APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110016-6
minded, doctrinaire approach is left to the politicians on the fringes. Since World War II all governments but three, whether single-party or coalition Cabinets, have rested on a shaky minority in parliament. Through practical arrangements with non-Cabinet parties, working majorities have been achieved.
This rational and pragmatic approach to politics is a latter-day phenomenon for Denmark, which has experienced during the millennium of its political existence various political forms and various levels of national power. The Danes derive satisfaction from the history of their ancient kingdom and its long-lived independence, recalling with pride those days when Copenhagen was the capital of northern Europe. Today's Dane, however, knows very well that his country is better suited to export high quality agricultural and industrial goods and set ethical standards for good government than it is to play the game of international power politics. This realization has promoted a "small country" state of mind. It is with some uneasiness that Denmark has again chosen the path of international commitment in the postwar decades. Nonetheless, the notion that the country could take refuge in neutrality - in vogue from 1864 to 1940 - had been pretty thoroughly discredited with the Nazi German occupation of World War II.
While the Danes have yet to resolve doubts concerning their country's international role, they have few qualms over the domestic task of maintaining a well-ordered and progressive society. For them, democratic responsibility has been refined into a tradition. On the average, 85% of the electorate has participated in the 11 postwar national elections. Illiteracy is virtually unknown; newspaper circulation is exceedingly high. Thus, the politician faces not only an active but also an enlightened public. The office-seeker may reason with the voter successfully, but lecturing him usually produces resentment.
The office-seeker's task is eased, however, by the fact that the Danes are the Danes in race, language, and religion. Minority elements - a mere few thousand residents mainly of German, Polish, Catholic, and Jewish ancestry - wield little political power. Pressure groups operate in low-key fashion through established political mechanisms. Class consciousness, such as exists, is mainly covert. As a consequence, political parties may more easily speak with one clear voice, undisturbed by the reactions of a multitude of conflicting interest groups.
Danish society, though homogenous and largely untroubled, has been passing through an evolutionary phase which provides a political challenge. Denmark's economy has moved beyond the fishing and agricultural concentration of earlier days. Its modernized commercial farming required less than 15% of its labor force in 1972. The rapid industrialization of the past two decades and the migration to the cities have tipped the political balance toward the urban dweller, with a consequent scramble among the parties for his vote.
Closely following and directly connected to post-industrial development as a political challenge has been Denmark's relationship with the European Communities. Having to retain the large UK market, particularly for Danish agricultural exports, and requiring further outlets for its expanding manufactures, Denmark broke with Nordic traditions by opting in 1972 for full EC membership. The wrenching impact on such institutions as the Nordic Council between the four Scandinavian countries and Finland had not been fully felt by mid-1973, but it may ultimately have a determinant effect on the self-imposed regionalism of Norway and Sweden. The break with traditional Danish self-determination implicit in a much broader European economic integration has caused unaccustomed sharp differences within the national body politic.
On the more exclusively domestic scene, poverty, inadequate housing, economic and social insecurity have been largely overcome, if not totally conquered. A semi-socialist state and a monitored free-enterprise system now coexist, as do the partisans of socialism and a modified capitalism. Yet, as the existence of splinter parties suggests and as the ebbing strength of the long-dominant Social Democratic Party indicates, the Danish voter reserves his right to express dissatisfaction with the way things are being run. Smugness is a sing the Danes assign to the Swedes. A Danish political party takes its following for granted only at its own risk.
2. Parliamentary political parties
Modern political development may be traced to the second quarter of the 19th century, more than a decade before the establishment of constitutional government in 1849. As early as 1835, elections to consultative provincial assemblies brought a coalescence of nascent political bodies into two groups - the Conservatives, favoring the continuation of monarchical absolutism, and the National Liberals, advocates of constitutional government. By mid-century, with constitutionalism per se no longer an issue, a new formation, the Agrarians, appeared on the left of the political spectrum. As the direct forebears of today's Moderate Liberals, they represented for the most part the small peasant proprietors. Following the merging
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110016-6
