This master thesis deals with the development of the protest movement PEGIDA, which was founded on October 11. 2014 in Dresden. This movement speaks loudly against the Islamization of Germany during the regular demonstrations and criticizes the political situation in the country. In times of its greatest popularity it has attracted thousands of people. Nowadays its importance is still diminishing. The aim is therefore to describe the development of the movement and its characteristics. The work is divided into four main chapters. The first one explains the development in Saxony, the second one describes the development of the movement and its programmatics. It also contains the change of relationship towards Alternative für Deutschland (AfD): from an animosity into an open collaboration. PEGIDA was created as a Facebook group: with tools like Google Trends and Fanpage Karma this chapter analyzes its evolution in an online world. It also shows a declining search rate on Google and its popularity on Facebook. The last chapter is based on studies conducted among demonstrators concerning their demographic data and their views on the functioning of democracy and politics. It follows that most Pegidists do not believe in political representation and see an AfD as an alternative. The stagnation of the...

As populism in Europe is on the rise there are two sides of populism contesting to make an impact on their societies. In connection with existing research, this study is focusing on the most prominent left-wing populist party in Spain, Podemos, and the  most prominent right-wing populist party in Italy, Lega Nord, and examines differences in their voters’ attitudes regarding a couple of crucial indicators of populism. The study is influenced by a previous study that examined the attitudes of left-wing and right-wing voters. The main distinction between this previous study and the current one is that my study also includes voters from the Spanish left-wing party Podemos, which was not included in the previous research. The result of my study show that Podemos voters are more positive towards the EU and towards immigration in difference to Lega Nord voters, whereas they have comparable attitudes towards material deprivation and elitism.

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The purpose of this study is to examine right-wing alternative media's framing of politics. This is examined by applying a method based on the framing theory, called Issue, game and scandal. The material consists of political news articles from these media during the 2018 election campaign in Sweden (13 August to 9 September), which in turn are either classified as issue news, game news or scandal news. The study uses the following five sites: Samhällsnytt, Nya Tider, Samtiden, Nya Dagbladet and Nyhetsbyrån. The study shows that alternative right-wing media frame politics as a scandal most times, followed by game and then issue. The results from the study are then compared with traditional media's framing of politics during the same period of time, where it shows that alternative right-wing media frame politics as scandal to a much greater degree than traditional media do, and that issue and game framings occur significantly less often on alternative right-wing media. The study also tries to explain how the differences between alternative right-wing media and traditional media can be understood, where press ethics and populism seem to be the key attributes. / Syftet med denna uppsatsen är att undersöka alternativa högermediers gestaltning av politik. Detta undersöks genom att applicera en metod som baseras på gestaltningsteorin - Sak, spel och skandal. Materialet består av politiska nyhetsartiklar från dessa medier under den svenska valrörelsen 2018 (13 augusti till 9 september), som i sin tur antingen klassificeras som saknyhet, spelnyhet eller skandalnyhet. I undersökningen används följande fem sajter: Samhällsnytt, Nya Tider, Samtiden, Nya Dagbladet och Nyhetsbyrån. Undersökningen visar att alternativa högermedier gestaltar politik som skandal flest gånger, följt av spel och sen sak. Resultatet från undersökningen jämförs sedan med traditionella mediers gestaltning av politik under samma tidsperiod, där det framgår att alternativa högermedier gestaltar politik som skandal i betydligt högre grad än vad traditionella medier gör, samt att sak- och spelgestaltningar förekommer betydligt färre gånger på alternativa högermedier. Dessutom redogörs det för hur skillnaderna mellan alternativa högermedier och traditionella medier kan förstås, där pressetik och populism bidrar med förklaringen.

This thesis examines the intersection of cultural discourse and economic policies of the Hungarian populist radical right party, Fidesz. It classifies the cultural discourse of the governing party as neo-traditionalist by examining how the party's leader, Viktor Orbán, rhetorically shapes his vision of the nation, espouses traditional values, and uses missionary politics to create a personalized moral code under the guise of cultural Christianity. It examines the government's economic policies of nationalization and re-privatization, crony capitalism, and national work program within a neo-feudalist classification. This research finds that the neo-feudalist economic policies of Fidesz serve as a reinforcement mechanism that legitimizes the cultural discourse espoused by Orbán. Furthermore, the neo-feudal economy is reshaping the social system into a highly centralized and hierarchical structure and having lasting macroeconomic effects, including demographic issues and increasing levels of wealth inequality. This emerging illiberal model of governance is not only reshaping Hungary's political, economic, and social systems, but also contributing to a larger movement away from the tenets of liberal democracy within CEE. Keywords Neo-traditionalism, Neo-feudalism, Delayed transformational fatigue,...

Why are social democratic parties losing voters to right-wing populist parties? For decades, social democratic parties across Europe have been in decline. Much of this decline can be attributed to voters leaving in favor of right-wing populist parties. Despite extensive research on the growing support for these parties, researchers are yet to agree on even the most fundamental causes. In Sweden this phenomenon is seen in the voter flow from the Social Democrats to the Sweden Democrats. In this study, Sheri Berman's theory of social democratic success factors is used to explain the decline of the Social Democrats in favor of the Sweden Democrats, by conducting interviews with Sweden Democrat politicians who used to be Social Democrats. Results suggest that respondents' decisions to leave the Social Democrats were preceded by prolonged disappointment with the Social Democrats' political direction. According to respondents, the Social Democrats have lost focus on social unity within the Swedish population, down-prioritized social democratic politics and ideology in favor of political power and become an elite party lacking representatives that workers can identify with. Interestingly, respondents' decisions to leave the Social Democrats are not attributed to any essential shift in their personal values, but to the social democratic party abandoning social democracy. Migration, while mentioned by some respondents, is tied to welfare and economic politics as well as a lost sense of community. While social democracy used to be the only ideology combining communitarianism, the primacy of politics and democratic ideals, results indicate that these earlier social democratic traits now constitute success factors for today's right-wing populist parties.

A study on far-right populism voters and democratic attitudes in five countries, France, Hungary, India, Russia and Sweden. The purpose of the study is to create a deeper understanding on the far-right populist voters view on a selection of democratic values. It is a quantitative study using datafrom International social survey program (2016). The focus is on the voters of these political parties.We conducted an exposé of the right-wing populism, using the theory of Cas Mudde and others, and of the far-right populist voter. Presentations were also carried out on every country´s far-right populism background. Democratic values were operationalized in different indicators, freedom of assembly, limitations of civil rights, limitations of public information, corruption and trust for MP: sand civil servants. The study did not result in a clear correlation between far-right populism voters and non-democratic values. However, we did find some correlations and the strongest effects were in France, Hungary and Russia. The patterns we found were on limitations of civil rights and the result showed that far-right populist voters tend to have a more non-democratic view on these issues.

Nowadays, liberal democratic societies comprise the breeding ground for thriving right-wing populist parties. They share the “fundamental core of ethno-nationalist xenophobia, (…) and anti-political establishment populism” (Rydgren, 2004 p.475). Coeval research has acknowledged the threat that is entailed in the bespoken phenomenon; yet, its account is incomplete.  This study follows Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, in objecting to the individualist and rationalist tenets that inform previous research, to accentuate a neglected lens on the thrive of right-wing populism in Western liberal democracies. Their discourse theoretical frame was herein used as both theory and method, in a discourse analysis of the Alternative für Deutschland’s (AfD) identity in German online newspaper discourse. The empirical material comprised 97 articles from Germany’s most popular national daily newspapers, which reported on the AfD in parliament, an AfD demonstration in Berlin, and the AfD’s youth organisation’s congress throughout April, May and June 2018. Ultimately, the study arrived at the conclusion that the sampled newspaper discourse identified ‘us’, the ‘benevolent democrats’ via the exclusion, and rejection of ‘them’, the ‘wicked right-wing populists’. Since such relation was markedly antagonistic proper, newspaper discourse may be considered to have contributed to the recent thrive of right-wing populism in Germany.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the constructed vision of social reality that the Sweden Democrats define and thus defend and legitimizes through their climate and environmental policy. With a focus on the power relations that are constitutive of the Sweden Democrats' definition of social reality, the intention is to clarify the Sweden Democrats' position on the issue of climate change and to make visible what underlies their actions concerning the ratification of the Paris Agreement. To achieve the purpose, critical discourse analysis is used as a method where political documents concerning the Sweden Democrats' climate, environment, and energy policy during the period 2018-2021 constitute the empirical material. The results show that the Sweden Democrats' definition of climate change is both ambiguous and ambivalent, where Sweden's self-image and Swedish interests are prioritized over climate measures. The result also shows that the Sweden Democrats' definition of climate change is constituted by underlying power relations to preserve the power of the nation-state and the subordinate position of developing countries. One conclusion that can be drawn is to reduce the Sweden Democrats to just being climate change deniers is to simplify because their attitude to climate change is characterized by ambivalence and self-interest rather than skepticism and denial. Another conclusion is that the Sweden Democrats' attitude to climate change is more about defending and preserving existing power relations and less about questioning the existence of climate change. A third conclusion that can be drawn is that the Sweden Democrats' action regarding the Paris Agreement is more about opposing a social change that entails increased equality and about legitimizing the nation state's continued relevance in a globalized world, and less about opposing the content and implementation of the Paris Agreement.

This thesis investigates how a change in the municipal asylum seeker share affects voting for the Sweden Democrats (SD), a far-right anti-immigration party, in both national Parliament and Municipal Council elections in Sweden. To circumvent the endogeneity problem, I use an instrumental variables strategy where the share of available apartments in Allmännyttan is used as an instrument for the municipal share of asylum seekers living in Migration Agency provided accommodation (ABO). I have exploited municipal level panel data on municipality characteristics, allocations of asylum seekers and national elections. I am not able to find support for any effect of a change in the municipal share of asylum seekers on voting for the Sweden Democrats. Consequently, I cannot provide any support for either the group position theory or the contact hypothesis.