This paper is a case study of the Sweden Democrats with the aim to better understand the nature of the immigrant-critical nationalist parties, often referred to as right-wing extremist, right-wing populist etc. who has had success in several countries, and their ideological roots. A comparative descriptive analysis has been done of the ideas of the Sweden Democrats' ideology, with the aim to identify and examine the presence of fascism ideas in SD's ideology. On the basis of the existing research has an ideal type been formulated what fascism most basic ideas are. With this idealtype as an analytical tool has SD's party platform, political speeches, SD-kuriren and Jimmie Åkesson's book, etc. been analyzed. It has been possible to demonstrate the similarities and differences between the SD's and fascist ideas. Ideas of SD which is also a typical feature of fascism is the opposition to the conduct of immigration policy and to stop or limit immigration which appears as the party's most prominent idea that is also a typical feature of fascism. The myth of the betrayed people's home “Folkhemmet” appears to be a typical "mystical core" in the SD's thinking which is similar to the example stab-in-the-back legend of Nazism. The idea about the third way and a excluding nationalism that sees diversity as a threat is common within fascism while the differences is that the SD profess democracy and denounces anti-democratic ideas. SD is like the fascists not pacifists but has not, moreover, any typical fascist ideas on the war in its program. The multicultural society is considered a threat, which is similar to the ideas of fascism, and SD considers that a culture war is going on, especially with Islam. SD has some ideas in common with fascism that indicates continuity from the interwar fascism. Other ideas differ from the ideas of fascism, which shows that the party has been partly done up with its ideological roots. The type of thought structures identified in the analysis of the Sweden Democrats have several ideas in common with the fascist discourse, but there are also similarities with the humanist Enlightenment discourse in the affirmation of democracy.

The Sweden Democrats has become the third largest party in Sweden after the parliamentary elections in 2014. Ever since the party was founded in 1988, debates regarding the party’s policy has been of great interests but also the party’s ideological affiliation whether to classify it as a populist radical right party or not. Furthermore, many scientists have arrived at the conclusion that the Sweden Democrats should be seen as a populist radical right party. This conclusion makes it interesting to further investigate what ideological affilitation the party should identify itself with since the party itself argues to be a social conservative party with a nationalist ethos. With this in mind, the purpose of this study is to examine if the party has populist radical right fundamentals in its recent policy program through the use of the method idea analysis and through the use of creating an ideal type of the theory populist radical right. In addition, it has thus been possible to confirm or to deny the Sweden Democrats as a populist radical right party. The result of this thesis has shown that the policy program does consist of populist radical right elements. Hence, it has been concluded that the Sweden Democrats should be categorized as a populist radical right party.

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.

The focus of this thesis lies on tracing the similarities and differences between Liberal conservatism, Christian democracy and National conservatism, its relationship to the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Sweden Democrats' parties’ own interpretations of conservatism with a further ambition to discuss the ideological preconditions of a conservative parliamentary coalition. This study is based on the assumption that differences and similarities between various types of conservatism depend on relationship between political ideas and political practice. This relationship explains by a model that divides conservatism into fundamental and operative elements. The fundamental element of conservatism is an idea of human imperfection which leads to political skepticism, traditionalism and organicism. Operative elements are identified with support in the classical literature that describes the meaning of each type of conservative practice in a particular context. Furthermore, a typology of three ideal types of conservatism derives from fundamental and operational elements. Based on this typology, the parties' own manifesto is analyzed. The results show that the parties' own interpretations of conservatism contain both similarities that correspond to the fundamental elements and differences that are explained by the contextdependent operative elements. The thesis then opens up for a discussion about how those ideological similarities and differences affects possibilities for a conservative parliamentary coalition.

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 essay researches the link between populism and political trust by comparing the development of these two phenomena in Sweden and Italy. Populism is defined as a political strategy in which one appeals to the people and uses anti-establishment rhetoric. The purpose of the study is to analyze if voters that are less politically trustful are also more prone to vote for anti-establishment populist candidates. By using a temporal comparative analysis with a historical perspective in mind, the development and linkage of political trust and populism is analyzed in the cases’ most recent four elections.  The Swedish case is distinguished by relatively high levels of political trust but have in the latest decade seen an ever-growing proportion of their electorate turning to the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats. Italy, comparatively, is currently distinguished for low levels of political trust and has seen populist politicians thrive in the electorate ever since the 1990s ‘Mani Pulite’ scandal, and over a majority voted for the two populist parties Lega Nord and Five Star movement. The main research findings suggest that political trust, while not being a crucial determinant for contemporary populist successes, certainly helps populist parties gain attention and attraction. It also shows indications that the relation between populism and political trust can go in two directions. Sweden resembles a case where increased support for the SD have led to decreased political trust. In contrast, Italy’s political scandals, volatile voters and drastic decreases in political trust seems to have sparked increased support for populists.

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.

This thesis has analyzed the relationship between the punitive turn and the crime policies of the Green party (Miljöpartiet de Gröna) and the Sweden democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) to answer the research question; what influence the punitive turn has had on the parties policies. The choice of method has fallen on a quantitative content-analysis with a qualitative complementarity and qualitative facilitation. From an account of the punitive turn has a word-list with recording units been created, of those recording units has a computer-search been made of the two parties most recent official documents which accounts for the parties holistic politics; MP´s Partyprogramme from 2013, and SD´s Principleprogramme from 2011. The result of the qualitative complementarity shows; a greater frequency of recording units for MP than for SD. The analysis of the qualitative facilitation-result shows; a lesser direct influence of the punitive turn for MP than for SD. The result and analysis are discussed regarding whether the research question has been answered, and no such conclusion is considered to be made by the researcher, instead are the result and analysis open for interpretation of the reader.

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.