“We Are a Small Country That Has Done Enormously Lot”: The ‘Refugee Crisis’ and the Hybrid Discourse of Politicizing Immigration in Sweden

This article looks at mainstream political discourses about immigration in Sweden during the recent “refugee crisis”. It argues that different patterns of politicization of immigration have traditionally dominated in Sweden and focuses on Swedish mainstream politics wherein, as is shown, explicit focus on politicization via (previous as well as current) immigration-related policies still persists. However, as the analysis of Sweden's Social Democratic Party's Twitter discourse shows, a hybrid new discourse of politicization is now emerging. It allows political actors to legitimize immigration policy with often populist-like politicization and the use of new modes of online political communication

Anti-Immigrant Parties, Local Presence and Electoral Success

Does the local organisational presence of anti-immigrant parties affect their chances for electoral success? In order to answer this question, the article explores the potential of a supply-oriented explanation to anti-immigrant party success by examining the electoral advancements the Sweden Democrats (SD) made in the 2006 and 2010 elections. Our results indicate that traditional demand side-explanations to anti-immigrant party success can be successfully complemented by a ‘internal supply-side argument’ to make the electoral fates of these parties more intelligible. Whether the SD had a local organisational presence had a substantial effect on its results in the national election and on the probability of gaining representation in local councils. Thus, the party´s fate in the national as well as local elections was largely determined by whether or not it had a local organisational presence in Swedish municipalities. </p

Assessing the adoption of household safety protection (HSP) in Stockholm, Sweden

This study examines the adoption of household safety protection (HSP) measures in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Drawing upon assumptions from environmental criminology and situational crime prevention, the study explores the impact of crime and fear of crime on HSP. Geographical Information System (GIS) combines in a single dataset data on HSP adoption: A cross-sectional resident safety survey, socio-demographic statistics of the areas and newspaper vignettes. A pre-analysis of the data is used to check whether HSP adoption varied by tenancy type. Then, hypothesis testing is performed using binary logistic regression models to identify significant predictors of HSP, including individuals' previous victimization, perception of high crime rates in the neighborhood, declared altruistic fear, and exposure to crime in the local media, while controlling for individual and areal covariates. Protection strategies are found to differ significantly according to tenancy type, and among those who rent, HSP varies by type of housing company. The likelihood of having several types of HSP was found to increase with perception of crime and altruistic fear but to only a small extent, previous victimization.</p

Radical right‐wing voters from right and left: Comparing Sweden Democrat voters who previously voted for the Conservative Party or the Social Democratic Party

As in many other European countries, the political system has undergone rapid changes in Sweden while a radical right-wing party - The Sweden Democrats (SD) - has grown from a negligible position into one of the country's largest parties. SD has been winning voters from both the right and the left sides of the political spectrum, and particularly from Sweden's two largest parties, the Conservative Party (Moderaterna, M) and the Social Democratic Party (S). The present study investigated the extent to which SD voters who previously voted for one of these two parties differ from each other, and compared these SD voters with current Conservative Party and Social Democratic voters. The results showed that 1) economic deprivation offers a better explanation for the past mobility from S, than from M, to the SD; 2) no group differences were found between previous M and S voters in attitudes connected to the appeal of an anti-establishment party; and 3) views on the profile issues espoused by the radical right, most importantly opposition to immigration, did not differ between SD voters who come from M and S. However, SD voters - particularly SD voters who had formerly voted for the Social Democratic party - differed from the voters of their previous parties in several aspects. It is thus possible that many SD voters will not return to the parties they previously voted for, at least as long as the immigration issue continues to be of high salience in the society.</p

The Eurosceptic Europeanization of public spheres: print and social media reactions to the 2014 European Parliament elections.

The present study tests the theoretical claim that Eurosceptics contribute to the Europeanization of national public spheres. Although advocating a renationalization of European politics, Eurosceptic parties can engender public media debates of transnational or European relevance. Through a comparative research design of two national cases (Sweden and Denmark), we examine the public discourse on the day following the 2014 European Parliament elections across three media: print, Twitter, and Facebook. Separating the discussions of Eurosceptic issues and actors from other topics of the election coverage, we find that the discourses about Euroscepticism exhibit a higher degree of Europeanization in four of the six media analyzed. Moreover, while we detect significant differences in valence between the Swedish and Danish press when reporting about the Eurosceptics, such national variation is much less pronounced on the social networking sites. The findings suggest, firstly, that Eurosceptics’ contestation of the EU may have the unintended effect of giving national media debates a stronger European dimension. Secondly, the study warrants moderate optimism for the Europeanization potential of social media vis-à-vis traditional media structures: Print media was more Europeanized in scope, whereas social media publics were more aligned in their sentiment toward Euroscepticism