For this study, I set out to examine the electoral manifestos of four European populist parties in national elections, in order to analyze the ideological similarities and differences between the Finns Party, the Sweden Democrats, the National Rally, and the League. Political manifestos represent authoritative statements on party policies. I aimed to compare the ideologies expressed in the manifestos and to allocate them on a left-neutral-right scale according to a model developed by Backlund (2013), Benoitand Laver (2007), and Lowe et al. (2011). The theoretical background comes from Spatial theory (Downs 1957, Sartori 1977, Adams 1998) and Saliency theory (Budge & Farlie 1983, Budge et al. 2001, Klingemann et al. 2006). I derived the research data from the Manifesto Research on Political Representation (MARPOR) database; the data are longitudinal, covering 48 variables from two elections during the period of 2011-2018. I investigated how the parties present their political goals through qualitative analyses, as well as an examination of the salience and frequency of issues. I compared the data to long-term trends from MARPOR data and from the Chapel Hill Expert Surveys. My findings indicate that the parties have common ideological traits such as nationalism, European Union (EU) opposition, and immigration negativity, but they differ in how they advocate for various policy matters. The Finns Party is the least moderate and openly exhibits nationalism and discriminatory features. The Sweden Democrats share attributes with leftist ideologies, except for the EU opposition and a veiled immigration negativity. The National Rally is nationalistic and privileges protectionism, but is more indirectly immigration and EU negative. The League shows an increasing preference for federalism and EU and immigration negativity during the two elections.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-187380 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Arling, Heidi Kristina |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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