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In recent decades, there has been a considerable expansion of citizen participation in protests and voluntary advocacy groups. To analyze this development, the social movement literature and the interest group literature have emerged. Yet these two bodies of literature have not communicated with each other and have rarely incorporated knowledge from other fields in political science. As a result, critical questions remain unanswered regarding the political influence of advocacy groups. How do they affect politicians? To what degree do informal groups use lobbying tactics? Are socioeconomically advantaged groups more influential? This thesis endeavors to address the above shortcomings by bridging the literature on social movements, interest groups and political parties. The purpose of the thesis is to explain if and how advocacy groups affect public policy and to analyze which resources that are required to influence political decisions. The focus is on informal and loosely organized social movement organizations (informal SMOs): parental networks, staff networks, and village networks. To test my arguments, I use a unique database on protests and lobbying against school closures in Sweden. Closures of public schools have been one of the most important drivers of political activism in Sweden. The results are presented in three essays. Essay I tests new electoral mechanisms that could condition the political influence of advocacy groups. The results suggest that the political influence of informal SMOs on school closure decisions varies according to the type of voter they mobilize: swing voters or core voters. Essay II demonstrates how informal SMOs use lobbying tactics, such as presenting policy-relevant information, to influence politicians. Social movement scholars often focus on protests and ignore lobbying tactics. However, the results show that SMOs that present policy-relevant information are more likely to stop school closures than SMOs that mobilize large protests. Essay III analyzes which informal SMOs exchange policy-relevant information with politicians. Previous studies on the use of lobbying tactics have ignored activist resources. My results suggest that SMOs mobilizing high-income activists and activists with analytical and civic skills are more likely to present policy-relevant information. This is problematic given normative ideals of equal access to decision-making by all members of society.

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.

The main purpose of this essay was to study whether niche parties that were represented in municipal councils in Sweden during the 2007-2010 term of office were politically relevant. Furthermore, factors that might facilitate political relevance for niche parties were studied. Political relevance was studied using two theoretical perspectives. The objective model of political relevance presents four categories of relevance based on the relations between political parties in a political assembly; governing parties, coalition parties, blackmail parties and isolated parties. The subjective model of political relevance relies on the party representatives’ own judgments of the relevance of their parties. To study objective and subjective political relevance, party representatives were interviewed. The results showed that seven out of eight niche parties were politically relevant according to the objective model, and six out of eight niche parties were relevant according to the subjective model. For the study of possible facilitating factors, a comparative table was formed using statistics and official data. Percentage of seats and type of majority coalition seemed to affect the possibilities for niche parties to become governing parties. A large percentage of seats and being represented on the municipal executive board and committees seemed to facilitate subjective political relevance.