This essay examines the recent electoral success of the Sweden Democrats (SD) in the Swedish municipal election in 2006 and 2010. By using statistical methods it aims to explain which of three contradicting theoretical frameworks best can explain how a populist radical right party could penetrate one of the most stable party systems in the world. The theoretical approaches tested in this essay are: a demand-side, an external supply-side and an internal supply-side approach. By using theoretically anchored proxies to determine the effect of the contradicting theoretical approaches this essay concludes that the internal supply-side explanation measuring the local party organizational ability of the SD had the most substantial effect when it comes to explaining their recent electoral success in the Swedish municipalities, as opposed to a more commonly believed demand-side driven explanation.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze why the Sweden Democrats (SD) continued to grow in the 2018 election, while the Danish Peoples Party (DF) lost over half of their support in the election in 2019. By using a structured, focused comparative method, the essay analyses the similar political systems of Denmark and Sweden, focusing on the traditional established parties’ different strategies to gain back the voters lost to populists. The analysis concludes that the success of SD and failure of DF can be contributed to ineffective strategies by Sweden’s traditional parties and a more effective strategy in the Danish case. Sweden’s established parties used isolating strategies by demonizing SD and their voters as extremists, paving way for SD to use populist political communication. In the danish case, most established parties have legitimized DF by co-opting their stances on immigration. The blue block has cooperated with DF in the Danish government.  By anchoring the analysis in theories about favorable conditions for populism, the main conclusion is that SD, because of the established parties’ isolating strategies, have been able to use populist political communication to present themselves as a distinct political alternative which mobilizes voters. DF have not had this opportunity, due to the co-optation, cooperation and broad consensus on their main issues

This thesis examines and explains how the three Scandinavian populist radical right parties, the Sweden Democrats, the Danish People’s Party and the Progress Party approaches the climate issue in their latest manifesto, and how it has changed over a period of ten years. By means of a content analysis and categorisations of climate scepticism, climate omission and climate measures, this thesis finds explicit evidence of climate scepticism in the Progress Party whereas there is no such evidence for the Sweden Democrats and the Danish People’s Party completely omits the issue. On the other hand, there is evidence of measures to fight climate change in the Progress Party, and the same goes for the Sweden Democrats. However, the only relevant difference when comparing the manifestos over a ten-year period is a decreased usage of statement connected to both climate scepticism and climate action in the Progress Party’s manifestos.

Denna uppsats undersöker Sverigedemokraternas kvinnoförbund SD-Kvinnor och hur förbundet ser på jämställdhet. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur ett kvinnoförbund på högerkanten formeras och att analysera denna formering utifrån ett genusperspektiv. Utgångspunkten har varit att svara på huruvida SD-Kvinnor representerades i SD-Kuriren under 2010–2012, vilka föreställningar som genomsyrar SD-Kvinnor och deras idéer om jämställdhet samt vilka politiska ämnen som diskuteras i kvinnoförbundets podcast ”Snedsteg” och vilka idéer och föreställningar dessa ämnen laddas med. Det teoretiska förhållningssättet är genusbaserad. Metoden utgörs av en kvalitativ textanalys där såväl fysiskt som digitalt material används. SD-Kvinnors idéer om jämställdhet bygger på konservativa grunddrag. De föreställningar som genomsyrar SD-Kvinnors idéer om jämställdhet är att de vill att den enskilda familjen har rätt till självbestämmande och att detta skall respekteras. Kvoteringsfrågan är SD-Kvinnor starkt kritiska till då de menar att jämställdhetspolitik handlar om att lösa problem som är ojämna hellre än att fördela lika mellan könen. Den övervägande politiska människosyn som kvinnoförbundet har handlar i hög grad om att bejaka de biologiska skillnaderna mellan könen. I SD-Kuriren är det tydligt att kvinnor är underrepresenterade i medlemstidningen under den period som undersöks. SD-Kvinnor presenteras på ett visst sätt i medlemstidningen,och gärna separat från det övriga innehållet i medlemstidningen. En slags idealbild av SD-Kvinnan skrivs fram där den socialkonservativa idén om idealkvinnan konstrueras. De politiska ämnen som diskuteras i podcasten Snedsteg är hämtade direkt från Sverigedemokraternas politik där endast sverigedemokrater är inbjudna. De ämnen som diskuteras är breda samhällsfrågor i form av brottslighet, invandring, hedersfrågor, den egna utanförskapen samt vårdfrågor. Dessa laddas med idén om Sverige som ett otryggt samhälle i förfall. Den här uppsatsen visar även att SD-Kvinnor inte nämns i SD-Kuriren förrän i juni 2011 trots att kvinnoförbundet funnits sedan oktober 2010. / This paper explores the women’s union called SD-Women of the political party Sweden Democrats and where they stand in terms of gender equality. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how a women’s union in the far right is formed and analyze this from a gender perspective. The basis has been to find out whether SD-Women are represented in their newspaper SD-Kuriren during 2010-2012, which type of concepts are raised by SD-Women and their ideas regarding gender equality, and lastly also which political topics are discussed in SD-Women’s podcast “Snedsteg” and the notions and concepts these topics are saturated by. The theoretical approach is based on gender and the method constitutes of a qualitative textual analysis where both physical and digital material is used.SD-Women’s ideas in terms of gender equality are based on a conservative essence. The concept that saturates SD-Women’s ideas regarding gender equality is that every individual family should be allowed to govern itself without outside influence and this is something that should be respected. The subject of electoral quotas is strongly criticized by SD-Women as they imply that gender equality politics should revolve around solving inequality problems rather than dividing equally amongst the genders. The predominant political views of SD-Women in terms of mankind is to affirm the biological differences between genders. In SD-Kuriren it’s clear that women are less represented during the period that is analyzed. SD-Women is presented in a very specific way in SD-Kuriren, and often separated from the other contents of the newspaper. A type of ideal image of a Sweden Democrat women is offered where the social conservative idea of an ideal woman is constructed.The political topics that are discussed in the podcast Snedsteg are directly imported from the politics of Sweden Democrats themselves where only other Sweden Democrats are invited to the podcast. The discussed topics are often the larger societal issues like crime, immigration, family honor, health care and also the Sweden Democrats own alienation. These topics are saturated with the idea of Sweden being an insecure society under decay. This paper will also shed a light on the fact that SD-Women is not mentioned at all in SD-Kuriren until June 2011, even though they were in existence since October 2010.

During the last decades, culturally racist parties, like the Sweden Democrats (SD) and the Alterna-tive for Germany (AfD), have seen a rapid growth in popularity and are now represented in parliaments in almost all European countries. Although the majority of their voters are considered white, male, and working class, a growing number of people with a migration background started sup-porting parties of said political stream that frame migration as the biggest threat to society. This thesis aims at understanding the alleged contradiction of individuals that are to different degrees racialized as immigrants becoming members in the SD and AfD. Located within discourses of racial neoliberalism, the study examines how national belonging and subject positions are constructed and contested, and how racist migrant respectability serves as a strategy of overcoming a struggle for belonging to the host society.

The purpose of this thesis aimed at trying to find out why the Sweden Democrats have increased their support, to become the second largest party in the Swedish parliament, while, the Danish People’s Party, has lost the majority of their support after being the second largest party in the Danish parliament to almost falling out a few years later. Is it possible for the Sweden Democrats to share the same fate? To find this out, we’ve decided to conduct this study using a qualitative comparative method, with a Most Similar System Design. The analysis mainly consists of two concepts to explain this phenomenon which are “Cordon Sanitaire” and “Normalization”.  The results of the analysis show that in Denmark, the Danish People’s Party’s views and policies on migration, have gotten normalized across the political spectrum. As such, they can no longer argue that they are anti-establishment, but instead, they have become a part of the establishment themselves. In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats have been kept out of power, with a “cordon sanitaire”, and thus their view and policies have not gotten normalized and adopted by other parties, and therefore they have continued to grow. An interesting aspect of this is that recently, the Sweden Democrats have gotten normalized and they are now a support party for a right-wing government, which we argue might lead to a similar situation as in Denmark, meaning that the Sweden Democrats might lose support in the future.

This essay intends to discover how a qualitative discourse of right-wing populismcan be seen within the Swedish parliament, by exploring how politicians in theparliament are using the "us against them" and if a scapegoat is created by doing so.The essay's key questions are going to examine the differences and similaritiesbetween the Social democratic government from 2020-2022 and the current centerright government compared to the opposition parties, between social democrats andcenter-right government on right-wing populist discourse, and what the media isnotifying about the political debate within the government. By doing so, we can find out important explanatory factors on why the shift inpolitics in Sweden has gone to more right-wing populist rhetoric, to understand whythis has been occurring in the Swedish government. By looking at the factors of whya rise of right-wing populism has occurred within different types of governmentparties and the type of similarities and differences they have on different parties’discourse about the framing of anti-immigration rhetoric.

The concept of integration is complex and multifaceted and is widely discussed in the social sciences, social and political debates, as well as the media. Previous research in the field of integration has identified different modes of immigrant integration, i.e., multiculturalism, assimilation, and civic integration. The general trend in Europe is that of abandoning the multicultural approach to integration, and Sweden is considered an outlier in this regard. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the political integration rhetoric in Sweden over time by conducting a multiple case study and comparing three major political parties in the Swedish parliament, namely, the Social Democratic Party, the Moderate Party, and the Sweden Democrats. The goal is to analyze their respective definitions of integration and framings of immigrants over time. This paper conducts a qualitative analysis using the matic data analysis and deductive logic. The empirical findings of this study point to the fact that Sweden is no longer an outlier regarding the general trend in Europe in abandoning the multicultural approach to integration. This paper concludes that regardless of any external factors, party politics and the growing support for SD among voters, a populist radical right party with its anti-immigrantsentiments, have to some extent influenced both S and M and their integration policies overtime, which has resulted in a shift in the political integration rhetoric in Sweden. Currently, all the parties examined in this paper view rights as the end goal of the integration processes at an individual level, despite the differences in the definition of integration and modes of integration policy between the parties. This is also evident in the contemporary political integration rhetoric in Sweden, where all three parties agree that previous integrationstrategies have failed. Another major finding in this thesis is that the time period for integration processes is often neglected both in party politics and in the scholarly literature; therefore, further research is needed on this aspect to determine whether the time frame for integration processes should be country-specific or path-dependent.

Populism has been an integral part of the Finnish political system since the late 1950's. At that time the Agrarian Populist Party, better known as The Rural Party, emerged and thrived for decades until the party financially broke down in the 1990's. Reemerging on the political scene as the True Finns, the party is more radical and more influential than ever, gaining enough support to be the third largest party of the 2011 parliamentary election. Sweden, Finland’s neighbor, in contrast has a history with very little populist presence or radical right populist parties (RRP-parties). However, during the 2010 parliamentary election the Sweden Democrats attained seats in the parliament for the first time in history. In this thesis, these cases, with their different historical backgrounds, are analyzed to explain the rise and growth of RRP-parties. Many political scientists have tried to answer this question before, focusing on system-oriented and contextual factors, but often neglecting factors that incorporate the political actors themselves. What this thesis adds to the previous research is a perspective on the rise and growth of RRP-parties based on the dynamism between system-oriented factors and actor-oriented factors. The theoretical discussion indicates that some system-oriented and contextual factors are significant when explaining the rise and growth of RRP-parties. At the same time, actor oriented factors such as the legacy of the RRP-party and the mainstream party strategies prove to be influential on the electoral strength of the RRP-party. These theoretical approaches are then used and combined in a comparative analysis, which imply two important things. First, the legitimacy of the RRP-party itself is an aspect that does explain the rise and growth of RRP-parties. Second, in the case of Sweden, the system-oriented and contextual factors alone were not able to explain the rise and growth of the Sweden Democrats. Together these findings stress that the dynamic perspective between system-oriented and actor-oriented factors truly is meaningful when trying to explain rise and growth of RRP-parties.

Populism as a phenomenon is increasing in Europe. This study is therefore centred on howpopulist parties affect mainstream parties when entering the parliament. Moreover this studyresearches how party behaviour theories such as the median voter theorem and cartel partytheory explains mainstream parties' transition on the political and ideological scale when apopulist party is included in the parliament. This study aims to identify populistic discourse in Swedish parties election manifestos. Additionally, examine if the degree of populisticdiscourse differs from the year 2010 when the populist party entered the parliament, the yearof 2018 and the year of 2022 when the populist party entered an alliance with the government.The methodical approach for this research has been a qualitative content analysis. The categories for populist communication strategy attempts to contribute with an operationalization, a measuring instrument of populism in the empirical material. Moreoverthe categories is based on Jan Jagers and Steffan Walgraves theory surrounding populism as a political communication-style. The eight units of analysis are the election manifestos of the Swedish parties: The christ democratic party, the moderate party and the sweden democrats. The empirical research shows that populism as a communication style appears within the election manifestos and that the degree of populist rhetoric differs within the mainstream parties from when the populist party entered the parliament in 2010 and government alliancein 2022.