Anders Widfeldt

State subsidies to political parties: Confronting rhetoric with reality

This article investigates the political impact of the introduction of state subsidies to political parties. The arguments for and against subsidising political parties are outlined. Different models of party subsidies, and their regulatory frameworks, are discussed. We find little evidence of a cross‐national impact of the introduction of party subsidies. The subsidies cannot explain the decline in party membership. Nor is there evidence to suggest that the subsidies were introduced as a response to membership decline. There is no support for the allegation that party subsidies lead to the petrification of party systems. The subsidies have not meant that other income sources have lost their significance for political parties.

Elite Collusion and Public Defiance: Sweden's Euro Referendum in 2003

In a referendum held on Sunday, 14 September 2003, the Swedish electorate rejected membership of the third stage of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). After a campaign characterised as heated by Swedish standards, and the murder of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, the referendum delivered a clear ‘No’ majority. In this article, it is argued that while the 2003 EMU referendum may not have compromised the use of referendums as an occasional complement to representative democracy, it did indicate a substantial gap between citizens and the political elite.

Losing Touch? The Political Representativeness of Swedish Parties, 1985-1994

Political parties are often said to be in decline. In Sweden, the major parties have lost significant amounts of members and activists in recent years. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the decline in participatory linkage via parties has been accompanied by a representative decline. Using data from the Swedish Election Studies and Parliamentary Studies, average self-placement on the left-right schema is compared between Members of Parliament, party activists, party members and voters. There is no evidence of a decline in the political representativeness of the parliamentarians. There is, however, some evidence that members and activists have become radicalized compared to the voters. This is particularly true of the Social Democrats, and also to some extent in the Moderate Party. Thus, while there is no general decline in the representative linkage provided by the Swedish parties, there is some justification to speak of a representational decline for the Swedish parties as membership organizations.

What Sort of Semi-presidentialism do Finns Want? An Intra-systemic Comparative Analysis

Against the backdrop of moves by the political establishment, endorsed by political scientists, to shift towards a purely ceremonial presidency, this paper uses recent survey data to assess levels of popular support – and the socio-demographic structure of support – for two different types of semi-presidentialism in Finland. It represents an exercise in intra-country comparison – comparing public support for a return to the significant powers the head of state possessed under the 1919 constitution (Duverger-style semi-presidentialism) with backing for the more limited presidential prerogatives enshrined in the 2000 constitution (status quo semi-presidentialism). Correlation and multiple regression analysis of complementary data-sets led to two main findings. The vast majority of Finns seem content with the current limited powers of the president – status quo presidentialism – whilst among the minority that would apparently prefer a return to Duverger-style semi-presidentialism, there is a disproportionate number of persons with relatively low levels of formal education, low social status and predominantly left-wing party political persuasion.

A fourth phase of the extreme right? Nordic immigration-critical parties in a comparative context

In recent years much attention, in the media as well as in scholarly publications, has been paid to extreme right parties. This distinctive party family, which challenges the political establishment with criticism against immigration as a prioritised issue, is not new. It can, at least, be traced back to the early post-World War II years, and is thus older than, for example, the green party family. With the German scholar Klaus von Beyme’s distinction into three historical phases as point of departure, this article discusses the development of the extreme right party family from the late 1940s to date. It is argued that, to von Beyme’s three phases, it is now appropriate to add a fourth phase. This most recent phase is characterised by increased legitimacy and political influence for extreme right parties. As shown by the illustrative example of Denmark, the fourth phase has far-reaching potential political and societal consequences.

What kind of party is UKIP? The future of the extreme right in Britain or just another Tory party?

This article aims to further our understanding of the nature of the UK Independence Party. Our approach differs from much of the existing literature on party families, by analysing public attitudes towards the UK Independence Party in comparison with other parties. Multidimensional unfolding is utilised to map UK Independence Party’s place in the British party system, Tobit regressions are employed to compare UK Independence Party’s support base with that of the British National Party and the Conservatives and, finally, latent class analysis is used to assess the heterogeneity in UK Independence Party’s support base. The conclusion is that, with increasing success, the UK Independence Party has established itself as the only viable electoral option for British extreme right voters while also making serious inroads into more traditional conservative circles, who are Eurosceptic but not extreme. This bridging position between the mainstream and the extreme makes the UK Independence Party distinctive from other British parties and has parallels with the positions of anti-establishment, European Union sceptical and immigration-critical parties elsewhere in Europe.

Torbjörn Bergman and Kaare Strøm (eds), The Madisonian Turn: Political parties and parliamentary democracy in Nordic Europe, reviewed by Anders Widfeldt

how in Zimbabwe election violence and repression in 2002, and even more so in 2008, severely weakened the opposition party on the ground. In response, the MDC leadership around Morgan Tsvangirai established ‘action committees’ staffed with younger, more militant, party members. These parallel structures operated independently of regular party branches and proved crucial in the campaign of mass action. However, their role and recourse to violence was controversial within the party, resulting in a split in 2005. The case of Zimbabwe reveals that, at the very least, polarization is a double-edged sword. The bulk of the book is devoted to labour relations, the role of trade unions in organizing protest, and the emergence of opposition parties spanning the entire postindependence period. LeBas has collected a wealth of data through field research in all three countries and provides fascinating insights into the lives of their main opposition parties. The case of Kenya is arguably the least developed and as a reader one can only speculate whether the decision to include that third case was by design or, say, an unintended consequence of Oxford University Press selecting an expert on Kenya as one of the reviewers of the manuscript. All too often the study of African politics is left to Africanists. LeBas’s book does an admirable job in grounding the study of African parties firmly in mainstream comparative politics, although more use could have been made of the European literature on corporatism and on political parties. The concluding chapter seeks to draw lessons about party-building and the prospects for democracy. It struggles, as do the case studies, with the question how much is explained by legacy and how much room is left for choice. It does not succeed in providing a clear answer on whether, and under what circumstances, opposition polarization is a source of democratization or rather an excuse and trigger for authoritarian retrenchment. The main policy recommendation is to strengthen national associations in the hope that one day they may provide the basis for (opposition) parties that cut across sub-national divisions; although LeBas admits it is unlikely that the story of Zambia and Zimbabwe – where the main opposition parties grew out of labour federations – will be repeated. Finally, despite the almost Leninist belief in the importance of party organization and confrontation displayed in this book, ultimately it does not tell opposition party leaders in hybrid regimes in Africa or elsewhere what to do: ‘To polarize or not to polarize?’.

Book Review: Jens Rydgren, From Tax Populism to Ethnic Nationalism. Radical Right-Wing Populism in Sweden. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2006. US

note, there has been little discussion within the parties of the changes wrought by the shift to the new format, which is now considered the appropriately democratic and inclusive thing to do. Conventional Choices sets the foundation for just such a discussion. The book is a solid research achievement based on a data set that has been developed by members of the Department of Political Science at Acadia University in Nova Scotia and carefully interpreted by Stewart and Stewart. Students of political parties everywhere will find their work to be a reliable and illuminating account of the leadership selection processes in one liberal-democratic part of the world.