Atlas / Comparisons / Nordic Social Democracy vs Institutional Revolutionary Party
Nordic Social Democracy and Institutional Revolutionary Party
Measured distance across six axes
Opposed programmes with little shared ground. No axis places them within three points of each other. They diverge by eight points or more on CU, AU.
Axis by axis
| Axis | Folkhemmet | PRI | Gap | Reading | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC · Economic organisation | −05 | +01 | 6 | Differs | Real difference, but not the dividing line. |
| CU · Social and cultural order | −06 | +04 | 10 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| AU · Organisation of power | −06 | +08 | 14 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| SC · Scale of decision | +02 | +07 | 5 | Differs | Real difference, but not the dividing line. |
| ID · Rule of membership | −04 | +03 | 7 | Differs | Real difference, but not the dividing line. |
| CH · Method and tempo | −08 | −04 | 4 | Differs | Real difference, but not the dividing line. |
Each axis runs from −10 to +10; the distance is the straight-line separation across all six at once, out of a maximum of 49.0. How the scoring works →
The evidence behind the widest gaps
A distance figure is worth nothing unless the scores behind it can be checked. These are the artefacts supporting the axes that separate these two most.
Folkhemmet · CU −06
Among the most liberal social legislation in the world, adopted early and by consensus.
- Documented act or statuteSweden legalised same-sex partnership in 1995 and marriage in 2009; Denmark was first in the world in 1989.
- Documented act or statuteIndividual taxation, universal childcare and parental leave quotas designed around dual-earner households.
PRI · CU +04
Coded +4: revolutionary anticlericalism succeeded by a conservative corporatist order.
- Documented act or statuteThe 1917 constitution's anticlerical articles were softened by amendment in 1992.
Folkhemmet · AU −06
Strongly dispersed authority: proportional representation, coalition norms, and institutionalised bargaining with organised interests.
- Documented act or statuteGovernment formation has required multi-party coalition or confidence agreement in almost every postwar parliament.
- Documented act or statuteWage-setting is conducted by employer and union federations rather than by statute.
PRI · AU +08
Coded +8: elections held without interruption and never lost for seventy-one years.
- Documented act or statuteThe 1988 result was declared after a computer failure that destroyed the ballots, later admitted by the incumbent president.
- Documented act or statuteThe party lost the presidency in 2000 and conceded, which is why this is not higher.
What this comparison does not establish
Proximity means similarity of stated position. It carries no claim about competence, circumstance, scale of operation, or what either organisation actually did to the people under it. Two organisations can sit close together and produce entirely different histories, because those things are not on any axis and could not be.
Nordic Social Democracy
1932– · Sweden, Norway, Denmark
Universal welfare, full employment and centralised wage bargaining, inside a market economy and a liberal constitution.
Institutional Revolutionary Party
1929– · Mexico
A party built to institutionalise a revolution and end military coups, which then held the presidency for seventy-one consecutive years.
Distance is not the whole answer. Two organisations can sit the same distance apart for entirely different reasons, and the reason is the content of any claim about them. Open the comparison in the atlas to weight the axes yourself.
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