Efter att ett debattinlägg undertecknat av Sverigedemokraternas partiledare publicerades i Aftonbladet i oktober 2009 började allt mer av mediernas utrymme att ägnas åt Sverigedemokraterna. Bland annat diskuterades vad som var lämpliga debattämnen när Sverigedemokraterna skulle bemötas.Syftet med denna undersökning är att undersöka vad dessa diskussioner kan ha för effekter på Sverigedemokraternas eventuella fram- eller motgång och vad detta innebär för det politiska klimatet. Fyra av de största dagstidningarna i Sverige har legat till grund för en diskursanalys. Analysen producerade sex teman debatten, samarbete, värderingar, verktyg, historia, och väljarna.Studien präglas av ett perspektiv som fokuserar på hegemonier och antagonistiska relationer. Vilket resulterade i upptäckten av ett antagonistiskt förhållande mellan Sverigedemokraterna och de etablerade politiska aktörerna. Sverigedemokraterna utestängs med moraliska medel och detta skapar en uppdelning mellan de moraliska och de omoraliska. Debatten om/med SD kan bidra till att det politiska fokuset vrids mot den sociokulturella konfliktdimensionen. Det råder viss konsensus bland skribenter och etablerade politiker att man bör samarbeta för att hindra Sverigedemokraterna från att kunna verka i Riksdagen.

This dissertation deals with temperance in rural economically backward communities in the county of Västerbotten in Northern Sweden. Most Swedish historians have related the rapid break-through of organized temperance to industrialization and industrial areas. The connection temperance - industrialization is indisputable. The question then arises: why did temperance establish its very strongholds in predominantly rural and backward areas of Northern Sweden? In the referendum over Prohibition in 1922, when the prohibitionists lost their case, the industralized part of Sweden took least interest in the question. In Norrland over 70% and in Vastebotten 81% of the population wanted and voted for Prohibition. The mechanisms of temperance in non-industral areas are dealt wich against this background. Was industrialization seen as a threat to the agrarian communities? How did the commercialization of liquor and wine after 1864 affect small peasant communities and pre-industrial towns, and in which ways and to what extent were these communities ready to defend themselves from the Demon Rum? In the town of Umeå and the southern part of the county of Västerbotten, temperance was able to dominate the left-wing factions of the regional populistic party variations of liberalism and social democracy. These populist parties were genuine prohibition parties and were often in opposition to their own central bureaucracy in Stockholm. They represented, like the American populist movement, a reaction against laissez-faire capitalism and commercialization. With the support of these political parties temperance succeeded in building up Sweden's most severe system of alcohol restrictions - the Umeå system - in 1923. / digitalisering@umu

Stödet för Sverigedemokraterna har ökat för varje år sedan de bildades år 1988 och har för första gången kommit in i riksdagen år 2010. Få undersökningar har gjorts om Sverigedemokraternas väljare. Vår studies syfte är att ta reda på vilka bakomliggande orsaker som ligger till grund för att vissa individer väljer att lägga sin röst på Sverigedemokraterna och försöka förstå hur dessa resonerar. För att uppfylla vårt syfte har vi använt oss av en kvalitativ forskningsmetod där semistrukturerade intervjuer har utförts med tio av Sverigedemokraternas väljare. De teorier vi har applicerat på studien behandlar främlingskap och ett vi och dem tänkande. Vi har använt oss av den tidigare forskning som finns om Sverigedemokraternas väljare för att få en större överblick över hur väljarna som författarna har intervjuat diskuterar. Vår studies resultat visar att respondenterna valde Sverigedemokraterna på grund av ett missnöje mot den invandringspolitik som förs i Sverige idag, ett generellt politikerförakt mot de etablerade politikerna, en oro över att islam ska breda ut sig i Sverige och farhågor över att välfärden inte räcker till.

<p>This project elucidates the politics of imagination in the United States and interrogates the conditions of democratic imagination in particular. I evaluate the role of imagination in political theory and in United States history, contextualizing my theoretical arguments through analyses of the Revolution and Founding and through a case study of the Populist movement of the late 19th century. I treat imagination as a productive and representative social power that is constituted in relation to the everyday terrain on which subjects, discourses, and material realities are formed and practiced. Imagination plays a paradoxical role in the history of political theory: it is a fundamental condition of political community, and yet it has the potential to transgress any given configuration of political order. Democratic theorists commonly respond to this paradox by moving to one side of it. Those concerned with democratic stability and belonging seek to ground imagination in some incontestable cultural authority; those concerned with democratic dynamism and freedom take the power of imagination to be illimitable. Constructing a conversation between Pierre Bourdieu, Michael Bakhtin, Hannah Arendt, and Populism, I argue that freedom requires attending to the everyday tensions between the stabilizing and dynamic powers of imagination. Contemporary mergers of capitalism, technology, and administrative power centralize political imagination by incorporating, concealing, or destroying competing cultural forms and practices. For the promise of freedom to survive, and at times even flourish, it is thus crucial to cultivate dynamic traditions, institutions, practices, and dispositions that can harbor emergent imaginings of democracy.</p> / Dissertation

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This thesis analyses the ideology of the Radical right-wing Populist Party, Sweden Democrats. The aim of the study is to see if and how the ideology of the Sweden Democrats has changed through its years of activity, by comparing the party in three periods. The focus in the analysis is put on the party's view on the Swedish national identity and on multiculturalism. The reason for analyzing the party's view on these two concepts is due to the fact that they can be seen as corner stones in a racist ideology. An explanation of the concepts will be presented in the theory chapter, which is later used in the analysis of the party. The study shows that the ideology of the Sweden Democrats has changed very little throughout its years of activity in terms of their view on the national identity and the multicultural idea. This as a result has led to a similar amount of change in the arguments that can be seen as racist, by the party.

A controversial party’s entry into parliament - a review of Expressen’s depiction of the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) The purpose of this essay was to study how Expressen presents the Sweden Democrats, as well as reasoning about the effects this depiction could have on the citizens’ opinion. Using a quantitative method I studied 122 articles, and through a qualitative method four of these could be further analyzed to reach a deeper result. The theoretical perspective that was applied in this study was primary agenda-setting and framing theory, to illuminate the power of media. The result showed that a prominent theme was to present Sweden Democrats as racists. Other recurring themes were to include the party misfortunate-, successful, crime-related scandals and as victims. It also showed that the Sweden Democrats rarely gets to speak in the articles and that the headlines and events are angled in an unfavorable way for the party.

The aim of the thesis is to offer an explanation for the emergence and success of the French political party the Front national. The project uses theories of political opportunity structures, neo-institutionalist approaches and a theory of ideological morphology to argue that institutions and ideologies have particular links to one another. This, in turn, leads to the argument that the FN's success can be attributed to the relationships between the institutions of the Fifth Republic on the one hand and fascist ideology in France on the other. It is argued that the gradual presidentialisation of French politics from 1958 onward reconciles two contradictory drives in French politics (the party drive and the rally drive), this reconciliation of the two drives and the institutionalisation of the rally drive grants renewed legitimacy to populist ideas in France. It is also argued that, given the component concepts of fascism as an ideology (its ideological morphology) and the links between ideologies and the contexts (institutional, social, political) in which they emerge, institutional pressures such as those generated by the Fifth Republic and its subsequent presidentialisation accounts for a mutation of French proto-fascism into a type of populist ideology. The FN's modification of its fascist ideology and conversion to an overt form of populism is depicted and analysed as a case study of a party's adaptation to, and exploitation of, the new structures of political opportunity created by the Fifth Republic; one in which populist ideas were more likely than fascist ones to lead to a measure of political success given the institutionalisation of a form of hitherto marginalised rally politics.

The thesis focuses on the Five Star Movement, a political movement in Italy based on an Internet blog, which was founded by the Italian comedian Beppe Grillo and which in just four years from its birth received the greatest number of votes in that country’s 2014 European election. The thesis focuses on the rise of 5SM, which was established in a critical political and economic context that provided a fertile environment for its founder’s antiestablishment platform and rhetoric. The structure, ideology and actions of the 5SM movement are examined as are the political and economic contexts in which it arose and now operates. The 5SM is analyzed as a product of an Italian political culture where populist leaders have dominated the political scene for many years. The thesis asks whether this movement can be defined as populist, using as a framework for analysis the work of Mény and Surel “Democracies and the Populist Challenge” (2002), by comparing the 5SM to other European anti-establishment political parties and movements.

Nordic right wing populism began in Denmark with the requisite growth in the political and societal power of the Danish People’s Party during the Liberal-Conservative coalition government from 2001 to 2011. As the number of immigrants and asylum-seekers from Middle Eastern countries continues to grow, the “other,” the definition of which is a perceived threat against an ill-defined “people,” is increasingly understood by the Danish People’s Party as Muslim immigrants and their descendants. This thesis will use both a wide array of literature and evidence from an original research project using a Danish Prison as a loose microcosm for Danish society. The research traces the influence of the Danish People’s Party on public policy. This thesis will conclude that blatant Islamophobia has seeped into the following sectors of Danish policy: the media, social services and the refugee and asylum system. Denmark, while being an internationally revered example of good governance, represents the dangerous proliferation of illiberalism in the modern, small welfare state in response to globalization.