Do Anti‐immigration Parties Matter? The Case of the Sweden Democrats and Local Refugee Policy

Abstract

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.

Who's Welcome and Who's Not? Opposition towards Immigration in the Nordic Countries, 2002–2014

“…Group threat theory predicts that a hostile political climate will induce feelings of threat, and thereby influence attitudes towards immigrants (Blumer 1958;Hopkins 2010). While RRPs have been found to impact policy positions of other political parties (Minkenberg 2001;Bolin et al 2014;Careja et al 2016), previous studies provide mixed results in relation to the degree of negative immigrant attitudes (Muis & Immerzeel 2017). While some find significant effects of RRP presence (Semyonov et al 2006; Sprague-Jones 2011), others do not (Dunn & Singh 2011;Bohman & Hjerm 2016), which can be related to how RRPs generally lack legitimacy in the eyes of the broader public (cf.…”

Direct and Indirect Welfare Chauvinism as Party Strategies: An Analysis of the Danish People's Party

“…Only few studies have analyzed the strategies of these parties to achieve policy influence and reach their policy goals. These studies, for good reasons, focused especially on immigration policy (Schain ; Akkerman ; Van Spanje ; Bolin et al ) and multiculturalism (Han ), and found that PRW parties have restrictive effects. This finding is unsurprising, given that these policies touch the parties’ core programmatic issues and affect a well‐defined target group.…”

Contemporary Land Questions in Sweden, Far‐Right Populist Strategies and Challenges for Inclusionary Rural Development

“…In this regard, one study concluded that electoral support for the Sweden Democrats increased in municipalities where mainstream parties took tougher positions on immigration (Dahlström and Sundell 2012). On the other hand, it can be noted that at the level of decisions on refugee reception in Swedish municipalities where SD had political representation, it has not been found that other parties took more restrictive directions concerning refugee policies to counteract the electoral success of SD (Bolin et al 2014).…”