The purpose of this thesis is, through both a quantitative and qualitative study, to map out how the interaction appears between the established parties and the radical right-wing party, the Sweden Democrat’s (SD) and their core issue – immigration in the Swedish parliament. By applying analytical dimensions on the parliamentary protocols regarding the immigration issue between the years of 2010-2012 this study will get an insight on how the argumentation concerning immigration has developed since their entrance into the Swedish parliament in 2010. The result shows that SD, through the rejection treatment of the established parties, fulfilled the three conditions which accordingly to the study's theoretical framework are crucial for the party's future success. In the established parties’ reception of SD regarding immigration, SD is, to a large extent, left unchallenged as the established parties rather focus on integration instead of challenge SD in the immigration issue. Furthermore, the result reinforce the previous studies stating that a radical right-wing party gains greater success if the established parties refuses to treat them as equals in the parliament.

The purpose of this study is to examine the strategic choice of mainstream parties in relation to the competition of voters posed by a niche party and their most important issue, in this case radicalist rightwing populists and the migration issue. The study uses a comparative approach to examine the mainstream parties Social Democrats and Moderates reaction to the niche parties New Democracy 1991-1994 and Sweden Democrats 2010-2015. Using Meguid´s PSO-theory and by performing an qualitative analyse of the parties rhetoric and political suggestions in the parliamentary debates as well as in government bills and reservations in committee reports, the study aims to describe mainstream parties position on the issue and if and how they change position and strategy. The results of the study shows that both mainstream parties over all applies an adversarial strategy, aiming to maintain distance to the niche party and its position but with time and due to changes in the political environment, changes in position and strategy takes place and the mainstream parties applies a slightly more accommodative strategy.

AbstractMedia presents hate crimes and nationalism as phenomenon that has increased both internationally and nationally in recent years. Further media largely pair these phenomenon together. The groups mostly exposed to hate and nationalism are people of different ethnic origin and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer) people. In Sweden's general election in 2010 a RHP-party, Sweden Democrats, made it in to Parliament. The purpose of this study was to examine how hate crimes and nationalism, in the form of the Sweden Democrats, has increased in Sweden and if there was any link between them. By mapping the proportion of reported hate crimes and the proportion of eligible voters who voted for the Sweden Democrats in Sweden between 1997 and 2009 the study's main aim was to investigate whether there was any link between the proportion of reported hate crimes and the proportion of voters for Sweden Democrats in Sweden. The results question whether an actual increase of hate crime occurred due to methodological changes in the Swedish Security Service, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention and the police. Also the dark figure is large regarding this crime. Sweden Democrats has had strong success in recent years, but whether this is a sign of increased nationalism can’t be impugned. 1998 and 1999 revealed a relationship between hate crime complaints and voting on the Sweden Democrats, but after 1999 the relationship is weak.

During the parliamentary elections in Sweden between 2006 and 2018 has the Sweden Democrats success increased enormously. The party went from 2,93% in 2006 to 17,53% in 2018, which is a rapid increase. The aim of this essay is to examine Sweden Democrats and the party’s successes by analyzing existing research within the same topic and if the research explanations for the increased election results have changed over time. A qualitative text analysis will be used in order to explain the Sweden Democrats’ increased election results. The text analysis is a systematized analysis. The essay's analysis is divided in three different time intervals, the first interval is between the years 2010-2013, the second interval is between the years 2014-2017 and the last interval is between the years 2018-2021. In each of these three intervals there will be five different researches that’s going to be analyzed. The analysis of the essay concludes for instance that the Sweden Democrats increased success depends on sociocultural problems, media exposure and the voter’s dissatisfaction with the established parties.