<p>University of Växjö</p><p>School of Social Sciences</p><p>Bachelor Thesis in Political Science</p><p>Title: “Sverigedemokraternas valframgångar 2006 – En ulv i fårakläder?”</p><p>Author: Emma Haraldsson and Åsa Neuschütz</p><p>Tutor: Emil Uddhammar</p><p>The aim of this study is to explain Sverigedemokraterna’s electoral success in 2006 and the essay assumes that some form of change has occurred. To study this change two hypotheses have been constructed. The first hypothesis concerns the change within Sverigedemokraterna and the second hypothesis concerns the change of the Swedish voters attitudes.</p><p>Kirchheimers catch-all theory is used to explain the change in Sverigedemokraterna. The catch-all theory states that parties have to change their structure to maximise the number of votes. Lipset and Rokkan’s theory about the party system is also used along with Inglehart’s value studies to explain why parties change.</p><p>The tests of the hypotheses are carried out through a text analysis and a statistical survey. The essay concludes that Sverigedemokraterna has not changed very much and that it is mainly an esthetical and not an ideological change. Therefore the first hypothesis has to be falsified. The second hypothesis can be neither falsified nor verified, because the material is too diverse. Further studies are necessary to explain the electoral success of Sverigedemokraterna.</p>

In 1959, the Swedish Social Democratic Party prevailed over the bourgeois parties in the great battle for supplementary pensions (ATP). In the 1990’s, however, the party leadership decided to abolish the ATP in close cooperation with the bourgeois parties. The thesis poses the following question: “What prospects did the Social Democratic leadership have to gain support for the ATP-reform in the 1950’s, and then for the quite dissimilar pension reform in the 1990’s, and how can differences between these prospects be explained?” In order to explain the kind of party change pointed out in the problem statement, this thesis proposes a theoretical perspective that focuses on the tension between different roles played by the party leadership on different arenas. The hypothesis, that is tested in the thesis, is that early decisions create different constrains for future decisions on different arenas. The thesis has two main conclusions. The first conclusion is that the decision to implement the generous ATP-system in the 1950’s in practice laid the ground for the subsequent abolishment of that same system in the 1990’s. The second conclusion is that the pragmatism, always displayed on the parliamentary arena, has not been visible on the electoral arena or on the party arena. The party leadership plays different roles on different arenas, and over time these different roles have become hard, if not impossible, to combine. The result of this was that decisions on the parliamentary arena were decoupled from messages and rhetoric about these decisions on the party arena, and on the electoral arena. The pension reform in the 1990’s was quite a different decision compared to the popular introduction of the ATP-system. Both of these decisions, however, were attempts by the party leadership to maximize support on each arena. The possibilities for succeeding in this venture were greatly reduced in the 1990’s. Instead of one party striving for one goal, Swedish Social Democracy in the 1990’s appeared as two or three parties, with different objectives and goals.

La thèse porte sur la "reconversion partisane" de la social-démocratie en Europe. Elle propose une explication au paradoxe apparent entre d’une part l'existence de travaux décrivant la crise voire la mort du régime social-démocrate d’après-guerre, et d’autre part la conservation par cette famille de partis de son statut de grande alternative de gouvernement. La reconversion partisane est définie comme une modalité particulière de changement partisan, qui seule pouvait permettre à la social-démocratie de surmonter l’obsolescence (plus ou moins avancée) de son projet, de sa coalition électorale et de son modèle organisationnel. M’inscrivant dans la tradition de l’institutionnalisme historique, je propose une étude macrosociologique et comparée de quatre processus de reconversion, analysés de manière systématique au Royaume-Uni, en France, en Suède et en Allemagne. Leurs similarités et leurs différences sont ensuite expliquées, notamment à l’aide de plusieurs variables susceptibles de peser sur la forme et la temporalité des reconversions. Mon travail s’achève sur une appréciation provisoire de la mise à l’épreuve des reconversions par la grande crise économique en cours depuis 2008. Au-delà de l’éclairage nouveau qu’elle projette sur la trajectoire historique de cette famille politique, la thèse est une contribution à la littérature sur le changement partisan, sur la "cartellisation" des grands partis de gouvernement, et sur l’adaptation de ces derniers aux mutations de la structure des clivages politiques en Europe. Elle illustre aussi comment une approche "intégrée" des partis (sur plusieurs niveaux d’analyse) peut entrer dans un dialogue fécond avec les travaux sur les recompositions contemporaines de l’Etat moderne et du capitalisme. / The thesis deals with the "partisan conversion" of social democracy in Europe. It aims to resolve the apparent paradox between the existence of many publications describing the crisis or even the death of social democracy on one hand, and the fact that this political family has remained one of the major party alternatives on the other hand. We define the partisan conversion as a singular type of party change, which was the only one that could help the Social democrats to overcome the obsolescence of their project, electoral support and organizational model. My analysis is methodologically anchored in the historical institutionalism paradigm. It offers a macrosociological comparison of four processes of partisan conversion in the United Kingdom, France, Sweden and Germany. The similarities and differences between these processes are then explained, partly through a set of variables weighing on the structure and the temporality of conversions. My work ends with an appreciation of how theses conversions have been put under stress by the 2008 global crisis. The thesis thus provides a reconstructed picture of the historical path of social democracy, additional analytical tools to the literature in party change, and some insights to the reflections about the contemporary cleavage structures. Our intention is also to prove the usefulness of an investigation nurtured by the most recent works on global capitalism and the modern state.

Research on social movements has traditionally addressed issues of movement emergence and mobilisation, paying little attention to their outcomes and consequences. Moreover, despite research on the political consequences of social movements accelerating in recent years, much has been left under researched, no more so than the impact social movements have on one of the most important actors in liberal democracies: political parties. This paper extends social movement research by examining whether social movements have an impact on political parties and under what conditions impact is more likely to take place. The empirical analysis, investigating whether anti-austerity social movements have had an impact on social democratic parties in Ireland and Spain during the years 2011 to 2016, suggests that the relationship between social movements and political parties is both under-theorised and under-researched, and mistakenly so. The paper finds that while parties are more likely to be influenced by social movements when certain conditions are present, social movements can also have unintended impacts on parties. Ultimately, this paper encourages research on political parties, and particularly research on party change, to pay greater attention to social movements and for social movement research to pay greater attention to political parties.

<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>

This thesis asks how the Mohajir Quami Mahaz (MQM), transformed itself from an ethnic to a catch-all party. Existing literature heavily emphasizes the MQM’s militancy, while this thesis explores the journey of the party, formed in 1984 to represent Urdu-speakers in Pakistan, through each phase of its development down to its transformation into the Muttahida Qaumi Mahaz (United National Movement) in 1997. The MQM’s process of transformation can be explained theoretically through Kirchheimer’s catch-all party theory. My findings note a shift from an ethno-militant agenda of Mohajir interests to one stressing the need for “national unity” and modernization. It is argued that the party shifted from making choices based on ideology to a strategy-based politics. The MQM, therefore, sought voters outside its traditional constituent base in an effort to gain national appeal. As an urban-based middle-class party, it provides an ideal example of how a party adopts to a changing social environment fractured by military administration, modernity, and political Islam. Therefore, this thesis is the story of the MQM’s journey from mohallah to mainstream.

This thesis asks how the Mohajir Quami Mahaz (MQM), transformed itself from an ethnic to a catch-all party. Existing literature heavily emphasizes the MQM’s militancy, while this thesis explores the journey of the party, formed in 1984 to represent Urdu-speakers in Pakistan, through each phase of its development down to its transformation into the Muttahida Qaumi Mahaz (United National Movement) in 1997. The MQM’s process of transformation can be explained theoretically through Kirchheimer’s catch-all party theory. My findings note a shift from an ethno-militant agenda of Mohajir interests to one stressing the need for “national unity” and modernization. It is argued that the party shifted from making choices based on ideology to a strategy-based politics. The MQM, therefore, sought voters outside its traditional constituent base in an effort to gain national appeal. As an urban-based middle-class party, it provides an ideal example of how a party adopts to a changing social environment fractured by military administration, modernity, and political Islam. Therefore, this thesis is the story of the MQM’s journey from mohallah to mainstream.

The thesis Party Change of the Northern League in Italy, deals with the transformation of the Italian Northern League (LN) from regional to national political party. The study aims to be a contribution to a larger scholarly discussion about changes of the Italian political system. Under the criteria that define a regional political party this thesis evaluate whether the contemporary LN truly transformed from regional to national party. The study than connects with the previous findings and follows with analysis of the five factors - the most recent party performance, political system change, institutionalization, leadership change and socio-economic changes in the country which could have affected party's agenda. Different variables are derived from the Kenneth Janda's theory of change in political parties. The research uses the data from the 2013 national parliamentary elections, when LN lost large part of its electorate, and the 2015 regional elections in order to evaluate which of the above mentioned factors influenced the process of transformation of the LN.

In the literature, electoral accountability has been explored in many ways. Among those are the studies of economic voting examining to what degree government parties are held accountable for the state of the economy. By now, the studies have incorporated variables that reflect how clear is the chain of responsibility for the economic policies. Among those are national level variables, such as the clarity of responsibility index, and party level variables, such as the number of seats a party occupies in a government. This dissertation suggests that the responsibility for the government policies can be obscured by yet another party level variable - party novelty. I define party novelty as the quality that reflects the degree of change within a party in terms of its structure (mergers, splits, etc) and attributes (name, leader, and program) within one electoral cycle. I argue that party change obscures party identity and, thus, affects voters' ability to hold it accountable for the state of the economy. This study explores the concept of party novelty and its effects on voter's party preferences in various economic conditions. I construct the Party Novelty Database (1989, 1994, 1999, 2004, and 2009) and show that party novelty can be measured. Moreover, I demonstrate that party novelty varies in understandable ways, and, most importantly, that party novelty matters. Using the European Election Study and the Euromanifesto Project (1994, 1999, 2004, and 2009) I show that party novelty moderates economic voting, and this effect differs across types of party changes and the timing of change. / Political Science

University of Växjö School of Social Sciences Bachelor Thesis in Political Science Title: “Sverigedemokraternas valframgångar 2006 – En ulv i fårakläder?” Author: Emma Haraldsson and Åsa Neuschütz Tutor: Emil Uddhammar The aim of this study is to explain Sverigedemokraterna’s electoral success in 2006 and the essay assumes that some form of change has occurred. To study this change two hypotheses have been constructed. The first hypothesis concerns the change within Sverigedemokraterna and the second hypothesis concerns the change of the Swedish voters attitudes. Kirchheimers catch-all theory is used to explain the change in Sverigedemokraterna. The catch-all theory states that parties have to change their structure to maximise the number of votes. Lipset and Rokkan’s theory about the party system is also used along with Inglehart’s value studies to explain why parties change. The tests of the hypotheses are carried out through a text analysis and a statistical survey. The essay concludes that Sverigedemokraterna has not changed very much and that it is mainly an esthetical and not an ideological change. Therefore the first hypothesis has to be falsified. The second hypothesis can be neither falsified nor verified, because the material is too diverse. Further studies are necessary to explain the electoral success of Sverigedemokraterna.