Sweden Democrats Research Articles

Party change as a necessity – the case of the Sweden Democrats

Despite indications of potential demand, no populist right party has yet broken through in Sweden. This article examines the biggest Swedish populist right party, Sverigedemokraterna [Sweden Democrats], which in 2006 came close to parliamentary representation. Originating from an extremist subculture, the party has been forced through a process of change to broaden its appeal. The article traces the party's background and history, and looks at the changes that have taken place to remove the extremist stigma.

Democracy the Swedish Way? The Exclusion of ‘Immigrants’ in Swedish Politics

Official declarations state that Sweden is today a multicultural society. At the same time, ethnic hierarchies have become increasingly conspicuous in contemporary Sweden. Recently, a governmental inquiry on structural discrimination in Swedish society presented a report analysing the relationship between the multi‐ethnic composition of the Swedish population and participation in Swedish politics. This article discusses some of the main findings of the report. On the basis of a number of case studies, it illustrates how inequalities in terms of participation and influence in Swedish politics are (re)produced. One of the main conclusions drawn in the article is that all citizens that participate in Swedish politics are faced with a series of routines, conventions and idea(l)s categorising citizens according to their perceived closeness to a Swedish ‘normality’. Thus, democracy not only constitutes a formalised system of impartial procedures and conventions, routines and norms that regulate the political process in a way that guarantees freedom and equality to all participants. Rather, political participation also reflects exclusionary practices long well‐documented in, for example, the housing and labour markets. In order to understand these practices, it is necessary to examine the historical interconnections between nationalism and democracy. By means of the recurrent characterisation of Swedish democracy as specifically Swedish, it becomes the job of Swedes to ‘enlighten’ the ‘immigrants’ to become ‘Swedish democrats’. This specific conceptualisation of democracy is founded on the ideal of an archaic national community, which in contemporary multi‐ethnic Sweden is not capable of including the whole population on equal terms.

The Professionalisation of Politics Reconsidered. A Study of the Swedish Cabinet 1917–2004

The professional politician is a controversial figure in democratic theory and practice. In this study the extent to which professional politicians have been members of the Swedish Cabinet is examined, covering the historical developments since the introduction of parliamentary democracy in Sweden in 1917. Contrary to what other scholars have recently argued, the evidence does not support the thesis of an ongoing process towards increasing professionalisation of the Cabinet. A more complex pattern is revealed and in the last decade a change has occurred that indicates that fewer previous full-time politicians are now recruited to the government.

SWEDISH DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS?

This article evaluates the democratic status of the established political institutions in the Swedish political system through an ‘intensive’ case study of deliberation in complex decision-making. More precisely, the decision-making process underpinning the first power transmission link between Sweden and Poland is reconstructed and assessed from a deliberative democratic perspective. The analysis is structured around an analytic approach derived from Jürgen Habermas's discursive conception of deliberative democracy. The research findings support earlier observations indicating the declining vitality of established institutions, and they suggest that Swedish democracy is in crisis. But the results also give reason to believe in a brighter future for Swedish democracy. The article observes that citizens are willing to devote considerable time and effort to politics, and that a devoted and well-informed local opposition was able to relatively successfully compete with the economic and social power of private enterprises and the administrative power of the Government and the state administration. The article further demonstrates that local opposition forced the private enterprises to introduce an alternative technology – a technology that, through a limited increase in costs, eliminated the major negative environmental impacts of the project. In other words, local mobilisation against the project resulted in the implementation of a more rational technology.

Playing with fire? Swedish mobilization for participatory democracy

Swedish service democracy is solidly based on a successful welfare state configuration. When good social services are received, citizens reciprocate with their stabilizing trust and legitimacy. Towards the turn of the last century, several economic, organizational and ideological foundations of Swedish representative democracy were faltering, owing to exogenous trends as well as to self-inflicted actions. A governmental commission was set up in 1997 in order to combat a weakening legitimacy. Confronted with extensive social science research, the commission chose to try to shift the focus from the output side to the input side of Swedish democracy. It argued for a legitimacy rooted primarily not in substantial qualities of social service but in procedural qualities such as citizen opportunities to gain influence and autonomy. Not completely disinterested (as its members were party representatives), it recommended leaving room for a participatory democracy with advanced deliberative qualities. In the ensuing debate, competing ideals of democracy were advanced.

Social democracy in neoliberal times: the left and economic policy since 1980

1. Introduction 2. Understanding Swedish Democracy: Victims of Success 3. The Austrian Experience 4. Social Democracy and Market Reform in Australia and New Zealand 5. The Logic and Limits of Desinflation Competitive 6. The Political Economy of Social Democratic Economic Policies: The PASOK Experiment in Greece 7. The Spanish Socialists in Power: Thirteen Years of Economic Policy 8. New Labour's Economic Policy 9. Why the Social Democratic Option Failed: Poland's Experience of Systemic Change 10. The Choices for Scandinavian Social Democracy in Comparative Perspective 11. The Social Democratic Welfare State 12. How Many Ways can be Third?

Between Fragmentation and Coordination

The article describes recent development in the Swedish local government system. This is made through four different ‘organizing perspectives’. Three organizing perspectives challenge the model of local popular government. The functional challenge focuses on the market orientation, which means that nearly all sorts of public activities should be put on the market according ti the belief that competition is the most important motor of public economy. The communitarian challenge focuses on the social and political order of user and citizen organizations in relation to the municipal organization, which can be viewed in terms of the relation between small-scale democracy and the large-scale democracy. Finally, the idea of governance structures focuses on how to mobilize and integrate different types of resources across borders within the public sector and between public and private institutions. By using the different organizing perspectives it is shown that the development of local politics and democracy is driven by different ideas. Experiences from reforms, which are related to these ideas, are presented. The article concludes by pointing out some important challenges for future development of local democracy in Sweden.

Representation from Above: Members of Parliament and Representative Democracy in Sweden. By Peter Esaiasson and Sören Holmberg. Aldershot, United Kingdom: Dartmouth. 1996. 360p. $67.95.

Representation from Above: Members of Parliament and Representative Democracy in Sweden. By Peter Esaiasson and Sören Holmberg. Aldershot, United Kingdom: Dartmouth. 1996. 360p. $67.95. - Volume 92 Issue 2

Peter Esaiasson & Sören Holmberg: Representation from Above: Members of Parliament and Representative Democracy in Sweden

Scandinavian Political StudiesVolume 20, Issue 4 p. 387-388 Peter Esaiasson & Sören Holmberg: Representation from Above: Members of Parliament and Representative Democracy in Sweden Klaus von Beyme, Klaus von Beyme Department of Political Science, Ruprecht-Karls-University HeidelbergSearch for more papers by this author Klaus von Beyme, Klaus von Beyme Department of Political Science, Ruprecht-Karls-University HeidelbergSearch for more papers by this author First published: 28 August 2007 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9477.1997.tb00201.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume20, Issue4December 1997Pages 387-388 RelatedInformation

The Struggle for Economic Democracy in Sweden

This book seeks to account for the fate of the 'Meidner Plan' - a Swedish innovative form of social organization and collective economic ownership. The author focuses on the changing balance of power between capital and labour.

The struggle for economic democracy in Sweden

The struggle for economic democracy in Sweden

The Politics of Structural Change

The 1930s and the 1980s were decades of significant political economic change in the capitalist democracies. Depression and the rise of the industrial working class created opportunities for the establishment of social democracy in the 1930s. Stagflation and the decline of the working class made possible waves of radical rightist reform. However, this article suggests that only governments that do not have to concentrate myopically on the exigencies of winning the next election have the political space to undertake structural changes, the benefits of which may only be manifest in the medium term. In turn, successful reforms are likely to entail changes in underlying social structural conditions—such as the strengthening or weakening of organized labor movements—that both expand the electoral constituencies of the government's partisanpreferred policies and improve their macroeconomic efficacy. These propositions are examined with respect to the construction social democracy in Sweden in the 1930s and the construction of neoliberalism in Thatcher's Britain. Although the consequences of these two instances were diametrically opposed, the conditions that created the possibility for radical reform, and the strategies pursued by the governments to precipitate structural change were very similar.

Labour Mobilization and the Strength of Capital: The Rise and Stall of Economic Democracy in Sweden

By focusing on variables which measure the strength of the working class, power resource theories represent a significant advance over other neo-Marxist accounts of the determinants of social and economic state policies insofar as they can provide an explanation for significant variation among advanced capitalist nations.

The Study of Power and Democracy in Sweden

The Study of Power and Democracy in Sweden

Labour Movement Theory Versus Corporatism: Social Democracy in Sweden

This article assesses the challenge from `labour movement theory' to the conventional `corporatist' interpretation of Social Democratic Sweden. It begins by outlining the theoretical debate. It then examines the labour movement's compromise with capitalism and the issues of redistribution, codetermination and economic democracy. It argues that the corporatist interpretation of the period from the 1930s to the 1960s stands up well to criticism. The more radical Social Democratic policies of the later 1960s and after are more consistent with `labour movement theory', but in the end demonstrate the weakness of labour political power in a capitalist society. `Corporatist theory' provides a better starting-point than `labour movement theory', though it must be modified to include the notion of the contradictions of corporatism. The strength of the Swedish labour movement made corporatism possible but when the discontent generated by corporatism threatened the unity of the movement it was this same strength of the labour movement that produced the radicalism of the 1970s. Radical measures were, however, blocked by the state's dependence on capital and the employer counter-offensive.

Industrial and economic democracy in Sweden: from consensus to confrontation

Abstract. At the beginning of the 1970s, there was a wide‐spread political consensus in Sweden that something had to be done in order to increase employee influence in companies and counteract the concentration of private capital. A series of laws on industrial democracy were passed by Parliament, virtually without opposition. The reforms were followed in 1975–1976 by a push towards economic democracy in the form of so‐called wage earners’ funds. The trade union movement was the leading actor behind these proposals. This broader issue was much more controversial and soon became the focus of sharp disagreement between the parties and the dominant interest organizations. The article analyses the development from consensus to confrontation in industrial and economic democracy in Sweden. Special attention is given to the Public Commission on Wage Earners’ Funds, which sat between 1975–1981 without being able to produce any constructive or concrete results.

Time for Economic Democracy in Sweden

Time for Economic Democracy in Sweden

The Social Origins of Liberal Democracy: The Swedish Case

Implicit in Dahrendorf's Society and Democracy in Germany and explicit in Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy are respectively a liberal and a radical model of democratic development. Neither of these models adequately accounts for the experience of Sweden, a remarkably successful “late developer.” Although Swedish industrialization proceeded with little public ownership of the means of production, with limited welfare programs until the 1930s, and above all with restricted military expenditure—all factors Dahrendorf implies are crucial for democratic development—it did not produce the traditional liberal infrastructure of bourgeois entrepreneurs nor a vigorous open market society. Similarly only three of Moore's five preconditions for democracy obtained in Sweden: a balance between monarchy and aristocracy, the weakening of the landed aristocracy, and the prevention of an aristocratic-bourgeois coalition against the workers and peasants. There was no thorough shift toward commercial agriculture and, most important, there was no revolutionary break with the past. Consequently, one has to evolve a radical liberal model of development which states the conditions for the emergence of democracy in Sweden without revolution. This model contains implications for the further modernization of American politics.

The Social Origins of Liberal Democracy: The Swedish Case

Implicit in Dahrendorf's Society and Democracy in Germany and explicit in Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy are respectively a liberal and a radical model of democratic development. Neither of these models adequately accounts for the experience of Sweden, a remarkably successful “late developer.” Although Swedish industrialization proceeded with little public ownership of the means of production, with limited welfare programs until the 1930s, and above all with restricted military expenditure—all factors Dahrendorf implies are crucial for democratic development—it did not produce the traditional liberal infrastructure of bourgeois entrepreneurs nor a vigorous open market society. Similarly only three of Moore's five preconditions for democracy obtained in Sweden: a balance between monarchy and aristocracy, the weakening of the landed aristocracy, and the prevention of an aristocratic-bourgeois coalition against the workers and peasants. There was no thorough shift toward commercial agriculture and, most important, there was no revolutionary break with the past. Consequently, one has to evolve a radical liberal model of development which states the conditions for the emergence of democracy in Sweden without revolution. This model contains implications for the further modernization of American politics.

Wartime Diplomacy and the Democratization of Sweden in September-October 1917

The last eighteen months of World War I have been considered a critical period of Swedish history for both the development of parliamentary democracy in Sweden and for Swedish neutrality. Suprisingly, however, historical scholarship has failed to cover this period adequately. Especially lacking are in-depth studies of the political events of September-October 1917, which is the turning point in the period. In early October, the Conservative Swartz-Lindman government was forced to resign, and for the first time in Sweden a government was formed that included Social Democrats. This new ministry constituted not only a large step forward for parliamentary democracy but also progress toward an impartial neutrality that was equally respected by both belligerent groups. Since the departure of the Conservative government came almost immediately after an election defeat in the Second Chamber of the Riksdag, most historians have interpreted the government change as a result of the election. However appealing this interpretation is, a closer examination of the events of September-October indicates that the victory of the Left parties played only a secondary role in the change of administrations. This switch can only be understood by an appreciation of the atmosphere in which the events took place. The overriding factor in all developments in Sweden during 1917 was the economic crisis. Any analysis of this period must begin by examining this problem and its repercussions. Sweden faced, in the third year of an ever expanding war, an economic crisis that threatened to destroy its industrial complex and to create widespread malnutrition. The percapita comsumption of grain decreased by over 50 per cent.' Shortages of fodder and fertilizers menaced the country with difficulties for the future. Luxury foods such as coffee and sweets were almost unattainable even for the wealthy. The lack of raw materials usually imported from abroad created forced shutdowns of factories and unemployment. As Sweden was dependent for her material livelihood on her import/export trade, her only hope