Ideological Transformations, Organizational Development and Mainstream Reactions. A Comparison of Populist Parties in Four Nordic Countries, 2015

This project offers comparative knowledge on how, why and when popular attitudes towards the out-group population translate into party political preferences in countries that share very similar socio-political attributes; hence, the Nordic countries. The Nordic countries seem to constitute a fruitful design so as to move beyond demand side explanations and to acknowledge supply-oriented explanations for the varying electoral fortunes of the four nationalist-populist parties. This project involved contextualized comparisons over time. The study called attention to the rise of national-populist parties in the four Nordic countries: the Sweden Democrats (SD) in Sweden; the Danish People's Party (DPP) in Denmark; the Progress Party (PP) in Norway and the True Finns (TS) in Finland. These parties experienced their greatest electoral success in recent years and since 2010 they have all been represented in the national parliament. The main research question was why these four parties differ in terms of electoral support, policy influence and governmental experience. The empirical focus was on how the national-populist parties have changed ideologically and organizationally and which strategies the mainstream parties have adopted faced with a new political competitor arena and mainstream reactions to their development in the public debate. Data was collected by manual coding of e.g. topic and tone of the articles in four leading newspapers in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland.本项目提供了比较研究视角，阐释在社会政治属性高度趋同的国家——即北欧诸国——中，民众对外群体的态度如何、为何以及何时会转化为政党政治偏好。北欧诸国堪称绝佳的研究场景，能够突破需求侧解释框架，为四国民族主义民粹主义政党不同的选举运势提供供给侧层面的解释。本项目采用历时性语境化比较研究方法。本研究聚焦北欧四国民族主义民粹主义政党的崛起：瑞典的瑞典民主党（Sweden Democrats, SD）、丹麦的丹麦人民党（Danish People's Party, DPP）、挪威的进步党（Progress Party, PP）以及芬兰的真芬兰人党（True Finns, TS）。上述政党近年均取得了其选举史上的最佳战绩，且自2010年起悉数跻身各国国会。本研究的核心议题为：为何这四国民族主义民粹主义政党在选举支持度、政策影响力与执政经验方面存在显著差异。本研究的实证重点在于：民族主义民粹主义政党在意识形态与组织架构层面发生了何种演变，以及主流政党面对这一新兴政治竞争格局时采取了哪些应对策略，同时探讨公众舆论中主流社会对其发展的反应。本研究的数据通过手动编码方式采集，编码维度涵盖瑞典、丹麦、挪威、芬兰四国四大主流报刊报道的主题与语调等内容。