The Nordic agrarian parties,[1] also referred to as Scandinavian agrarian parties[2][3] or agrarian liberal parties,[4][5] are agrarianpolitical parties that belong to a political tradition particular to the Nordic countries. Positioning themselves in the centre of the political spectrum, but fulfilling roles distinctive to Nordic countries, they remain hard to classify by conventional political ideology.
This article is missing information about The evolution of Swedish Centre Party in the latest years.. Please expand the article to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page.(August 2022)
Compared to continental Europe, the peasants in the Nordic countries historically had an unparalleled degree of political influence. They were not only independent, but also represented as the fourth estate in the national diets, like in the Swedish Riksdag of the Estates. The agrarian movement thus precedes the labour movement by centuries in Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway.
The first of the parties, Venstre in Denmark, was formed as a liberal, anti-tax farmers' party in 1870, uniting various groups of bondevenner (friends of the farmers) which had existed since the introduction of democracy in 1849. The rest of the parties emerged in the early 20th century, spurred by the introduction of universal suffrage and proportional representation across the region.[7] Finland's Agrarian League was the first to be created in 1906, followed by the Agrarian Party in Norway in 1915. The Icelandic Progressive Party was founded in 1916 as a merger of two agrarian parties. Sweden's Agrarian Party, founded in 1921, emerged from the existing Lantmanna Party and its splinter groups.[7]
As the Scandinavian farming population declined, the parties moved towards becoming catch-all centrist parties by capturing some of the urban electorate.[8] The Swedish Agrarian Party renamed itself to the Centre Party in 1958. The Norwegian and Finnish parties adopted the same name in 1959 and 1965 respectively.[8]
According to a 2022 study by Magnus Bergli Rasmussen, farmers' parties and farmer representatives had strong incentives to resist welfare state expansion, and farmer MPs consistently opposed generous welfare policies.[9]
After the end of Soviet rule in the Baltic countries, the Estonian Centre Party (established in 1991) and Lithuanian Centre Union (1993) were modelled explicitly on the Swedish example.[10] The Latvian Farmers' Union of the post-communist era views the Nordic agrarian parties as models, too, aiming to be a centrist catch-all party instead of a pure single-interest party of farmers.[11]
In recent years, rural interest parties emerged outside of Northern and Baltic, such as the Farmer–Citizen Movement in the Netherlands.
Most of the parties have traditionally sat on the Eurosceptic side in their respective countries.[14][15] However, for the most part, they hold these positions due to particular policies, with an emphasis on whether they believe European policies to be better or worse for rural communities.
The Centre Party in Norway is the party most opposed to European Union membership, having maintained that position since the 1972 referendum. The Icelandic Progressives are also opposed to membership, while the DanishVenstre is in favour of the European Union and Denmark's entry into the Eurozone.
Support base
While originally supported by farmers, the parties have adapted to declining rural populations by diversifying their political base. The Finnish Centre Party receives only 10% of its support from farmers, while Denmark's Venstre received only 7% of their votes from farmers in 1998.[16] Similarly, in Sweden, between 60-70% of farmers voted for the Center Party up until the 1988 elections, but support for the party from the traditional agricultural support base thereafter declined, and today the Center Party's base of support is mostly middle-class voters who do not engage in farming.[17]
Parties
The Centre parties in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Åland, Estonia, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania have similar backgrounds and identities, as indicated by their similar logos, based on the four-leaf clover
^Arter, David (2001). From Farmyard to City Square? The Electoral Adaptation of the Nordic Agrarian Parties (1 ed.). Routledge. ISBN9781138258297.
^ abcdeLori Thorlakson (2006). "Agrarian Parties". In Tony Fitzpatrick; Huck-ju Kwon; Nick Manning; James Midgley; Gillian Pascall (eds.). International Encyclopedia of Social Policy. Routledge. pp. 15–17. ISBN978-1-136-61004-2.
^Simon Hix; Christopher Lord (1997). Political Parties in the European Union. St Martin's Press. p. 33.
^Gary Marks; Carole Wilson (1999). Thomas Banchoff; Mitchell P. Smith (eds.). National parties and the contestation of Europe. Routledge. p. 124. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
^Narud, Hanne Marthe; Valen, Henry (1999). Esaiasson; Heidar (eds.). What Kind of Future and Why?: Attitudes of Voters and Representatives. p. 377. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
^Sitter, Nick (2003). "Euro-Scepticism as Party Strategy: Persistence and Change in Party-Based Opposition to European Integration". Austrian Journal of Political Science. 32 (3): 239–53.
^Hanley, David L. (2008). Beyond the Nation State: Parties in the Era of European Integration. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN978-1-4039-0795-0.
^Ruostetsaari (2007). Restructuring of the European Political Centre. p. 227.
^Marie Oskarson (2016). "The Never-Ending Story of Class Voting in Sweden". In Jon Pierre (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Swedish Politics. Oxford University Press. p. 252.
^ abcdeChristina Bergqvist (1999). "Appendix II". In Christina Bergqvist (ed.). Equal Democracies?: Gender and Politics in the Nordic Countries. Nordic Council of Ministers. pp. 319–320. ISBN978-82-00-12799-4.