In 2018, the Sweden Democrats party has gained 17.5 per cent of the votes during the Swedish general elections. Consequently, with this success, they became the third largest party in the riksdag. However, the party’s rapid growth has created several questions in the political arena and the Swedish society about the party’s ideological affiliations and evolutions. The political scientists, Mudde (2010) and Widfeldt (2008) argue that in order to understand a party’s improvements, it is important to explore a party’s ideological evolution. Scholars have argued that Sweden Democrats have normalized their ideas and values; adopted liberal values in some policy areas in order to attract a large number of voters, succeed and survive in the political system. The aim of this study is to explore the party’s idea/ideology changes since its creation in 1988 until present 2019. Hence, the main purpose is to find out if the core ideologies of the Sweden Democrats - that is nativism, authoritarianism and populism- as expressed in their party programs respectively electoral manifestos, are characterized by continuity or by normalization, and adaptation to liberal values. Using Marie Demker’s (1993) concept of ideology, ideal types for radical right populism and liberalism have been constructed as analytical tool. The study shows that throughout the years, the party’s nativist world view and strategy have been changed and normalized, the authoritarian world view has mainly been constant but the strategy has had major changes; shifted to liberal values, and finally regarding populism; both world view and strategy are characterized by continuity.

This study investigates the connection between refugee reception in Swedish municipalities and support for the Swedish right-wing populist party, the Sweden Democrats. Using panel data of electoral support for the Sweden Democrats in the elections 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018 and the number of refugees received per municipality in the years since the preceding election, I find a positive and significant association between support for the Sweden Democrats and number of refugees received. This result is consistent across different models, including models utilising municipality-fixed and year-fixed effects. In order to test different theories on the connection between immigration and support for right-wing populists, I also utilise several different interaction effects between refugee intake and urbanity, native unemployment, income, immigrant unemployment and existing immigrant stock. Through this, I find some evidence for a connection between economic circumstance and response to refugee reception, supporting a theory of refugees being perceived as an economic threat, but only very weak support for a connection between political response to refugee reception and cultural fears or native contact with refugees.

"Most people don't mind global warming": Climate change denial in Czech politics between the years 2018 - 2021 This thesis deals with the topic of climate change denial in contemporary Czech politics. It aims to describe how the narrative of climate change denial is formed and reproduced. The first part captures the origins and the background of climate change scepticism in both Czech and international context with the special stress laid upon ideology. Based on the critical discourse analysis of the rhetorics of Alexandr Vondra, Jan Zahradník, Václav Klaus Jr., and Tomio Okamura, the second part of this paper aims to contribute by unravelling the key symptoms of climate change denial discourse of the above mentioned politicians as well as the dominant frames and discursive strategies used to deny both the anthropogenic climate change and the climate change politics. The last goal of the analysis is to describe in what aspects the linguistic means of selected right-wing populists differ or intertwine with the language of right-wing conservatives. Keywords: climate change denial, right-wing populism, climate policy, discourse, rhetorics

The rise of right-wing populism has been identified as a major threat to multilateralism, and its negative consequences for climate policy have already materialised. However, its impacts on environmental policy have been less studied, especially so regarding policy outcomes. In this paper, I strive to narrow this research gap by investigating the impacts of right-wing populism on environmental protection expenditure. I employ a panel regression analysis to examine populist government participation in all European Union member states, and I also separate countries that have experienced a right-wing populist government to explore differences across the party family. The results show no profound effects, which is anticipated. Environmental concerns are more easily conveyed within the right-wing populist logic than climate change mitigation measures, and many European PRRPs express pro-environmental policy stances - they are so-called green patriotists. Based on previous studies, I expand on this concept. Finally, the results indicate green patriotism might be influential for policy outcomes, which is another contribution of this paper to the research field.

In conjunction with the rise of populism all over the globe, social media has been acknowledged as an important arena for populist actors to disseminate their political ideas. This thesis aims to examine the relationship between social media and right-wing populism by exploring how an online platform mediates right-wing populist discourses. In contrast to the existing literature on this relationship, the social media platform TikTok is studied in this thesis. This study examines how online activists that are campaigning for the Sweden Democrats utilize the possibilities provided by TikTok’s material functions in relation to the social context in which they are used. Participant observation was conducted to study these dynamics, understood as platform affordances. The results show that the activists disseminate right-wing populist ideas on TikTok by utilizing functions for self-publication (of video). In terms of the proliferation of these videos, populist communication styles appear to be favored on this platform. A mapping of the social composition and available resources of these activists shows that their usage of the platform to conduct activism is affected by these factors, demonstrating different pathways to becoming an influential activist on TikTok.

Literature on climate policy of political parties’ points to an emerging congruence between populist radical right parties and scepticism toward climate change and climate policy. This thesis explores this nexus via a case study of the Sweden Democrats (SD) climate policy over a period of twelve years (2010-2022). It examines if the Sweden Democrats have expressed variations of climate scepticism and whether this has varied over time. Idea analysis and a taxonomy of three categories of climate scepticism are used for analysing official policy material of the Sweden Democrats. This thesis finds that the Sweden Democrats have outcomes on all three categories of climate scepticism: evidence (i.e., whether human caused climate change is happening), process (related to bureaucratic and scientific processes, e.g., scepticism against dominant research paradigms and bureaucratic decision making), and response scepticism (related to policy choices dealing with climate change). Over time there has been a gradual migration of scepticism from evidence and process related scepticism toward more policy-oriented forms of scepticism that concerns type of policy and attitudinal responses to climate change. Sweden Democrats climate scepticism is primarily anchored in arguments related to desired levels of national response and issues of trade/offs, with climate scepticism frequently constructed through frameworks of the potential harm that climate mitigation may do to national sovereignty, national economy, and industries. Another finding is that the Sweden Democrats overall have a lower salience and prioritization of climate issues compared to other parties represented in parliament whose climate policy they criticize, presenting their climate policy as alternative to these parties. This thesis concludes that the Sweden Democrats climate scepticism is closer to an unconvinced stance toward climate change rather than strictly denialistic, with evidentiary sceptic arguments over time becoming less frequent and decreasing in the degree of scepticism.

Following the 2022 Swedish general election, all three of the Scandinavian countries have had right-wing populist parties either within the government or in cooperation with one. This thesis will review the origins and developments of the major, national, right-wing populist parties in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. It will further focus on the respective party’s development of relationship with other, mainstream parties, as well as the progression of cooperations and advancement towards influence of governmental politics. With the Scandinavian states’ high level of similarities across various areas, this thesis aims to review and analyse similarities and differences from the three examples connected to the theories. This methodology is based as a qualitative, comparative study, focusing on gathered text materials such as academic works, political statements and news. The empirical material gathered will be analysed and connected to theories like convergence, political strategy and party ideology among others, with the aim to observe what aspects these theories have had regarding both the emergence of the right-wing populist parties in Scandinavia, as well as in connection to their development of cooperation with other parties. Central conclusions from the thesis’s discussion and analysis shows how political convergence through various acts and happenings, have supported the achievements of the right-wing populist parties’ goals of entering governmental cooperation. Moreover, comparisons between the countries show similarities such as these parties being shunned by the mainstream ones for example, while some differences include the societal statuses at the point of the parties’ origins.

Essay I (with Mattias Öhman): Fluoridation of the drinking water is a public policy whose aim is to improve dental health. Although the evidence is clear that fluoride is good for dental health, concerns have been raised regarding potential negative effects on cognitive development. We study the effects of fluoride exposure through the drinking water in early life on cognitive and non-cognitive ability, education and labor market outcomes in a large-scale setting. We use a rich Swedish register dataset for the cohorts born 1985-1992, together with drinking water fluoride data. To estimate the effect we exploit intra-municipality variation of fluoride, stemming from an exogenous variation in the bedrock. First, we investigate and confirm the long-established positive relationship between fluoride and dental health. Second, we find precisely estimated zero effects on cognitive ability, non-cognitive ability and education. We do not find any evidence that fluoride levels below 1.5 mg/l have negative effects. Third, we find evidence that fluoride improves labor market outcome later in life, which indicates that good dental health is a positive factor on the labor market. / Essay II: Motivated by the intense public debate in the United States regarding politicians’ backgrounds, I investigate the effects of electing a candidate with earlier experience from elective office to the House of Representatives. The U.S. two-party-system with single-member election districts enables me to estimate the causal effect in a RD design where the outcomes are measured at the election district level. I find some indications that candidates with earlier elective experience are more likely to be members of important congressional committees. I also find some indications that directed federal spending (pork barrel spending) is higher in those districts were the elected representative had earlier elective experience prior of being elected to the House, but the effect manifests itself some years after the election. In contrast, I find no robust or statistically significant effects for personal income per capita or unemployment rate in the home district. / Essay III: This paper uses Swedish and Finnish municipal data to investigate the effect of changes in voter turnout on the tax rate, public spending and vote-shares. A reform in Sweden in 1970, which overall lowered the cost of voting, is applied as an instrument for voter turnout in local elections. The reform increased voter turnout in Sweden. The higher voter turnout resulted in higher municipal taxes and greater per capita local public spending. There are also indications that higher turnout decreased the vote share for right-wing parties. I use an individual survey data set to conclude that it was in particular low income earners that began to vote to a greater extent after the reform. / Essay IV (with Lovisa Persson): In a theoretical model where voters and politicians have different preferences for how much to spend on basic welfare services contra reception services for asylum seekers, we conclude that established politicians that are challenged by right-wing populists will implement a policy with no spending on asylum seekers if the cost is high enough. Additionally, adjustment to right-wing populist policy is more likely when the economy is in a recession. Voters differ in their level of private consumption in such a way that lower private consumption implies higher demand for basic welfare services at the expense of reception of asylum seekers, and thus stronger disposition to support right-wing populist policies. We propose that this within-budget-distributional conflict can arise as an electorally decisive conflict dimension if parties have converged to the median voter on the size-of-government issue.

This study concerns political communication in general, and right-wing populist PR in particular. Research shows that the role of mass media in liberal democracies has changed as a result of emerging social- and alternative media. Political parties no longer need news media to spread their agenda, which proves an opportunity for right-wing populist parties to reach a broader audience. This study aims to determine how The Sweden Democrats, as Sweden’s largest right-wing populist party, communicate through the use of PR-activities. Building on existing work on the content of populist communication, this study aims to show not only what the party communicate but also how they communicate. The ambition is to enable a discussion on the possible effects of right-wing populist communication in liberal democracy.   Based on Habermas’ theory of the public sphere, a critical discourse analysis was carried out on two of the Sweden Democrat’s PR-activities. Analysis on the examples demonstrates use of a populist discourse as well as the use of manipulative persuasive strategies. The results indicate that right-wing populist communication have a negative effect on democracy. The Sweden Democrats utilize discontent and fear as a foundation for totalitarian reasoning, through a use of strategy that neglects the value of democracy. Based on the results the public sphere is recommended as a normative vision for political debate. Further research is needed on how right-wing populist parties communicate in Sweden and internationally, as well as how the use of strategic communication can be transformed to better serve democratic politics.

Explaining the rising support for right-wing populist parties in Europe during the last decade is an issue that interests both economists, sociologists and political scientists. A number of theories suggest that the rising inflow of migrants to Europe has had an important causal effect on right-wing populist support. However, as migration patterns generally are not exogenous to right-wing populist support, it is difficult to interpret the estimates of a correlation study causally.  In this paper, I exploit a Swedish refugee dispersal program as a natural experiment to estimate the effect of refugee inflow on the support for the right-wing populist party the Sweden Democrats using an instrumental variable strategy. Despite detailed institutional knowledge, I am not able to find support for any short-term effects of refugee inflow on the self-reported preferences for the Sweden Democrats. This goes against the findings of most previous studies.  However, the multicollinearity of some of my covariates are high. In addition, as the program was introduced in 2016, there are few years available for identification. Thus, the precision of the estimates is relatively low and the study would benefit from adding more years to the panel data set.