Is religion a vaccine against radical right populism? The opposite has often been taken for granted in many debates. This study tests the theory of religious immunity by examining three Swedish evangelical newspapers: Dagen, Världen idag and Sändaren. By performing an analysis of ideas on evangelical contribution to public debate in the years of 2010 and 2021, the degree of radical right populism is estimated. Differences between the newspapers and change over time are the investigation’s comparative elements. By utilizing theological variation among the cases and the development over time, the strength and endurance of the immunity is examined.  Results show an evangelical opinion making in change. From a starting point in 2010, where all cases proved a solid immunity, to a more complex picture in 2021. Two parallel trends where observed: the immunity found in Dagen and Sändaren endured the test of time. At the same time, Världen idag developed a radical right tendency, harmonizing with the Christian Democratic party. Being a least likely case, the turn in Världen idag does not write off the theory of immunity, but challenges the idea of evangelical homogeneity in regard to radical right populism. Theological ideas about the nation is suggested being a possible division. In whole, this study has deepened our knowledge in how theological motives are used to affect the connection between religion and radical right populism, and given a more nuanced understanding of evangelical politics in Sweden.

Stuart Hall, who passed away in February 2014, was one of the founding figures of what is known today as ‘cultural studies’ and long-time director of the renowned Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. In addition, he was a central figure of the British New Left, founding editor of the journal New Left Review, and one of Britain’s most charismatic public intellectuals. Crucially, for Hall, intellectual practice was a politics, and questions of culture were political questions. His was a thinking that was inquisitive, flexible and open-ended, regularly moving across disciplinary boundaries and synthesising different theoretical outlooks. It was rigorously contextual, extremely attentive to complexity, dedicated to the concrete, activist, committed and practical, and driven by a curiosity that constantly led onto new – and frequently largely uncharted – theoretical terrain. The subjects covered by Hall’s work include topics as diverse as popular culture and mass media; representation and signifying practices; subcultures; questions of power, ideology and resistance; ‘race’ and ethnicity; globalisation; multiculturalism and diaspora; cultural and personal identity; Thatcherism; New Labour; and neoliberalism. The present issue of Coils of the Serpent endeavours to contribute to the timely exploration of the legacy of Stuart Hall’s highly influential and multi-faceted work.

Through the lens of analyses of populist mobilizations informed by political sociology, this study offers a new perspective on tactics used by anti-gender campaigns. Specifically examining the Education Curriculum and the Enfoque de Igualdad de Género [Gender Equality Approach] in congressional debates in Peru in 2018 and 2019, this study uses a qualitative content analysis to identify central themes. The themes reveal tactics that sabotage feminist gains in educational reforms, spearheaded by Christian political actors. The argument is thus that Christian political actors use tactics such as coopting feminist concepts such as “gender” and re-framing it as “gender ideology”. This is an example of using “emotional epistemic loops” of information to achieve political goals, in this case advancing patriarchal Christian values and undermining feminist and gender equality gains.

This thesis examines the factors behind politicians' ‘missing tweets’. Missing tweets are posts that were once available on Twitter but are no longer accessible. Despite numerous studies on the Twitter behavior of politicians, few explore the dynamics around politicians’ missing tweets. This study fills this research gap by examining the extent of, and possible factors associated with, missing tweets among parliamentarians active on Twitter in 2018 in six Western European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Sweden). Empirically, this study uses replication material from Castanho Silva and Proksch (2021a) to identify the number of missing tweets per parliamentarian, finding that 21.8% of the tweets from 2018 had disappeared from the platform by October 2021. To determine the factors associated with these missing tweets four hypotheses are tested, examining mass deletion, gendered incivility, intra-party conflict, and populism. The results find that there is no association between gender or intra-party conflict and missing tweets. Furthermore, parliamentarians generally do not engage in mass deletion of tweets, but when they do those who have since left parliament are overrepresented. Lastly, there is a positive association between the level of populism and the number of missing tweets. The results of this thesis highlight both the theoretical and empirical importance of examining missing tweets when analyzing the behavior of politicians on Twitter.

This study investigates the connection between refugee reception in Swedish municipalities and support for the Swedish right-wing populist party, the Sweden Democrats. Using panel data of electoral support for the Sweden Democrats in the elections 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018 and the number of refugees received per municipality in the years since the preceding election, I find a positive and significant association between support for the Sweden Democrats and number of refugees received. This result is consistent across different models, including models utilising municipality-fixed and year-fixed effects. In order to test different theories on the connection between immigration and support for right-wing populists, I also utilise several different interaction effects between refugee intake and urbanity, native unemployment, income, immigrant unemployment and existing immigrant stock. Through this, I find some evidence for a connection between economic circumstance and response to refugee reception, supporting a theory of refugees being perceived as an economic threat, but only very weak support for a connection between political response to refugee reception and cultural fears or native contact with refugees.

"Most people don't mind global warming": Climate change denial in Czech politics between the years 2018 - 2021 This thesis deals with the topic of climate change denial in contemporary Czech politics. It aims to describe how the narrative of climate change denial is formed and reproduced. The first part captures the origins and the background of climate change scepticism in both Czech and international context with the special stress laid upon ideology. Based on the critical discourse analysis of the rhetorics of Alexandr Vondra, Jan Zahradník, Václav Klaus Jr., and Tomio Okamura, the second part of this paper aims to contribute by unravelling the key symptoms of climate change denial discourse of the above mentioned politicians as well as the dominant frames and discursive strategies used to deny both the anthropogenic climate change and the climate change politics. The last goal of the analysis is to describe in what aspects the linguistic means of selected right-wing populists differ or intertwine with the language of right-wing conservatives. Keywords: climate change denial, right-wing populism, climate policy, discourse, rhetorics

No description available.

The thesis deals in the theoretical part with a presentation and comparison of views of political science on party-political euroscepticism, including a description of the development of the form of eurosceptic factions in the European Parliament after 2014 and political subjects associated in them. Practical part presents, analyzes and interprets the voting of these political entities in the election periods 2014-2019 and 2019-2024, especially in terms of their coherence within individual factions. Both in general (overall average coherence) and by individual thematic agendas. In its outputs, the work tries, based on the obtained data, to answer the question, what are the dominant common ideological characteristics of the eurosceptic political parties represented in the European Parliament and whether they form, or can form, a separate so-called party-political family. Keywords: Euroscepticism, European Union, European Parliament, factions, political parties, populism, elections Title: Eurosceptic Political Parties Factions in the European Parliament: constitution, form, political activity and changes in the context of the European Parliament elections 2019

This research aims to deepen the understanding of drivers of populism by analysing different camps in the debate around land reform, using South Africa as a case. The research is conducted through a critical discourseanalysis (CDA) of two actors that represent different positions in a deeply divided society. To analyse the data for this research, the methodological framework of CDA will be operationalised and tabulated against concepts drawn from the theoretical discussion of populism described in the literature review. The two actors in the analysis are the political party EFF and the civilrights organisation AfriForum. The research found that the drivers of populism connected to land reforms in South Africa are based on the discontent of the black African people who still live in poverty, do not own their own land and are forced to stay in temporary housing on illegally occupied land. On the other hand, the driver behind AfriForum concerns feelings of threat, due to racial violence and their land is at risk of being confiscated by the government. After analysing their discourses between each other, it demonstrates how their actions sustain and create racial tension in post-apartheid South Africa.

The overall aim with this study is to understand how and why the political environment in Sweden changed so drastically during the first years of the 1990s. The political mayfly New Democracy took office in the Swedish parliament in 1991 to 1994. At the time they were branded as a rightwing, xenophobic populist party. While our Nordic neighbors have had political parties resembling New Democracy since the beginning of the 1970’s, the established parties in Sweden managed to cover most of these controversial questions for some time. In a world that was dominated by western capitalism and libertinism following the collapse of the Soviet union, with increasing immigration also from outside of Europe, the Swedish people wanted to see change and the 1991 election turned out to be historical in that about 30% of the voters changed party allegiance. Enter New Democracy, a party that had been formally created in February 1991. They had been formed by 2 strong characters who met in November 1990 for the very first time: Ian Wachtmeister and Bert Karlsson. Karlsson was the person with impeccable instincts for publicity. Wachtmeister was the man behind most of the ideas that came to make up the party program. Their leading idea was that politics should be governed by common sense. In this spirit (and the lack of time) they postponed a lot of principal and basic discussions on key matters, with the idea that they would sort them out once elected. This did not work out too well and they soon started to disintegrate from within and by the next election in 1994 they had basically stopped working as a party. The aim of the study is achieved through evaluating the following areas: how did New Democracy communicate with their voters as well as how they worked in parliament seen in the light of their party program; the second evaluates New Democracy from an ideology standpoint and finally; how did the voters look at the political situation in Sweden at this time? What relatively little has been written and researched about New Democracy has seemingly always taken the starting view of looking at them as a populist party. In this thesis I look atthis unconditionally, and start with an analysis of ideologies and populism. The characteristics identified from this are then applied on New Democracy based on what they said they wanted to achieve as well as how they applied their ideas in real life. In order to firmly establish the current theories on ideologies in general and populist theory in particular I have drawn upon some of the most well renown researchers in these areas. As fo rthe study of New Democracy I have been using whatever little material they published themselves, in addition I’ve been using the archives of the Swedish government and a series of books and research on New Democracy. Furthermore I’ve conducted an interview with a former New Democracy parliament member to add and confirm much of the written material. The analysis shows that New Democracy was a party that in some ways were ahead of their time as it took another couple of years and then many of their ideas had been implemented. Their messages and ways to go about it were seen as extraordinary at the time. This provides an interesting parallel to the political debate of today considering what is seen as politically correct. Although they were seen as rebels at the time, by today’s standards they appear as rather harmless. They were seen as a populist party of their day. By comparing to current definitions of a populist parti they would rather be seen as a discontent party. Today they would not stand out even nearly in the same way as they did then. And finally, I would argue that the development of a party like New Democracy was inevitable at the time given all political changes in Sweden and in our vicinity.