Ivarsflaten: - The Progress Party and the Sweden Democrats are not fully comparable
Associate Professor Elisabeth Ivarsflaten says to Newspaper Aftenposten that the two parties’ different origins render them not fully comparable.
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The Sweden Democrats’ the election winner
Associate Professor Elisabeth Ivarsflaten, an expert on far right parties at the Department of Comparative Politics, is interviewed in a number of media outlets in recent days about the Sweden Democrats’ great surge in electoral support in the Swedish parliamentary election 14. September. Ivarsflaten says to Aftenposten that the negative reaction of the other Swedish parties to the Sweden Democrats’ electoral success must be understood within a broader context:
- For the other parties this is not only about the Sweden Democrats talking about immigration, it is also about their nationalist and extremist background. It is a party that resembles more the Front National in France and Vlams Belang in Belgium than the Danish People’s Party or the Norwegian Progress Party.
- Challenging for them to find enough MPs
In a comment to NTB and TV2 Ivarsflaten notes that the Sweden Democrats faces a challenge in finding enough representatives with politically acceptable views.
- The Sweden Democrats’ leadership must cooperate with their politically more extreme local party branches when filling parliamentary seats after the election. It is a party struggling to unite the local and central levels. The central leadership tries to be more mainstream, and has a zero-tolerance attitude towards racism. Local branches are more diverse in this respect.
Read both interviews here:
