The Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) has in recent years distinguished themselves in the arena of library policy and have initiated several controversial proposals in this field that goes against what can be considered the traditional public library mission in Sweden. These proposals, although much written about in media has been the focus of few studies and not one single study has focused exclusively on the Sweden Democratic library policy field as a whole. Therefore it has been my intention to do a textual analysis on thirteen political documents concerning library policy from the Sweden Democrats during the years 2018 to 2021 on all the political levels of decision making in Sweden: national, regional and municipal. With the help of researcher Dorte Skot-Hansens model of rationalities in nordic cultural policymaking I have tried to identify the predominant lines of policy in the material and the conclusion is essentially two main rationalities. The first one is the social conservative rationality in which the main goal is to preserve traditional Swedish values, which can be found on all political levels. The other one is the radical right rationality which is mostly distinct in the municipal and regional level and in which the main goal is to assimilate citizens into the Swedish culture. Both these rationalities make up the main political currents in the library policy of the Sweden Democrats which I have christened the the rationalitities of national identity.

Populism in a Democratic sense undermines the representative aspect of any democracy’s public interest, which plays a key role in the legitimacy, also known as credibility, of any democratic representation. In both Greece and Sweden during an extensive amount of time, populists have gained a seemingly steady increase in support. In this sense this essay will also pursue an attempt to find out if factors like crisis could be an underlying explanation to as of why established power is losing their previously assumingly secured mass loyalty within these societies. The purpose of this essay is to investigate the health of two European democracies, namely Greece and Sweden, to potentially find out to which extent established parties succeed to maintain a healthy political organization within society. Europe’s free democracy is affected by the even more so present populism we see today. In theory this means we are investigating the representation of the citizens and the popularity towards populist parties, through voting support. This should give us an idea of how these democracies are faring, in favor of populists one could also assume there is a detoriating support for established parties. Depending on how these similarities or differences play out, the actual populist support could potentially undermine the legitimacy of any given democratic representation, if populist tendencies are widely present during times of crisis. Therefore, this essay will pursue the investigation of the questionable growth of populism within Sweden’s and the Greece democracy to find out if established parties have addressed day to day political topics in a credible way, or if they might have a potential inability to handle crisis could be the underlying factor, as of why and how populists have increased in both popularity and support over distinguishable periods of times in crisis. During a crisis, the state apparatus is faced with new challenges. If these developing challenges are not tended to or subdued, it will of course in theory make the democratic voter seek an alternative solution, hence also resulting in a mass loyalty loss for established parties.

In 2007, revolutionary commander Daniel Ortega returned to power in Nicaragua, claiming to enact the “second phase” of the Sandinista Popular Revolution (1979-1990). However, this was not a return to revolution as Nicaraguans had come to know it. The Ortega regime established timely alliances with former adversaries, including the leadership of the Catholic Church as well as the nation’s business elites. Moreover, Sandinismo was recast from the figures of revolutionary militancy and the disciplined party-state to a personalistic vision of the loving patriarch, disseminating a kitsch-ified, religiously inflected doctrine of ‘love’ to the neoliberalized masses. Though Ortega was elected without a majoritarian mandate, his regime quickly grew in popularity while also consolidating an authoritarian political project that dismantled incipient liberal-democratic institutions and constitutional guarantees in the name of ‘the people.’ Based on 24 months of participant-observation research between 2014 and 2018 in the peripheries of a city located in the urban pacific of Nicaragua, a traditional Sandinista stronghold, this dissertation investigates the Ortega regime’s capacity to hail Nicaraguans into relation with Sandinismo and the FSLN party in the post-revolutionary moment. I argue that the material exchanges that are most often taken to explain the mobilizing capacities of authoritarian populism must be analyzed in conjunction with the economy of affects that circulate in and through exchanges, which issue powerful forms of identification that help sustain people’s attachments to the FSLN even when redistributive politics fades away. For historical militants and other Sandinistas that lived through the 1980’s, attachments to the FSLN are structured by way of a ‘revolutionary a structure of feelings’ that continues to be reproduced in the contemporary moment. For my interlocutors, the gift of being a Sandinista, narrated as a political birth, brought with it an unpayable debt that produces obligations to Sandinismo. It is this very structure of feeling that enables militants to cope with multiple injuries to which the party routinely subjects them, which I argue come to be experienced as sacrifices on Sandinismo’s behalf. Moreover I suggest that being wounded by the FSLN itself might afford pleasure, and that it might be the site of production of a victimized identity, one dependent on attachment to that which injures. Finally, I argue that for a younger generation, Sandinismo has also produced strong forms of identification in the absence of historically structured attachments. This time, attachments are predicated not on the notion of a revolutionary inheritance, but on Sandinismo as a patriarchal family which rewards its members with a sense of mediatized recognition, righteousness, and power in exchange not for sacrifices, but for following the injunction to ‘produce prosperity’ as good neoliberal subjects aspiring to gain access to a range of consumer pleasures. It is these affective excesses that sharpen the boundaries of the political community and invest it with a vibrance it could not otherwise achieve, inviting and enabling those that are part of it to the often violent, permanent defense of Sandinismo.

Since gaining independence from Colombia in 1903, Panama has witnessed both elitist democratic governments and authoritarian populist governments. The oligarchic system in place throughout much of Panama's history was a significant hindrance to real democracy taking hold within the country. Democracy was further set back by the inordinate power exerted by the US presence on the isthmus throughout the twentieth century. Omar Torrijos's time as head of the Panamanian government from 1969 to 1981 exhibited populist, paternalistic and personalistic characteristics. His government marked an attempt to establish a form of government based on popular democracy. While a number of social programs were implemented and the social welfare of a greater percentage of the population was generally improved during the years Torrijos was in power, his military regime did not ultimately institutionalize a model for democratic participation. This study argues that some form of popular democracy should replace the status quo in Panama. This would allow for genuine representation of a greater number of the population and in turn broaden the base of decision-making, something that has not been fully accomplished under previous authoritarian or democratic forms of government. The Torrijos regime was the first and only government in Panama to have attempted this move toward popular democracy. As such it is seen as a useful case study in examining its contributions to the political landscape and the political culture that makes up contemporary Panama. Deductions are made from it for the political future of the country in terms of the democratization process.

Populist movements have been on the rise across Europe and the Americas. In France, the far right-wing party, Le Front National, has experienced recent growth in electoral success. Scholars of the Front National have in part attributed the party’s success to its increased use of populist rhetoric. This thesis examines the populist rhetoric used between the Front National’s past president Jean-Marie Le Pen and current president Marine Le Pen in order to test these scholarly claims. Based on their campaign speeches for the 2002, 2007, 2012, and 2017 French presidential elections, I conducted a quantitative dictionary-based analysis on the difference in use of populist, xenophobic, and economic rhetoric between Jean-Marie Le Pen and Marine Le Pen. My results show that there has been only a relatively small increase in the use of populist rhetoric between the two leaders. Consequently, I argue that the perceived increased use of populist rhetoric in the Front National has more to do with the saliency of populism than numerical fact.

Since the 1980s a growing number of populist parties have made a breakthrough in European party systems. Examples of these are the Belgian Vlaams Belang (VB), the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF) in the Netherlands or the German Die Linke (DL). All of these parties can considered to be populist because they share a thin centred ideology “that considers society ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people” (Mudde, 2004: 543). This thin centred ideology can be combined with other full ideologies such as the radical right but also democratic socialism. The main objective of this study is to explain why people vote for populist parties. Such a question is difficult to answer, however, because populism is mostly attached to other ideologies. To address this problem, this study draws on a comparative research design. By studying the electorates of a wide range of different populist parties, it is disentangled what is exactly the populist element, rather than elements related to the host ideology, that drives voters towards these parties.<p>The study begins with a careful investigation of all parties in Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany by means of both qualitative and quantitative methods to explore which of them could be labelled populist. Support was found for at least the following cases: LPF, the Belgian Lijst Dedecker (LDD), the Dutch Partij Voor de Vrijheid (PVV), VB, the Dutch Socialistische Partij (SP) and DL. In a next step, the voters of these parties were analyzed by means of election survey data (Dutch Parliamentary Election Study, Partirep Survey and German Longitudinal Election Study). <p>The main finding of is that dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy and a desire for more decision making through referendums are important and unique drivers for populist voting in general. On the demand side it is argued that a process of cartelization, i.e. increased reliance of parties on state subventions, more cooperation between government and opposition, and ideological moderation, combined with the growth of critical citizens has led to the questioning of political authority. On the supply side, an increasing group of well-organized populist parties have begun challenging mainstream parties by depicting them as a group of self-serving elites depriving the ordinary people of their sovereignty. Moreover, populist parties claim to restore the voice of the people through the introduction of direct democracy. Accordingly, a growing group of voters who share these concerns are attracted to the populist appeal.<p>Another important finding of this study is that populist parties generally attract social groups that feel themselves deprived. In Eastern Germany of the 1990s these were the ‘losers of unification’, i.e. highly educated civil servants who had lost the social prestige that they enjoyed during the heydays of the DDR. Yet in contemporary ‘diploma democracies’ it appears that populist parties, regardless of their host ideology, are increasingly attracting the ‘losers of globalization’, which are the lower educated and lower social classes. While populism has mostly been considered a threat for democracy, the ability of populist parties to integrate excluded social groups into the political system certainly deserves notice. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This thesis examines the intersection of cultural discourse and economic policies of the Hungarian populist radical right party, Fidesz. It classifies the cultural discourse of the governing party as neo-traditionalist by examining how the party's leader, Viktor Orbán, rhetorically shapes his vision of the nation, espouses traditional values, and uses missionary politics to create a personalized moral code under the guise of cultural Christianity. It examines the government's economic policies of nationalization and re-privatization, crony capitalism, and national work program within a neo-feudalist classification. This research finds that the neo-feudalist economic policies of Fidesz serve as a reinforcement mechanism that legitimizes the cultural discourse espoused by Orbán. Furthermore, the neo-feudal economy is reshaping the social system into a highly centralized and hierarchical structure and having lasting macroeconomic effects, including demographic issues and increasing levels of wealth inequality. This emerging illiberal model of governance is not only reshaping Hungary's political, economic, and social systems, but also contributing to a larger movement away from the tenets of liberal democracy within CEE. Keywords Neo-traditionalism, Neo-feudalism, Delayed transformational fatigue,...

The rightwing-populist movement has gained momentum in recent years throughout the western world. The recent spike of organized Islamic terror organization has been one of the root causes of the spark about the debate of what western culture actually is, which has resulted in a gain for the rightwing-populist movement and a normalization of populist Islamophobic rhetoric. This bachelor theses focuses on the portrayal of Islam by the US president, Donald J. Trump. The purpose of the study was to analyze how Donald Trump portrays Islam in some interviews and speeches and try to pinpoint in his rhetoric reasoning how he interprets Islam in the American context. To fulfill this purpose four different forms of speeches has been analyzed. The nature of the speeches is either a type of interview or where Trump talks as a lone speaker. The study aimed to offer an answer to how Islam becomes a politized phenomenon and to determine the narrative in Trumps statements and thereafter use that narrative to offer a perspective on the incitement of the established narrative. Therefore, to answer the question about the politization of Islam the study has worked with Jonas Lindbergs (2017) Religion in Nordic politics as a means to societal cohesion and Carolina Ivanescus (2010) Politicised religion and the religionisation of politics. Rogers Brubakers (2017) Between nationalism and civilzationism was used to offer a perspective on the incitement to Trumps reasoning that orientates around right-wing populist understanding of Western cultural values. Thus, were these theories the theoretical framework to this essays study. The methods used for the study was content analysis and narrative analysis. The narrative analysis, as explained was used to establish the narrative in Trumps statements while the content analysis was used a method to systematize the empiricism and to facilitate the process of coding of the material. The conclusion of the study is that Donald Trump uses Islam as a depicted threat to the American people and the American culture. Islam takes aim on majority group in America and threatens to implement new normative understandings that emerges from Islamic doctrine. The Christian identification of the American people is threatened and the secular spirit as well that is in impregnated in the American culture. In Trumps understanding the threat has reached a breaking point where he, as the leader of the country, is the sole solution to this dictated problem.

This thesis explores an understudied area in political communication research by examining populist communication on the social media platform TikTok. Specifically, the study focuses on content related to the Sweden Democrat party during the 2022 election. This thesis also proposes an integrated methodological and quantitative empirical framework for analyzing the multi-dimensional relationships present in political communication on digital social media. By identifying key hashtags used by followers of the party during the time of the 2022 election, including the campaigning leading up to it and the government formation following the election, new empirical data consisting of 250 TikTok videos and their accompanying information was collected. Firstly, the data was used to map SD tagged content on TikTok. Secondly, while difficult to measure, a framework was created to code and operationalize populist characteristics within the TikTok posts. Through quantitative content analysis and linear regression, the study examines the relationship between TikTok affordances and populist communication. Affordances are used to describe what an object, or in this case, a technology, can be used for and let a user do. Finally, the data collected was used to determine potential relationships supporting that populist style communication is favored by social media affordances. The results show that videos on the topic of immigration and videos from accounts with many followers were significantly related to virality. However, limitations in studying content on TikTok, due to the platform’s API were highlighted, as well as the difficulty of handling and coding video data from the platform. Overall, this study contributes to the field of political communication by demonstrating the multi-faceted relationship between media logic, social media affordances, and populist communication.

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