Notes on the 'Freezing Hypothesis'

It is now 40 years since Lipset and Rokkans heavily influential ‘Cleavage Structures…’ was first published. Current research has still made little effort to explain why the ‘freezing’ of party systems these authors observed actually took place. The purpose here is to contribute to this field by elucidating the individual-level mechanisms that make party system stability more intelligible. The argument put forward here is that three interrelated factors give us deeper insights into the mechanics of the so called ‘freezing process’. Firstly, the ‘problem of collective action among potential party-entrepreneurs’ makes it puzzling that new political parties emerge at all. Secondly, even if the original collective-action problem somehow is overcome, the ‘principal-agent problem’ and the ‘problem of voter coordination’ make it hard for new parties to attract voters. Finally, well-established and powerful competitors have the incentives and instruments to fight newcomers and steer them away from the political arena. I reach the conclusion that it is not surprising at all that Lipset and Rokkan made their empirical observations. Instead, what is really puzzling is why new political parties emerge and gain support at all.Party systems; 'freezing hypothesis'; party formation

Explaining Party Emergence in Swedish Local Politics 1973–2002

Since individuals demanding formations of new parties face a collective action problem, I inquire why people form new parties, and why this political strategy became increasingly popular between 1973 and 2002 in Swedish municipalities. Case-studies indicate that ‘strong emotions’ – i.e. anger, frustration and indignation – mobilize rational actors to start up new parties. However, ‘strong emotions’ only explain why individuals form parties in the first place, not why party formation has become a popular strategy. Hence, I hypothesize that entrepreneurs forming parties at t inspire potential entrepreneurs in neighbouring municipalities at t + 1. Since previous attempts to explain the increasing number of new parties in Sweden have failed, I maintain that the support the hypothesis gains adds important knowledge to this field.Party entrepreneurs; new parties; emotional arousal; rational imitation; local politics; Sweden

Resilience through Restructuring: Swedish Policy-Making Style and the Consensus on Liberalizations 1980–2000

In 1980, Sweden was a highly regulated economy with several state monopolies and low levels of economic freedom. Less than 20 years later, liberal reforms have turned Sweden into one of the worlds most open economies with a remarkable increase in economic freedom. While taxes and expenditure shares of GDP remain high, there has been a profound restructuring of Sweden’s economy in the 1980s and 1990s. Furthermore, the degree of political consensus is striking, both regarding the policies that characterized Sweden up to 1980, as well as the subsequent liberalizations. Since established theories have difficulties explaining institutional change in heavily institutionalized settings, we seek to understand how the Swedish style of policy-making produced this surprising political consensus on liberal reforms. Building on previous research, we underscore the importance of three complementary factors: (i) Policy-making in Sweden has always been influenced by, and intimately connected to, social science. (ii) Government commissions have functioned as ‘early warning systems’, pointing out future challenges and creating a common way to perceive problems. (iii) As a consequence from social science influence and the role of public investigations, political consensus has evolved as a specific feature of Swedish style of policy-making. The approach to policy-making has been rationalistic, technocratic and pragmatic. Thus, the political consensus in Sweden on substantial liberalizations is no more surprising than the political consensus on the development of the welfare state.Sweden; Welfare state; institutional change; globalization; policy-making; policy-style

Energy spectra for quantum wires and 2DEGs in magnetic fields with Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interactions

We introduce an analytical approximation scheme to diagonalize parabolically confined two dimensional electron systems with both the Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interactions. The starting point of our perturbative expansion is a zeroth-order Hamiltonian for an electron confined in a quantum wire with an effective spin-orbit induced magnetic field along the wire, obtained by properly rotating the usual spin-orbit Hamiltonian. We find that the spin-orbit-related transverse coupling terms can be recast into two parts W and V, which couple crossing and non-crossing adjacent transverse modes, respectively. Interestingly, the zeroth-order Hamiltonian together with W can be solved exactly, as it maps onto the Jaynes-Cummings model of quantum optics. We treat the V coupling by performing a Schrieffer-Wolff transformation. This allows us to obtain an effective Hamiltonian to third order in the coupling strength k_Rl of V, which can be straightforwardly diagonalized via an additional unitary transformation. We also apply our approach to other types of effective parabolic confinement, e.g., 2D electrons in a perpendicular magnetic field. To demonstrate the usefulness of our approximate eigensolutions, we obtain analytical expressions for the n^th Landau-level g_n-factors in the presence of both Rashba and Dresselhaus couplings. For small values of the bulk g-factors, we find that spin-orbit effects cancel out entirely for particular values of the spin-orbit couplings. By solving simple transcendental equations we also obtain the band minima of a Rashba-coupled quantum wire as a function of an external magnetic field. These can be used to describe Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations. This procedure makes it easier to extract the strength of the spin-orbit interaction in these systems via proper fitting of the data.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figure

Supply Equals Success? The Sweden Democrats’ Breakthrough in the 2006 Local Elections

The Swedish party system has been one of the world’s most stable, and anti-immigrant parties have been largely absent from the centre-stage of Swedish politics. It is thus peculiar that an anti-immigrant party, the Sweden Democrats (SD), made a dramatic breakthrough in the 2006 local elections, gaining representation in 144 out of 290 municipalities. The purpose of this article is to explain why the SD gained representation in almost half of the Swedish municipalities. Results indicate support for a supply-oriented argument: whether the SD ran with a formal ballot or not has a substantial and statistically significant effect on their probability of receiving representation even when a series of variables, suggested by previous research, is controlled for. The result has important ramifications, since it implies that no obvious socioeconomic factors, e.g. local ‘fertile grounds’, brought SDs success about. Rather, what decided its fate was whether or not the party had an organizational presence and actual candidates running for seats.Anti-immigrant parties; elections; Sweden