Europe is not as calm as one might think. There are currently several secessionist struggles that are ongoing in the region and in this thesis three of them will be researched. This thesis has investigated the biggest democratically elected actor that wants secession in Flanders, Catalonia and Scotland. This has been done by questioning how they argue for their secession and how these arguments relate to different approaches to legitimize secession. These approaches being the remedial approach, the free choice approach, the functional approach, the exit approach and the anti-theory approach. This was performed by using a qualitative content analysis. With this method I created an analytical scheme which was applied to the arguments in order to sort them into the scheme. The arguments used by the actors were pluralistic, relating to democracy, nationalism, administration, governance, economy, grievance and history. This proved that the actors are much more pluralistic than what theory could handle hence, none of the actors fit to either one of the approaches as they argued in a multitude of different ways. In addition to this, I was also able to show that against theoretical assumptions these secessionist actors didn’t favour external legitimacy. Even though this is argued by some to be most important for secessionist groups to gain independence. In the end the implications of this thesis are that secessionist actors are incredibly pluralistic, and it is quite hard for theory to fully capture this plurality. Hence, secessionist theory gives a very incomplete picture of how secessionist actors try to legitimize their secession.

Over the past two decades there has been a significant increase in the support for radical-right populist parties in Europe. Simultaneously the income inequality has been rising. The aim of this thesis is to examine how income inequality affects the support for populist radical-right parties. To achieve this, we study the support for the Sweden Democrats, a radical-right populist party, and income inequality measured as the Gini coefficient. Using Swedish municipality level panel data of the election years from 2002 to 2014, a fixed effects-method is employed to examine the relationship between the Gini coefficient and support for the Sweden Democrats. Interestingly, the results show a robust statistically significant negative relationship between income inequality and support for the Sweden Democrats. Thus, our findings indicate that increased inequality decreases the support for the Sweden Democrats.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att analysera hur Sverigedemokraterna agerar i sin politiska kommunikation på Youtube i fråga om drivmedels prishöjningen. Frågeställningarna är: Hur framställer Riks drivmedelsprishöjningen som skedde under mars 2022? Den andra frågan är, hur agerar Sverigedemokraterna i sin politiska kommunikation i fråga om drivmedelsprishöjningen? Riks är ett Youtube-kanal som lanserades år 2020 och är finansierad av Sverigedemokraterna. Sociala medier erbjuder nya möjligheter för spridande av politiska budskap. Det är därför relevant att undersöka hur Sverigedemokraterna agerar i sociala medier för att kommunicera deras budskap gällande de höga drivmedelspriserna. I uppsatsen används teori om gestaltning eftersom den behandlar hur problem framställs i medier. En till teori som används i arbetet är teori om populistisk politisk kommunikation i sociala medier. Metod i uppsatsen är WPR ansats som behandlar hur problem representeras i medier. Materialet för analysen är Riks videos.  Slutsatsen i uppsatsen är att kanalen gestaltar problemet på ett polariserande sätt där klyftan mellan folket och eliten betonas. l Riks framställer framför allt problemet med drivmedelspriserna med regeringen som syndabocken. På Riks beskrivs det svenska ”folket” som goda och naiva. Denna framställning är baserad på den populistiska premissen om att samhället består av två grupper nämligen det goda folket och den ohederliga eliten. Den politiska kommunikationen på Riks är typiskt för populistisk kommunikation.  Slutsatsen är alltså att Sverigedemokraterna agerar populistisk i hur den väljer att kommunicera de politiska budskapen gällande drivmedels prishöjningen. Sverigedemokraterna på Youtube kanalen Riks använder sig alltså av icke formellt och vulgärt språk för att etablera en relation med publiken, framställa sig som representanten till folket och väljer de polariserande lösningar som betonar klyftan mellan folk och eliten. Detta är typiska drag för populistisk kommunikation och gynnas i sociala medier.

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Europe and North America are currently witnessing dramatic shifts in the existing balance of power. Whether the AfD and Pegida in Germany, UKIP in Britain, the French Front National, the FPÖ in Austria, the Dutch Party for Freedom, Fidesz and Law and Justice, which have already come to power in Hungary and Poland respectively, Donald Trump in the US, and similar parties and movements in Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Italy and elsewhere – while these groups and developments are by no means identical, it is nevertheless obvious that in many places today, national-conservative forces are on the rise and ever more forcefully – and successfully – making a bid for power (the most recent and, perhaps, most shocking instances of this success being the Brexit in June of last year and the election of Donald Trump as president of the US in November). The essays collected in this issue tackle these and other issues connected with the rise of the new right. They address topics such as populism and ‘affective politics’, neoliberalism, political rhetoric, the Brexit, Donald Trump, gender and sexuality, ‘race’ and class, the realm of culture, as well as the role of the left, of Cultural Studies and of the university more generally. In line with Hall’s conception of intellectual work, our issue is intended not just, or even primarily, as an academic publication, but also as a political intervention. Thus, I am hopeful that it will make a contribution, even if only a small one, to the task of finding ways to understand and adequately respond to the challenge presented by the new right.

There is a puzzling occurrence in Western Europe: Some far-right populist parties, traditionally seen as antithetical to liberalism, are appropriating liberal rights for their own illiberal ends. On the premise that the parties instrumentalise liberal elements to achieve more legitimacy in a climate of tolerance and respect for human rights in Western Europe, this thesis examines how far-right populist parties use human rights for mobilising purposes. Using Clifford Bob’s four conceptual elements of mobilising human rights rhetoric, in a qualitative content analysis the language of three Western European far-right populist parties is analysed. It is argued that, by drawing from a liberalism of fear, far-right populists frame human rights as a Western achievement, under threat by immigration from Islamic countries and the “corrupt elite” that allows for immigration to continue. By doing so, populists manage to incorporate human rights rhetoric in their mobilisation efforts, without challenging human rights per se.

The presented paper deals with a theoretical concept of populism and analysis of political style and politics of one of the most important but also most controversial figures of Italian politics over the past few decades, Silvio Berlusconi. The main objective of this paper is to verify the initial hypothesis that Silvio Berlusconi is a pragmatic contemporary politician whose politics and the political style includes identifiable elements of populism and to answer the question whether Silvio Berlusconi, due to the theories outlined on populism, could be considered as a representative of populism and whether his case meets the definition criteria set out in the theoretical part. A secondary objective is to provide a clear overview of the conceptual aspects of populism and it' s causes and identify these on the case of Italy. The work is divided into three parts. After introduction in a second chapter the theoretical and methodological framework will be defined. With a general focus on the concept of populism we will map the contemporary theoretical knowledge concerning this issue. The paper briefly summarizes the historical development of the populist movement in contemporary Western democracies, clearly and comprehensively summarizes the defining features of the theoretical concept of populism and...

(in English): Main goal of this diploma is to analyze the relationship between populism and representative democracy. The theoretical part of my work is researching populism as a vague concept and determining its minimal definition and esential constituents (I have declined the possibility that populism is only anti-essentialy formed attitude/phenomenon). In the analytical part I've studied the relationship between populism and representative democracy, and defined drawbacks of this uneasy coexistence. However I believe that representative democracy can't be successfully fulfiled without this phenomenon and I have also found not only positive moments of this relationship - I assume that populism is necessary supplement of representative democracy.

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The purpose of this study is to examine right-wing alternative media's framing of politics. This is examined by applying a method based on the framing theory, called Issue, game and scandal. The material consists of political news articles from these media during the 2018 election campaign in Sweden (13 August to 9 September), which in turn are either classified as issue news, game news or scandal news. The study uses the following five sites: Samhällsnytt, Nya Tider, Samtiden, Nya Dagbladet and Nyhetsbyrån. The study shows that alternative right-wing media frame politics as a scandal most times, followed by game and then issue. The results from the study are then compared with traditional media's framing of politics during the same period of time, where it shows that alternative right-wing media frame politics as scandal to a much greater degree than traditional media do, and that issue and game framings occur significantly less often on alternative right-wing media. The study also tries to explain how the differences between alternative right-wing media and traditional media can be understood, where press ethics and populism seem to be the key attributes. / Syftet med denna uppsatsen är att undersöka alternativa högermediers gestaltning av politik. Detta undersöks genom att applicera en metod som baseras på gestaltningsteorin - Sak, spel och skandal. Materialet består av politiska nyhetsartiklar från dessa medier under den svenska valrörelsen 2018 (13 augusti till 9 september), som i sin tur antingen klassificeras som saknyhet, spelnyhet eller skandalnyhet. I undersökningen används följande fem sajter: Samhällsnytt, Nya Tider, Samtiden, Nya Dagbladet och Nyhetsbyrån. Undersökningen visar att alternativa högermedier gestaltar politik som skandal flest gånger, följt av spel och sen sak. Resultatet från undersökningen jämförs sedan med traditionella mediers gestaltning av politik under samma tidsperiod, där det framgår att alternativa högermedier gestaltar politik som skandal i betydligt högre grad än vad traditionella medier gör, samt att sak- och spelgestaltningar förekommer betydligt färre gånger på alternativa högermedier. Dessutom redogörs det för hur skillnaderna mellan alternativa högermedier och traditionella medier kan förstås, där pressetik och populism bidrar med förklaringen.