I HÖGERPOPULISTISKA PARTIERS SKUGGA? En kvalitativ studie om socialdemokratiska partiers strategival i migration- och integrationsfrågor i Norge, Sverige, Danmark, Nederländerna och Österrike

Abstract

The aim of this Bachelors thesis is to examine the strategic ways Social Democratic parties respond to the electoral success of populist radical right parties (PRRP) in immigration-and integration issues. The theoretical framework is that PRRP pose a triple challenge to Social Democratic parties; increasing the salience of issues traditionally ‘owned’ by the right parties, appealing to the working-class who traditionally vote for the centre left and help the formation of centre-right government coalitions (Bale et al., 2010). The study conducts a secondary analysis by using qualitative data concerning Social Democratic parties in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria and Sweden and the data is categorised by three ideal-typical strategies; hold, defuse and adopt. The five cases stand an empirical gap and hence the four first mentioned cases have been investigated before by Bale et al. (2010) it is therefore possible to make a comparative analysis. Sweden was until the 2010 elections regarded as a deviant case with its absence of PRRP and because Bale et al. (2010) could not include Sweden as a case this thesis will furthermore contribute to empirical evidence with which strategy the Swedish Social Democratic party has chosen. The results show that the Social Democratic parties do not adopt the PRRP’s restrictive political agenda on immigration-and integration issues to a higher extent compared with previous research results. But as the PRRP might become more established and experienced it puts more pressure on the Social Democratic parties to adopt its agenda to stay competitive in the future.