Niklas Bolin

Towards a two-party system? The Swedish parliamentary election of September 2006

The Swedish Social Democrats are one of the most successful political parties in the democratic world. Between 1932 and 2006 they were out of government for just over nine years, and had not needed a coalition partner since the 1950s. The result of Sweden’s election of 17 September 2006, then, must count as something of an electoral earthquake (see Table 1). The Social Democrats suffered their worst score in a parliamentary election since 1920 – that is, since the advent of fully democratic politics. Göran Persson, prime minister since 1996, immediately announced his resignation as party leader – the first time in the Social Democrats’ long history that a leader had resigned after electoral defeat. By contrast, the result was a spectacular success for an unprecedented alliance of four opposition, right-of-centre parties, led by the new prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt. His Moderate Party achieved its best result since 1928 and the biggest jump in support between elections enjoyed by any party in Swedish history. The four allied parties duly formed a coalition government three weeks later – the first Swedish administration formally based on a parliamentary majority since 1981. The election outcome had one ostensibly puzzling feature. The conventional wisdom is that booming economies favour incumbent parties, while stagnant ones favour the opposition. In a post-election article, Persson (2006) pointed out that, among other shining economic indicators, inflation in Sweden was negligible; the public finances would probably enjoy a surplus that year of 3 per cent; and the economy had grown in the second quarter of 2006 by a remarkable 5.1 per cent. Why, then, when the Swedish economy was apparently performing so impressively, did the governing party nevertheless suffer such a profound defeat? In this article, we describe and explain the election result. In the following section, we outline the background to the campaign, with a review of events

Polarising Pluralism: The Swedish Parliamentary Election of September 2014

The parliamentary election in Sweden on 14 September 2014 resulted in defeat for the four-party centre-right coalition that had governed for eight years. It was displaced by another coalition, comprising the Social Democrats and the Greens. The new government rested on a very narrow parliamentary base, however, and its prospects looked uncertain. Its weakness was in large part due to the strong electoral performance of the far-right Sweden Democrats.

Do Anti-immigration Parties Matter? The Case of the Sweden Democrats and Local Refugee Policy

With the increased electoral success of anti-immigration parties, questions regarding whatimpact the parties actually have naturally follow. Previous research has rarely explored thisquestion. Furt ...

Managed Intra-Party Democracy : Precursory Delegation and Party Leader Selection

The question of how party leaders are selected has recently, and belatedly, come under systematic comparative scrutiny. If it is the location of intra-party power that interests us, however, it might be that some of the more observable indicators in such processes, such as the identity of the selectorate, are not actually the most revealing ones. Using a delegation perspective, we thus present a framework for analysing prior steps in leader selection and relate it to various ideal-typical constellations of intra-party power. The framework encompasses, first, what we call precursory delegation, with focus especially on an agent that, formally or informally, manages the selection process before it reaches the selectorate. Second, the framework takes account of the degree to which the process is managed rather than left open to free competition between leader candidates. We illustrate the framework primarily with instances of leader selection in two Swedish parties.

Party organizational development and the electoral performance of the radical right: exploring the role of local candidates in the breakthrough elections of the Sweden democrats 2002–2014

ABSTRACT It is today commonplace to view radical right parties as masters of their own fates. However, whereas most authors in the field focus on dominant leaders, the impact of party organizations remains understudied. To remedy some of this, we study the impact of three unique measures of organizational development on the electoral performance of the Sweden Democrats (SD) in four consecutive local elections between 2002 and 2014. When controlling for crucial demand- and supply-side factors, while holding the appeal of the national leadership constant, we find that the size, competence, and stability of the local candidate base were all decisive for explaining the success of the SD. These findings suggest that a developed organizational base not only matters to the long-term persistence of radical right parties, but also to their electoral breakthrough. Additionally, we suggest that party organizations are likely to have a greater impact in countries where radical right parties are already established. We conclude by arguing that our findings potentially provide insights into mechanisms that explain how new parties in general establish themselves.

The Swedish Greens: a big step forward – and several steps back

The parliamentary election of 14 September 2014 induced decidedly mixed feelings in the Swedish Green Party (Miljöpartiet de gröna). It led to the ejection of the centre-right government and the installation, for the first time, of Green cabinet ministers. However, the party also experienced a small but unexpected loss of votes compared to its score in the previous election. Moreover, partly because a far-right party built impressively on its breakthrough into the national parliament in 2010, the new government rests on a precariously narrow parliamentary base.