This study aims to explain why voters in Sweden choose to cast their vote on the, often more unknown and smaller, local municipality party rather than an established larger party. Earlier studies have focused more on why the local parties are created, this study has a different approach as it tries to explain voter behavior rather than party creation. To achieve this goal a survey has been sent out to all the local parties registered for the kommunfullmäktige election before 2018s election. The study finds that the most significant reason for the voters seems to be the representatives of the local party, therefore strengthening the earlier theories of the importance of the so-called local entrepreneur. A second important result was the fact that voters believe that local parties best represent the voters view on local issues, as the local party focuses on trying to fix those issues without the need to take the national policy into consideration. Future studies with a larger sample size could develop the theory further and answer some unanswered questions, such as: Why local parties seem to cluster together in neighboring municipalities.

This thesis describes the parties, which stand for the local elections under another name, then is an actual name of the political party. However, there is not definition yet, in the Czech Republic this topic is not even included in a literature. Those parties, which can be called as hidden parties, do not appear only in the Czech Republic, but they can be found in other countries as well. This thesis describes the problematic of the hidden parties also in England, Belgium, Estonia, Croatia, and Poland. The main part of this thesis is devoted to the hidden parties in the Czech local elections. Beside the definition of what parties can be considered as hidden parties, this thesis includes comparison with other forms of candidacy and the development of frequency of these parties in individual years. There are also compared two forms of candidacy, which under certain circumstances can be considered as hidden parties. The biggest part of this thesis is devoted to the success of these parties and to which parties most often hide their names. Several specific hidden parties are then further analyzed to determine the historical development of parties in a particular city and the degree of connection of candidates and the political party.

The aim of this study is to examine explanations for why Swedish local political parties are formed. This is done by using a statistical method with a focus on first person explanations, whereas previous research either has focused on third person explanations or conducted small scale studies. Several perspectives and explanations are found in the previous literature, around which a total of seven hypotheses are constructed. To test the hypotheses, a survey is constructed and data is collected from a total of 63 founders, representing 44 of the 62 local parties that received mandates in a municipal council for the first time in either 2014 or 2018. Results indicate that difficulty to influence the established parties, disappointment aimed towards the established parties as well as a lack of attention given to topics perceived as important are all significant factors when making the decision to form a party. Contrary to previous research, factors such as anger and a desire for revenge are not found to affect the decision to form a party. Furthermore, a potential explanation for why the diffusion effects that have been documented in previous research exist, namely rational imitation, finds some support in this study. In conclusion, it is argued that the disparity within the previous research and between previous research and this study, along with theoretical shortcomings in some theoretical explanations, shows that the study of why local political parties emerge is in its infancy and that both theoretical explanations and empirical analyses could use further development.

This study aims to explore ideological profiles in local parties’ electoral manifestos. Through qualitative content analysis, three profiles, redistributive, developmental, and political discontent-oriented are investigated in local parties’ electoral manifestos in the case of Norrbotten. One of the main findings shows that the political discontent-oriented profile occurs to a lesser extent in comparison with the other profiles. Instead, many of the manifestos convey concerns relating to their municipality’s persistence. Local parties in Norrbotten tend to endorse new establishments of companies and industries in their manifestos. When expressing political discontent, the electoral manifestos often focus on distancing themselves from ideology-oriented politics while claiming to be a pragmatic alternative. Some manifesto also expresses the need to prioritize vulnerable groups in the municipality, especially the Sami people, senior citizens, and rural communities within the municipality.

This case study focuses on wind power development in Norrköping using a multi-level governance approach. The aim is to examine the wind power decision-making process from the state to Norrköping municipality and to identify other factors that impact wind power development in the area. A textual analysis comparing national political party platforms and local parties' official stances and interviews has been used to achieve this study's goal. The study shows that the decision-making in vertical multi-level governance is both bottom-up and top-down. It also sheds light on a significant role the Swedish Armed Forces play in this process as an external actor. The study concludes that vertical multi-level governance, including municipal veto, although an important factor, needs to be complemented with external factors to see how it affects wind power development in Norrköping.