With the increased electoral success of anti‐immigration parties, questions regarding what impact the parties actually have naturally follow. Previous research has rarely explored this question. Furthermore, within this body of research, one is given different answers. While some argue that anti‐immigration parties have made an impact on public policy, others find no such evidence. This article shows that some of this inconsistency is a consequence of the methodological strategies that have been employed. Previous studies are either single case studies or comparisons of a small number of countries. Consequently, different parties in different institutional settings are compared, making it difficult to estimate the actual impact of the party of interest. In order to circumvent such methodological problems, this article explores the question of anti‐immigration party impact on a local level and asks if the Sweden Democrats (SD) have managed to influence decisions on refugee reception in Swedish municipalities. The analysis shows mixed results. First, while unable to find an independent effect of the size of the representation of the SD, it appears that the party's impact is conditioned by them holding the balance of power. Second, the SD's impact is not dependent upon whether there is right‐wing or left‐wing rule, although local migration policy is stricter when the main right‐wing party has strong support.

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Despite the widespread recognition of the relevance of intra-party democracy (IPD), there has been a lamentable scarcity of empirical data suitable for large-N cross-sectional comparative analysis. This has changed with the Political Party Database Project (PPDB) project. Against this background this chapter sheds some light on questions about whether and how IPD varies systematically by country and party level criteria. The empirical analysis shows that country-level factors are generally more important than party-level factors. Most importantly, the existence of a party law and levels of trust and affluence are associated with higher levels of IPD. However, the authors also find that smaller parties, in terms of membership size, are associated with higher levels of IPD. While the results must be interpreted with some caution, the authors believe they constitute a first step towards reframing the scholarly debate on IPD from what is normatively desirable to a discussion about causes and consequences of variations in IPD.

The question of how party leaders are selected has recently, and belatedly, come under systematic comparative scrutiny. If it is the location of intra-party power that interests us, however, it might be that some of the more observable indicators in such processes, such as the identity of the selectorate, are not actually the most revealing ones. Using a delegation perspective, we thus present a framework for analysing prior steps in leader selection and relate it to various ideal-typical constellations of intra-party power. The framework encompasses, first, what we call precursory delegation, with focus especially on an agent that, formally or informally, manages the selection process before it reaches the selectorate. Second, the framework takes account of the degree to which the process is managed rather than left open to free competition between leader candidates. We illustrate the framework primarily with instances of leader selection in two Swedish parties.

Although the number of studies of new political parties is gradually increasing, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of when new parties manage to enter national parliaments. The objective of this article is to explain the circumstances under which new parties enter national parliaments for the first time. Unlike earlier research, this study does not focus on individual party families. Instead, generally applicable explanations are sought. This is achieved through an examination of the importance of the political opportunity structure, that is, the external environment new parties face in their quest for parliamentary representation. Using data collected for 18 Western European countries for the period 1960-2010, the analysis shows that institutional factors are important to understand new party parliamentary entry. The sociological factors analysed in the study, however, do not seem to be of equal importance.

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