This study investigates the connection between refugee reception in Swedish municipalities and support for the Swedish right-wing populist party, the Sweden Democrats. Using panel data of electoral support for the Sweden Democrats in the elections 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018 and the number of refugees received per municipality in the years since the preceding election, I find a positive and significant association between support for the Sweden Democrats and number of refugees received. This result is consistent across different models, including models utilising municipality-fixed and year-fixed effects. In order to test different theories on the connection between immigration and support for right-wing populists, I also utilise several different interaction effects between refugee intake and urbanity, native unemployment, income, immigrant unemployment and existing immigrant stock. Through this, I find some evidence for a connection between economic circumstance and response to refugee reception, supporting a theory of refugees being perceived as an economic threat, but only very weak support for a connection between political response to refugee reception and cultural fears or native contact with refugees.

This thesis has analyzed the relationship between the punitive turn and the crime policies of the Green party (Miljöpartiet de Gröna) and the Sweden democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) to answer the research question; what influence the punitive turn has had on the parties policies. The choice of method has fallen on a quantitative content-analysis with a qualitative complementarity and qualitative facilitation. From an account of the punitive turn has a word-list with recording units been created, of those recording units has a computer-search been made of the two parties most recent official documents which accounts for the parties holistic politics; MP´s Partyprogramme from 2013, and SD´s Principleprogramme from 2011. The result of the qualitative complementarity shows; a greater frequency of recording units for MP than for SD. The analysis of the qualitative facilitation-result shows; a lesser direct influence of the punitive turn for MP than for SD. The result and analysis are discussed regarding whether the research question has been answered, and no such conclusion is considered to be made by the researcher, instead are the result and analysis open for interpretation of the reader.

In conjunction with the rise of populism all over the globe, social media has been acknowledged as an important arena for populist actors to disseminate their political ideas. This thesis aims to examine the relationship between social media and right-wing populism by exploring how an online platform mediates right-wing populist discourses. In contrast to the existing literature on this relationship, the social media platform TikTok is studied in this thesis. This study examines how online activists that are campaigning for the Sweden Democrats utilize the possibilities provided by TikTok’s material functions in relation to the social context in which they are used. Participant observation was conducted to study these dynamics, understood as platform affordances. The results show that the activists disseminate right-wing populist ideas on TikTok by utilizing functions for self-publication (of video). In terms of the proliferation of these videos, populist communication styles appear to be favored on this platform. A mapping of the social composition and available resources of these activists shows that their usage of the platform to conduct activism is affected by these factors, demonstrating different pathways to becoming an influential activist on TikTok.

Literature on climate policy of political parties’ points to an emerging congruence between populist radical right parties and scepticism toward climate change and climate policy. This thesis explores this nexus via a case study of the Sweden Democrats (SD) climate policy over a period of twelve years (2010-2022). It examines if the Sweden Democrats have expressed variations of climate scepticism and whether this has varied over time. Idea analysis and a taxonomy of three categories of climate scepticism are used for analysing official policy material of the Sweden Democrats. This thesis finds that the Sweden Democrats have outcomes on all three categories of climate scepticism: evidence (i.e., whether human caused climate change is happening), process (related to bureaucratic and scientific processes, e.g., scepticism against dominant research paradigms and bureaucratic decision making), and response scepticism (related to policy choices dealing with climate change). Over time there has been a gradual migration of scepticism from evidence and process related scepticism toward more policy-oriented forms of scepticism that concerns type of policy and attitudinal responses to climate change. Sweden Democrats climate scepticism is primarily anchored in arguments related to desired levels of national response and issues of trade/offs, with climate scepticism frequently constructed through frameworks of the potential harm that climate mitigation may do to national sovereignty, national economy, and industries. Another finding is that the Sweden Democrats overall have a lower salience and prioritization of climate issues compared to other parties represented in parliament whose climate policy they criticize, presenting their climate policy as alternative to these parties. This thesis concludes that the Sweden Democrats climate scepticism is closer to an unconvinced stance toward climate change rather than strictly denialistic, with evidentiary sceptic arguments over time becoming less frequent and decreasing in the degree of scepticism.

This study aims to analyze whether an ideological resemblance has occurred between the Moderate Party and the Sweden Democrats during the electoral periods 2018 and 2022. As such, an ideology focused systematic qualitative analysis has been applied with the additional lens of ideal type Liberal, Conservative and Nationalist values. The research questions for this study are: (1) What are differences and similarities between the Moderate Party and the Sweden Democrats in terms of Liberal, Conservative and Nationalist values during the two electoral periods? (2) Did an ideological resemblance occur between the two parties in two measuring points? The main findings of the study points to the implication that there is some degree of pathological normalcy when it comes to the Moderate Party’s election manifestos as there is a widespread use of all three ideal type ideologies in the election manifestoes from both chosen years. At the same time one could argue to a lesser extent that the Sweden Democrats have neared the Moderate Party as the ideal type Liberal values can be found abate to a far lesser extent compared to the the ideal type Nationalist and Conservative values in the election manifestos. As such, one can argue that an ideological resemblance between the two parties is apparent to a degree in the chosen measuring points though differences can also be found within the study between the two parties.

Countries with proportional representation are increasingly introducing an electoral threshold to stop smaller parties from entering their parliaments. In this paper, I’m focusing on the  proportional electoral system and mainly why some countries choose to impose a barrier to their parliaments and others do not. First I did a survey to see which countries that are using it and after that I decided to do three case studies including: Sweden, The Netherlands and Turkey. I used Carles Boix theory on proportional electoral systems. The main variable in his theory is that the “threat” from the social democratic parties has an affect on the enforcement of a PRsystem. I wanted to examine whether it was possible to apply this theory on the implementation of thresholds. Finally, it is possible to conclude that Boix theory can be used even when studying the emergence of electoral barriers. Boix theory suggests that any "threat" from new parties makes the old, larger and established parties or other government organizations want to impose a threshold to secure their positions. This was the case in Sweden and in Turkey. In countries where this situation does not exist, it seems to be no need for an electoral barrier, as shown in the Netherlands.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine how the Swedish parliamentary left viewed Brexit and its expected consequences. The standpoints concerning Brexit that were presented by the Social Democrats (S; SAP), the Left Party (V) and the Greens (MP) during the foreign policy debates of 2016 and 2017, and during eight of the consultations with the Committee on EU Affairs, from December 2015 to September 2016, are analysed. The actions of the three parties are explained with the help of the concepts politicization, programme realization, vote maximization and maximization of parliamentary influence. The standpoints are categorized using a qualitative text analysis. The conclusion is that the Social Democrats and the Greens had a negative attitude towards the United Kingdom leaving the EU, and they argued that the result of the referendum was a matter of regret. According to the Social Democrats and the Greens, Brexit meant that the EU had to start fulfilling the wishes of the citizens; otherwise the legitimacy of the union would be damaged even further. The Left Party neither approved nor disapproved of Brexit, but it did consider the event a historic opportunity to reform the EU. The analysis of the standpoints showed that Brexit couldn’t be classified as a politicized (contentious) question for the Swedish left. The actions of the Social Democrats are seen as an attempt to achieve all the strategic goals: programme realization, vote maximization and maximization of parliamentary influence. The Left Party prioritized vote maximization over the other goals, while the Greens prioritized maximization of parliamentary influence at the expense of programme realization.

Explaining the rising support for right-wing populist parties in Europe during the last decade is an issue that interests both economists, sociologists and political scientists. A number of theories suggest that the rising inflow of migrants to Europe has had an important causal effect on right-wing populist support. However, as migration patterns generally are not exogenous to right-wing populist support, it is difficult to interpret the estimates of a correlation study causally.  In this paper, I exploit a Swedish refugee dispersal program as a natural experiment to estimate the effect of refugee inflow on the support for the right-wing populist party the Sweden Democrats using an instrumental variable strategy. Despite detailed institutional knowledge, I am not able to find support for any short-term effects of refugee inflow on the self-reported preferences for the Sweden Democrats. This goes against the findings of most previous studies.  However, the multicollinearity of some of my covariates are high. In addition, as the program was introduced in 2016, there are few years available for identification. Thus, the precision of the estimates is relatively low and the study would benefit from adding more years to the panel data set.

Studien “Vi gör det för att vi älskar Sverige” syftar till att belysa hur en politikers diskurstillämpning i en svensk valrörelse kan exkludera etniska och kulturella grupper. Specifikt studeras hur Sverigedemokraternas partiledare Jimmie Åkesson tillämpar en etno-nationalistisk diskurs i sina tal på Långholmen, i Almedalen och i Sölvesborg under valrörelsen 2018. Studien undersöker därmed hur etno-nationalism kommer till uttryck i Åkessons tal och hur den etno-nationalistiska diskursen förändras utifrån kontexterna rumslig dimension, målgrupp och historia. Det teoretiska ramverket utgår från kritisk diskursanalys (CDA) där även begreppen diskurs, nationalistisk diskurs samt den retoriska aspekten förklaras. Studiens metod och analysbegrepp utgår från CDA och Norman Faircloughs tredimensionella modell, som gör det möjligt att identifiera underliggande maktstrukturer och bidra till kritisk språkmedvetenhet kring exkluderande diskurser i svensk politik. Samtliga tal analyseras på Norman Faircloughs textnivå, för att sedan jämföras på den diskursiva och sociala nivån i hans tredimensionella modell. Analysresultatet visade att Åkessons etno-nationalistiska diskurs förändras efter vilken kontext talen gavs i. Gemensamt för samtliga tal var att Åkesson förespråkar assimilering eller exkludering när han tillämpar en tydlig etno-nationalistisk diskurs. Resultatet visade också att en etno-nationalistisk diskurs inte nödvändigtvis behövde uttryckas tydligare inför en redan ideologiskt övertygad publik.

<p>Den här studien undersöker skillnaderna i de sätt på vilka Junilistan respektive Socialdemokraterna officiellt talar om demokrati, samt tillskriver begreppet värde. </p><p>Med en kombination av diskurs- och ideologianalys, med tyngdpunkten på diskursanalys, granskas det sätt på vilket de båda organisationerna, i idéprogram samt debattartiklar, använder demokratibegreppet vid diskussioner om EU som institution, samt vid resonemang om hur det svenska partiväsendet representerar de svenska väljarnas åsikter i unionen. </p><p>Tanken bakom studiens fokus är att demokratibegreppet, med sin legitimitet och positiva värdeladdning, blir oerhört viktigt att knyta till sin verksamhet för att kunna visa på grundläggande demokratisk förankring i sina resonemang och därigenom vinna väljarnas bifall. </p><p>En av studiens centralaste slutsatser är att de båda organisationerna i stor utsträckning talar om varandra. Det vill säga att när Junilistan talar i negativa formuleringar så talar Socialdemokraterna i positiva, utan att argumentationen på allvar möts i detaljfrågor.</p>