Assessing pariah party status: Concept operationalization and the case of the Sweden Democrats

Abstract

This study presents a novel operationalization of pariah party status, conceiving of pariah status in terms of two continuous dimensions involving (1) a party's coalition potential, and (2) a party's legislative cooperation potential. Recent success of radical right parties has been identified as a common trend throughout Western Europe. Research has focused on mainstream parties' strategies toward these controversial challengers, as well as why some controversial challenger parties are involved in collaborations but others are not. Yet, an elaborate discussion—disentangling the status as pariah—has hitherto been absent in the literature. The article further demonstrates the usefulness of the suggested operationalization, using the Sweden Democrats as an empirical example. When entering parliament in 2010, the Sweden Democrats were a complete pariah party. Recently, however, the party's status has evolved and the Sweden Democrats are now to be regarded as partly pariah.

Debating the Populist Pariah: Changing Party Dynamics and Elite Rhetoric in the Swedish Riksdag

“…We show that negative speech targeting the Sweden Democrats has declined among MPs from the center-right parties over time. The decline in negative rhetoric toward the SD in speeches aligns with Leander's (2022) evidence of their shift from complete pariah status to their partial acceptance by these parties as a legislative cooperation partner. This also relates to patterns observed at the mass level, wherein "voters of the Moderate and Christian Democrats have significantly become more favorable toward the Sweden Democrats" (Reiljan and Ryan, 2021, 216).…”

“…This result is consistent with qualitative accounts of the changing party dynamics in the Riksdag. For instance, around January 2017, the Conservative Party (M), under the leadership of Anna Kinberg Batra, began to entertain the idea of collaborating with SD at the parliamentary committee level (Leander 2022). However, this initiative by Kinberg Batra was deemed still controversial at that time, culminating in her resignation and the temporary reinstatement of the cordon sanitaire by her successor Ulf Kristersson.…”

“…While established parties' 1 responses toward radical right-wing populist parties have varied, many have initially treated such parties as "pariahs," emphasizing divergence from the consensus among major parties on basic democratic norms (Downs, 2001). When radical right parties enter parliament, the established parties that typically form governing coalitions often rule out cooperation with them (see e.g., Backlund, 2020;De Lange, 2012;Leander, 2022). However, as some radical right parties have steadily expanded their parliamentary representation over time, established parties have faced shifting incentives surrounding their treatment of these ostracized parties (De Lange, 2012).…”

Adverse Contagion? Populist Radical Right Parties and Norms on Gender Balance in Political Institutions

“…Since then, the party has steadily increased its seat share to 20.5 % in 2022, currently being the second-largest party after the Social Democrats. Despite the Sweden Democrats' pivotal position between the right and left bloc in parliament, the party has been treated as pariah by the mainstream political parties who have refused to collaborate or negotiate with the party (Backlund, 2020;Leander, 2022). Yet, after the 2018 elections, the mainstream right opened up to abandoning its previous cordon sanitaire towards the Sweden Democrats, and after the 2022 elections, a minority right-wing government was formed.…”

Emigration and Radical Right Populism

“…10 Whether these shifts represent a real change in party ideology is disputed (Erlingsson, Vernby and Öhrvall, 2014), but they did help the party double its vote share in each national election between 2002 and 2014, going from less than 2% to almost 13% of the vote. In 2018, the party polled more than 17%, and some established parties have signaled their willingness to cooperate with it (Leander, 2022). Although the breakthrough of a populist radical right party thus occurred comparatively late in Sweden, these developments resemble those in several other European party systems (Rydgren and Van der Meiden, 2019).…”