Radical Right Populism in Sweden: Still a Failure,But for How Long?

Although radical right populist (RRP) parties were successful elsewhere in Western Europe during the 1990s, Denmark and Norway included, the Swedish RRP parties have been more or less failures. Besides the short-lived party New Democracy, which disappeared in 1994, no Swedish RRP party has managed to escape electoral marginalization. The main purpose of this article is to explain this failure. Such an explanation is approached by using explanatory factors identified from earlier research on RRP parties elsewhere. We find some factors that have worked against the emergence of a strong Swedish RRP party, namely: enduring class loyalties, especially for working-class voters; an enduring high salience of the economic cleavage dimension (and a corresponding low salience of the sociocultural cleavage dimension); a relatively low salience of the immigration issue; and finally, a low degree of convergence between the established parties in political space. However, we also find some important indicators that there may be an available niche for the emergence of a Swedish RRP party in the near future, namely: widespread popular xenophobia; a high level of discontent with political parties and other political institutions; and a potential available niche for an anti-EU party of the right. Hence, this article concludes that if a sufficiently attractive party emerges in Sweden, with a certain degree of strategic sophistication and without too visible an anti-democratic heresy, it might be able to attract enough voters to secure representation in the Swedish parliament.     

Rinderwahnsinn. Können Gesellschaften aus Krisen lernen?

Bovine Spongiforme Enzephalopathie, kurz BSE, ist ein Kulminationspunkt einer Reihe sozialer Krisen: BSE ist Symbol für die Krise der Natur, die Krise des Gewissheitsanspruches der Wissenschaften, die Krise der Verwaltungen oder der Agro- und Fleischindustrie. Die BSE-Krise fordert die institutionelle Landschaft moderner Gesellschaften auf besondere Weise heraus. Aber augenscheinlich fällt es Verwaltungen und Regierungen oder einzelnen sub-politischen Akteuren wie Organisationen und Expertengemeinschaften schwer, auf das komplexe Problem zu reagieren. Die Pluralisierung von Wissensansprüchen, -ressourcen und Werthaltungen, aber auch die Zunahme von Ungewissheit und Nicht-Wissen erschweren die Chancen für eine Konvergenz der Problemsichten und die gemeinsame Organisation von Ma\nahmen zur Problemlösung. Vor diesem Hintergrund stellt sich die Frage, inwiefern Gesellschaften überhaupt aus solchen Krisen ?lernen“ können. Die jüngere modemisierungstheoretische Diskussion setzt ihre Hoffnungen dabei auf die Lerneffekte von Netzwerken wie Epistemic Communities, Advocacy- oder Diskurskoalitionen, die die kollektiven Lernchancen quer zu den üblichen Disziplin-, Organisations- und Institutionsgrenzen denken. Der folgende Beitrag versucht über diese Ansätze hinauszugehen. Dabei wird deutlich, dass die Chancen kollektiven Lernens nicht nur von den akteursspezifischen und institutionellen Problemnarrationen abhängen, sondern auch von den institutionellen Kontexten und Verfahren, durch die das Lernen des Lernens organisiert wird. Ob sich durch das Zusammenspiel von Problemnarrationen und interorganisatorischer wie interinstitutioneller Kommunikation die Lernfähigkeit in den unterschiedlichen institutionellen Feldern erhöhen lässt oder sich die Wahrscheinlichkeit ihrer Blockierung erhöht, ist eine brennende Frage.     

Citizenship in the Faroe Islands: Participant,Parochial or Colonial?

This article analyses citizenship and political culture in the Faroe Islands based on a quantitative survey carried out in summer 2004. Located theoretically in the tradition of Scandinavian citizenship investigations and its predecessors in the 'civic culture' tradition of Almond and Verba, four areas of citizenship are analysed: political engagement, democratic participation, political efficacy and democratic identity. The main hypothesis is that the character of citizenship in the Faroe Islands is very similar to that found in the Scandinavian countries in general. While most of the results found confirm this hypothesis, there are a number of special features that demand alternative explanations. Thus, the fact that the Faroese score much below the Scandinavian average concerning 'postmodern' forms of political participation like political consumption or boycott of goods, and that gender differences are bigger than in other Scandinavian countries when it comes to female representation in the Faroese parliament and in government, seems better explained by the relative remoteness of the islands from the Scandinavian political and cultural mainstream (the parochialism hypothesis). Also the fact that the Faroese are much less confident in speaking at public meetings, sending letters to newspapers or complaining to authorities than, for example, Danes in general calls for an alternative explanation. As these features go together with much less knowledge about and confidence in the Danish parliament ('Folketinget') and a lower level of efficacy towards the parliament than among Danes in general, the most likely explanation seem to be found in the way in which Danish supremacy has affected political culture in the Faroe Islands (the colonialism hypothesis).     

Varieties of Reconciliation

In recent years scholars from neighboring disciplines have emphasized the importance of conceptual rigor in designing, administering, and interpreting research in the social sciences. Drawing on this new conceptualism, this article analyzes the much talked about notion of "reconciliation." In an effort at structuring a useful debate on possible departures from historic injustice, the article formulates a systematized concept of reconciliation based on the multitude of meanings contained in theory and practice. It distinguishes varieties of reconciliation, organizing these varieties into types and subtypes. The article argues that while most varieties of reconciliation emanate from the same root concept, the various outer layers of meaning do not overlap. This hampers not only our understanding of reconciliation, but its promotion in the international system as well. In response to this methodological malaise, the article prescribes friendly amendments—conceptual modifications and refinements designed to increase measurement validation of reconciliation as a conceptual variable .     

Meet the critics: Analyzing the EU Commission's Regulatory Scrutiny Board through quantitative text analysis

As part of the “better regulation” agenda, the European Commission created a semi-independent institution, the Regulatory Scrutiny Board, to monitor the preparation of policy proposals. The position of this Board is potentially wide-ranging. A proposal that is not given the green light by it cannot proceed in the Commission's internal decisionmaking process. But so far, the Board has only received scant scholarly attention. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board on the Commission's policy preparation. Using machine learning techniques and quantitative text analysis, we study 673 Board opinions and compare almost 100 draft and final policy proposals. Our findings show that the Board is an active watchdog that is taken seriously by the Commission's departments. A full understanding of policy preparation in the EU therefore requires more scholarly attention to the Regulatory Scrutiny Board.     

Shaping Political Preferences: Information Effects in Political-Administrative Systems

Information is at the heart of politics. However, since information is always sent by someone who is more or less powerful, it is difficult to disentangle the effect of information from the power of the sender. Drawing on a standard model of attitude formation, we argue that presenting information can affect preferences of politicians regardless of the power of the sender. We test this proposition in a survey experiment with 1205 Danish local politicians in which the experimental groups were presented with varying levels of cost information but where sender remained constant. The experiment shows that even in a setting where the information is not disclosed by a powerful sender, information may have a stronger impact on political preferences than other well-known determinants such as committee and party affiliation. Our findings speak to learning theories, knowledge perspectives and the literature on the determinants of politicians’ preferences.