Since the Swedish Democrats established in 1988, debates and discussions have occurred regarding the party's ideological foundation and affiliation. This study is based primarily on a qualitative textual analysis, an idea- and ideology analysis and ideal types. The study's purpose is to discover which of the following political ideas and ideologies; fascism, populism, conservatism and socialism are most prominent in the Swedish Democrats election manifesto (2014) respectively principle program (2011). At my disposal, the study consists of two research questions; To what extent are there general features of socialism, populism, fascism and conservatism in the Swedish Democrats principle program respectively election manifesto? Which ideology is more prominent in the principle program respectively election manifesto? The theoretical section summarises the different ideologies central themes/discussions and view of democratic governance, the nation, the economic system respectively international governance. When conducting the analysis, the focus is on the Swedish Democrats central themes/discussions and view of democratic governance, the nation, the economic system respectively international governance and how the party's views relate to the political ideologies and ideas. The conducted analysis reveals features of all four ideologies, especially conservatism and populism.

The purpose of this study is to further examine the populist wave that has struck the West, with specific regards to France and Germany. The growing anti-immigrant sentiment, the discontent with “establishment” politics, and fear-mongering tactics has given rise to far-right political parties such as the National Front and the Alternative for Germany. These political parties prove threatening to the democratic institutions in place, for they wish to limit the liberties of those who seem too different. Through delving into the core values of these countries and specific events revolving around foreigners, I explain how xenophobic ideology has been allowed to permeate through France and Germany’s society and has increased the legitimacy of political leaders like Marine Le Pen and Frauke Petry.

Le pouvoir populaire est une nouvelle stratégie de transformation sociale émancipatrice, apparue en Amérique latine, mais avec vocation universelle. Elle est centrée sur la construction d'un pouvoir plébéien capable d'élargir l'exercice démocratique de l'autorité, de développer des sujets autonomes et de créer de nouvelles formes de sociabilité. Ce pouvoir est celui des organisations populaires, quand elles sont capables de construire des espaces où le pouvoir capitaliste ne peut pas s'exercer pour y développer de nouveaux rapports sociaux. À partir de ces organisations, le pouvoir populaire, cherche d'abord à établir un rapport de forces avec le pouvoir du système lui permettant de se préserver, mais avec vocation de devenir hégémonique au sein de la société pour pouvoir la remodeler. Porteur d'une vision utopique de la transformation sociale, son objectif final est le dépassement de toute domination et la construction une nouvelle totalité sociale, communautaire, mais respectueuse de la diversité populaire, individuelle et collective. Sa stratégie politique part de l'hégémonie sociale et vise à contrôler, démocratiquement, l'appareil d'État capitaliste, à le transformer, et à terme, à le faire disparaître. Le pouvoir populaire assume que son engagement politique, du fait de sa méthode démocratique, nécessite une période et une société de transition prolongées dans le temps. Cette société, préalable à la société émancipée, admets la coexistence en son sein de formes de vie capitalistes et non capitalistes. / The people's power relies on a new strategy of emancipating social transformation which appeared in Latin America but with a universal aim. It consists in building up a plebeian power able to enlarge the democratic authority to form autonomous individuals and to create new ways of living in society. Such is the power of popular organizations when they are able to set up places where the capitalistic power can't prevail so that new social interactions are developed. Thanks to these organizations, the people's power first aims at creating a tension with the larger system not only in order to protect itself, but also to increase its influence on society and be able to make it evolve. It conveys a utopian vision of social transformation and intends to overrule all domination and to build a new social and local unity that would respect the people's diversity, as individuals or groups of individuals. Its political strategy relies on social hegemony and aims at controlling the capitalist state system in a democratic way and at transforming it, and, in the end, put it to an end. The people's power understands that its necessarily democratic political stance needs a long term transition period, as well as a transition type of society. This society, the condition to an emancipated one, is to be composed of both capitalistic and non-capitalistic forms of lives.

This study departs from a cleavage-theory by Kriesi et al. in which the globalization and the European integration divides Europeans in winners and losers through a political, a cultural and an economic mechanism (2012). It examines the connection between the polarization following the integration and the support for political systems using Norris’ framework from Democratic deficit (2012) which differs on five levels of support. The main findings show that the polarization has an impact on four out of five levels through the cultural mechanism and that it thus not only may generate support for right-wing populism as shown by Kriesi with more, but for right-wing extremism as well. Even though the effect is limited the results also suggests that the decreasing trust in political institutions in Europe is not to be reduced to normal a fluctuation.

Recent studies have shown that skepticism about human-caused climate change has increased among people in Europe and the United States. Researchers have tried to examine the causes behind this trend. What some of the studies have found is that there could be connectivity between populistic and nationalistic ideologies and climate skepticism. The purpose of this study has been to, through an idea analysis, examine the American president Donald Trump to see what type of climate sceptic he is according to the typology created by Rahmstorf. Furthermore, the study seeks to understand if the scepticism could be linked to the theories of populism and nationalism. The study is based on interviews done by newspapers and tv-shows but also tweets written by Trump. The study found that Trump’s climate scepticism could be classified into all of Rhamstorf’s different levels of skepticism. It also found that Trump’s argumentation in the interviews and in his tweets could, in accordance with earlier research, be linked to populism and nationalism.

Chantal Mouffe förklarar exkludering och demonisering av politiska partier som en kontraproduktiv strategi. När etablerade partier samlas kring en konsensus i mitten reduceras medborgarnas valmöjligheter och undergräver demokratin, menar Mouffe. Detta är exempel på politiska fenomen som enligt Mouffe leder till att högerpopulistiska partier gynnas, något som skett i flera Europeiska länder. Högerpopulistiska partier och rörelser växer på många håll i Europa och Mouffe menar att uppsvinget för högerpopulismen och den populistiska retoriken till stor del beror på de etablerade partiernas tillkortakommanden. Syftet med uppsatsen är att utifrån Mouffes teori, och med Sverige som exempel, förklara hur en svag regering och ett starkt högerpopulistiskt parti hänger ihop med oförmågan att tänka politiskt och reflektera över hur en vänstervriden populistisk motståndskraft skulle kunna se ut.

Research Report Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Political Studies University of the Witwatersrand March 2015 / Recent 21st century political developments in South Africa have given rise to debate surrounding a threat to a functioning democracy. New radical political parties, turmoil in the labour sectors, and dysfunctional government policies and activities have made populist tendencies a central aspect of this debate. Populism is an entity oft evoked in a negative light and rhetoric in this debate. It is associated with demagogues and the ‘uncontrollable’ urges of the masses that would be let loose upon society given the chance, destroying democracy in the process. It is the aim of this paper to argue the opposite. By expanding and contributing to the theoretical literature on populism, and through the analysis of empirical evidence – the Western Cape farm worker’s strikes and the Marikana strikes and subsequent massacre of 2012 –in South Africa this research report seeks to fill a gap in the conceptualisation and practical characterisation of populism in our political setting. Can populism be conceptually, theoretically, and empirically utilised to characterise and explain trends in contemporary South African politics and can it be utilised in providing a contextual underpinning for explaining recent events in South African society as a whole? Through the reliance on the theories of Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek the aim will be to identify the underlying gaps in democratic politics that gives rise to populist movements and through this argument to build and utilise this conception of populism as a positive and effective analytical tool of contemporary South African politics.

[pt] O foco deste trabalho é a vida pública de Pedro Ernesto Batista, interventor e prefeito da cidade do Rio de Janeiro, na primeira metade da década de 1930. Nossa hipótese sugere que a combinação de difusão escrita e falada- através do uso do rádio como instrumento aglutinador e irradiador de propaganda doutrinária- foi de fato inovadora e anterior a aplicada no Estado Novo. Grande parte das idéias que compunham o que se designou posteriormente como trabalhismo também fora antecipado pela sensibilidade de retórica e ação da liderança de Pedro Ernesto que aperfeiçoara sua imagem popular de médico bondoso e voltado para o atendimento aos pobres com o uso do rádio e de jornais de grande tiragem. Em sua campanha para a prefeitura de 1934 e no exercício deste cargo,tornou-se um dos primeiros exemplos de político carismático preocupado com as condições de vida e com os interesses da população urbana, em especial dos trabalhadores. Este tipo de liderança e prestígio foi sem dúvida o alimento de perseguições que passou a sofrer no bojo do combate ao anticomunismo desencadeado a partir de 1935, que culminaria com sua prisão e afastamento da prefeitura. Sua prisão não significou, no entanto, o fim da força de sua imagem pública. Os consensos e dissensos simbólicos e a força de sua memória pública desafiaram até mesmo a ditadura de Vargas. / [en] The focus of this study is to analyze Pedro Ernesto Batista`s public life; who was Rio de Janeiro`s major at the first half of the 30`s. Our hypothesis suggests that the combination of written and spoken communications vehicles - through the using of the radio as an agglutinant and powerful instrument of doctrinaire propaganda - it was, in fact, innovating and previous to the tactics used during the denominated "Estado Novo" (The new State).Most of the ideas used in the process of what has been named "trabalhismo" (labourism) was also anticipated by Pedro Ernesto`s sensible speech and leadership action. He improves his image as a kind and popular doctor dedicated to the attendance of the poor population, using the radio and the most extended newspapers to spread this profile.During his politic campaign for the election to the City hall in 1934 and later as while as working as major in this equivalent period, he became one of the firsts examples of charismatic politician, always caring about the urban population life conditions and interests, specially the workers.This kind of leadership and prestige caused, certainly, the prosecutions that he suffered during the bulge of the anticommunism persecution happened in 1935; wich culminated with his arrest in prison and destitution as major.However, being arrested didn`t meant the end of the powerful of his public image; the symbolic consensuses and dissents, plus the powerful of his public memory had defied even though the Vargas dictatorship.

The Sweden democrats has for a long time been labelled as a racist party in swedish media. Due to the problems related to the members of the party in the 90s, where members were subject to criminal actions and racist scandals, the media had focus on the racist actions and labelled the party as a racist party therefore. How does the discourse present itself today? The purpose is to make a comparative study between the year 2014 and 2018/2019 and to research if the discourse surrounding the sweden democrats has changed during this time. Relevance for the study is how we discover, categorize and give the discourses names that helps us and also the reader to understand the process about how the media picture Sweden democrats. Our method is a comparative critical discourse analysis that we are going to use on articles published in the two largest newspapers in sweden, Aftonbladet and Expressen. We will locate the surrounding discourses from 2014 at first and then locate what kind of discourses is surrounding the party in 2018/2019. The main discourse from 2014 is the racist discourse, it´s present in nearly every article we analyse. With the racist discourse, the big difference is that the discourse is changing. When we look upon 2018/2019, new discourses take place, the new discourses we locate it’s the right populism-, scandal- and normalization discourse, the rasism discourse is still present but not so extensive as during 2014. During 2014 the racism discourse depends on the scandal discourse, this changes significant, the scandal discourse is no longer in 2018/2019 dependent on the racism discourse, but it acutally transforms into its own discourse. The focus on racism is almost gone and new scandals take place instead. In combination with the normalization discourse we can se that there has been a change, actually a big change in the media discourse surrounding the Sweden democrats.

Cette étude a pour but d’essayer de comprendre les nouvelles formes de régulation sociale qui consiste à évacuer la conflictualité au profit d’une tentative de normalisation du champ politique par la cybernétique. Pour ce faire, notre travail développe un modèle théorique qui croise la théorie du management comme tentative de neutralisation du politique avec ses nouvelles formes d’expression appelées « Gouvernance ». Les techniques managériales contemporaines sont la mise en œuvre de présupposés théoriques élaborés dans l’immédiat après-guerre avec la naissance de la cybernétique. Ce nouveau paradigme fait que le politique est désormais cantonné à la recherche de l’efficacité et de la performance. Toutefois, cette prétendue neutralisation opérationnelle et la culture du résultat qui lui est associé se révèle être une manière de décrédibiliser le nécessaire affrontement idéologique qui est le cœur battant de la vie démocratique. C’est ainsi que l’on peut observer depuis quelques années déjà, les signes d’une fragilisation du monde démocratique. La hausse de l’abstention, l’installation d’un puissant vote protestataire et la crise des partis de gouvernement en sont les signes les plus remarquables. A des degrés divers, la défiance à l’égard des institutions et des acteurs politiques est commune à la plupart des démocraties, y compris là où le régime démocratique semblait le plus solidement enraciné. Dès lors, on ne peut plus penser le politique selon une norme unique, propre à l’Occidentalisation du monde. Que la conflictualité sociale traduise un désaccord profond entre le pouvoir qui est devenu totalement étranger à la vie réelle et la puissance populaire qui ne se reconnaît plus dans ses élites, rend d’autant plus pertinente une approche centrée sur la cybernétique. / This study aims to understand the new forms of social regulation that, in hampering any forms of conflictuality, tend to the normalization of the political field through cybernetics. In this respect, our dissertation develops a theoretical template at the crossroads of management theory as an attempt to neutralize politics and new forms of expression called « Governance ». Contemporary managerial techniques are the implementation of theoretical assumptions developed in the immediate post-war period with the birth of cybernetics. This new paradigm means that policy is now limited to the pursuit of efficiency and performance. However, this de-ideologisation and the culture of the results prove to be a discredit of the necessary ideolological confrontation which is at the very heart of the democratic life. This is why many signs of the weakening of democracy are to be seen in the recent years. The rise of abstention, an enduring populist vote and the crisis of the governmental parties are the most obvious ones. To different degrees, the distrust of the political institutions and actors is shared by all the democracies, even by those where the democratic system seemed to be very firmly rooted. Accordingly, politics cannot be regarded in one perspective, in line with the Westernization of the world. Social conflictuality shows a large gap between the political power that is not anymore related to real life and the popular power that no longer recognizes itself in its elites, and it makes an approach centered on cybernetics all the more relevant.