Swedish Party Research Articles

Ideology–Driven opinion formation in Europe: The case of attitudes towards the third sector in Sweden

Abstract. This paper uses attitudes towards the third sector in Sweden to test general assumptions about how citizens in West European political systems apply ideological schemas as shortcuts to political preferences. Attitudes towards the third sector are found to be affected by all ideological schemas reflected in the Swedish party system (state–market, Christian traditionalism, and growth–ecology). Contrary to what is implied by findings from America, these effects are very stable across socio–economic groups (especially those of the dominant statemarket schema). Similarly, no interaction effects of political sophistication could be traced, and the relative impact of the schemas remains the same regardless of whether or not the third sector is presented as an alternative to the welfare state. The implications of these findings for the nature of public opinion formation in ideologically clear and structured political systems are discussed.

Party-political rhetoric on gender equality in Sweden: The uses of uniformity and heterogeneity

Political documents on gender equality in the Nordic countries contain interesting systematic variations in justification strategies and discursive commitments at different political-rhetorical levels. This is particularly apparent when political texts move from general gender equality to arguing about specific issues. This article looks at the variety of "versions" of gender equality that appear when the discourses of gender and the conceptualisations of power that inform Swedish political party documents are scrutinised. Consequences of different versions of gender equality for rhetoric about policy measures and rhetorical uses of "uniformity" versus "heterogeneity" are also discussed.

Foreign Policy as Battlefield: A Study of National Interest and Party Motives

In no other policy arena are party unity and national unity considered as critical as in security and foreign policy. Party unity on foreign policy is viewed as a national security strategy of particular importance in times of international crisis and uncertainty, or as an expression of party strategy and ideological considerations. Through an empirical study of programs, congresses, voters and ideology of the Swedish parties 1945–1993, we show that the presence or absence of tension in the international system does not affect the inclination of parties to take issue on matters of foreign policy. We also show that parties argue just as much about issues that are central to Swedish security policy as they do about issues that do not directly affect national interest. The main sources of party disagreement over foreign policy seem to be ideologically motivated.

The ‘new’ rhetoric of new labour in comparative perspective: A three‐country discourse analysis

Over the past two decades, social democratic‐labour parties (SDLPs) have been confronted by various challenges which have had a dramatic impact upon their ideological orientation. These include, not least, emerging challenger parties, as well as the Neo‐Liberal discourse of the New Right. In this article, we compare the ideological positioning of three parties in Sweden, Germany, and particularly Great Britain. We conclude that the ideological profile of ‘New Labour’ now largely mirrors those of other SDLPs. The results are based upon a content analysis of the 1994 (Germany and Sweden) and 1997 (Great Britain) election rhetoric in party manifestos and television debates. The analysis centres on the extent to which the three SDLPs refer to the discourses of socialism, the welfare state, neo‐liberalism and ecologism.

Losing Touch? The Political Representativeness of Swedish Parties, 1985–1994

Political parties are often said to be in decline. In Sweden, the major parties have lost significant amounts of members and activists in recent years. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the decline in participatory linkage via parties has been accompanied by a representative decline. Using data from the Swedish Election Studies and Parliamentary Studies, average self‐placement on the left‐right schema is compared between Members of Parliament, party activists, party members and voters. There is no evidence of a decline in the political representativeness of the parliamentarians. There is, however, some evidence that members and activists have become radicalized compared to the voters. This is particularly true of the Social Democrats, and also to some extent in the Moderate Party. Thus, while there is no general decline in the representative linkage provided by the Swedish parties, there is some justification to speak of a representational decline for the Swedish parties as membership organizations.

Relationship between the rise and decline of ancient Loulan Town and environmental changes

Located in the central Asia, ancient Loulan Town was a place of strategic importance to the ancient Silk Road. According to the historical records, it was flourishing during the period from the second century B. C. to the third century A. D. However, it was disrecorded suddenly 1400 years ago. Until 1900 it was discovered by a Swedish exploration party. The ruins of Loulan is situated on the west bank of Lop Nur Lake and the delta of the Tarim River (40°29′55″N, 89°55′22″E), and occupies an area of 108 240 m2. Two main tributaries of the Tarim River passed by its northern and southern sides respectively and converged into Lop Nur Lake about 100 km eastward. Human civilization of the Loulan Town had been developed in the Stone Age, which was revealed by a lot of stone implements found in the region, and the discovery of the corpse of “Loulan Beauty” proved the continuity of economic development. During several centuries around the Christian era, Loulan had become a place of strategic importance on the Silk Road because its superior geographical position and natural conditions. The decline of ancient Loulan Town was caused by natural change of the river courses and rapid environmental deterioration.

Shopkeepers and the Swedish Model: The Petty Bourgeoisie and the State during the Interwar Period

When the Swedish Social Democratic Labour Party came to power in 1932, Sweden experienced a turning point in its history. For the first time the role of the Social Democratic Party in the construction of the welfare state became significant. Until the end of the 1910s the Social Democrats had concentrated their primary efforts on the problems of trade union recognition and the struggle for parliamentary democracy. After 1920 the Social Democrats became the largest party, but did not gain political power except for a brief interlude. The concept of the ‘Swedish Model’ has often been used in Sweden and abroad to describe the unique development of Swedish society in the twentieth century. However, historians and social scientists have tended to analyse Swedish society without a clear definition of the very concept, the ‘Swedish Model’.

Mapping the Nordic Party Space

The left‐right positions of the political parties in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland are compared from the late 1970s to the beginning of the 1990s. To locate the parties, survey data on the voters' self‐placements along the left‐right continuum are used. In order to study changes in the left‐right polarity and the degree of consensus along the left‐right continuum in each of the countries, we use the mean party positions to calculate three different measures of party distances. The wing party distance is that between the party farthest to the left and the party farthest to the right. The rival party distance is that between the Social Democratic Party and the traditional Conservative Party. Finally, the mean party distance is the average distance between all pairs of parties. One of the main conclusions is that in Sweden and Iceland the left‐right continuum seems to contract, whereas in Norway and Denmark the left‐right polarity and the distances between the parties are increasing. In today's Nordic party space, the distance between left and right is longest in Denmark and shortest in Norway. Eventually, 39 Nordic parties are brought together on the same left‐right scale. The analysis reveals that there are some clearly distinguishable clusters of parties or party families in the Nordic countries, such as, for example, the socialist parties, the social democratic parties and the conservative parties. Other party groups differ greatly in left‐right position, like the progressive parties, the liberal parties and the centre parties.

The Nordic Model as a Foreign Policy Instrument: Its Rise and Fall

This article hypothesizes that the `Nordic' model of society is primarily of Swedish origin, with the other Nordic countries as its first tier of followers. The idea of Nordic `progressivity' has been a useful instrument in individual Nordic foreign policies - primarily as a `bastion' in official rhetoric. Postwar examples of such usefulness are offered from three settings: the Nordic countries as a group in multilateral diplomacy, individual Nordic countries in multilateral diplomacy, and Nordic countries bilaterally in dealings with a great power. Whereas the Nordic bastion could still serve as a useful foreign policy instrument, it has actually been discreetly abandoned from 1991, as part of a deliberate policy on the part of Sweden. The symbol of stable innovation in Northern Europe is gone. The main reason for this abandonment lies in perceived Swedish national interests: how Sweden has chosen to adapt to the European Union. Domestic Swedish party polemics may also have played a (secondary) role. This abandonment has generally adverse implications for the foreign policies of the other Nordic countries, depending on which all-European scenario prevails. Prospects for a future revival of the Nordic bastion do not seem bright.

Unemployment as a dimension of politics in Finland between the war

Abstract This article examines the Finnish labour market as an area of public intervention, and compares the Finnish policies with the corresponding Swedish measures. As far as parliamentary decisions and public debate are concerned, Finland was distinctly ahead of Sweden after the turn of century, but behind it in actuel practice. In the 1920s the situation in Finland actually regressed, and even the Swedish policies stagnated. At the beginning of the depression of the 1930s, Finland began to carry out a policy patterned after the Swedish system of the 1920s. The principles that were adopted after the onset of the boom in 1936 resembled the views of the Swedish right-wing parties during the depression years. Actually, these principles were essentially the same as those approved by the Finnish Diet three decades earlier. The policies of the welfare state with regard to unemployment were sketched in Finland in 1941–1947 but these plans had long been forgotten when a new start was made in the 1960s. In Swed...

Constitutional Design and Government Formation: The Expected Consequences of Negative Parliamentarism

In the early 1970s the Swedish parties designed new rules for government formation. In this study it is shown that the choice of a new voting rule stemmed from a combination of goaloriented behaviour and a process of socialization. In a cross national comparison, it is also shown that there exists an empirical correlation between the Swedish type of rule and (1) a high frequency of minority governments, (2) a high frequency of small minority governments and (3) a short government formation process. From the perspective of coalition formation theory, this is a challenging finding.

Creating social democracy: a century of the Social Democratic Labor Party in Sweden

Creating social democracy: a century of the Social Democratic Labor Party in Sweden

In From the Cold? Christian Parties in Scandinavia

The combination of extreme religious homogeneity and advanced secularization is a special feature of the Scandinavian societies as compared to the rest of Europe. This difference largely explains why Christian parties have remained small compared to the rest of Europe. This article surveys the creation and popular following of the Christian parties in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The four parties acquired an image of “moral vigilantes” from the beginning. Their best electoral results, however, are a result of a more general political protest. Despite the recent success of the Swedish party, the parties are not likely to reach a position beyond that of a minor party with basically a moralist image.

Election campaign volatility in Sweden and the United States

An account is given of the volatility of voters during ten parliamentary election campaigns in Sweden (1956–1988) and ten presidential elections in the United States (1952–1988). For each of these campaigns, the population is described in terms of stable voters, switchers, recruits, armchair partisans, and the unmobilized. Various measures of volatility are explored. There appears to have been a trend over the past 30 years towards increased volatility among Swedish voters, but a similar trend is not evident among American voters. Analyses of the more subjective time of decision measures confirmed this as well. Behind the increased volatility of Swedish voters there has been a loosening grip of the political parties in Sweden. The number and positioning of candidates or viable parties competing for votes are associated with variations in volatility in both countries.

The Welfare State and Beyond: Success and Problems in Scandinavia, by Gunnar Heckscher

The Welfare State and Beyond was first published in 1984. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.The welfare state emerged in a number of industrialized countries after the First World War as a middle ground between capitalism and socialism. The aim of architects of the welfare state was to abolish the injustices and hardships that accompanied capitalism and to do so without wholesale social or economic revolution. Establishment of the welfare state created something close to euphoria among many observers; it was, it seemed, the answer to many, if not all, troubling social questions. But it eventually became obvious that this type of society was not immune to problems. In The Welfare State and Beyond Gunnar Heckscher examines four Nordic countries-Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden-not to either criticize or defend the welfare state but to shed some light on a number of questions: Has the welfare state achieved what it attempted? Are the results generally held to be satisfactory? What important problems remain unsolved and what types of solutions have been proposed? Although Heckscher has been associated with the Conservative party in Sweden, his objective, clear-eyed analysis cites both the accomplishments of the welfare state and the troubling problems that still await resolution.

Issues, parties and attitudinal stability: A comparative study of Sweden and the United States

Though Converse's work has generated considerable debate about attitudes vs. nonattitudes, there has been surprisingly little new evidence concerning attitude stability in national electorates. We present data from three panel studies that show that the Swedish electorate is consistently more stable than its American counterpart. More importantly, the pattern of continuity levels across types of issues differs from that in the American electorate, with the highest continuity rates for abstract, ‘ideological’ issues. An explanation that accounts for the differences in continuity levels within as well as between countries is found in a structural factor, as suggested by Converse. That factor is the party system. In both countries there is variation in the relationship between party preferences and issue positions, but on the whole the parties in Sweden give clearer, more consistent cues about where to stand on issues.

Politik und Wissenschaft im schwedischen Exil

AbstractPolitics and Scholarship Among Germans in Swedish Exile. The author's main source is H. Müssener's doctoral thesis on the fate of the about 5,000 refugees of German speech who left Hitler‐dominated Europe for Sweden during the fateful years 1933‐45. Thirty per cent left for political reasons. Only about 60 immigrants possessed an academic background. Well‐known is the Swedish influence on Willy Brandt, Bruno Kreisky, Herbert Wehner and others. But whereas the political refugees could count upon the solidarity and assistance of their Swedish party associates, the academics would find themselves moving in a milieu which was still strongly influenced by the pro‐German university tradition ever since the period of German cultural predominance following upon Bismarck's foundation of the Reich. Only two academics were awarded university professorships, the philosopher Ernst Cassirer in Gothenburg and the psychologist David Katz in Stockholm, who both had to cope with the prevalent positivistic orientation of Swedish philosophy. The pro‐German attitude of the German departments, coupled with their purely linguistic tradition, made it impossible for two prominent scholars to obtain a subsistence within the universities: Walter Berendsohn and Käte Hamburger. In 1952, however, Berendsohn was given a readership at the university of Stockholm and thanks to him the German Department soon became a centre for literary research, especially with regard to German literature in exile. Also in musicology immigrants have come to play an important part. After the war German literary critics and journalists, many of them by this time bi‐lingual (like Peter Weiss), contributed to the re‐establishment of cultural relations between Sweden and the German‐speaking countries.

POLITICAL FACTORS IN NEWSPAPER READERSHIP

The aim of this article is to analyze the base of a party press system. The central question is how the Swedish party press was affected by structural changes in the newspaper market during the process of newspaper concentration. The article first focuses on the degree of party press readership within the local morning press. It is shown that a substantial part of the Swedish public reads a morning paper of their own party outlook although the share has decreased during the last 25 years. The second part of the article analyzes the role of newspaper structure for party press readership. It is demonstrated that access increases the probability of reading a paper of one's own party. In a special section the role of the national evening press is discussed. The results show that the political evening papers have outbalanced some of the changes on the local markets. The conclusion is that the party press in Sweden, in spite of concentration, is relatively strong. This is explained by three factors within the Swedish party political system: parties' ties to newspapers, the government subsidy system, and the citizens' experiences from the party press.

THE RISE AND POSSIBLE FALL OF THE SWEDISH PARTY PRESS

In contrast to many other western countries, Sweden still has a party press system. The historical background of the Swedish party press, its present situation and its possible future is outlined in this article. The party press is an integral part of the Swedish political structure. It worked well for the better part of a century, but today it is threatened from two quarters: the economy and the increasing professionalism among journalists. The politicians have an interest in keeping the system alive. They may divert the economic threat, at least for some time, by increasing and reallocating the press subsidies existing since the early 1970s. The threat against the party press system stemming from the journalistic professionalism may be more difficult to influence.

The Impact of Economic Performance on Electoral Support in Sweden, 1967–1978*

This article investigates the impact of macroeconomic conditions on aggregate political support for governing parties in Sweden over the period 1967–1978. After reviewing survey evidence on the relative salience of economic and fiscal issues to the Swedish electorate, a novel, dynamic model of political support is presented. The model incorporates the ideas that voters evaluate economic performance relatively rather than absolutely, and that governments' mass political support is based on their cumulative performance records. The empirical results supply estimates of the impact of unemployment, inflation, the real income growth rate and the income effects of direct tax and transfer policies on political support. The evidence suggests that the responses of political support to reasonable movements in macroeconomic conditions are large enough to give economic management a pivotal role in electoral shifts.