This thesis analyses the ideology of the Radical right-wing Populist Party, Sweden Democrats. The aim of the study is to see if and how the ideology of the Sweden Democrats has changed through its years of activity, by comparing the party in three periods. The focus in the analysis is put on the party's view on the Swedish national identity and on multiculturalism. The reason for analyzing the party's view on these two concepts is due to the fact that they can be seen as corner stones in a racist ideology. An explanation of the concepts will be presented in the theory chapter, which is later used in the analysis of the party. The study shows that the ideology of the Sweden Democrats has changed very little throughout its years of activity in terms of their view on the national identity and the multicultural idea. This as a result has led to a similar amount of change in the arguments that can be seen as racist, by the party.

The Sweden democrats has for a long time been labelled as a racist party in swedish media. Due to the problems related to the members of the party in the 90s, where members were subject to criminal actions and racist scandals, the media had focus on the racist actions and labelled the party as a racist party therefore. How does the discourse present itself today? The purpose is to make a comparative study between the year 2014 and 2018/2019 and to research if the discourse surrounding the sweden democrats has changed during this time. Relevance for the study is how we discover, categorize and give the discourses names that helps us and also the reader to understand the process about how the media picture Sweden democrats. Our method is a comparative critical discourse analysis that we are going to use on articles published in the two largest newspapers in sweden, Aftonbladet and Expressen. We will locate the surrounding discourses from 2014 at first and then locate what kind of discourses is surrounding the party in 2018/2019. The main discourse from 2014 is the racist discourse, it´s present in nearly every article we analyse. With the racist discourse, the big difference is that the discourse is changing. When we look upon 2018/2019, new discourses take place, the new discourses we locate it’s the right populism-, scandal- and normalization discourse, the rasism discourse is still present but not so extensive as during 2014. During 2014 the racism discourse depends on the scandal discourse, this changes significant, the scandal discourse is no longer in 2018/2019 dependent on the racism discourse, but it acutally transforms into its own discourse. The focus on racism is almost gone and new scandals take place instead. In combination with the normalization discourse we can se that there has been a change, actually a big change in the media discourse surrounding the Sweden democrats.

In 2018, the Sweden Democrats party has gained 17.5 per cent of the votes during the Swedish general elections. Consequently, with this success, they became the third largest party in the riksdag. However, the party’s rapid growth has created several questions in the political arena and the Swedish society about the party’s ideological affiliations and evolutions. The political scientists, Mudde (2010) and Widfeldt (2008) argue that in order to understand a party’s improvements, it is important to explore a party’s ideological evolution. Scholars have argued that Sweden Democrats have normalized their ideas and values; adopted liberal values in some policy areas in order to attract a large number of voters, succeed and survive in the political system. The aim of this study is to explore the party’s idea/ideology changes since its creation in 1988 until present 2019. Hence, the main purpose is to find out if the core ideologies of the Sweden Democrats - that is nativism, authoritarianism and populism- as expressed in their party programs respectively electoral manifestos, are characterized by continuity or by normalization, and adaptation to liberal values. Using Marie Demker’s (1993) concept of ideology, ideal types for radical right populism and liberalism have been constructed as analytical tool. The study shows that throughout the years, the party’s nativist world view and strategy have been changed and normalized, the authoritarian world view has mainly been constant but the strategy has had major changes; shifted to liberal values, and finally regarding populism; both world view and strategy are characterized by continuity.

Sverigedemokraterna är ett radikalt högerpopulistiskt parti som fortsätter att öka sedan valet år 2010. Vid en opinionsundersökning i april 2012 skulle partiet få 8 procent av medborgarnas röster. Syftet med vår uppsats är att förstå och förklara vilka orsaker som ligger till grund för att allt fler medborgare röstar på Sverigedemokraterna. För att kunna besvara syftet med uppsatsen har vi valt att göra en kvalitativ studie genom att med semistrukturerade intervjuer undersöka upplevelser och attityder till dagens samhällsförändringar bland Sverigedemokraternas väljare och relatera deras upplevelser till tidigare forskning inom ämnet. För att besvara vårt syfte blir frågeställningarna följande: På vilket sätt kan SD som parti locka allt fler väljare i dagens globaliserade Sverige? Vilka faktorer kan ligga till grund för att vissa medborgare röstar på SD? Samt vad tror de att SD kan bidra med och förändra i det svenska samhället och mer specifikt för deras egen situation? Vårt teoretiska ramverk är globalisering, representationen ”Vi och Dom”, nation/nationalism och välfärdschauvinism. Med dessa teorier kommer vi ur ett sociologiskt perspektiv förklara vilka samhällsprocesser som interagerar med väljarnas vardagssituation och därmed ligger till grund för deras politiska beslut. Det slutgiltiga resultatet visar att radikal högerpopulistisk retorik är genomgående i samtliga intervjuer. Invandring och välfärdsfrågor var det viktigaste faktorerna till varför intervjupersonerna röstade på Sverigedemokraterna. / The Sweden Democrats is a radical right wing party who continue to increase since the elections in 2010. At a poll in April 2012, the party would get 8 percent of the votes. The purpose of our paper is to understand and explain the reasons underlying that more and more citizens vote for the Sweden Democrats. To be able to respond to the purpose of the paper, we have chosen to make a qualitative study by using semi-structured interviews examine the experiences and attitudes of today's social changes among the Sweden Democrats ' voters and relate their experiences to the previous research on the subject. To answer our purpose becomes the following questions: In what way can the SD as an increasing number of voters in the party attract today's globalized Sweden? What factors can serve as the basis for that some citizens vote on SD? What do they think that SD can contribute and change in Swedish society and more specifically for their own situation? Our theoretical framework is globalization, representation "We and Them" nation/nationalism and welfare-chauvinism. With these theories we come from a sociological perspective to explain what social processes that interact with voters ' living situation and thus is the basis for their policy decisions. The final result shows that radical right wing rhetoric is consistently in all interviews. Immigration and welfare issues were the main factors why the respondents voted for the Sweden Democrats.

This thesis examines and explains how the three Scandinavian populist radical right parties, the Sweden Democrats, the Danish People’s Party and the Progress Party approaches the climate issue in their latest manifesto, and how it has changed over a period of ten years. By means of a content analysis and categorisations of climate scepticism, climate omission and climate measures, this thesis finds explicit evidence of climate scepticism in the Progress Party whereas there is no such evidence for the Sweden Democrats and the Danish People’s Party completely omits the issue. On the other hand, there is evidence of measures to fight climate change in the Progress Party, and the same goes for the Sweden Democrats. However, the only relevant difference when comparing the manifestos over a ten-year period is a decreased usage of statement connected to both climate scepticism and climate action in the Progress Party’s manifestos.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka innehållet i Sverigedemokraternas principprogram för att skapa en förståelse för inslag av radikal högerpopulism i partiets politiska ideologi, så som den kommer till uttryck i dessa texter. Forskningsfrågans relevans grundar sig i den splittring som identifierats bland forskare som sysslar med Sverigedemokraternas politiska ideologi och hur den bör definieras. Trots att Sverigedemokraterna är Sveriges näst största parti, vilket medför ett stort politiskt inflytande, finns alltså en osäkerhet bland forskare om partiets ideologi och intentioner. Det är vanligt förekommande att Sverigedemokraterna beskrivs baserat på deras ställningstagande i enskilda politiska frågor, exempelvis frågor om invandring, men i den här uppsatsen presenteras en analys av Sverigedemokraternas beskrivningar av Sverige, världen och politik i allmänhet. Mitt syfte ska besvaras genom en riktad kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Det material som analyseras är Sverigedemokraternas partiprogram/principprogram från åren 1996, 1999, 2003, 2011 och 2019. I analysen utgår jag från ett teoretiskt ramverk baserat på Jens Rydgrens beskrivningar av radikal högerpopulism. En idealtyp för radikal högerpopulism formuleras med syftet att förenkla och förtydliga ideologins olika grundbultar. Resultatet visar att Sverigedemokraternas principprogram innehåller radikala högerpopulistiska tendenser under alla år, men det identifieras också skillnader som indikerar att principprogrammens primära fokus varierar under åren. Partiets invandringspolitiska ståndpunkter är centrala delar som går i linje med ideologin i samtliga program, där en intolerans inför olikheter och stark etnopluralistisk nationalism identifierats. De radikala högerpopulistiska tendenser som identifieras förekommer i en sådan utsträckning, även 2019, att studiens resultat kan tolkas som stöd till påståenden om att radikal högerpopulism kan användas för att beskriva Sverigedemokraternas ideologi. / The purpose of this study is to examine the content of the Sweden Democrats' party program in order to create an understanding of potential elements of radical right-wing populism in the party's ideology, as expressed in these texts. The relevance of the research question is based on the division identified among researchers of the Sweden Democrats' political ideology and how it should be defined. Even though the Sweden Democrats are Sweden's second largest party, which entails a large political influence, there is still a great deal of uncertainty among the public as well as experts about the party's ideology and intentions. It is common for the Sweden Democrats to be described based on their stance on individual political issues, for example issues of immigration, but this essay presents an analysis of the Sweden Democrats' descriptions of Sweden, the world and politics in general. My purpose is to be answered through a targeted qualitative content analysis. The material that is analyzed is the Sweden Democrats' party programs from the years 1996, 1999, 2003, 2011 and 2019. In the analysis, I use a theoretical framework based on Jens Rydgren's descriptions of radical right-wing populism. An ideal type for radical right-wing populism is formulated with the aim of simplifying and clarifying the core of the ideology. The results show that the Sweden Democrats' party programs contain radical right-wing populist tendencies between the years 1996-2019, but differences are also identified which indicate that the primary focus in the party programs vary over the years. The party’s immigration policies align particularly well with the ideology in all programs, where an intolerance towards differences and a strong ethnopluralist nationalism have been identified. The radical right-wing populist tendencies that are identified occur to such an extent, even in 2019, that the study's results can be interpreted as support for claims that radical right-wing populism can be used to describe the ideology of the Sweden Democrats.