Politics in Cornwall in the twentieth century was dominated by the rivalry of two major parties: the Conservatives and the Liberals. Unlike much of the rest of Britain Cornwall retained a different political paradigm in which Labour did not replace the old left, with socialism, and until the modern day this localised duopoly has persisted. This thesis looks at the potentially different reasons why this divergence persists and identifies three possible explanations for this phenomenon: culture, character and campaigns. In Part I of the thesis, there is a comparison of politicians from the past and the attributes that these politicians possessed which are compared with modern day politicians to evaluate their relative strengths. The thesis also assesses historic campaigning as a cause of Liberal success as well as the different nature of Cornwall, with its distance from Westminster and its Celtic and Methodist background, which set it apart from much of the rest of England. Then in Part II, using modern day voter surveys conducted by telephone, this thesis identifies particular peculiarities in Cornwall which would seem to suggest that although there have been traditional cultural ties to Liberalism, mainly through the pre-dominant faith, Methodism, this cleavage towards the modern day Liberal Democrats has changed in nature as cultural reasons have become less significant. It also identifies the importance of so-called personality politics, in the Cornish context, as a key aspect of maintaining and then augmenting support for the party. As such major personalities from historic Cornish politics, such as Isaac Foot and David Penhaligon, are compared to modern day politicians to assess their relative significance. However, the significant majority of the original research conducted across Cornwall, and other parts of the country, attempts to identify whether the resurgence of the Liberal Democrats in the 1997 election, and subsequently, is linked to the campaigning the party conducts rather than these traditional assumptions for their electoral success. Conducting telephone surveys across thirteen parliamentary constituencies, before and after the 2010 general election, from the Highlands of Scotland to West Cornwall, this research identifies that grassroots campaigning, commonly referred to as Rennardism in the most recent past, but more accurately described as Community Politics, is the primary reason for the success of the Liberal Democrats in Cornwall between 1997 and 2010. By assessing not just seats in which the Liberal Democrats have been successful in recent years in Cornwall but also in similar, and different, regions of Britain a better assessment of the value of the party’s successes and failures can be evaluated both in Cornwall and comparatively. The research compares different potential reasons for voters supporting the party but the evidence would seem to suggest that in the period under discussion the party had built substantial levels of campaigning capacity in the target areas for the party and this helped to win all the seats in Cornwall for the Liberal Democrats in 2005. Surveys were conducted before and after the 2010 election and there is also evidence that as the party became a less effective campaigning machine it began to lose support in Cornwall and this helps to explain why the party lost seats in Cornwall in 2010. This thesis adds to the increasing awareness, amongst political scientists, of the significance of local constituency campaigning, in British politics, which has been the subject of debate in this field in recent years. Historically scholars have debated the significance of national swing, with early political scientists, like David Butler and Robert Mackenzie, favouring this explanation to electoral success assessing the general election campaign as being essentially a national one. However, as three and now arguably four or even five party politics is the norm academics such as David Denver, Dennis Kavanagh and Philip Cowley have identified that constituency campaigning matters much more to those parties breaking into the post-war duopoly, than early political scientists have suggested. This thesis evaluates, not just whether there is a local campaign factor in the Liberal Democrats’ success, but whether the volume and penetration of this local campaign matters and, as such, this research is original and forms a unique contribution to academic debate in this field.

The social and economic background to politics in Steyr was highly unusual. The town was a working class, social democratic stronghold isolated within an agrarian, conservative region. Moreover, its economy was unstable automobile works, dominated by one single, highly the Steyr-Werke. This thesis is concerned with the ways in which this unusual background dominated and defined the nature and development of the local social democratic movement between 1927 and 1934. It argues that this background conditioned the emergence of a distinctive, insular social democratic ethos which encapsulated a moderate, reformist approach to politics based not on ideological considerations, but on practical local experience. Between 1927 and 1929, the Steyr-Werke undertook a massive expansion of production and employment which triggered a local economic boom. The boom in the local economy supported and promoted the social democratic ethos. Conversely, the sudden shutdown of automobile production late in 1929 plunged the local economy into depression and undermined the rationale of the social democratic ethos, which became anachronistic and inconsistent with the new local economic background. However, the unwieldiness of the Social Democratic Party structure and the rigidly bureaucratic mentality of the party leadership precluded effective response to the new local conditions. The inability to respond stimulated the development of an opposition faction within the movement which rejected the authority and policies of the established party leadership, and which mobilised in support of a radically different, quasi-communist political strategy.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis explores discourse of the Sweden Democrats around the issue of immigration and provides an overview of changes that occurred in Sweden Democrats’ rhetoric and argumentation from National election in 2010 until the election in 2014. The study offers an analytical contribution to the field of media and communication and provides readers with the insight of right wing online activism. Qualitative in its core, and based on the theory of framing, the study analyzed video material uploaded by the Sweden Democrats on their official Youtube channel. Results are organized thematically in the way in which party framed the issue of immigration (threat to a national identity, the cause of criminal actions, unemployment and welfare abuse). The Sweden Democrats use their YouTube page as a tool for alternative political communication. The findings indicate a major shift in their rhetoric about the issue of immigration from sharp criticism of mass immigration on religious and cultural grounds toward criticism based on economical and financial grounds. On their journey towards more democratic norms, the Sweden Democrats sought to give an impression of new, changed party, distant from racial roots by employing ‘softened’ rhetoric and blowing a ‘dog whistle’.

This study is an attempt to re-investigate the Republican party during the Reconstruction era in order to understand the degree and nature of the changes. The paper reviews the basis of the party at different points in its metamorphosis to demonstrate what happened to the organization.

The aim of this essay was to determine 1. How Muslims were described in the Sweden Democrats official magazine and 2. What the purpose with their descriptions could be. The material, the SD-Courier was chosen due to it being an official magazine that was easily accessible. A hermeneutic method was used where each article selected was read several times to create a greater understanding for the material and the phenomenon within. Several articles, nine out of 485, mentioned Islam and Muslims. The description of Muslims and Islam was exclusively negative in that most authors and articles tried to describe Muslims and Islam as a threat. The threat ranged between a local threat, threatening Sweden as a whole and finally threatening the entire Western civilization. The reasons for the descriptions can be several. By creating stereotypes of Muslims as evil the Sweden Democrats create a stereotype of themselves as the “good guys”. By doing so they also create an opportunity for recruiting new members to the party. Another reason is the assignment of blame. Muslims become the scapegoat for problems in society which may lack obvious solutions.

Det finns en hel del forskning om högerpopulistiska partiers relation till massmedier, och hur den högerextrema rörelsen använder sociala medier. Hur högerpopulistiska partier använder material från medierna för att rama in sina politiska budskap är däremot mindre utforskat. Frågeställningarna för undersökningen var hur Sverigedemokraterna agerar som news aggregator på sin Facebook-sida i samband med riksdagsvalet 2014, och hur partiet ramar in det redaktionella material de länkar till. En kvalitativ undersökning med utgångspunkt i teorin om framing gjordes av samtliga officiella inlägg på Sverigedemokraternas Facebook-sida under perioden 140801 – 141031. Inläggen grupperades utifrån sex teman (mobilisering, Sverigedemokraterna mot etablissemanget, välfärd, ekonomi, invandring och hotet mot Sverige). De inläggen som innehöll länkar till redaktionellt material analyserades vad gäller syftet med nyhetsförmedlingen och inramningen av det länkande materialet. Analysen visar hur Sverigedemokraterna använder Facebook-sidan för att förmedla sin egen tolkning av händelser under valrörelsen. Det redaktionella materialet används för att ge SD legitimitet, hämta hem segrar och förstärka bilden av stödet för partiet. Två gestaltningar dominerar inramningen av de länkade artiklarna. Den ena är att SD som enda parti vågar tala klarspråk om den negativa utvecklingen i Sverige och därmed ger röst åt ”vanligt folk”. Den andra är att Sverige är hotat och att detta på olika sätt kan kopplas till invandringen. Detta ligger i linje med resultat från tidigare forskning.

The aim of the current study was to examine the radical right-wing sympathizers in Sweden. To fulfill this aim, a quantitative case study on Sweden Democrats sympathizers was conducted. More specifically, this study has examined socio-economic backgrounds and political attitudes of the Sweden Democrat sympathizers. The results show that sympathizers of Sweden Democrats are higher among younger people and men. The results also show a higher support for Sweden Democrats among people with lower education and low income that also live in small towns and in the countryside. These individuals also have lower trust in political institutions at the national and European level and are less satisfied with democracy at both levels and believe that Sweden should reduce immigration. The theory explains that these results are also consistent in other parts of Europe. The underlying explanation for these results seems to be that the world has become amore globalized, and these individuals who sympathize with radical right-wing populist parties are the ones who are negatively affected by a globalized world.

This study critically studies two different manifestos, New democracy manifesto from 1991 and Sweden Democrats manifesto from 2010. The purpose with this is to discover in what way populist rhetoric is used and what parlance the parties have used in these two manifestos. Using Lennart Hellspong’s model for propaganda analysis, textual compilations will be discovered and analyzed through a set of questions. Previous research show that these two parties has a lot in common and even though both have different political ideology and framework, they both have populist rhetoric as one of the key elements in their rhetoric. With Sweden democrats currently being the third biggest party in Sweden there is an interest to see what they have in common with the first populist party in Sweden during the modern era, New Democracy. Do the populist characteristics in Sweden Democrats manifesto have similar attributes as the in New Democracy manifesto? The result of the study shows that the populist rhetoric is used in different ways, with different ideological purposes but is built from the same springboard.