Assessing pariah party status: Concept operationalization and the case of the Sweden Democrats

Abstract

AbstractThis study presents a novel operationalization of pariah party status, conceiving of pariah status in terms of two continuous dimensions involving (1) a party's coalition potential, and (2) a party's legislative cooperation potential. Recent success of radical right parties has been identified as a common trend throughout Western Europe. Research has focused on mainstream parties' strategies toward these controversial challengers, as well as why some controversial challenger parties are involved in collaborations but others are not. Yet, an elaborate discussion—disentangling the status as pariah—has hitherto been absent in the literature. The article further demonstrates the usefulness of the suggested operationalization, using the Sweden Democrats as an empirical example. When entering parliament in 2010, the Sweden Democrats were a complete pariah party. Recently, however, the party's status has evolved and the Sweden Democrats are now to be regarded as partly pariah.