<p>The aim of this paper is to empirically examine the ideological trends and positioning of the Swedish liberal party with the Danish social liberal party. This paper also aims to analyze the reasons behind the trends. By examine the development in these two Nordic liberal sisterparties, this paper contributes to our understanding of why and how party change is initiated. The paper commences with an intuitive notion that the Swedish party has in fact, made a lurch towards the right, during the past ten to fifteen years while the Danish party has retained their social-liberal position in the centre of the Danish political spectrum. The questions then asked are: can this hypothesis be verified empirically? If so, how can this phenomenon of divergence, be explained?</p><p>The method used in this thesis is process-tracing and the empirical material does to a large extent rely on interviews with central agents as they are specified in the theory of each party. The starting point of the paper is theory on party change, which identifies the important agents, goals and determinants of party policy.. It rely on rational choice assumption, pays regard to institutional boundaries and is placed somewhere in the category of new institutionalism.</p><p>This thesis argues that it is empirically unquestionable that the Swedish party de facto has made a lurch to the right during the last decade, while the Danish party has shown significant stability in their ideological position. The thesis further argues that the development in the Swedish party can be explained through a shift of primary goals, from policy-seeking toward vote-maximising, while the Danish party’s primary goals have since the beginning of the nineties until now, remained primarily policy-seeking. This explains why their ideological trend has kept a stable course. The paper concludes by stating that the divergent development within the two parties is explainable on the basis of the institutional organisation within each party, together with the different political environments they are occupied in.</p>

In this thesis I examine the relationship between party affiliation of the local political leadership and the municipal tax rate in Sweden’s 290 municipalities between 1994 and 2018. The mean tax rate of Swedish municipalities has increased by 1.3 percentage points in that time, while the prevalence of right-wing coalitions – consisting of parties that claim to want a lower tax rate – in leadership also has increased. I therefore examine to what degree right-wing coalitions have contributed to the increase in the mean tax rate compared to left-wing and mixed coalitions. I find that while right-wing coalitions have contributed to the increase in the mean tax rate to a lower degree than other coalitions, the difference is small, and the difference between the contributions of right-wing and left-wing coalitions is not statistically significant. I also examine how right-wing coalitions containing the Green Party and local parties have affected the municipal tax rate compared to coalitions consisting only of traditional right-wing parties. When the Green Party or local parties are part of a right-wing coalition, the mean increase in the municipal tax rate is much lower than that of coalitions consisting only of right-wing parties. Lastly I examine how the amount of parties that are part of a local right-wing coalition affect the municipal tax rate and find that the fewer parties, the larger the mean tax increase.

This essay will explain the electoral success of radical right parties in thirteen Western European countries over time. Based on a theory of convergence and polarization as a recent for the upsurge of radical right partiers. The two main factors that will be tested as potential explanations to the success of these parties are polarization and convergence along the leftright and the Gal-Tan dimensions respectively. The questions (and hypothesis) that will be answered in the essay are; Does left-right convergence between established parties lead to electoral success for Radical right parties (H1); Does Gal-Tan polarization lead to electoral success for radical right parties (H2). This research problem is approached then with statistical methods. The conclusion is that radical right parties benefits from polarization between parties in the party system on the left right and the Gal-Tan dimensions. Yet, the findings show that Gal-Tan polarization has a more profound effect than left-right polarization.

This thesis deals with the nature of the Left-Right scale. Theories and ideas about the Left-Right scale have been tested by a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods. The research questions are, in short, firstly if voters’ preferences on political issues, where economic issues are tested in this specific thesis, can consistently explain voters’ Left-Right self-placement, secondly if this level of explanation can vary depending on changes in national political discourse, and finally if a high level of correlation between issue and Left-Right self-placement facilitates the matching process of parties and voters of similar ideological conviction. A regression is run on data from the World Values Survey and the European Values Study, data which consists of survey questions about attitudes towards economic preferences and self-placement on the Left-Right scale. The selection is restricted to old democracies, as there is some discrepancy between new and old democracies with regards to the capacity of the electorate to relate to the Left-Right scale. The independent variable in this regression is attitudes toward different economic issues, while the dependent variable is self-placement on the Left-Right scale. The first question is answered by the regression, which is if preferences regarding issues can explain self-placement on the Left-Right scale. The answer that is given is that there is indeed a consistent relationship between preferences on economic issues and self-placement on the Left-Right scale, over time. Albeit it is higher for some countries, like Scandinavia, and lower for other countries, like Japan and Ireland. The two remaining questions are answered by case studies, selected through the method of least likely and most likely cases. These are Netherlands, Sweden, Japan and France. In essence, these cases show that the Left-Right scale is indeed flexible, and can adapt to the current political discourse, and that a high relationship between preferences on political issues and self-placement on the Left-Right scale facilitates the matching of voters and parties of similar ideological conviction.

The aim of this paper is to empirically examine the ideological trends and positioning of the Swedish liberal party with the Danish social liberal party. This paper also aims to analyze the reasons behind the trends. By examine the development in these two Nordic liberal sisterparties, this paper contributes to our understanding of why and how party change is initiated. The paper commences with an intuitive notion that the Swedish party has in fact, made a lurch towards the right, during the past ten to fifteen years while the Danish party has retained their social-liberal position in the centre of the Danish political spectrum. The questions then asked are: can this hypothesis be verified empirically? If so, how can this phenomenon of divergence, be explained? The method used in this thesis is process-tracing and the empirical material does to a large extent rely on interviews with central agents as they are specified in the theory of each party. The starting point of the paper is theory on party change, which identifies the important agents, goals and determinants of party policy.. It rely on rational choice assumption, pays regard to institutional boundaries and is placed somewhere in the category of new institutionalism. This thesis argues that it is empirically unquestionable that the Swedish party de facto has made a lurch to the right during the last decade, while the Danish party has shown significant stability in their ideological position. The thesis further argues that the development in the Swedish party can be explained through a shift of primary goals, from policy-seeking toward vote-maximising, while the Danish party’s primary goals have since the beginning of the nineties until now, remained primarily policy-seeking. This explains why their ideological trend has kept a stable course. The paper concludes by stating that the divergent development within the two parties is explainable on the basis of the institutional organisation within each party, together with the different political environments they are occupied in.