Political Parties and Local Refugee Reception in Sweden

• With the increased electoral success of anti-immigration parties, questions on what actual impact the parties obtain naturally follow.Previous research only sparsely has explored this question. Furthermore, within this body of research we are given different answers. While some arguethatanti-immigration parties have made an impact on public policy others find no such evidence. We argue that some of this inconsistency is a consequence of the methodological strategies that have been employed. Previous studies are single case studies or comparisons of a smaller number of countries. Consequently different parties in different institutional settings are compared making it hard to estimate the actual impact of the party of interest. In order to circumvent such methodological problems this studyexplore the question of anti-immigration party impact from a local level and asks if the Sweden Democrats (SD) has managed to influence decisions on refugee receptions in Swedish municipalities.Our analysis show mixed results. Firstly, while we are unable to find an independent effect of the size of the representation of SD we show that the party's impact is conditioned by them holding the balance of power. Secondly, SD impact is not dependent on whether there is a right-wing or left-wing rule although wecan show that local migration policy is stricter when the main right-wing party has a strong support

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap -- Statsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science -- Political Science (hsv//eng)

Keyword

anti-immigration parties

Sweden Democrats

migration policy

municipalites

refugee reception

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kon (subject category)