De nya riksdagspartierna och den politiska dagordningen

• Main Author: Engblom, Gustav
• Format: Others
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Växjö universitet, Institutionen för samhällsvetenskap 2009
• Subjects: agenda; nya partier; politisk instabilitet; media; Sverigedemokraterna; Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalisation Studies); Statsvetenskap (exklusive studier av offentlig förvaltning och globaliseringsstudier)
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:vxu:diva-5641

Engblom, Gustav (2009) De nya riksdagspartierna och den politiska dagordningen “The new parilament parties and the political agenda.” 1988 and 1991 the swedish parties Miljöpartiet, Ny demokrati and Kristdemokratiska samlingspartiet made it over the 4 percent threshold and successfully entered the Swedish parliament. Sweden was once described as one of the most stable political systems in the world, but the parliament elections of 1988 and 1991 showed that Sweden was no exception from the growing instability in west democratic political systems. The stability and instability that followed in the west democratic political systems is believed to be explained by the political parties’ efforts to adjust to changes in their political environment. This has lead them to cartelize and the cartel party is believed to prefer stability over triumph for various reasons. The established political parties are believed to be able to manipulate the political agenda in such a way that political topics that would have caused great turbulence in the political system, if debated, are kept away from the political agenda. This the cartel members do to reduce competition among each another. But these political topics can still cause turbulence in the political system if such an issue is actualized by a new party. This essay describes how established party’s propaganda correlates with media’s coverage of the same political issues and how this influence voter preferences. The essay also describes how established parliament parties deals with new parties that aspire to win seats in the Swedish parliament. The main conclusion is that media’s coverage has a huge impact on which questions are perceived to be important to the voters and that established parties do not gain from confronting new parties such as Sverigedemokraterna, if their goal is to keep Sverigedemokraterna from getting seats in the Swedish Parliament. It is instead better to “silence them to death.” However if a new party is ignored by the established parties, but manages to convince the public that a crisis will occur if nothing is done to improve current conditions, this strategy backfires, as it did in 1988 when Miljöpartiet became a parliament party.       Keywords: political agenda; new parties; political instability; media; Sverigedemokraterna