Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European ...

144 Twenty-First Century Populism
We have thus found that Sweden has about as many xenophobic and
immigration-sceptic voters per head of the population as other Western
European countries. Some 50 per cent of voters favour taking in fewer asylum-seekers
and a relatively large proportion accords high priority to the
issues of asylum and immigration. As Marie Demker (2003: 89) has shown,
the proportion of voters holding anti-immigrant sentiments was higher (60
per cent) amongst those who ranked refugee and immigration issues as one
of the top three social problems. This means that 11 per cent of voters want
a tighter immigration and asylum policy and consider this more important
than most other issues. It is amongst such voters that RRP parties can hope
to mobilize support, leaving us to conclude that there is a relatively large
niche available for a Swedish anti-immigration party to take root. At the
same time, however, immigration has not been a particularly salient political
issue, in the sense that it has not significantly affected voting behaviour,
as has been the case in countries where RRP parties have enjoyed success.
Party convergence
The degree of party convergence can also affect the political opportunity
structure for emerging parties (Kitschelt, 1995). Convergence may fuel political
distrust and alienation by aggravating the sense that there are no significant
and relevant differences between the parties. It thus creates an
atmosphere in which political discontent can be articulated and mobilized.
It can also serve to create niches in the voter arena. Equally important is
that it can trigger the depoliticization of a formerly dominant cleavage
dimension, such as the socio-economic dimension (Schattschnieder, 1975;
Rydgren, 2005), by rendering it less engaging and thus less relevant for
voters and the media. In its place, a new, alternative cleavage dimension
(such as the socio-cultural) may then flourish, which in turn can facilitate
the rise of a new populist party.
Swedish political space, however, did not see any major convergence
between 1994 and 2003. When asked to place the parties on a Right-Left scale
(on which 0 represented the far Left and 10 the far Right), voters gave the
Conservative Party a score of 8.9 in the 1979 and 1982 elections, 9.0 in 1985,
8.9 again in 1988, 8.7 in 1991, 8.8 in 1994 and 8.9 once more in the 1998 election.
Similarly, the Left Party was consistently placed between 0.9 and 1.4
between 1979 and 1998. The Social Democrats, however, have migrated to
the Right since the mid 1980s (with the exception of the 1994 election), and
between 1994 and 1998 drifted from 3.2 to 3.8 (Holmberg, 2000: 124).
Nonetheless, this method tells us nothing about how voters actually interpret
the terms ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ and we can surmise that they base their distinction
of the parties’ respective positions on socio-economic considerations.
At the same time, however, we know that the socio-cultural dimension
(which comprises issues of nationality and nationalism, immigration, abortion,
law, security and so on) is more fundamental to the emergence of