<p>I denna uppsats undersöks under vilka omständigheter det är mer sannolikt att lokala partier uppstår. Partibildningar åren 1982 till 2002 undersöks och ett flertal hypoteser kring varför partier bildas testas med regressionsanalys. Det tycks som att den ekonomiska situationen i en kommun inte påverkar sannolikheten för att ett nytt parti uppstår. Däremot finns det en spridningseffekt av partier, nya partier bildas i högre utsträckning i områden där det sedan tidigare är vanligt med partibildningar. Vi finner också att ett byte av styrande föregående val ökar sannolikheten för att nya partier bildas, i motsats till vad vi förväntat oss. Slutligen finner vi att ett nytt lokalt parti tar proportionellt fler röster från det styrande blocket än från oppositionen.</p>

I denna uppsats undersöks under vilka omständigheter det är mer sannolikt att lokala partier uppstår. Partibildningar åren 1982 till 2002 undersöks och ett flertal hypoteser kring varför partier bildas testas med regressionsanalys. Det tycks som att den ekonomiska situationen i en kommun inte påverkar sannolikheten för att ett nytt parti uppstår. Däremot finns det en spridningseffekt av partier, nya partier bildas i högre utsträckning i områden där det sedan tidigare är vanligt med partibildningar. Vi finner också att ett byte av styrande föregående val ökar sannolikheten för att nya partier bildas, i motsats till vad vi förväntat oss. Slutligen finner vi att ett nytt lokalt parti tar proportionellt fler röster från det styrande blocket än från oppositionen.

The main purpose of this essay is to examine the motivation of political parties on their reason of formation. To execute, three perspectives on the formation of parties will be applied on the sequence of events for two specific party-formations. Those perspectives are the structural-, organisationtheoretical-, and actorcentralized perspective. The focus in this essay will be to determine the power of explanation for every perspective. “Kristdemokraterna” and “Feministiskt initiativ” are the parties chosen to be examined in this essay. The result revealed that the power of explanation also was according to the order the perspectives were presented above. The structural perspective had the highest power of explanation while the actorcentralized had the lowest. Interestingly the result did not concur with previous studies on the formation of political parties. Though, earlier studies had targeted different material. The weakness of the actorcentralized perspective might have its explanation in the assumption that parties does not want to make individuals greater than the organization. To much focus on the individual could undermine the actual purpose of the party. Another interesting discovery was the possibility to combine the different perspectives, as they did not rule out each other as explanations.

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.