Sweden Democrats Research Articles

TEMSİLİ SİSTEMDE KATILIMCI PLANLAMA NASIL ALGILANMAKTADIR?: İSVEÇ'İN ULLERÅKER BÖLGESİ ÖRNEĞİ

The participatory planning approach that emerged in urban planning in recent years is based on collaborative, communicative, and deliberative planning processes that cover the differences. The main purpose of participatory planning is to include the perspective of actors (political representatives, planners, citizens) in planning processes by developing horizontal planning tools and processes among actors. However, the decision-making system in Sweden is built on representative democracy based on top-down policy-making processes and vertical relations. Therefore, the simultaneous coexistence of representative top-down policy-making processes and multi-faceted participatory arrangements make Sweden an interesting example and suggests that some dilemmas and tensions may arise in practice. At this point, in a political system with strong representative democracy like Sweden, it provides important data on how actors perceive participatory planning and how participatory planning is implemented. In this context, this research discussed how participatory planning is perceived in urban planning in the logic of representative democracy in Sweden. Ulleråker region of Uppsala, in particular, was chosen to carry out the field research, and thus, interviews on the subject were conducted in this region with the main actors of decision-making processes in urban planning such as political representatives, public officials/planners, and citizens.

Reputation versus office: Why populist radical right governmental participation has differed between Sweden and Denmark

Sweden and Denmark have presented contrasting relationships between centre-right and populist radical right (PRR) parties. In Sweden, the centre-right has refused cooperation with the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) (SD), even when this cost the centre-right office. However, in Denmark, coalitions led by centre-right parties have cooperated with the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti) (DF) on multiple occasions. Through a controlled comparison, we examine what explains these different outcomes. Using Chapel Hill Expert Surveys and public opinion data, we firstly look at the policy congruence between parties and the social acceptability of cooperation. We then examine interview material with representatives from centre-right and PRR parties in Sweden and Denmark to see their explanations of cooperation and non-cooperation. We conclude that, while the office goals of Danish centre-right parties, along with the policy focus and uncontroversial past of DF, explain that case, the reputation and past of SD has precluded a similar outcome.

Workplace Contact and Support for Anti-Immigration Parties

How does an increased presence of immigrants in the workplace affect anti-immigration voting behavior? While cooperative interactions between natives and immigrants can reduce intergroup prejudice, immigrant coworkers might be regarded as a threat to native-born workers’ labor market position. We combine detailed Swedish workplace data with precinct-level election outcomes for a large anti-immigration party (the Sweden Democrats) to study how the share of non-Europeans in the workplace affects opposition to immigration. We show that the share of non-Europeans in the workplace has a negative effect on support for the Sweden Democrats and that this effect is solely driven by same-skill contact in small workplaces. We interpret these results as supporting the so-called contact hypothesis: that increased interactions with minorities can reduce opposition to immigration among native-born voters, which, in turn, leads to lower support for anti-immigration parties.

Economic Distress and Support for Radical Right Parties—Evidence From Sweden

This paper studies the effects of economic distress on support for radical right parties. Using Swedish election data, I show that one layoff notice among low-skilled native-born workers increases, on average, support for the Swedish radical right party the Sweden Democrats by 0.17–0.45 votes. The relationship between layoff notices and support for the Sweden Democrats is stronger in areas with a high share of low-skilled immigrants and in areas with a low share of high-skilled immigrants. These findings are in line with theories suggesting that economically distressed voters oppose immigration as they fear increased labor market competition. In addition, I use individual-level survey data to show that self-reported unemployment risk is positively associated with voting for the Sweden Democrats among low-skilled respondents while the opposite is true for high-skilled respondents, echoing the aggregate-level findings.

The impact of the local conservative climate on generalised trust in Sweden

The rise of the radical right parties, with their anti-immigrant rhetoric, may amplify the generally observed negative impact of diversity on generalised trust. The impact of the conservative climate created by these parties is apparent at the national level, but the little research carried out in the field has yet to examine the role of their local political power. In Sweden, the literature suggests that the radical right Sweden Democrats party has a stronger anti-immigration and ethnonationalist rhetoric at the local level, which may reduce the generalised trust of residents by triggering conflict theory. Calculating the conservative climate based on the percentage of party representatives on local councils using multi-level modelling, we observe that the contextual effect of the conservative climate is present and reduces generalised trust. However, the underlying cause of this effect is not fully known. It can be traced back to the party’s local politics, the residents and the local media.

A Spectre is Haunting Swedish Archaeology – The Spectre of Politics: Archaeology, Cultural Heritage and the Present Political Situation in Sweden

Today Swedish archaeology and cultural heritage management are embraced by the xenophobic party Sweden Democrats. This is a problematic situation, and once again it is therefore time to discuss the rela­ tionship between archaeology, cultural heritage and politics – not as a consequence of theoretical considera­ tions and standpoints, but against the background of the harsh political reality. The overall aim of this pa­ per is to contribute to the discussion concerning which strategy, or strategies, Swedish archaeology and cul­ tural heritage management should adopt as a response to the present political situation and as a defence of a solidaristic and multicultural Swedish society.

The Characteristics of the Nordic right-wing populism

The last two decades have seen the rise of right-wing parties in Europe, spurred among other things by a series of crises, the latest of which being the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic. Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark did not find themselves isolated from the political and socio-economic shocks and aftershocks of such events, and right-wing populist parties and movements belonging to the Nordic region have also gained strength, sometimes even being a part of governments. However, these parties have certain characteristics that distinguish them from their counterparts in the rest of the Europe, given the specific social, political, economic and historical context of the region. Such traits can be listed as welfare chauvinism, right-wing egalitarianism, authoritarian positions on sociocultural issues, and populist, anti-establishment drive. At the same time, these parties have demonstrated their high pragmatism and ability for adaptation to the current political situation in their countries. In this work a quick overview is presented of the principles of four major right-wing parties in the Nordic region (The Finns Party, Sweden Democrats, Norwegian Progress Party, and Danish People’s Party), and the differences and similarities in their motivations are discussed.

Populism versus the people: How citizen's social representations of home destabilize national populism's territorial vision

Can understanding social representations of home unpack the central empty signifier of populism—the “true people”? Nationalist exclusionary forms of populism use home, birthplace, and born and bred narratives to frame sections of the population as Other. “Go Home” vans in the United Kingdom, Donald Trump's use of birther rhetoric during his previous presidential candidacy and the Sweden Democrats mobilization of folkhemmet (people's home) to question migrant welfare contributions together illustrate how nationalist populism works. Populism uses threat and insecurity, related to home, to make hegemonic a protectionist and reified worldview of home as stable, bounded and historically continuous. This article examines how populist rhetoric of home compares to people's actual social representations of home. Using cross-European interviews (N = 76) we find the dynamics of home relate to three social representations—home as a threatened space, home as birthplace, and home as a lifespan journey. These are articulated through a dialogical self engaged in transnational and intergenerational dialogue. The evidence of dynamic, dialogical, and relationally continuous representations of home points to the value of further examination of alternative social representations of home. This articulation could counter protectionist rhetoric associated with both vertical (ordinary/elite) and horizontal (people/migrant) dimensions of nationalist populism.

Populismens existentiella dimensioner: Sverigedemokrater och kyrkor i den flytande moderniteten

Rightwing populism is characterized by critique of immigration, but populist parties also address existential anxieties of late or liquid modernity. I argue that regular churchgoers reject the Sweden Democrats not only because they hold different opinions on immigration, but also due to their strong social capital. The latter helps them cope with modern anxieties, and this makes them less inclined to accept the message of the populists.

Ideological Tripolarization, Partisan Tribalism and Institutional Trust: The Foundations of Affective Polarization in the Swedish Multiparty System

Currently, very little is known about the individual level foundations of affective polarization outside the US context. This paper addresses this research gap by exploring the predictors of affective polarization in Sweden, using nationally representative survey data. From 2010 till the 2018 elections, the Swedish multiparty system was divided into two affectively converged mainstream party blocs that were moderately polarized between each other, and an asymmetrically polarized populist right party that invoked significantly more hostility from the supporters of mainstream parties than vice versa. To unpack the foundations of affective polarization in such a tripolar configuration, we employ a methodological approach that distinguishes not just between in‐ and outparties but also in‐ and out‐blocs, and separates different conflict dimensions. We find that: (1) voters with stronger partisan identities and more extreme political attitudes exhibit higher levels of affective polarization. The latter, however, is a better predictor of direct dislike towards political opponents; (2) the effects of political attitudes correspond to the tripolar nature of the party system: while affective polarization between the centre‐right and ‐left blocs is mostly driven by socioeconomic positions, the hostility towards Sweden Democrats links predominantly to cultural issues, most notably immigration; (3) institutional trust has a two‐edged relationship with affective polarization: populist right voters that trust the country’s central institutions more, are less polarized towards mainstream blocs, whereas among centre‐right voters, higher trust associates with stronger animosity towards Sweden Democrats. We believe that these findings could have broad implications for affective polarization research in multiparty systems.

The Intersections of Equality, Welfare and Democracy in Sweden

This article examines the historical legal treatment of equality and its present-day protections against the backgrounds of welfare, democracy and access to justice. This first part begins with the historical development and legal treatment of equality, democracy and local govern-ment, moving over to the Swedish labor law model and the “folk home” that created the Swedish welfare state, and then to the current Swedish discrimination legislation. Access to justice is then addressed, seen here as the necessary mechanism for achieving both formal and substantive equality, followed by a discussion as to what type of equality is being protected and promoted by the law.

The Politics of Differentiated Integration: What do Governments Want? Country Report - Sweden

Differentiated integration (DI) is of very low salience in Sweden, and the rare discussions on DI that took place focused on instances of DI rather than on models or mechanisms. As regards the models of DI, Sweden had a negative view of multi-speed, which was seen as detrimental to cohesion within the Union. Multi-end Europe was instead perceived as a useful way to include different countries. Enhanced co-operation, in which some countries pursue a deeper cooperation, was therefore acceptable and Sweden had no problems when others engaged in enhanced co-operation on initiatives that Sweden was critical of. It was also pleased when initiatives that Sweden favoured and which could not find the acceptance of all, could be pursued as enhanced co-operation. It was, however, critical against using opt-outs in areas seen as crucial, like climate, the environment and migration. Without explicitly mentioning the euro as a case of enhanced co-operation this was how Sweden dealt with it. Neither Sweden nor the EU have acted to bring about a formal opt-out. The two EU-critical parties, the Left Party and the Sweden Democrats, have, however, argued for this, most probably because of a wish to make non-membership of the euro permanent. While recognising the right of deeper co-operation among eurozone countries, Sweden saw it as crucial not to create wider political rifts in Europe. With only a few exceptions, such as the euro, all political parties have agreed on the issues under discussion within the context of DI.

Attitudes Towards Globalization Barriers and Implications for Voting: Evidence from Sweden

Using six waves of the Swedish National Election Studies (SNES) survey data, we investigate the determinants of attitudes towards globalization barriers (trade and immigration) and how important these attitudes are in how people vote. In line with the existing results in the literature, we find that more educated and richer voters support freer trade and more immigration. We also find that conservative voters in Sweden are more likely to prefer freer trade but higher immigration barriers. Once various economic and demographic determinants of globalization barrier preferences along with voters’ ideologies on a liberal-conservative spectrum are controlled for in the analysis of voting behavior, trade barrier preferences lose their statistical significance while attitudes towards immigration barriers remain significant. This suggests that immigration attitudes affect voting behavior through channels involving identity-driven factors that are different from the channels through which more traditional electoral issues, such as trade barriers, work. Focusing on the anti-globalization Swedish Democrats, we confirm that voters with a greater preference for barriers to immigration were more likely to switch their votes to this party from the 2014 to the 2018 election.

Performing ‘us’ and ‘other’: Intersectional analyses of right-wing populist media

Finland and Sweden share the ideal of a Nordic welfare state, with gender equality as a central tenet. In both countries, right-wing populist parties have gained prominence in mainstream politics. Despite similar political agendas at the moment, these parties have different political histories, and different modes of expressing their anti-immigration pleas. In this comparative study, we examine how the distinction between ‘us’ and the ‘other’ is performed intersectionally in terms of gender, social class, ethnicity and ‘race’, and sexuality. For this purpose, we examine empirical material collected from the party newspapers of the Finns Party and the Sweden Democrats, because their content most closely reflects the ideological tenets of these parties. The chosen timeline stretches from 2007 until 2014 and entails the qualitative close reading of 16 issues of each newspaper. We evidence the dynamic between the intersectional analysis that fleshes out the reproduction of categories of difference, and the comparative analysis with its interest in temporal change and the resulting convergence between the two parties’ ideologies. We conclude that, although the Finns Party previously had a more pronounced anti-elitist rhetoric and resorted to class-based antagonism as a means to garner electoral support, it subsequently moved closer to the anti-immigration agenda around issues of protecting national identity and the welfare state that has characterised the political platform of the Sweden Democrats over the past decade. This temporal awareness allowed us to document the Sweden Democrats’ ideological consistency over the examined timeframe, emphasising the party’s quest to rebuild the (Swedish) ‘people’s home’ and to exclude the racialised Muslim ‘other’.

Sweden and Coronavirus: Unexceptional Exceptionalism

The aims of this article are, first, to describe the Swedish authorities’ strategy for dealing with the sudden onset of novel coronavirus in early 2020 and, second, to explain why that strategy differed markedly from those in nearly all other European countries. From an early stage, the Swedish government delegated decision making to the Public Health Agency, and its goal was to mitigate the effects of the virus rather than to suppress its spread. Society was never closed down in the same way as elsewhere. Using data from media reports and other publications, we argue that the agency was insulated from pressure to change course, even as the number of deaths associated with covid-19 rose far above those in Sweden’s Nordic neighbours, by four conditions: (1) the structure of national public administration; (2) an outburst of nationalism in parts of the media; (3) the uneven impact of the virus; and (4) a political leadership that was willing to delegate responsibility for policy almost entirely. We conclude by briefly comparing the coronavirus strategy to previous episodes of Swedish policy exceptionalism. This emerging pattern, we suggest, raises normative questions about the functioning of Swedish democracy.

Contesting and envisioning ‘trygghet’: The Sweden Democrats, Social Democrats, and the 2018 Swedish General Election

AbstractIn September 2018, international observers were fixated on Sweden as voters went to the polls. With the national populist party, the Sweden Democrats, predicted to gain significant support, commentators sardonically speculated whether this might finally spell the last bastion of social democracy’s fall from grace? Against the backdrop of the 2015 refugee crisis and growing violent crime rates, would Sweden finally succumb to the emotive appeal of populism? In this paper, we argue for an analysis that starts at the national level to fully appreciate the elements that made Swedish populism unique to its socio‐cultural context. We propose that a geopolitics of language fused with ideas from the ‘affective turn’ is uniquely poised to analyse the deeply affective connotations of territorial metaphors and the structures of feelings associated with them. This is done by showing how the 2018 election centred on competing mobilisations of the Swedish concept of trygghet. This affectively loaded concept, denoting a structure of feeling of comforting and holistic safety, finds no equivalent in the Anglophone world. Taking insights from two ethnographic research projects, conducted with the Sweden Democrats and the Social Democrats, we argue that trygghet serves as a rich socio‐cultural heuristic device that conveys the geohistorical specificities underpinning the 2018 Swedish elections. Indeed, we show the links between the Swedish notions of trygghet and the folkhem (people’s home) to help explain the rise of Swedish populism.

Climate Change Denial among Radical Right-Wing Supporters

The linkage between political right-wing orientation and climate change denial is extensively studied. However, previous research has almost exclusively focused on the mainstream right, which differs from the far right (radical and extreme) in some important domains. Thus, we investigated correlates of climate change denial among supporters of a radical right-wing party (Sweden Democrats, N = 2216), a mainstream right-wing party (the Conservative Party, Moderaterna, N = 634), and a mainstream center-left party (Social Democrats, N = 548) in Sweden. Across the analyses, distrust of public service media (Swedish Television, SVT), socioeconomic right-wing attitudes, and antifeminist attitudes outperformed the effects of anti-immigration attitudes and political distrust in explaining climate change denial, perhaps because of a lesser distinguishing capability of the latter mentioned variables. For example, virtually all Sweden Democrat supporters oppose immigration. Furthermore, the effects of party support, conservative ideologies, and belief in conspiracies were relatively weak, and vanished or substantially weakened in the full models. Our results suggest that socioeconomic attitudes (characteristic for the mainstream right) and exclusionary sociocultural attitudes and institutional distrust (characteristic for the contemporary European radical right) are important predictors of climate change denial, and more important than party support per se.

Climate Change Denial among Radical Right-Wing Supporters

Political right-wing orientation correlates with climate change denial in several Western countries. Politicians and voters of far-right (i.e., radical and extreme right-wing) parties seem to be particularly inclined to dismiss climate change but the reason for this is unclear. Thus, the present paper investigates if and why climate change denial is more common among voters of the radical right-wing party Sweden Democrats as compared to voters of a mainstream right-wing party (the Conservative Party, Moderaterna), and compares both these voter groups with center-left (Social Democrat) voters. In four regression analyses, distrust of public service media (Swedish Television, SVT), socioeconomic right-wing attitudes, and negative attitudes toward feminism and women were the strongest predictors of climate change denial. These variables outperformed conservative ideologies (Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation), anti-immigration attitudes, distrust of the Parliament and courts, and belief in conspiracies, in predicting denial. Party preferences explained only a small or zero part of variance in denial over and above these variables. The results suggest that even though radical and mainstream right-wing parties emphasize different sociopolitical issues and anti-establishment messages, similar psychological factors seem to explain why these voter groups differ from each other and from left-wing voters in climate change denial. However, the included independent variables were intercorrelated, which calls into question to what degree they can be separated when explaining psychological underpinnings of climate change denial.

Those were the days: welfare nostalgia and the populist radical right in the Netherlands, Austria and Sweden

AbstractIn academia and beyond, it has become commonplace to regard populist parties – in particular, those on the radical right – as the archetypical embodiment of politics of nostalgia. Demand-side studies suggest that nostalgic sentiments motivate populist radical-right (PRR) voting and welfare chauvinist attitudes, yet systematic analyses of the nostalgic discourse that these parties promote have not been forthcoming. This paper seeks to fill that lacuna by analysing how the Freedom Party of Austria, the Dutch Party for Freedom and the Sweden Democrats framed the historical fate of the welfare state in their electoral discourse between 2008 and 2018. It demonstrates that their commitment to welfare chauvinism finds expression in a common repertoire of “welfare nostalgia,” manifested in the different modes of “reaction,” “conservation” and “modernisation.” Giving substance to a widespread intuition about PRR nostalgia, the paper breaks ground for further research into nostalgic ideas about social policy.

Contemporary Land Questions in Sweden, Far‐Right Populist Strategies and Challenges for Inclusionary Rural Development

AbstractThis article analyses the rural politics and discursive strategies of the Sweden Democrats political party and contrasts them with the politics of movements proposing inclusionary rural development in Sweden. The article examines political and media documents on rural issues produced by the Sweden Democrats, uses documents of and interviews with representatives of rural development initiatives in Sweden and analyses relevant forest owners’ magazines. The results show that the defence of property rights and exclusionary politics are a prominent part of the populist strategy of the Sweden Democrats in rural areas and that technological development and mechanisation of forestry and agriculture become crucial challenges in articulating political efforts for inclusionary rural development in Sweden. The article concludes by highlighting differences between the Sweden Democrats’ populist strategies and the political efforts to build inclusionary rural politics in the context of contemporary land questions in Sweden.