Northern but not Nordic? Social Democracy in Estonia

Abstract

Estonia is geographically northern, closely neighboring Scandinavia. It shares much in common with the Nordic region, including similarities in religion, culture, language, and many parts of its history. The Nordic countries have a long tradition of social democratic parties holding power, a tradition which continues to the present day. In 2023, the majority of prime ministers in the region come from social democratic parties, and their parties hold sizable numbers of seats regardless of whether or not they are currently in government. However, this is not the case in Estonia. The country has a prominent and historically significant social democratic party, but it has significantly fewer seats than its Nordic counterparts. This thesis seeks to explain why this difference has occurred, despite the many similarities between Estonia and its northern neighbors. It finds that while small, the Social Democratic Party has been a stable presence in parliament, and that the different role it plays may be attributed to the comparative weakness of civil society and of trade union political power, and that the left-leaning vote is split between the SDE and Centre parties, with no bloc system to unify them.