Abstract
The rise of the far-right poses a pressing challenge to democratic politics and the democratization of political participation in Western Europe. This paper addresses this issue in the Scandinavian context, examining the importance of welfare chauvinism and gendered citizenship claims in the political rhetoric of the far-right. In so doing, we contribute to a need to examine closely the interplay between gender, citizenship, and welfare politics and the rise of exclusionary and anti-democratic politics. The paper draws on an examination of the party platforms of the three principle far-right-wing parties currently active in Scandinavia: the Danish People’s Party, the Norwegian Progress Party, and the Sweden Democrats as well as descriptive statistics on ethnonationalist tendencies among the Scandinavian populations in recent years, retrieved from the International Social Survey Programme’s (ISSP) 2013 survey on nationalism. We conclude that the far-right in Scandinavia uses gender and ethno-nationalist claims to simultaneously valorize and challenge egalitarianism in the welfare state while also shoring up exclusionary and anti-democratic claims to citizenship and belonging in the Nordic welfare state.
Highlights
The rise of the far-right poses a pressing challenge to democratic politics and the democratization of political participation in Western Europe. This paper addresses this issue in the Scandinavian context, examining the importance of welfare chauvinism and gendered citizenship claims in driving support for the far-right
We argue that understanding the rise of the far-right in the Nordic welfare states requires attention to the interplay of gender with ethnonationalist politics within the specific context of a cradle-to-grave welfare state
We find that the party platforms for the three main Scandinavian far-right parties—the Danish People’s Party, the Norwegian Progress Party, and the Sweden Democrats—present a vision of society with the nuclear family as the foundation; the Sweden Democrats are vocal in the support for the heteronormative nuclear family
Summary
All three parties worry about the threats to their cultures posed by immigration, advocation “fair and sustainable” immigration policies that control levels of immigration and allow for integration and assimilation of immigrants (Danish People’s Party, 2002; Norwegian Progress Party, 2017; Sweden Democrats, 2018) In line with their reputations, all three Scandinavian far-right parties maintain anti-immigrant stances. Are the Sweden Democrats (2018), Norwegian Progress Party (2017) and the Danish People’s Party (2002) alike in their anti-immigrant stances, our examination of their platforms showed them to be closely aligned in their positions on security, on foreign relations, on the role of the family, and on the welfare system
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