The master thesis "True Finns. Establishment of right-wing populism in Finland?" deals with political party True Finns (The Finns, PS), its historical development and current position in Finnish party system. The master thesis is devided into three chapters. The first chapter deals with populist radical right political parties (PRR), which have established themselves in a lot of Western Europe party systém (inluding Scandinavia). Finland represented a state which had been immune of PRR. The aim of the first chapter is to answer an question, which are the main reasons of PRR emergence, respectively which were the reasons which delayed the Finnish PRR. The second chapter is concerned with political party True Finns (The Finns, PS), its historical development and ideological profile. The chapter reffers to ideological and personal roots in Finnish Rural Party. A part of the chapter is ideological core used by Cas Mudde (nativism, authoritarianism, populism) which is supplemented by an economical programme. The final part deals with the parliamentary election 2012. The final chapter concerns with current PS position in Finnish party systém and with impact on finnish politics. The chapter is closed with positive and negative factors for the future development.

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.