The economic policy of the Swedish Social Democrats has undergone major changes during the last thirty years. From using a so-called Keynesian policy to promote full employment in the economy, the Social Democrats have switched to a more monetaristic policy to promote low inflation instead. What I intend to do with this study is to see if the policy change also can be noticed in how the party describe their own policy. Have the Social Democrats been open and transparent with their change in priorities, or have they tried to hide this in their rhetoric? The purpose of this thesis is to examine if one can notice a change from a Keynesian to a monetaristic policy in the Social Democrat’s descriptions of their economic policy. The main research question, which I intend to answer, is: "Is it possible to notice a change from a Keynesian to monetaristic policy in the Social Democrat’s descriptions of their economic policy?" I have chosen to study the descriptions found in the financial forecasts, presented by the Social Democrats during their time in government rule between 1970 and 1999. The research method I use is the qualitative text analysis. After analyzing the descriptions found in the financial forecasts I present an answer to the main research question: Yes, it is partly possible to notice a change from a Keynesian to monetaristic policy in the Social Democrat’s descriptions of their economic policy. I only say partly possible because it is possible to notice the policy change that took place between the 1970s and 1980s, when low inflation was given the same priority as low unemployment. Whereas it is not possible to notice the change that took place between the 1980s and 1990s, when low inflation was given the highest priority, above low unemployment.

In the Swedish general elections of 2010, the party the Sweden Democrats for the first time entered the parliament. In an election otherwise characterised by competition between two explicit political blocs, the Sweden Democrats profiled itself as a party free from ideological blinders, ready to represent the will of the people. Commonly referred to as a populist party, there is considerable disagreement about where in the Swedish political space the party actually belongs. At the same time, there exist within political science a multitude of methodological approaches aimed at answering such questions. By combining election manifesto content analysis and survey-based approaches, the study of this paper presents cross-validated estimates of where in Swedish political space the Sweden Democrats belong. The study also evaluates strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches to the estimation of policy positions in the specific context of the Sweden Democrats. The party is found to be economically centrist but highly authoritarian, making it an outlier along both a "traditional" and a Swedish left-right continuum. Some methodological difficulties that may be particularly important to consider when analyzing parties such as the Sweden Democrats, e.g. bias, dimensional salience and linguistic volatility, are suggested.

This essay examines the recent electoral success of the Sweden Democrats (SD) in the Swedish municipal election in 2006 and 2010. By using statistical methods it aims to explain which of three contradicting theoretical frameworks best can explain how a populist radical right party could penetrate one of the most stable party systems in the world. The theoretical approaches tested in this essay are: a demand-side, an external supply-side and an internal supply-side approach. By using theoretically anchored proxies to determine the effect of the contradicting theoretical approaches this essay concludes that the internal supply-side explanation measuring the local party organizational ability of the SD had the most substantial effect when it comes to explaining their recent electoral success in the Swedish municipalities, as opposed to a more commonly believed demand-side driven explanation.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze why the Sweden Democrats (SD) continued to grow in the 2018 election, while the Danish Peoples Party (DF) lost over half of their support in the election in 2019. By using a structured, focused comparative method, the essay analyses the similar political systems of Denmark and Sweden, focusing on the traditional established parties’ different strategies to gain back the voters lost to populists. The analysis concludes that the success of SD and failure of DF can be contributed to ineffective strategies by Sweden’s traditional parties and a more effective strategy in the Danish case. Sweden’s established parties used isolating strategies by demonizing SD and their voters as extremists, paving way for SD to use populist political communication. In the danish case, most established parties have legitimized DF by co-opting their stances on immigration. The blue block has cooperated with DF in the Danish government.  By anchoring the analysis in theories about favorable conditions for populism, the main conclusion is that SD, because of the established parties’ isolating strategies, have been able to use populist political communication to present themselves as a distinct political alternative which mobilizes voters. DF have not had this opportunity, due to the co-optation, cooperation and broad consensus on their main issues

This thesis examines and explains how the three Scandinavian populist radical right parties, the Sweden Democrats, the Danish People’s Party and the Progress Party approaches the climate issue in their latest manifesto, and how it has changed over a period of ten years. By means of a content analysis and categorisations of climate scepticism, climate omission and climate measures, this thesis finds explicit evidence of climate scepticism in the Progress Party whereas there is no such evidence for the Sweden Democrats and the Danish People’s Party completely omits the issue. On the other hand, there is evidence of measures to fight climate change in the Progress Party, and the same goes for the Sweden Democrats. However, the only relevant difference when comparing the manifestos over a ten-year period is a decreased usage of statement connected to both climate scepticism and climate action in the Progress Party’s manifestos.

The term 'populist radical right parties' often occurs in media, among experts or as a frequently discussed topic. The topic related to a rise of such of political parties in Europe is parallelly linked to the context of growing number of immigrants. The aim of this work is to clarify reasons of the origin and long-term success of two populist radical right parties. The work analyzes and consequently compares the existence of the Swedish Democrats and the Norwegian Progress Party. Even though Sweden and Norway share several historical and cultural features, situation around selected political parties is apparently different. Norway's Progress Party succeeded in an election of 1973 already. Nowadays it can be listed among Norwegian strongest political parties. On the other hand, the populist radical right party, Swedish Democrats, entered the political scene in 2002 only. The starting point of the time research frame for this thesis is defined as the breakthrough of the Progress Party in 1973 with Anders Lange in lead. The core of the thesis is based on the concept of supply and demand according to which independent variables are categorized. The main purpose of the work is to determine the key factor, which leads to the success of selected political parties and analyze their development.

This thesis aims to contribute to the current academic debate on contemporary polarization in the U.S. Congress. The paper provides a brief overview of the relevenat existing literature and schools of thought on the issue. As part of the thought direction which steers away from definining roots and causes of polarization among the general public but rather sees them as issues of the political elite, this thesis highlights the need to focus on individual Congressional Member Organizations (CMOs) in the House of Representatives and their connection to polarization. By applying an existing dataset accepted among political science scholars as the key tool for measuring polarization, the thesis seeks to affirm the presumed ideological differences among the individual CMOs (or caucuses). The main part of this thesis which adds value to further discussion is the case study of all roll call votes of the 114th House of Representatives examining voting cohesion of the studied caucuses. The aim of this study is to show to what extent the CMOs are in fact consistent voting blocs and how influential they can potentially be within the political elites in the House of Representatives and to what level they may be contributing to the contemporary polarization.

Denna uppsats undersöker Sverigedemokraternas kvinnoförbund SD-Kvinnor och hur förbundet ser på jämställdhet. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur ett kvinnoförbund på högerkanten formeras och att analysera denna formering utifrån ett genusperspektiv. Utgångspunkten har varit att svara på huruvida SD-Kvinnor representerades i SD-Kuriren under 2010–2012, vilka föreställningar som genomsyrar SD-Kvinnor och deras idéer om jämställdhet samt vilka politiska ämnen som diskuteras i kvinnoförbundets podcast ”Snedsteg” och vilka idéer och föreställningar dessa ämnen laddas med. Det teoretiska förhållningssättet är genusbaserad. Metoden utgörs av en kvalitativ textanalys där såväl fysiskt som digitalt material används. SD-Kvinnors idéer om jämställdhet bygger på konservativa grunddrag. De föreställningar som genomsyrar SD-Kvinnors idéer om jämställdhet är att de vill att den enskilda familjen har rätt till självbestämmande och att detta skall respekteras. Kvoteringsfrågan är SD-Kvinnor starkt kritiska till då de menar att jämställdhetspolitik handlar om att lösa problem som är ojämna hellre än att fördela lika mellan könen. Den övervägande politiska människosyn som kvinnoförbundet har handlar i hög grad om att bejaka de biologiska skillnaderna mellan könen. I SD-Kuriren är det tydligt att kvinnor är underrepresenterade i medlemstidningen under den period som undersöks. SD-Kvinnor presenteras på ett visst sätt i medlemstidningen,och gärna separat från det övriga innehållet i medlemstidningen. En slags idealbild av SD-Kvinnan skrivs fram där den socialkonservativa idén om idealkvinnan konstrueras. De politiska ämnen som diskuteras i podcasten Snedsteg är hämtade direkt från Sverigedemokraternas politik där endast sverigedemokrater är inbjudna. De ämnen som diskuteras är breda samhällsfrågor i form av brottslighet, invandring, hedersfrågor, den egna utanförskapen samt vårdfrågor. Dessa laddas med idén om Sverige som ett otryggt samhälle i förfall. Den här uppsatsen visar även att SD-Kvinnor inte nämns i SD-Kuriren förrän i juni 2011 trots att kvinnoförbundet funnits sedan oktober 2010. / This paper explores the women’s union called SD-Women of the political party Sweden Democrats and where they stand in terms of gender equality. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how a women’s union in the far right is formed and analyze this from a gender perspective. The basis has been to find out whether SD-Women are represented in their newspaper SD-Kuriren during 2010-2012, which type of concepts are raised by SD-Women and their ideas regarding gender equality, and lastly also which political topics are discussed in SD-Women’s podcast “Snedsteg” and the notions and concepts these topics are saturated by. The theoretical approach is based on gender and the method constitutes of a qualitative textual analysis where both physical and digital material is used.SD-Women’s ideas in terms of gender equality are based on a conservative essence. The concept that saturates SD-Women’s ideas regarding gender equality is that every individual family should be allowed to govern itself without outside influence and this is something that should be respected. The subject of electoral quotas is strongly criticized by SD-Women as they imply that gender equality politics should revolve around solving inequality problems rather than dividing equally amongst the genders. The predominant political views of SD-Women in terms of mankind is to affirm the biological differences between genders. In SD-Kuriren it’s clear that women are less represented during the period that is analyzed. SD-Women is presented in a very specific way in SD-Kuriren, and often separated from the other contents of the newspaper. A type of ideal image of a Sweden Democrat women is offered where the social conservative idea of an ideal woman is constructed.The political topics that are discussed in the podcast Snedsteg are directly imported from the politics of Sweden Democrats themselves where only other Sweden Democrats are invited to the podcast. The discussed topics are often the larger societal issues like crime, immigration, family honor, health care and also the Sweden Democrats own alienation. These topics are saturated with the idea of Sweden being an insecure society under decay. This paper will also shed a light on the fact that SD-Women is not mentioned at all in SD-Kuriren until June 2011, even though they were in existence since October 2010.

During the last decades, culturally racist parties, like the Sweden Democrats (SD) and the Alterna-tive for Germany (AfD), have seen a rapid growth in popularity and are now represented in parliaments in almost all European countries. Although the majority of their voters are considered white, male, and working class, a growing number of people with a migration background started sup-porting parties of said political stream that frame migration as the biggest threat to society. This thesis aims at understanding the alleged contradiction of individuals that are to different degrees racialized as immigrants becoming members in the SD and AfD. Located within discourses of racial neoliberalism, the study examines how national belonging and subject positions are constructed and contested, and how racist migrant respectability serves as a strategy of overcoming a struggle for belonging to the host society.

The purpose of this paper is to examine, from a local perspective, the reaction of the southern conservative wing of the Democratic party to the liberal changes which occurred in that organization as a result of the transitional decades of the 1930s and 1940s. In particular, the study focuses on the growing sense of alienation and the eventual withdrawal of a handful of Texas Democrats from affiliation with the national body and their subsequent realignment with other dissident Dixie Democrats in the short-lived States' Rights party of 1948. This work is based essentially on the personal recollections of Texans who participated in the States' Rights movement and on those papers of the party's leaders which have survived until today.