| 1. |
- Backlund, Anders, 1982-
(författare)
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Isolating the Radical Right : Coalition Formation and Policy Adaptation in Sweden
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In recent decades, established political parties across Europe have become increasingly challenged by a new party family: the radical right. In terms of how mainstream parties respond to this challenge, Sweden has been a puzzling case both in a comparative European perspective and in light of established theories of party competition. Rather than co-opting the restrictive immigration policies of the radical right party the Sweden Democrats, the Swedish mainstream parties jointly converged on liberal policies. In addition, rather than being included as a coalition partner or support party to the government, the Sweden Democrats have been excluded from government formation despite a pivotal position between the established left and right blocs in the parliament. In order to explain these puzzling outcomes, this dissertation combines two bodies of scholarly literature that have tended not to communicate much: coalition theory and research on mainstream party reactions to the radical right. It uses a multi-method research design to analyse party behaviour at both the local and the national level, and in both the electoral and the parliamentary arena. In doing so, it identifies aspects of established theories and concepts in need of refinement. The dissertation argues that despite the apparently puzzling nature of the Swedish case, the isolation of the Sweden Democrats can be explained in terms of the strategic pursuit of policy, office, and votes.The key to the strategic explanation lies in considering three things: first, that different kinds of party strategies interact, within and across arenas; second, that the choice of strategy is constrained, between different levels of a party and over time; and third, that we need to reconsider how some commonly used concepts – such as anti-pacts, winning coalitions, and policy dimensions – are operationalised. Rather than relying on the idea of qualitatively different ‘pariah’ or ‘anti-system’ parties, the findings of this thesis show how the isolation of a radical right party can be explained in terms of the strategic incentives of rival parties. The results also show that the transition from isolation to cooperation can, under certain conditions, be a rapid process. The dissertation is a contribution to research on coalition formation, spatial party competition, and mainstream party reactions to the radical right.
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| 2. |
- Bergman, Torbjörn, et al.
(författare)
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Comparative parliamentary democracy : a project report
- 2005
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Ingår i: European Political Science. - : Palgrave Macmillan. - 1680-4333 .- 1682-0983. ; 4:1, s. 42-54
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Comparative Parliamentary Democracy project examines West European parliamentary politics from a principal–agent perspective. The project involves thirty-five scholars from Western Europe and the Americas. It has made both conceptual and empirical contributions in the fields of comparative politics, parliamentary democracy in general and coalition politics in particular. In this report, the project leaders present the project, its ‘structured collaboration’ approach and share some observations on the practice of conducting a large-scale cross-national project.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Bergman, Torbjörn, 1957-, et al.
(författare)
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Nordic Europe in comparative perspective
- 2011
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Ingår i: The Madisonian turn. - Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press. - 9780472117475 - 0472117475 - 9780472035298 ; , s. 35-64
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)
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| 6. |
- Bergman, Torbjörn, 1957-, et al.
(författare)
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Nordic Europe in comparative perspective
- 2011
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Ingår i: The Madisonian turn. - Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press. - 9780472035298 - 9780472117475 - 9780472025503 ; , s. 35-64
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Few readers will be surprised at our treatment of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden as one region. There is in fact widespread agreement among students of politics, social life, history, and culture that these countries share many commonalities, and that it is for a variety of purposes meaningful and interesting to study them jointly. While the Nordic countries make up a plausible and familiar region, they are not historically or geographically indistinguishable. Two countries (Norway and Sweden) are located on the geographically and culturally cohesive Scandinavian Peninsula (which takes its name from Skåne, the southernmost part of Sweden). Denmark lies on the other side of the strait of Öresund, but is seen as part of Scandinavia for historical, political, and cultural reasons. In strictly geographic terms and in our analysis, Finland and Iceland are considered to be Nordic countries, but not Scandinavian ones. Many observers argue that the political similarities between the five countries outweigh the differences. For this reason, they are often seen as suitable for "most similar system" comparisons (see, for example, Miles 1996; Arter 1999, 147-49). Indeed, Einhorn and Logue (2003, xii) argue that with the impact of globalization and the collapse of the Soviet Union, "the commonalities [in the region] have grown while the differences have lessened." The research presented in this book will allow us to assess such judgments as they apply to contemporary Nordic parliaments and parties.
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| 7. |
- Bergman, Torbjörn, 1957-, et al.
(författare)
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Nordic Europe in Comparative Perspective
- 2013
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Ingår i: The Madisonian Turn. - Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press. - 9780472035298 ; , s. 35-64
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)
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| 8. |
- Bergman, Torbjörn, 1957-, et al.
(författare)
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Parliamentary Democracy Under Siege?
- 2013
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Ingår i: THe Madisonian Turn. - Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press. - 9780472035298 ; , s. 3-34
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)
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| 9. |
- Bergman, Torbjörn, 1957-, et al.
(författare)
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Shifting Dimensions of Citizen Control
- 2004
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Ingår i: Scandinavian Political Studies. - : Wiley. - 0080-6757 .- 1467-9477. ; 27:2, s. 89-113
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- European politics is still dominated by representative and parliamentary national systems of policy making. These systems can be seen as chains of political delegation from citizens through parliamentarians and executive office holders to civil servants. In these chains, a major trend for the past thirty years, and more strongly during the second half of that period, is a strengthening of agents’ accountability to the principals. But, simultaneously, citizens’ ability to exercise accountability through parliamentary democracy is eroding because of a decline in political party cohesion. Concurrently, constraints external to both the constitutional chain and political parties are growing stronger.The changes along these three dimensions lead to a situation in which democratic principals commonly decide more about less. Thus, while reforms have strengthened the constitutional parliamentary chain of governance, there is also an ongoing de-parliamentarisation of modern politics. The main motivation for this special issue is to investigate this general phenomenon through a set of focused case studies of the Nordic (here known as ‘Scandinavian’) countries. These analyses show important differences in how these trends have been manifest. In one country, Finland, the parliamentary chain has actually grown in strength and importance in the last decade.
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| 10. |
- Bergman, Torbjörn, 1957-, et al.
(författare)
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The Nordics : demanding citizens, complex polities
- 2011
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Ingår i: The Madisonian turn. - Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press. - 9780472117475 - 0472117475 - 9780472035298 ; , s. 356-387
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)
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