Politics of Denmark
The politics of Denmark take place within the framework of a parliamentary representative democracy, a constitutional monarchy and a decentralised unitary state in which the monarch of Denmark, Queen Margrethe II, is head of state. Denmark is described as a nation state. Danish politics and governance are characterized by a common striving for broad consensus on important issues, within both the political community and society as a whole. Executive power is exercised by the cabinet of Denmark, presided over by the Prime Minister, first among equals. Legislative power is vested in the national parliament. Members of the judiciary are nominated by the executive, formally appointed by the monarch and employed until retirement. Denmark has a multi-party system, with two strong parties, four or five other significant parties. No single party has held an absolute majority in the Folketing since the beginning of the 20th century. Since only four post-war coalition governments have enjoyed a majority, government bills become law without negotiations and compromise with both supporting and opposition parties.
Hence the Folketing tends to be more powerful than legislatures in other EU countries. The Constitution does not grant the judiciary power of judicial review of legislation, however the courts have asserted this power with the consent of the other branches of government. Since there are no constitutional or administrative courts, the Supreme Court deals with a constitutional dimension. On many issues the political parties tend to opt for co-operation, the Danish state welfare model receives broad parliamentary support; this ensures a focus on public-sector efficiency and devolved responsibilities of local government on regional and municipal levels. The degree of transparency and accountability is reflected in the public's high level of satisfaction with the political institutions, while Denmark is regularly considered one of the least corrupt countries in the world by international organizations; the Economist Intelligence Unit rated Denmark as "full democracy" in 2016. Margrethe II has ruled as Queen Regnant and head of state since 14 January 1972.
In accordance with the Danish Constitution the Danish monarch, as head of state, is the theoretical source of all executive and legislative power. However, since the introduction of parliamentary sovereignty in 1901, a de facto separation of powers has been in effect; the text of the Danish constitution dates back to 1849. Therefore, it has been interpreted by jurists to suit modern conditions. In a formal sense, the monarch retains the ability to deny giving a bill royal assent. In order for a bill to become law, a royal signature, a countersignature by a government minister, is required; the monarch chooses and dismisses the Prime Minister, although in modern times a dismissal would cause a constitutional crisis. On 28 March 1920, King Christian X was the last monarch to exercise the power of dismissal, sparking the 1920 Easter Crisis. All royal powers called Royal Prerogative, such as patronage to appoint ministers and the ability to declare war and make peace, are exercised by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, with the formal consent of the Queen.
When a new government is to be formed, the monarch calls the party leaders to a conference of deliberation, where the latter advise the monarch. On the basis of the advice the monarch appoints the party leader who commands a majority of recommendation to lead negotiations for forming a new government. According to the principles of constitutional monarchy, today the monarch has an ceremonial role, restricted in his or her exercise of power by the convention of parliamentary democracy and the separation of powers. However, the monarch does continue to exercise three rights: the right to be consulted. Pursuant to these ideals, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet attend the regular meeting of the Council of State. Denmark has a multiparty system. Nine parties are represented in parliament; the four oldest and in history most influential parties are the Conservative People's Party, the Social Democrats and the Danish Social Liberal Party. However, demographics have been in favour of younger parties, which has led to a constant process of policy development and gradual renewal amongst the political parties.
No two parties have the same organization. It is however common for a party to have: an annual convention which approves manifestos and elects party chairmen. In most cases the party members in parliament form their own group with autonomy to develop and promote party politics in parliament and between elections; the government performs the executive functions of the kingdom. The affairs of government are decided by the Cabinet, headed by the Prime Minister; the Cabinet and the Prime Minister are responsible for their actions to the Folketing. Members of the Cabinet are given the title of "minister" and each hold a different portfolio of government duties; the day to day role of the cabinet members is to serve as head of one or more segments of the national bureaucracy, as head of the civil servants to which all employees in that department report. Enjoying the status of primus inter pares, the Prime Minister is head of the Danish government; the Prime Minister and members of the Cabinet are appointed by the Crown on basi
Time zone
A time zone is a region of the globe that observes a uniform standard time for legal and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries of countries and their subdivisions because it is convenient for areas in close commercial or other communication to keep the same time. Most of the time zones on land are offset from Coordinated Universal Time by a whole number of hours, but a few zones are offset by 30 or 45 minutes; some higher latitude and temperate zone countries use daylight saving time for part of the year by adjusting local clock time by an hour. Many land time zones are skewed toward the west of the corresponding nautical time zones; this creates a permanent daylight saving time effect. Before clocks were first invented, it was common practice to mark the time of day with apparent solar time – for example, the time on a sundial –, different for every location and dependent on longitude; when well-regulated mechanical clocks became widespread in the early 19th century, each city began to use some local mean solar time.
Apparent and mean solar time can differ by up to around 15 minutes because of the elliptical shape of the Earth's orbit around the Sun and the tilt of the Earth's axis. Mean solar time has days of equal length, the difference between the two sums to zero after a year. Greenwich Mean Time was established in 1675, when the Royal Observatory was built, as an aid to mariners to determine longitude at sea, providing a standard reference time while each city in England kept a different local time. Local solar time became inconvenient as rail transport and telecommunications improved, because clocks differed between places by amounts corresponding to the differences in their geographical longitudes, which varied by four minutes of time for every degree of longitude. For example, Bristol is about 2.5 degrees west of Greenwich, so when it is solar noon in Bristol, it is about 10 minutes past solar noon in London. The use of time zones accumulates these differences into longer units hours, so that nearby places can share a common standard for timekeeping.
The first adoption of a standard time was on December 1, 1847, in Great Britain by railway companies using GMT kept by portable chronometers. The first of these companies to adopt standard time was the Great Western Railway in November 1840; this became known as Railway Time. About August 23, 1852, time signals were first transmitted by telegraph from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Though 98% of Great Britain's public clocks were using GMT by 1855, it was not made Britain's legal time until August 2, 1880; some British clocks from this period have two minute hands—one for the local time, one for GMT. Improvements in worldwide communication further increased the need for interacting parties to communicate mutually comprehensible time references to one another; the problem of differing local times could be solved across larger areas by synchronizing clocks worldwide, but in many places that adopted time would differ markedly from the solar time to which people were accustomed. On November 2, 1868, the British colony of New Zealand adopted a standard time to be observed throughout the colony, was the first country to do so.
It was based on the longitude 172°30′ East of Greenwich, 11 hours 30 minutes ahead of GMT. This standard was known as New Zealand Mean Time. Timekeeping on the American railroads in the mid-19th century was somewhat confused; each railroad used its own standard time based on the local time of its headquarters or most important terminus, the railroad's train schedules were published using its own time. Some junctions served by several railroads had a clock for each railroad, each showing a different time. Charles F. Dowd proposed a system of one-hour standard time zones for American railroads about 1863, although he published nothing on the matter at that time and did not consult railroad officials until 1869. In 1870 he proposed four ideal time zones, the first centered on Washington, D. C. but by 1872 the first was centered with geographic borders. Dowd's system was never accepted by American railroads. Instead, U. S. and Canadian railroads implemented a version proposed by William F. Allen, the editor of the Traveler's Official Railway Guide.
The borders of its time zones ran through railroad stations in major cities. For example, the border between its Eastern and Central time zones ran through Detroit, Pittsburgh and Charleston, it was inaugurated on Sunday, November 18, 1883 called "The Day of Two Noons", when each railroad station clock was reset as standard-time noon was reached within each time zone. The zones were named Intercolonial, Central and Pacific. Within a year 85% of all cities with populations over 10,000, about 200 cities, were using standard time. A notable exception was Detroit which kept local time until 1900 tried Central Standard Time, local mean time, Eastern Standard Time before a May 1915 ordinance settled on EST and was ratified by popular vote in August 1916; the confusion of times came to an end when Standard zone time was formally adopted by the U. S. Congress in the Standard Time Act of March 19, 1918; the first known person to conceive of a worldwide system of time zones was the Italian mathematician
Municipalities of Denmark
Denmark is divided into five regions, which contain 98 municipalities. This structure was established per an administrative reform of the public sector of Denmark, effective 26 June 2005, which abolished the 13 counties and created five regions which unlike the counties are not municipalities; the 270 municipalities were consolidated into 98 larger units, most of which have at least 20,000 inhabitants. 67 of the present municipalities are mergers as a result of the administrative reform, with Ærø being allowed to merge 1 January 2006, one municipality, Bornholm Regional Municipality being a merger from 1 January 2003, 68 merged municipalities in all. The 30 remaining municipalities have not merged. Before the merger on Bornholm there were 275 municipalities in Denmark, 14 counties. Two sui generis municipalities, namely Copenhagen and Frederiksberg, were never a part of a county, but were counties in their own right. For growth in population numbers, see Regions of Denmark. Many of the responsibilities of the former counties were taken over by the 98 existing municipalities.
With the increased responsibilities, the income tax that each of the 98 municipalities levies was raised by 3 percentage points from 1 January 2007. This tax had once been a part of the tax levied by the now former counties; the Capital Region has 29 municipalities, Southern Denmark 22, Central Denmark 19, Zealand 17 and North Denmark 11. Use the Municipalities of Denmark template at the bottom of this page to access the pages of the municipalities; the archipelago of Ertholmene is not part of any municipality, but is administered by the Ministry of Defence. The existing coat of arms of the municipalities; the average land area of a Danish municipality is 167.08 square miles. The Constitution of Denmark states: "Article 82; the right of municipalities to manage their own affairs independently, under State supervision, shall be laid down by statute." 2,522 municipal councillors were elected on Tuesday 15 November 2005 being the first councils elected since the new reform. In 1997 there were 4,685 municipal and 374 county councillors in the 275 municipalities and 14 counties.
As an example of the reduction in the number of councillors, Bornholm had a total of 122 councillors in five municipalities and one county. After the merger on 1 January 2003 of the five municipalities and the county, there was one single municipal council with 27 municipal councillors, they were reduced to 23 from 1 January 2018. After 1 January 2007, when Bornholm Regional Municipality lost its county privileges, there is talk of a reduction to 19 municipal councillors, the guidelines for a municipality with over 20,000 inhabitants being a maximum of 31 and minimum of 19 municipal councillors and the guidelines for a municipality with less than 20,000 inhabitants being a maximum of 31 and minimum of 9 municipal councillors; these guidelines replaced the old guidelines with the council elections in 2005 after the laws initiating the structural reform were passed in parliament. Many newly formed municipalities have chosen to have a maximum number of councillors so that all parts of the new municipalities and the small political parties have a chance of representation in the new councils.
Gentofte, Glostrup, Hørsholm, Ishøj are examples of municipalities that have increased the number of councillors because of the new guidelines. Council elections are held on the third Tuesday of November every four years; the previous were held on 21 November 2017. The newly formed 5 regional and 66 municipal councils acted as transitional merger committees in 2006 with the responsibility of arranging the mergers of the old counties and municipalities into 5 and 66 new entities respectively; the 238 municipal councils and 13 county councils that were to be merged and replaced/abolished just continued their work one extra year beyond the fixed four-year term of office they were elected for until 2006, ceased to exist. 32 municipalities including those of the formed Ærø Municipality and Bornholm Regional Municipality remained unchanged and were not merged with other municipalities. Local elections have been held in uneven years earlier, but before 1 January 1979, when the fiscal year in the public sector was changed from 1 April until 31 March into 1 January until 31 December, local elections were held in March and the elected councillors took their seats the following month, 1 April.
Elections were held in years: March 1966, March 1970, March 1974, March 1978. Term of office for local politicians elected in 1978 was 1 April 1978 until 31 December 1981. Local elections were held in November 1981 for the 4-year term of office 1982- 1985. November 1985 local elections were for the following 4-year term of office, etc; the election pages can be accessed from the templates at the bottom of each election page. Number of municipal councillors elected and term of office: Electi
Herlev Municipality
Herlev Kommune is a suburban municipality in Region Hovedstaden on the island of Zealand in eastern Denmark. The municipality covers an area of 12 km², has a total population of 27,851, its mayor is a member of the Social Democrats political party. The former village Herlev is the largest settlement of the municipal and the site of the municipal council. Neighboring municipalities are Gladsaxe to the east and northeast, Furesø Municipality to the north, Ballerup to the west, Glostrup to the southwest, Rødovre to the south, Copenhagen to the southeast. Herlev municipality was not merged with other municipalities by 1 January 2007 as the result of nationwide Kommunalreformen. Herlev Hospital Herlev station Municipality's official website Municipal statistics: NetBorger Kommunefakta, delivered from KMD aka Kommunedata Municipal mergers and neighbors: Eniro new municipalities map
Dragør Municipality
Dragør Kommune is a municipality in Region Hovedstaden on the southern coast of the island of Amager just east of Zealand in eastern Denmark. The municipality covers an area of 18.41 km², has a population of 14,028. Its mayor is a member of the agrarian liberal Venstre. Not until four years after the 1970 Danish Municipal Reform on 1 April 1974 two new municipalities were formed in Copenhagen County, namely Dragør Municipality, formed by the merger of Dragør and Store Magleby parishes and Høje-Taastrup Municipality, which from that date included Sengeløse parish; the inhabitants would have preferred to remain as independent municipalities. Store Magleby, larger in area than Dragør, had a large number of subdivisions with owner-occupied homes built on the boundary with Dragør before the merger; because the voters of Store Magleby and Sengeløse were exclusively owner-occupiers, who voted center-rightwing, whereas Høje-Taastrup Municipality and Dragør Municipality to a large extent consisted of tenants who rented their apartments and who voted center-leftwing, there were heated debates and reluctance among the voters of Store Magleby and Sengeløse about joining the new municipalities.
This was because the center-rightwing voters would be in a minority at elections for their local councils. Dragør parish is surrounded by Store Magleby parish to the north and west and the strait of Øresund to the east, Dragør parish thus does not border the neighboring Tårnby municipality. Dragør parish has an area of only 156 hectares, 8.6% of Dragør municipality's area, as opposed to Store Magleby parish's 1602 hectares, the latter accounting for more than 88% of Dragør municipality's area. A part of Copenhagen Airport accounts for 56 hectares, 3% of Dragør municipality, outside of parish jurisdiction and taxation. With 4144 people, 29.77% of the population, recorded as living there on 1 January 2013, Dragør parish has a population density of 2656 persons per square km, Store Magleby parish with 9737 people, 69.96% of the population, has a density of 607.8 persons per square km. Thirty-six persons were recorded as not having a fixed address; the main town is Dragør. The seat of the town hall is Store Magleby, which can house such a large building.
Its only neighboring municipality is Tårnby to the north. To the east and south is the Øresund, the strait that separates Zealand and Amager from Sweden. To the southwest is Køge Bay. Dragør Municipality was not merged with any adjacent municipality under the municipal reform of 2007, as it agreed to enter into a "municipal cooperation agreement" with Tårnby Municipality. Prior to its dissolution, Maersk Air had its headquarters in Dragør in the municipality; when it existed, Sterling Airlines had its head office at Copenhagen Airport South in Dragør. Municipal statistics: NetBorger Kommunefakta, delivered from KMD aka Kommunedata Municipal mergers and neighbors: Eniro new municipalities map Municipality's official website Visit Dragør website
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