Return to search

The Salience of Issues in Parliamentary Debates : Its Development and Relation to the Support of the Sweden Democrats

The aim of this study was to analyze the salience of issue dimensions in the Swedish parliament debates by the established parties during the rise of the Sweden Democrats Party (SD). Structural topic modeling was used to construct a measurement of the salience of issues, examining the full body of speeches in the Swedish parliament between September 2006 and December 2019. Trend analysis revealed a realignment from a focus on socio-economic to socio-cultural issues in Swedish politics. Cross-correlation analyses had conflicting results, indicating a weak positive relationship between the salience of issues and the support of SD – but low predictive ability; it also showed that changes in the support of SD did lead (precede) changes in the salience of issues in the parliament. The ramifications of socio-cultural issues being the most salient are that so-called radical right-wing populist parties (RRPs), or neo-nationalist parties, has a greater opportunity to gain support. It can make voters more inclined to base their voting decision on socio-cultural issues, which favors parties who fight for and are trustworthy in those issues – giving them more valence in the eyes of the voters.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-167610
Date January 2020
CreatorsAlexander, Ödlund Lindholm
PublisherLinköpings universitet, Institutionen för ekonomisk och industriell utveckling, Linköpings universitet, Filosofiska fakulteten
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Page generated in 0.0026 seconds