Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.10.2010, Blaðsíða 10

Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.10.2010, Blaðsíða 10
8 The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 16 — 2010 So is a comedian really scaring Iceland's politicians away from breaking up Parliament? That's kind of funny. Hah. We were trolling Facebook the other day and stumbled upon the phrase “the Gnarr effect.” We were intrigued. What is this so-called ‘Gnarr effect’? WHAT DOES IT MEAN? So we tracked down Ólafur Þ. Harðarson—the po- litical scientist responsible for coining the phrase. We sat down with Ólafur (who is incidentally also Dean of the School of Social Sciences at the Uni- versity of Iceland), and got him to ex- plain this catch phrase, the success of the Best Party and what it means for Iceland’s four established parties. In his facebook diary Reykjavík Mayor Jón Gnarr recently wrote that he visited the university of Iceland and learned that he had become a concept in political sci- ence—“the Gnarr effect.” do you know what he was referring to? Well I actually met Jón that day and we were discussing the Best Party and sort of what kind of party it was, ideol- ogy and so on and so forth, and I told him that I get a lot of foreign journal- ists asking me for interviews to explain the Best Party and the Gnarr phenom- enon, if you like. And in discussing this with foreign journalists I think prob- ably I have coined the phrase, “the Gnarr effect.” So it’s not really a theo- retical political science term [laughs]. For a new party that is antiestab- lishment, satirical, made of comedians if you like, obtaining 1/3 of the vote is highly unusual. And as I have been us- ing it, “the Gnarr effect” simply refers to the impact this extreme success of the Best Party has had on the other parties. Why was the Best Party so unusu- ally successful? The basic reason for this great suc- cess was two-fold. First, there was the extremely low trust that Icelandic vot- ers now have for the four established parties. But, secondly, the profile of the Best Party was very different from, for instance, many of the protest par- ties in Europe that had been getting up to 10–15% in some cases. Many of those protest parties have basically been extreme right wing, focusing on xenophobia, hatred of foreigners, things like that. There has been some electoral market for that, but they are not getting anything like a third of the vote. The difference here is basically that the Best Party presented them- selves as a party with little emphasis on ideology. Then it seems to me that they had relatively nice, presentable candidates. So my explanation of their success is that many voters thought that they could, by voting for the Best Party, show their dislike of the estab- lished parties—at low risk. Low risk? Jón Gnarr’s platform was about bringing a polar bear to the zoo and things like that. Ah, yes but people didn’t take that very seriously. He was basically saying, ‘we are nice guys, we have no extreme ide- ology and we are fed up with politics as it has been.’ When he got detailed questions on policy, he said we have excellent public administration that will take care of the technicalities. A lot of people were prepared to take a chance on voting for such a party. They probably thought, even if they get some members elected, there would be no disaster. Back to “the Gnarr effect,” specifi- cally what kind of impact is it hav- ing on the established parties? It’s basically twofold. First, the success of the Best Party is a powerful deter- rent against calling for new elections, which some of the old parties would otherwise like to do in light of the present difficulties in government and disagreements in parliament. The second impact of “the Gnarr effect,” which I don’t think has really manifested itself to a great extent, is that the established parties will do some soul searching—asking, ‘what did we do wrong? What do we have to do to gain back the trust of the people and avoid something like this from happening again?’ Was the crash itself not enough to get the parties soul searching? To some extent. We’ve had the SIC [Special Investigative Committee] Re- port that is extremely critical of the po- litical system, the political parties, the political culture, basically how Iceland has been practicing politics for the last decades. And then we have this report from the Parliamentary commission. They basically concluded that the po- litical culture in Iceland has serious defects, and there are a lot of things, both in legislation and political prac- tices that should be reformed. The important thing is, firstly, a committee with representatives from all of the parties came to the same critical conclusion and secondly, all 63 members of parliament voted for this resolution. That of course means that MPs from the parties responsible for those old practices and political be- haviour are at least verbally saying, ‘okay this is right, we have to do some- thing.’ A completely different question is, ‘are they going to do something?’ So far, I have not seen many signs that they have really been taking this seriously enough. At least the unani- mous passing of this parliamentary resolution is perhaps the first sign that all MPs are accepting that there is a problem. At this point though, do you think it matters if the established parties attempt to reform, or aren’t people just too fed up with them? That’s impossible to say. If you look at history, the most likely outcome is always that things will stay roughly the same in terms of parties and party support. It’s rare that major parties die when you have great discontentment among voters (the exception being Italy in the early ‘90s). The old parties almost always adapt when a new situ- ation arises. However, a refocus of political agenda is far easier than changing a heavily ingrained political culture. The worst-case scenario for the estab- lished parties is that the people get so fed up that they conclude that those rascals in conventional politics are so bad that we can’t get anything worse. So they can vote for anything. That could be the Best Party. That could be a xenophobic party. That could be a new centre party. It’s impossible to predict. So if the old parties do not adapt and refresh themselves, there is increasing probability of “the Gnarr ef- fect.” do you think the Best Party has a shot in the next parliamentary elections then? Well, my guess is that most voters would not be prepared to take the risk of voting for a party like the Best Party, with almost no ideology and lit- tle experience, because there is more at stake when governing the country than governing the city. People might think it’s okay to have Jón Gnarr, a nice mayor in Reykjavík, but whether they would like him to be a Prime Minister is another question. Voters might ask questions like, is it likely that Jón Gnarr and those lov- able, respectable artists would really be good at reorganising the economy and facing the difficult tasks of run- ning a country with no experience in politics.? So, when it comes to this, I think it would be more difficult for a party like the Best Party to succeed. But were you not surprised when the Best Party did so well in the city elections? Yes, I was surprised. As a political sci- entist, I am trained in observing poli- tics as they usually are, what is com- mon, and then you get something that is absolutely out of the ordinary, you are really not expecting it. One of the fascinating aspects of Jón Gnarr and the Best Party is that the whole operation is so ambiguous— you never know exactly when they are serious, when they are not. Are they just making a parody of the political system and giving warning to the con- ventional politicians or is there some- thing else to it. We are in completely unknown territory so we’ll just have to see how things unfold. And I have to admit, for a political scientist, things like this, even though people don’t always ad- mit it, it is of course scientifically very interesting, just like economists, they find economic disasters very interest- ing, and geologists find eruptions very interesting. Politics | Interview The Gnarr Effect ANNA ANdERSE N HöRðuR SVEINSSON Established parties, beware! “That is one of the fascinating aspects of Jón Gnarr and the Best Party, the whole operation is so ambiguous—you never know exactly when he is serious, when he is not. Is he just making a parody of the political system and giving a warning to the conventional parties or is there something else to it.” Tíu Dropar Laugavegi 27 léttöl

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