How the Nordics get so many senior internationalpositions
北歐為何擁有眾多較高的國際職位
WHEN it comes to international jobs, Scandinaviadoes well. Sweden, Denmark and Norway have only 20m people, yet their nationals often runglobal organisations. Jens Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, is taking over froma former Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as NATO's boss. Thorbjorn Jagland,another former Norwegian prime minister, has just won a second term at the Council ofEurope. Now attention is on the current Danish prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who isa front-runner to succeed Belgium's Herman Van Rompuy as president of the EuropeanCouncil.
說到國際工作,斯堪的維納亞(在地理上是指斯堪的納維亞半島,包括挪威和瑞典,文化與政治上則包含丹麥)表現算是個中翹楚。盡管瑞典、丹麥和挪威僅有2千萬人口,他們的公民卻掌舵者全球組織。挪威前首相Jens Stoltenberg正接棒前丹麥首相Anders Fogh Rasmussen成為北約的領袖。另一位挪威的前首相Thorbjorn Jagland則剛剛于歐洲議會選舉中贏得了第二任期,F今關注的是當前丹麥首相Helle Thorning-Schmidt能否繼任比利時的 Herman Van Rompuy成為歐洲理事會主席。
With the European Union's foreign-policy chief and the head of the Eurogroup of financeministers, this job should be filled at an EU summit on July 16th, after the European Parliamentconfirms Luxembourg's Jean-Claude Juncker as European Commission president. Ms Thorning-Schmidt has disavowed any interest, saying she hopes to lead the Social Democrats to anotherelection win next year. But Mr Fogh Rasmussen played a similarly oblique game in 2009,repeatedly denying any interest in NATO. Afterwards he claimed that “being a candidate” and“canvassing” were separate. Ms Thorning-Schmidt's real drawback is that Denmark is not in theeuro. But as a woman from the centre-left, she balances Mr Juncker. She is also married to theson of Neil Kinnock, a former British Labour leader and European commissioner.
Other politicians are less coy. Finland's former centre-right prime minister, Jyrki Katainen, hasstepped down to seek a big international job. He is now interim economics commissioner(replacing another Finn, Olli Rehn), and he might stay on or take the Eurogroup job. Sweden'sforeign minister (and another former prime minister), Carl Bildt, is a possibility for the foreign-policy post, though some find him too abrasive.
What gives the Nordics a head start? One answer is that they are unthreatening to bigcountries . Another is that a history of parliamentary compromise gives them the ability tocross ideological divides. It has been a long time since any Nordic country had a single-partymajority government. Mr Katainen's 2011-14 cabinet was a six-party patchwork. Yet there isa limit to how many Nordics the world can absorb. No matter how perfect they are, not all willwin prizes.