of a global decoupling process whereby a sustainable recovery in domestic demand was taking place. Analysts on this blog never really accepted this view. The key question and central enigma associated with the German economy is really why domestic demand should have remained so congenitally weak over such a considerable period of time.
Since this phenomenon is also to be observed in the the two other societes with very high (circa 43) population median ages - Italy and Japan - we postulate that demographics and population ageing processes offer some part of the explanation here.
Basically what we can observe as societies move above the 40 median age mark are a number of stylised facts. Weakness in domestic private consumption would be one of these, absence of consumer credit driven property booms would be another, growing pressure on the national debt as the elderly dependence ratio steadily rises would be another, and growing dependence on export growth for sustaining GDP growth would be the central feature of the whole edifice.
We hope you will find the background data presented here useful in assessing the argument which we are presenting on this blog, which is basically that a key component in the longer term growth stagnation from which Germany is suffering has its roots in the underlying demographics. Basically and in the long run (possibly with a 30 year lag) fertility does matter. Please click on thumbnails for better viewing.
What follows is a very rough and ready attempt to describe in broad brush strokes how the contemporary German economy actually works. First off, and as is well known, German society is ageing, and at the same time the German population has started declining. Not only is Germany's median age rising, the proportion of the population in the key 25-49 age group is now falling.
As can be seen from the chart this crucial age group touched its highpoint in 1997/98. This could be thought of as the moment of maximum capacity for the German economy since it includes the crucial 25 to 40 household-former, first-time-homebuyer group. In terms of credit expansion, it is this group which drives a significant part of internal demand.
The age group also includes another important group, the 35 to 50 years one. This group drives an economy in productive terms, since these are the prime age workers. If you think of a society as a 100 metres sprint athlete, then there is an age when this athlete is at the maximum of his or her running potential, an age after which each time they can only run the 100 metres more slowly.
Well a society is the same in terms of its collective economic potential, without addressing underlying issues either through fertility or immigration, it can only move forward more and more slowly. Consumption becomes flat, and GDP growth - gioven the external dependence - fragile.
Private consumption has hovered pretty close to the 60% mark for many years now, while government consumption - after moving sharply upwards as a total share in the first half of the 1970s has subsequently remained pretty constant, moving around the 19% of GDP mark. The big difference has been in the importance of fixed capital formation (GFCF) which reached from 1975 to 2000hovered around the 22 - 24% of GDP mark.
Prior to 1975 GFCF was at a much higher level, while post 2000 it has dropped substantially And So what we can see is that the year between, say, 1975 and 2000, when GFCF remaind a more or less constant share of GDP, constituted - to use the language of neo-classical economics - the constant growth period of the German domestic economy.The years prior to 1975 were the convergence, or "catch-up" years
And especially the 1960s, after Germany finally broke out of the destruction and devastation of WWII - while the years after 2000 constitute what the neo-classicists would call the "balanced growth period", although as we can see, it isn't very balanced, and there certainly isn't a steady state.
2008 Forecasts: There is a consenus at the present time that the German economy is slowing. Where there is no real consensus is over the rate at which it is slowing and where and when it will settle. It is clear that GDP growth in 2007 will be below the heady 3.1% annual rate achieved in 2006. The OECD last December revised their 2007 German forecast down to 2.6%, and their 2008 one down to 1.8%. The IMF in their October World Economic Outlook forecast growth for 2007 at 2.4%, slowing to 2% in 2008. Morgan Stanley's Elga Bartsch, while optimistic that the German economy will whether the credit crunch better than most (and here she may well be right) is somewhat more sanguine, putting 2008 growth at 1.5%. In general though I rather doubt her overview that "Germany could well be on the way to becoming the new growth locomotive in Europe." and especially her suggestion that "the phase of underperformance in terms of GDP growth, which has plagued Europe’s largest economy for years, is clearly over." Unfortunately, what we are arguing on this blog is that Germany's GDP growth rates since the mid 1990s are not some special kind of "underperformance", but what can be expected from a society with a rapidly rising median age which is increasingly dependent on exports rather than domestic consumption for growth.
The EU commission in it's November 2007 forecast was also convinced that the German economy was now on a "solid growth path", forecasting 2.5% growth for 2007 and 2.1% for 2008.
I personally will be very surprised if we see growth in the region of 2% for the German economy in 2008, and I even consider the 1.8% from the OECD and 1.5% from Morgan Stanley still on the high side given the extent of downside risk. Basically the reasonably favourable depreciation rules which currently apply to German investment have been changed as of 1 January 2008, and we might reasonably expect to see some sort of impact on investment comparable with the negative shock which hit private domestic consumption following the VAT rise on 1 Jan 2007. In addition all the indications suggest that German consumption will continue to be weak in 2008. So if consumer consumption is at best flat, governemnt consumption equally so, and investment and construction weakening, we are simply lefy with export growth, and here the outlook is definitely more negative in 2008 than it was in 2007. The Spanish economy (one important German customer) is visibly wilting by the day, as is the UK (another big customer), but it is to Eastern Europe we must look for the biggest impact on German exports of any correction in 2008. Just one data point should suffice, Germany exports roughly the same value of goods to the Czech Republic (and more to Poland) as it does to China. This means that Geramny is proportionately not that exposed to any slowdown in China, but hugely exposed to any sudden shift in growth and demand in the East of Europe.
So I would say, that on current data, 1% growth in Germany in 2008 look a reasonable estimate at this point, but that this needs to be taken to mean with considerable downside risk. Germany is now tremendously dependent on what happens elsewhere, and until what does actually happen elsewhere becomes clearer it is difficult to be more precise on Germany.
The only apparent bright spot on the horizon is employment, but I am dubious that in the context of Germany's ageing workforce this will work through as some are hoping, as I expain at some considerable length in this post here. My opinion is that Germany will enter recession at some point during 2008, and that we may well have 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth. The continuing high euro will maintain pressure on German exports, and high oil and food prices will maintain pressure on the inflation front, at least in the first half of 2008. The ECB will probably switch stance towards rate reductions at some point, but since, as Elga Bartsch among many others so eloquently argues German internal consumption and investment are not especially dependent on credit conditions, easing from the ECB may not have as much impact as one would hope for.
Key Posts For Understanding The Present Path of the German Economy
Is The German Economy Heading For Recession in 2008?
Employment and Unemployment in Germany January 2008
Germany Economy, What Price the VAT Effect Now!
The German Economy, Employment, Export Shares and Age Structure
Structural Aspects of German Export Dependence
Does NeoClassical Steady State Growth Really Exist?
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Iceland 2007 parliamentary election
1 comments:
"and it's quite possible the Independence Party may seek other coalition partners in order to secure a stronger parliamentary majority."
Yep, this is what the FT seems to be suggesting in this piece today. They suggest the coalition may well end, and that the SDA will most probably step in to fill the gap.
"The decline was due to a disastrous performance by the Progressives, who lost five seats, making its position as a coalition partner.....Political experts in Reykjavik, the capital, said the most likely outcome was that the Progressive Party would leave the government and be replaced as the junior partner in a right/left coalition by the Social Democratic Alliance (SDA)."
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