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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-210805 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Bergenfors, Mats |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för idé- och samhällsstudier |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| 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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