Iceland - Politics
Is Iceland bigger than a breadbox? Probably not. Iceland has a total population of about a third of a million people, less than half the total population of a single Congressional District in the United States. Icelanders are an informal people, with everyone from the bus driver to the highest government official addressed by their first name and never their last name. Most Icelanders are related to one another. All politics is local.
Icelandic politics have traditionally been dominated by three main cleavages: class, centre-periphery, and foreign policy. The result has been a party system somewhat uncharacteristic of northern Europe. Iceland thus has a strong conservative party (the Independence Party, IP), a united centre dominated by the Progressive Party (PP), and a fragmented and electorally weak left. The differences between the two largest left-wing parties, the People’s Alliance (PA) and the Social Democrats (SD), have been significant, especially in the field of foreign policy.
Iceland became a free and sovereign state on 1 December 1918, when the Union Treaty with Denmark came into effect. That day may be seen as one of the most important landmarks in Iceland's campaign for self-determination, which had then been in progress for nearly a century. Following a referendum in 1944, the independent Republic of Iceland was established. During World War II, allied troops were stationed on Icelandic soil. The Icelandic NATO membership of 1949 and the defence treaty with the United States have been important conflict dimensions in Icelandic politics in the post-war period. Membership of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) was formalized in 1970.
From 1959 to 1971 Iceland was governed by a coalition of the Independence Party (IP) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The following two decades produced a range of rather short-lived coalition governments, most of which comprised two or three parties. In June 1980 Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, a non-political candidate who was favoured by left-wing groups because of her opposition to the US military airbase at Keflavík, achieved a narrow victory in the election for the office of president. She took office on August 1,1980, becoming the world’s first popularly elected female head of state. Finnbogadóttir remained in office until 1996.
The left forces of Icelandic politics unified in the local elections of 1994 and together with the centrist PP deprived the IP their customary majority in the local council in Reykjavík. However, left-wing fragmentation persisted in the 1995 parliamentary elections and altogether four left-wing parties were represented in the Althing . Following the decision by Finnbogadóttir not to seek re-election as President in 1996, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, a former leader of the PA, was elected president. He began a second term in office in August 2000, his candidacy being unopposed.
In the run-up to the 1999 election, four left-wing parties united in the Social Democratic Alliance (SDA). The four parties included SD, PA, the Womens Alliance, and the National Movement. The 1999 parliamentary elections thus saw four major political forces. The two main winners were the IP and the Left-Green Movement (LGM), a splinter of PA. PP lost some ground in the election, but the main loser was the newly formed SDA (the Alliance). Whereas the four parties combined polled 37.7 percent of the vote in 1995, the Alliance managed only 26.8 percent in the 1999 election. Even when combining its votes with those obtained by LGM, it was clear that the political left lost ground. In the 2003 elections, the left regained some of its lost support: SDA obtained 31 percent of the votes and combined with LGM they polled altogether 39.8 percent. Also the Liberal Party (LP), established in 1998, made important gains. IP received its worst outcome since 1987 but the IP-PP coalition government retained its majority in the Althingi.
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