From the middle of the 19th century, the question of Iceland’s independence from Denmark dominated the Icelandic political scene. With sovereignty in 1918 and full independence in 1944, the Icelandic society began to change. Iceland moved from being an agricultural society to a more industrialized one, causing swift changes in settlement, life style and living conditions. The Icelandic party system was not immune to these changes in the social structure.

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Anna Striethorst (Brussels) – “Why Seems the Crisis to Favour Rather the Right than the Left?” In March 2010, the leftist network Transform!Europe invited experts from all over Europe to Palma de Mallorca to discuss strategic options for the left during the crisis.

The debate first of all addressed the question of an analysis as to whether the crisis has in fact strengthened the position of right-wing political forces, as assumed at the outset. A study by the Austrian Barbara Steiner, who had compared the results of the elections in a number of European countries, arrived at no clear conclusion. Many took issue with the thesis of the Czech Jiri Malek that crises always help the rightists: Ruurik Holm from Finland pointed out, for example, that the Finnish economic crisis during the nineties has led to a landslide victory of the left. Other participants argued that the right, too, had been caught unprepared by the crisis and would now have to reconsider its neo-liberal positions. Some even went as far as Richard Detje of the magazine Sozialismus, who noted a vacuum of hegemony, in view of the obsolescence of deregulation and depoliticising. In his opinion, the situation has seldom been as open as now; the left, he said, must make use of this.

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