Sweden’s center-left government is collapsing after just 3 months in office

The root cause of Lofven’s troubles is the difficult manner in which he won the most recent Swedish election. His coalition of left-of-center parties secured more votes and parliamentary seats than the previous governing coalition of right-of-center parties. But neither coalition secured a majority of seats. Instead, the populist anti-immigration party Sweden Democrats pulled 13 percent of the vote.

Neither main group of parties was willing to join the Sweden Democrats in a coalition, so the prime minister’s job fell to Lofven. But actually getting bills passed in parliament required the cooperation — or at least passive accommodation via abstention — of one of the opposition parties. That’s a recipe for instability. So while it’s mildly surprising that Lofven’s government is collapsing it’s not exactly shocking.

Americans may be familiar with the specter of a head of government being unable to secure a legislative majority for his key policy ideas. The Swedish solution to this dilemma — new elections which may resolve the gridlock — seems to have a lot of advantages over the American system of executive orders and repeated political crises.