Klaudia Koxha(Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Lausanne).
Speakers
“Populist Strategies of Normalizing Demographic Fears,” by Oscar Mazzoleni (Professor in Political Science and Political Sociology at the University of Lausanne).
“The Scientific Normalization of ‘the Great Replacement’ Conspiracy,” by Alberta Giorgi (Associate Professor in Sociology of Culture and Communication at the University of Bergamo).
“From Demographic Winter to Civilizational Struggle: Anti-Abortion Networks and the Global Radical Right,” by Carol Mason (Otis A. Singletary Chair in the Humanities and Professor at University of Kentucky, US).
“Mestizaje, Backlash, and the Politics of Demographic Populism: Race and Gender in Latin America,” by Carlos de la Torre (Professor at the Centre for Latin American Studies, University of Florida).
“Anti-Muslim Mobilization: Demographic Change and Radical-Right Populism in Austria,” by Reinhard Heinisch(Professor of Comparative Austrian Politics at the University of Salzburg, European Studies Center associate at the University of Pittsburgh and visiting lecturer at Renmin University of China).
Klaudia Koxha is a Senior Researcher at the University of Lausanne, where she works on an international research project examining radical right populism and conspiracy theories across four European democracies. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Paris Lodron University of Salzburg and was a visiting researcher at American University in Washington, DC. Her research focuses on populism and the radical right, European integration and EU policy, gender equality, party politics, and comparative and multi-level politics. Alongside her academic work, she has contributed expertise to regional and international organizations on issues including gender equality and inclusion, integrity, and democratic governance. She regularly contributes to public and policy debates through invited talks, lectures, and expert commentary, with her work featured in outlets including EUobserver, El Mundo, The European Correspondent, and DeFacto. She is co-editor of The Radical Right and Demographic Populism (Manchester University Press, 2026), New Dynamics of Contestation in EU–Western Balkan Relations (Palgrave, 2026), and Perspectives on Populism (Nomos, 2024). Her recent research appears in Government and Opposition journal, with further work accepted for publication in Comparative European Politics and forthcoming with Presses de l’Université Laval.
Oscar Mazzoleni is a professor in political science at the University of Lausanne where he leads the Research Observatory for regional research. He has achieved an interdisciplinary educational path, with a degree in sociology and anthropology and a PhD in contemporary history between the universities of Lausanne and Turin. He has been visiting professor and research fellow at the Universities of Columbia, Cornell, Laval, Geneva, Groningen, Torino, Sorbonne-Panthéon- Paris, Science-Po-Paris, Valencia, Salzburg, European University Institute of Florence, La Tuscia, and Roma-Sapienza. His current interests are devoted on political parties, populism, nationalism, regionalism, electoral studies, and Swiss politics in comparative perspective.
Alberta Giorgi is an associate professor in Sociology of Culture and Communication at the University of Bergamo. Her work explores discursive boundaries and classifications, particularly at the intersection of politics, gender, religion, and science. She has recently co-edited with H. Eslen-Ziya, (Un)silencing Academia in Times of Epistemic Conflicts. Navigating Online Violence (Routledge 2026). She is co-editing with Pauline Cullen Mapping Political Sociology Ambiguities and Complexities for Unpredictable Futures (Routledge 2026)
Carol Mason is the Otis A. Singletary Chair in the Humanities and a professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Kentucky, USA. She is the author of four books on various aspects of the rise of the Right since the 1960s. University of California Press published her latest monograph, From the Clinics to the Capitol: How Opposing Abortion Became Insurrectionary, in 2025.
Carlos de la Torre is a professor at the Centre for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida. He has authored several manuscripts and edited volumes on populism. His most recent books are Populism and Fascism, Elements in the History and Politics of Fascism (Cambridge University Press, 2025); Global Populisms with Treethep Srisa-nga (Routledge Press, 2021); Populisms: A Quick Immersion (Tibidabo editions, 2019); and Populist Seduction in Latin America (Ohio University Press, second edition, 2010).
Dr. Reinhard Heinisch is a Professor of Comparative Austrian Politics at the University of Salzburg and head of the Department of Political Science. He received his academic training in the US where he completed his PhD at Michigan State University and then taught at the University of Pittsburgh from 1994 to 2009. Heinisch’s research focuses on the rise of the radical right, populism, democracy, and political parties. Dr. Heinisch is the author of over 40 research articles and more than 50 other scholarly publications including 14 books. His research appeared in journals such as Journal of European Political Research, Political Studies,Journal ofCommon Market Studies, Party Politics, West European Politics, Democratization, Representation, and many others. His book publications include Understanding Populist Party Organization: The Radical Right in Western Europe (Palgrave 2016); The People and the Nation: Populism and Ethno-Territorial Politics in Europe (Routledge 2019), Political Populism. A Handbook, Nomos (2021), and Politicizing Islam in Austria (Rutgers University Press 2024).
In this ECPS interview, Assistant Professor Sofie Blombäck examines the Sweden Democrats’ electoral setback alongside the continuing normalization of ideas long associated with the radical right. She argues that some voters may feel they have already “gotten what they wanted” on migration, even as SD itself remains partly stigmatized. Dr. Blombäck also highlights a darker post-election development: debate over whether Sweden’s newest citizens, particularly Muslim immigrants, are treated as legitimate political actors. “In my personal view, the debate has become quite ugly,” she says. More broadly, she situates the election within a changing party system shaped by normalization, bloc realignment, strategic voting, weakened parliamentary norms, and shifting boundaries of political legitimacy.
Sweden’s 2026 general election has brought into sharp relief a paradox that has been developing for more than a decade: the Sweden Democrats (SD) may lose electoral ground while continuing to shape the ideological and policy environment in which other parties compete. In this interview, Assistant Professor Sofie Blombäck, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Mid Sweden University, examines this paradox through the lenses of radical-right normalization, party-system realignment, political stigma, representative democracy, and the changing relationship between voters and political elites. Her analysis places particular emphasis on the extent to which ideas associated with SD have become embedded in mainstream political competition even as the party itself continues to carry a degree of stigma.
Dr. Blombäck argues that some voters who previously turned to SD because they wanted tougher migration policies may now feel that “they have now gotten what they wanted,” since the current policy direction has been “heavily influenced by the Sweden Democrats.” In her view, this helps explain how an electoral setback can coexist with deeper ideological influence: restrictive migration policies have become sufficiently entrenched that voters may no longer need to support SD itself in order to secure them. At the same time, she stresses that normalization remains incomplete. Although “the cordon sanitaire is gone,” and the stigma surrounding SD “is not as universal as it was four years ago,” the party is “not quite fully accepted into the mainstream.”
The interview’s most striking discussion concerns the post-election controversy over immigrant participation and the political legitimacy of Sweden’s newest citizens. Dr. Blombäck notes that rising turnout in socioeconomically vulnerable areas with significant migrant populations has been portrayed by some actors on the right as threatening. This, she argues, has shifted debate toward a more fundamental question: whether immigrants, “and especially Muslim immigrants,” are treated as “a potential problem or legitimate political actors.” Reflecting on the tone of the post-election debate, she states plainly: “In my personal view, the debate has become quite ugly over the past week or two.” She adds that Sweden is “a country of immigrants,” and warns that political mobilization which questions the legitimacy of such citizens as political actors carries particularly significant implications.
Beyond immigration, Dr. Blombäck situates the election within a broader restructuring of Swedish party competition. She argues that the party system has “tilted diagonally” along the GAL–TAN dimension, while the composition and ideological content of Sweden’s traditional blocs have changed. The result, she suggests, is not simply polarization, but a transformation in how parties compete, cooperate, stigmatize one another, and define the boundaries of political legitimacy in contemporary Sweden.
Here is our interview with Assistant Professor Sofie Blombäck, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Sweden Is Unlikely to Return to the Migration Policies It Had Ten Years Ago
Sweden’s 2026 general election produced a narrow parliamentary majority for the red-green parties, with 176 seats compared with 173 for the Tidö parties. The Social Democrats remained the largest party with 28 percent of the vote, followed by the Moderates at 19.8 percent and the Sweden Democrats at 17.5 percent. Source: SVT.
Professor Blombäck, welcome! Let me begin with the most striking paradox of the September 13 election. The Sweden Democrats fell from 20.5 percent in 2022 to 17.48 percent and lost ground for the first time since entering Parliament, yet many policies and frames associated with SD—particularly on immigration, integration, crime, citizenship, and deportation—have become considerably more mainstream. How should we distinguish between an electoral setback for a populist radical-right party and the longer-term success of its political agenda? Can a party lose votes while simultaneously winning the ideological argument?
Dr. Sofie Blombäck: It’s still a little early to determine exactly what caused this setback in the Sweden Democrats’ electoral fortunes. The party itself tends to blame strategic voting, arguing that some of its supporters voted for the Liberals. I’ve also seen suggestions that it lost some votes to parties even further to the right that failed to enter Parliament.
But I believe another factor is that some voters supported the Sweden Democrats because they wanted tougher migration policies and a tougher approach to crime. In a sense, they have now gotten what they wanted. On migration, parties across the political spectrum, including the Social Democrats, are essentially campaigning to maintain the current policy direction, which has been heavily influenced by the Sweden Democrats.
So, for voters who supported the Sweden Democrats in the last election because they wanted tougher migration policies, those policies are now largely in place. They may not want to go as far as the Sweden Democrats do, but they are perhaps fairly confident that another government, whether led by the Moderates or the Social Democrats, would not return to the migration policies Sweden had 10 years ago, or even four years ago.
The Cordon Sanitaire Is Gone, but the Stigma Around the SD Has Not Disappeared
Your research with Niklas Bolin and Stefan Dahlberg found a persistent “stigmatization effect”: voters evaluated identical proposals less favorably when they were told that the proposal came from SD, even after the party had grown substantially and its political isolation had weakened. After four years in which SD exercised extensive influence through the Tidö agreement, what would you expect that stigma to look like today? Has SD finally acquired something closer to a “reputational shield,” or might voters still distinguish sharply between accepting SD-inspired policies and accepting SD itself?
Dr. Sofie Blombäck: One of the most memorable moments from the election-night coverage was when the Sweden Democrats’ party leader, Jimmie Åkesson, went on stage before the cameras and said that their voters no longer needed to feel ashamed. From the party’s perspective, this seems to have cemented its status as a party like any other.
It would be really interesting to run the same experiments now, after four years with a government influenced by the Sweden Democrats. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to do that. There is probably still some stigma attached to the Sweden Democrats, but it is not as universal as it was four years ago. All the parties on the right are now on the record saying that they would be willing to include the Sweden Democrats in a government. So, the cordon sanitaire is gone; it is no longer in effect. But among voters on the left, the Sweden Democrats remain highly stigmatized.
We do not yet know what the government will look like, but for the Sweden Democrats, being allowed to join a government after this election was supposed to be the final step into the political mainstream. At the moment, a left-wing government appears more likely, and the Sweden Democrats are not the largest opposition party. One outcome of this election, therefore, is that they are neither able to enter government nor become the default opposition leader by virtue of being the largest opposition party. So, they are not quite fully accepted into the mainstream, but the stigma has clearly decreased.
Countering the Party Does Not Necessarily Mean Countering the Ideas It Represents
Sweden Democrats’ Square Meeting in Umeå. Jimmie Åkesson speaks to the people on the city square where opposition left-wingers have formed a chain and protest in Umeå, Sweden on August 14, 2018. Photo: Shutterstock.
That distinction seems particularly important for understanding normalization. Should we analytically separate the normalization of a party from the normalization of its ideas? If mainstream parties adopt restrictive migration policies, assimilationist rhetoric, or tougher approaches toward citizenship while SD itself remains socially or morally stigmatized for some voters, are we dealing with partial normalization rather than full political mainstreaming?
Dr. Sofie Blombäck: That’s a strategy that parties across Western Europe have tried in response to SD and other parties in the same political family. There has been considerable debate among mainstream parties over what the most effective strategy should be. If the goal is to counteract the party as an organization, one option is to adopt some of its positions and policies. If voters can obtain the policy ideas associated with a right-wing party from another party that does not carry the same stigma, that may, of course, be more palatable to some of them.
Other voters, however, may actually be attracted to the anti-establishment rhetoric itself. But, as your question suggests, countering the party does not necessarily mean countering the ideas that the right-wing populist party represents. Those ideas can still become normalized. We know from research that voters take cues from party leaders. If the leader of the party you support says that a proposal or policy is good and acceptable, you are more likely to agree with it. By adopting the right-wing party’s policies and messages, other parties are therefore, in effect, contributing to the mainstreaming of those ideas.
That being said, one explanation political scientists in Sweden have offered for the rise of the Sweden Democrats is that the party was able to tap into ideas and preferences that were already present in the electorate. Immigration used to be one of the issues on which the electorate and elected representatives differed most. Members of the Riksdag (Swedish Parliament) were much more pro-immigration and more accepting of refugees than the average Swedish voter. In that sense, the Sweden Democrats helped align these two groups by becoming the party-political expression of an idea or preference that was already present in the electorate.
Sweden Is a Country of Immigrants
The 2026 campaign also exposed the continued importance of anti-immigration and, at times, explicitly anti-Islam politics. SD’s campaign included proposals concerning Islamic dress, while opposition mobilization was particularly strong in some immigrant-dense urban districts. How should we distinguish legitimate democratic debate over immigration, integration, and secularism from forms of political mobilization that turn Muslims or immigrants into collective objects of suspicion? At what point does cultural conflict become exclusionary or nativist politics?
Dr. Sofie Blombäck: This is one of the issues that has carried over into the post-election public debate. I mentioned earlier that one of the memorable moments from the election-night coverage was when the Sweden Democrats’ leader said that their voters no longer needed to feel ashamed. Another memorable moment came during the final party leaders’ debate before the election, when Jimmie Åkesson said that this could be the first election decided by the immigration that the other parties had allowed.
This has become a recurring trope over the past couple of weeks. There have been articles and media coverage from various outlets debating whether this election was won by Sweden’s newest citizens. Electoral participation increased in some of the most vulnerable, socioeconomically deprived areas, where many relatively recent migrants live and where some residents may not have been Swedish citizens four years ago. Of course, this has sparked a debate over whether this is a positive development. We generally want citizens to vote; that is regarded as democratic. Yet the Sweden Democrats and some other opinion leaders on the right have portrayed this participation as threatening.
The argument is that the parties on the left—the Left Party and the Social Democrats—have mobilized voters who do not really know what they are doing and are essentially voting the way they are told. This has been compounded by accusations of electoral impropriety concerning one particular candidate of Somali heritage in a small Swedish town.
So, this is still very much up in the air and further complicates the discussion. I realize I have not yet directly answered your question, but it connects to the same debate over immigrants, and especially Muslim immigrants, as either a potential problem or legitimate political actors.
The parties on the left would say that we should not be surprised that voters in these communities overwhelmingly support parties on the left, because parties on the right want to deport them and their neighbors. So why would you vote for a party that has said it does not want you to be here?
This is something Sweden is going to have to grapple with over the coming weeks and months. In my personal view, the debate has become quite ugly over the past week or two.
Sweden is a country of immigrants. A substantial share of the adult population has roots outside Sweden, including outside Europe, and this brings the issue to the forefront. When you have one party mobilizing against this group, even questioning their legitimacy as political actors, the implications become particularly significant.
So, it is not new. This has always been part of the Sweden Democrats’ electoral appeal, but it has been brought more clearly to the forefront, not least because I have seen others joining this discussion and accepting its premise. At the same time, you also see pushback from the left, arguing that you might just as well say that churchgoers decided the election, or point to various other groups that also account for roughly the 50,000-vote difference between the two blocs. You can identify such groups across many demographic categories, not just among new citizens.
Voters Judge the Same Policy Differently Depending on Who Proposes It
Politicians and campaigners engage with voters at the Sweden Democrats’ election hut in a city square in Uppsala, Sweden, on August 17, 2026, ahead of Sweden’s parliamentary elections. Photo: Krister Hägglöf / Dreamstime.
One implication of your stigmatization research is that party labels themselves function as powerful political cues. But what happens when policies first associated with the radical right are subsequently proposed by mainstream parties? Does the removal of the SD label make restrictive proposals more acceptable—and, if so, can mainstream parties become important agents in laundering or legitimizing ideas that were previously considered too radical?
Dr. Sofie Blombäck: That’s certainly what our results indicate. A proposal, regardless of its content, is seen more favorably when it comes from a party other than the Sweden Democrats, or from the voter’s own preferred party. So, this goes back to the idea of elite cues. If your preferred party proposes a policy, you are more likely to agree with it than if it is proposed by a party you disagree with. This is compounded by the stigma attached to a party like the Sweden Democrats.
For some voters, a proposal is never going to be acceptable if it comes from the Sweden Democrats, almost regardless of whether it involves free puppies and ice cream for everyone; they are going to regard it with suspicion. But the flip side is exactly what you are pointing to: the other parties, the more mainstream or established parties, want to neutralize the SD. They do not want to lose voters to the Sweden Democrats. The party grew to become the second-largest party and is now the third-largest party in the party system. Of course, the other parties want those voters back, and one way of doing that is by giving voters what they want in terms of policy. But that, of course, also removes some of the stigma.
There is other research by researchers such as Elisabeth Ivarsflaten that points to the fact that we have an internal stigma as well. We do not want to believe ourselves to be racist, for example. Nobody wants to be thought of by others as racist, but we also do not want to think of ourselves that way. So, we need some way of convincing ourselves that supporting a specific policy does not make us a bad person, a racist, or an elitist, or whatever the bad thing may be. If you can say that someone else who is not racist, not elitist—whatever the bad thing is—is also supporting this policy, then it becomes easier to believe that I’m not racist either. This can probably work in quite a few different ways.
The Mainstream Right’s Cooperation with SD Is a Double-Edged Sword
This raises a strategic problem for the mainstream right. The Moderates and other Tidö parties governed with SD support and adopted substantial elements of its agenda, yet SD still received 17.48 percent while the Tidö bloc narrowly lost its parliamentary majority. Does the Swedish case suggest that accommodation can simultaneously normalize the radical right and fail to neutralize it electorally? What does this tell us about the conventional assumption that mainstream parties can compete away populist radical-right support by moving toward its positions?
Dr. Sofie Blombäck: One way many political scientists in Sweden have tried to understand the other Tidö parties’ shift toward the Sweden Democrats is through basic electoral math. After the 2018 election, the Center Party (C) and the Liberals (L) signaled that, when forced to choose between a government dependent on the SD and one involving the Social Democrats—the traditional adversary of the parties on the right—they chose the Social Democrats.
That left the Moderate Party (M) and the Christian Democrats (KD) in a position where they could no longer see a viable path to government without the Sweden Democrats. If they could not rely on parties in the center of the party system to help them govern with SD support, they still needed the Sweden Democrats because the party was large enough that any Moderate-led government would at least require it not to actively oppose them. Mathematically, unless something changed significantly, that seemed to imply permanent opposition for the Moderates and Christian Democrats.
So, in that situation, the obvious option was to open up to collaboration. We have seen similar developments in other Western European countries, where mainstream parties on the right have included populist-right parties because they needed them electorally to gain office. In a sense, this is basic coalition theory 101.
But, of course, that also gives a party like the Sweden Democrats considerable leverage. They could demand policy concessions in 2022, and if a right-wing government were to be formed now—which does not appear to be the first option, though we do not yet know—they would demand inclusion as a full coalition member.
That, in turn, means that the other parties on the right are effectively signaling that the Sweden Democrats are not a pariah party and are no longer beyond the pale. This can limit SD’s growth, as I mentioned earlier, by allowing the other parties to win back voters who may be Moderates at heart but wanted stricter migration policy. Those voters can now return to the Moderate Party, potentially placing a ceiling on the Sweden Democrats’ support.
At the same time, however, this also signals to the perhaps 75 percent of Sweden Democrat voters who are hardcore party identifiers that it is acceptable to be a Sweden Democrat. They are no longer voting for a stigmatized party, and their party can exert real policy influence, so they are not, in that sense, wasting their vote. So, it is a double-edged sword, but coalition theory helps explain why the other parties still feel compelled to make this choice.
The Swedish Party System Has Tilted Diagonally
Swedish political parties intensified their campaigning ahead of the critical September 13, 2026 parliamentary election, setting up campaign stands in prominent public squares to promote their platforms and election promises. The image shows party campaign stands in the square connecting the two sections of Åkersberga Centrum in Österåker, Sweden. Photo: Bulent Kenes.
Your broader work on representative democracy emphasizes the importance of ideological contestation and the linkage between parties and citizens. If established parties increasingly converge on restrictive immigration and integration policies, while voters who disagree migrate toward V, MP, C, or other alternatives, could Sweden be witnessing a new form of realignment rather than simply a temporary swing between blocs? What would constitute convincing evidence that a new cleavage structure has emerged?
Dr. Sofie Blombäck: This has already taken place in Sweden, and I would go back to the 2018 election as the crucial point. If we think of left-right economic policy as one dimension and the GAL-TAN (Green, Alternative, Libertarian / Traditional, Authoritarian, Nationalist) cultural dimension as another—covering migration, environmental policy, and various other issues—the Swedish party system has tilted diagonally.
For several elections in the early 2000s, we had a quite rigid two-bloc system, with M, KD, L, and C on one side, and the Social Democrats (S), Greens (MP), and Left Party (V) on the other. This was stable enough that some of my colleagues compared Sweden to almost a two-party system because the two blocs were so dominant. Then the Sweden Democrats entered and disrupted this left-right division. The Sweden Democrats were mobilizing on the other dimension, the GAL-TAN dimension.
For a couple of elections, the other parties tried to pretend that SD was not there, isolating the party and carrying on with left-right politics as usual. But what happened in 2018 was that the two parties in the center, C and L, had both promised not to support or join any government dependent on SD because, in their words, SD was a racist party. The then-L leader even said, “I have promised my children that I will never do this.” At the same time, they had promised voters that they would not support a Social Democratic and left-wing government because they did not like its left-wing economic policies.
Then came the longest government formation in Swedish history. Usually, government formation takes a week. This time, it took months. In the end, despite the fact that both parties would have preferred some sort of centrist coalition, they were forced to choose because the other parties refused to go along with the idea of a grand coalition in the middle.
So, when it came down to it, C and L chose to align with the parties they agreed with on the GAL end of the GAL-TAN scale rather than with the parties they agreed with on the economic right. This marked the first step toward what we are now beginning to see as a new two-bloc system, where the parties on the right-TAN side have included SD, while the Center Party has remained on the left-GAL side and the Liberals have moved back. They have now let go of their red line on the Sweden Democrats.
So, it is not that this is supplanting the way Swedish politics usually works. We tend to like bloc politics, apparently, but the content of the blocs has changed, both in terms of the parties involved and their ideological content.
The Left Party Is Not Guaranteed a Place in a Left-Wing Government
The Left Party (V) increased its support to 8.40 percent and 30 seats. In your earlier research on V, you argued that the party’s position in the party system depends heavily on how other parties, especially the Social Democrats, relate to it. Does the 2026 result strengthen V as an autonomous pole of the Swedish left, or does its influence still depend fundamentally on whether Social Democrats treat it as a legitimate governing partner rather than merely a parliamentary support party?
Dr. Sofie Blombäck: This is another issue that remains very much up in the air. Right now, the main stumbling block for Magdalena Andersson, the Social Democratic Party leader, is that she has been asked by the outgoing parliament speaker to try to form a government. But she would need support from the Left Party and the Greens, as well as the Center Party, and the Center Party is not at all a fan of the Left Party. They have basically ruled out collaborating with them. They say they do not want to cooperate with either of the extremes in the party system: not the Left Party and not the Sweden Democrats.
The Left Party, meanwhile, is once again saying that it will not support a government in which it is not included. They have tried this before with the Social Democrats but have never succeeded. In the end, they have had to settle for budget cooperation and basically trade their parliamentary support for policy influence.
When we speculate about this around the coffee table at work, we tend to think that the Left Party may once again have to give in, because the Center Party is in a stronger negotiating position. It has more options. The party would still prefer some kind of centrist grand coalition, although that does not seem likely at the moment.
In a sense, they are in the same situation they faced in 2018. They either have to accept left-wing economic policies or accept the inclusion of the Sweden Democrats in government. So, my money is still on some form of left-wing government, but the Left Party is not guaranteed to be included in it. The accusations of electoral impropriety that have come to the forefront over the past week have not helped. Nor has the fact that, before the election, the Left Party had to basically expel some candidates who had been caught making statements considered anti-Semitic or too supportive of Hamas.
There have also been signals from the Social Democrats that they are not sure whether the Left Party is ready to be a governing party. The question, then, is what the Left Party will do. Unless the Social Democrats, in particular, can persuade it to change its position of refusing to support a government without being included in the coalition, the Left Party will probably be left with two options: either tolerate a right-wing government dependent on the Sweden Democrats or force an extra election.
That is something that simply does not happen in Swedish politics. All the parties are convinced that voters will not be happy if they fail to form a government and will punish whoever is perceived to be responsible. That being said, there is a scenario in which the Left Party might calculate that left-wing voters would appreciate a principled stand and that it might be able to peel off some additional voters from the Social Democrats. But I think that is unlikely.
Voters Can Move to the Left Party or Greens to Signal Disagreement with the Social Democrats
The Social Democrats remained the largest party but fell to 28.02 percent, while V and the Greens gained. How should we interpret this redistribution within the left? Could it indicate that S’s attempts to adopt more restrictive positions on immigration have weakened its ability to monopolize the progressive electorate, creating political space for parties that articulate clearer alternatives on migration, welfare, climate, or civil liberties?
Dr. Sofie Blombäck: In one sense, the decline of the Social Democrats reflects a long-running and geographically widespread trend that we have seen across many Western European countries. There is also a demographic challenge for the party. Many of its most loyal supporters are elderly, and the very old tend to vote at lower rates than younger citizens. Once you get past the age of 85, for example, making it to a polling station may simply become less of a priority.
At the same time, Swedish bloc politics has a long tradition of voters identifying more strongly with a political bloc than with a particular party. So, there is a group of voters who see themselves primarily as left-bloc voters. These voters may move between the Social Democrats, the Greens, the Left Party, and perhaps even the Feminist Initiative, depending on the election.
Part of that choice can be strategic. There is a long tradition of voting in ways that help keep all the parties in a preferred bloc above the electoral threshold. That has not really been an issue on the left in this election. It mattered much more on the right, where the Liberals were expected perhaps not to reach the 4 percent threshold but ultimately made it to around 5 percent.
Another form of strategic voting within the blocs is to signal the direction in which voters want the bloc to move. If you are a broadly left-wing voter but disagree with the Social Democrats’ attempt to neutralize the immigration and law-and-order issues by moving quite close to the Moderate Party, you can vote for the Left Party or the Green Party to signal that disagreement. Similarly, if you are particularly concerned about what the government has done with Swedish climate policy, you might move to the Green Party. You are still supporting a change of government, and you are still expecting Magdalena Andersson to become Prime Minister, but you are also signaling that you want the government to tilt more toward the green side.
So, this is a challenge for the larger parties in both blocs. They tend to compete for the median voter while simultaneously facing pressure from parties on their flanks. This is simply part of how Swedish politics works.
Both SD and V Are Now Firmly Entrenched in Swedish Parliamentary Democracy
The parliament (Riksdag) building in Stockholm, Sweden. Photo: Dreamstime.
This produces an interesting symmetry. SD challenges the mainstream from the radical right, while V seeks influence from the left. From a party-system perspective, what are the analytical dangers of treating the populist or radical right and the radical left as equivalent phenomena? Which dimensions—attitudes toward liberal democracy, pluralism, minorities, political equality, capitalism, nationalism, or institutional constraints—should scholars use to distinguish different forms of anti-establishment politics?
Dr. Sofie Blombäck: It depends somewhat on why we are interested in studying the symmetry. From a purely coalition-formation and bloc-politics perspective, the symmetry is quite clear. Both sides of the political spectrum have struggled with similar problems: each has a party on the flank that the more centrist members of the coalition do not like. This was even more pronounced in 2022, when the Liberals were still on the fence about the Sweden Democrats. This time, they climbed down off the fence on the Sweden Democrats’ side.
From that perspective, the challenge is quite similar. In terms of what this says about politics or political attitudes, however, they are very different parties. Both have problematic pasts, and this is often brought up, especially by politicians on the right and other opinion makers, when discussing the Left Party. It used to be the Communist Party many decades ago and was not regarded as a reliable party. During the national government in World War II, for example, the communists were excluded. They were not seen as trustworthy when all the other parties formed a joint coalition.
There is a history there. But it is, of course, much further back in time than the history of the Sweden Democrats. You then have people disagreeing over what the bigger problem is: communist roots or skinhead neo-Nazi roots. That is one part of the debate: are these equally bad or not? The other part concerns what the parties have done to rehabilitate themselves.
Both parties have had scandals involving candidates or local politicians who have been excluded for saying or doing things, often through posts on social media. That seems to be the downfall for many of these candidates because it is there in print. But I would say this has been more prevalent among the Sweden Democrats.
Of course, the argument from parties on the left—that it is ridiculous to compare the two—is not helped by instances during this election in which they have seemed not to really know who is on the ballot, particularly candidates placed quite far down the ballot in various parts of the country. This is usually something parties try to address by vetting candidates quite thoroughly.
But we also have the problem in Sweden, as in other countries, of declining party membership. Parties increasingly struggle to find people willing to stand for office, especially local office, in many smaller municipalities. If you are faced with having no candidate at all or with a candidate you do not know very well, you might opt to give that person a chance. This is a problem that many smaller parties struggle with.
The final point I would make is that I do not think we can really regard either of these parties as anti-establishment anymore. They have both been part of governing arrangements, even if they have not formally been in government. This is especially true of the Left Party, which has played such a role for decades.
They are also trying very hard to become governing parties. In that sense, they are no longer mobilizing around the idea that “all the other parties are equally bad, and we are the ones here to shake up the system and do something new.” It is more that they are positioned at the ideological extremes, while both are nevertheless firmly entrenched in Swedish parliamentary democracy.
The SD Could Survive Isolation, but Governing Remains the Final Threshold
Your research on new political parties emphasizes that their long-term success depends not only on voter demand but also on political opportunity structures, established-party acceptance, leadership, and institutional conditions. Does SD’s trajectory illustrate how decisive established-party acceptance can be? To what extent did the transformation from cordon sanitaire to formalized parliamentary cooperation alter SD’s position more fundamentally than additional electoral growth would have done?
Dr. Sofie Blombäck: Most of the research I’ve done on this has focused on new parties in the context of the European Parliament, but I think it also translates to the national level. What I found was that acceptance by mainstream parties was very important, with populist radical-right parties being something of an exception to this rule. There are several cases across Europe in which such parties have managed to survive despite being isolated and placed behind a cordon sanitaire by other parties.
This is more speculative, but I would imagine that this is because they have been able to tap into voter demand for a particular type of policy among people who may be angry or dissatisfied enough that they are not deterred by knowing their party is unlikely to exercise much policy influence in the short term.
Of course, it is difficult to know what the counterfactual would have been if this invitation into the mainstream from parties on the right had not occurred. But the Sweden Democrats had contested elections for more than 10 years before they were first elected to Parliament, and for more than 20 years before they were first invited into the Tidö cooperation. Clearly, the party was capable of surviving on its own.
When we study new parties, however, we tend to think of their lifespan in terms of crossing different thresholds, and the Sweden Democrats have not yet crossed the final threshold of actually governing. They have not done so at the national level, although they have at the municipal level in some cases. In a way, that is the final hurdle to becoming a fully institutionalized part of the party system.
We Need to Look at Both What a Party Says and What It Actually Does
Sweden’s Social Democrats campaign ahead of the general election in Malmö, Sweden, on September 2, 2022, in support of then-Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson’s bid for a second term. Photo: Francis Joseph Dean / Dreamstime.
At the same time, the election raises a broader question about extremism. SD has spent years attempting to distance itself from its historical extremist origins while becoming an established parliamentary actor. What criteria should political scientists use when deciding whether a formerly extremist party has genuinely moderated, merely professionalized its communication, or instead succeeded in moving the boundaries of acceptable politics around itself?
Dr. Sofie Blombäck: We would need to look at both what the party says and what it does, but also at what the electorate thinks and does. This is quite straightforward to study. You can take the election manifestos and party programs of a party like the Sweden Democrats and trace the moderation of its positions, the shift in language from overtly racist rhetoric to more dog-whistle-style language, and some broader moderation of its stances.
Another example, unrelated to immigration, is the party’s position on Swedish EU membership. It was the last party to shift toward being, if not supportive, at least accepting of Swedish EU membership. That was a precondition for being invited to cooperate with the Moderates, who consider it very important that a partner be reliable on foreign policy.
That is one shift you can observe both in what the party says and in what it does. It no longer opposes Swedish negotiating positions in the EU. These positions have to be presented to Parliament, and the Sweden Democrats used to hold a record for the number of times they disagreed and argued that Sweden should take a different position on various issues of EU policy. Now they have joined in supporting what the government has done.
So, this is a case of the party saying something and then following through in the way it votes and acts. Of course, the final hurdle would be to see what the party would actually do if it were given the post of Minister for Migration, which is something it very clearly wanted and expected to receive if the Tidö side won.
That is one way of looking at it. Another is to examine what voters think of the party. Stefan Dahlberg, my colleague with whom I co-authored the piece on stigmatization, has continued this line of research with other colleagues, looking at shifts in voter attitudes toward migration and support for the Sweden Democrats. In a recent paper, they identify some changes in the general level of acceptance for anti-migration attitudes at the very local level.
So, I would hesitate to identify a single criterion. In my own research, I tend to pay attention to what parties say they want to do and what they believe, but also to what they are actually willing to do. This is especially important when it comes to compromise, because it does not seem to be on the cards that the Sweden Democrats will gain a majority on their own. Nor does it seem likely that any party will do so in Sweden. We have eight parties in Parliament, after all.
So, it is not just a matter of what you say you believe, but also what you are willing to compromise on. In the Tidö agreement, the Sweden Democrats did not have to compromise much on their core issues. Because they were not allowed to join the government, they were given a great many policy concessions. If they were included in a coalition, I would imagine that the other parties might push back more. But that remains to be seen.
Migration and Identity Are More Difficult Areas for Broad Compromise
Your recent work on elite deliberation finds that political actors can engage in respectful, common-good-oriented discussion even when partisan commitments and economic constraints limit the space for genuine accommodation. Could deliberative mechanisms of this kind help reduce polarization around migration and identity, or are such conflicts qualitatively different because they involve moral boundaries, belonging, religion, and national identity rather than primarily distributive disagreements?
Dr. Sofie Blombäck: It’s a good question. We conducted our research at the local level, where many of these issues are simply not present. Local politics in Sweden often revolves around questions such as how to organize schools or elder care, or how to attract more business to the area, whereas issues of migration and nationality are firmly situated at the national level.
A further complication in simply transposing what we found at the local level to the national level is that scrutiny is much more intense in national politics. One of the key elements of this more deliberative style of decision-making is that all parties are willing to sit down and have these kinds of discussions, and that they are willing and able to do so without negotiating through the media. These are meetings held behind closed doors, and even in the municipality where we conducted our study, you could see a clear difference between how politicians spoke in public council meetings and how they interacted in non-public deliberative meetings.
More broadly, this ties into the debate on affective polarization, which is very much at the forefront these days. There is this question of who you can still talk to in the sense of, “I may disagree with your stances, but I still respect you as a person.” And I don’t think election campaigns are really the best place to look for that.
The flip side is that the Swedish Parliament has a long tradition of reaching broad consensus. But, as your question suggests, many of those broad agreements concern economic and redistributive issues where compromise is possible. Halfway between 0 and 100 is 50, but halfway between permanent residence permits and no permanent residence permits—there is no such thing as a half-permanent residence permit.
For that reason, these questions may be more difficult when it comes to forming broad agreements. But even here, there is historical precedent. Back in 2010, the then-Alliance government on the right formed an agreement with, among others, the Green Party on migration policy in order to neutralize the Sweden Democrats. They preferred to collaborate with parties on the other side of the bloc in order to neutralize the issue.
That agreement did not hold—or rather, positions shifted—but such arrangements are not unheard of.
The 2026 Election May Be More a Story of Continuity Than Dramatic Change
Sweden has often been portrayed as a high-trust, consensus-oriented democracy. Yet the rise of SD, sharper conflicts over Islam and immigration, and growing bloc fragmentation seem to challenge that self-image. Does the 2026 election suggest a weakening of the traditional Swedish consensus model—or could stronger ideological contestation actually improve representative democracy by giving citizens clearer alternatives rather than producing the depoliticization that your work on party linkage warns against?
Dr. Sofie Blombäck: It’s a double-edged sword. Normatively, we want voters to have choices. One way of looking at the Swedish tradition of bloc politics is that it tries to do both: you have broad blocs within which parties can cooperate, while voters can still choose among the different parties within those blocs.
I think it’s too early to draw firm conclusions from the 2026 election. One early interpretation that many political scientists have pointed to is that, despite a highly contentious campaign—particularly in the final couple of weeks, since the summer itself was relatively calm—the overall shifts in the election results were not that dramatic.
It can, of course, be politically dramatic if there is a change from a right-wing to a left-wing government. But the difference between the two blocs is only around 50,000 votes, and it was something similar in the previous election. So, in terms of voter movement between the blocs, the shift is not especially large. One story we are already seeing, therefore, is one of continuity rather than dramatic change.
Another point is that, since the Sweden Democrats emerged as an electoral force at the subnational level—in municipalities and regions—we have seen an increase in cross-bloc cooperation, often aimed at neutralizing the Sweden Democrats or other political challenges that established parties do not like. We have around 150 local parties, ranging from very pragmatic to highly populist, across Sweden’s municipalities.
In the last electoral period, almost 50 out of 290 municipalities were governed jointly by the Social Democrats and the Moderates, something that would be almost unthinkable at the national level today. Two elections ago, it was also unusual at the local level, but it has now become quite normal.
So, it is far too early to say that these developments will necessarily lead to increased polarization and the erosion of the Swedish collaborative model. They might weaken it. But one development I find more worrying is not the election result itself, but what has happened in the Swedish Parliament during the last parliamentary period.
Several of the informal norms that help Parliament function have weakened. For decades, the parties had an arrangement whereby, if a politician from one side of the aisle was sick or had another official duty—perhaps attending a meeting of the Council of Europe or the UN—a politician from the other side would abstain from voting in order to preserve the balance of power.
During the last parliamentary period, the Sweden Democrats were included in this system because they were part of the government side in Parliament. They then broke with the agreement on a vote concerning migration. They argued that they had reasons for doing so, but the result was that the other parties, particularly those on the left, said that if they could no longer trust the Sweden Democrats to uphold the bargain, they could not continue to abide by it either. It is essentially a kind of prisoner’s dilemma.
Another example concerns the Committee on the Constitution, which handles complaints against government ministers. It was unable to agree on a unified statement regarding this year’s list of complaints. That tradition is much less long-standing, but the process had gradually become less politicized. Several parliaments, and especially several speakers of Parliament, had tried to make it less political and more almost judicial in character.
That development has now also fallen away. It may simply be a temporary blip because this was an election year, but it is indicative of a less deliberative and less consensus-oriented form of parliamentary conduct. No-confidence votes have also increased, and so on.
So, I will be very interested to see what happens once the new Parliament is seated.
On Security and International Cooperation, Sweden Still Presents a United Front
Your research with Thomas Karv shows that Swedish public opinion toward the EU has evolved significantly and that major external shocks can reshape political attitudes. In an era of war in Europe, NATO membership, migration pressures, and heightened security concerns, could security politics displace immigration as the principal terrain of radical-right mobilization—or might the radical right increasingly connect external security, borders, anti-Islam, migration, and national sovereignty into a single political narrative?
Dr. Sofie Blombäck: This is a good example of traditional Swedish consensus politics. The issues of security and international cooperation have been fairly effectively neutralized by the fact that both the Social Democrats and the Moderates strongly supported Sweden’s application to join NATO in 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Both potential governing parties, or prime ministerial parties, have been very clear that politics stops at the water: on these issues, Sweden presents a united front.
There is also the fact that the Moderates have demanded that the Sweden Democrats not rock the boat when it comes to European cooperation and related matters. That has been a precondition for considering the party a possible partner in a coalition or other form of government cooperation.
It is also the case that the Sweden Democrats are perhaps less Russia-friendly than some of their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, even though there was a scandal shortly before the election involving a Sweden Democrat politician and their partner being potentially connected to the Kremlin. So, the issue remains problematic in that sense.
In the previous election, however, there was an almost securitization of immigration and crime through the wave of shootings and bombings linked to organized crime, which the Sweden Democrats and others very strongly connected to immigration.
In a sense, this has created a “be careful what you wish for” situation for the government parties, because these incidents have declined. Of course, the Tidö parties want credit for reducing the number of shootings and bombings, but voters are now effectively saying, “Yes, I don’t care about bombings and shootings anymore; now I care about something else. I want a better economy or something.”
So, the government parties are not really being rewarded for bringing those incidents down, and as a result, that argument has been much less visible in this election.
SD Entering Government Would Mark the End of Its Pariah Status
And finally, Professor Blombäck, looking beyond one election, what indicators should we watch to determine whether September 13 represents a durable turning point or merely a temporary interruption in Sweden’s long-term political realignment? Would the most revealing signs be SD’s future vote share, the persistence of its policy influence, continued mainstream adoption of its positions, the strength of V and other alternatives, changing attitudes toward immigrants and Muslims, or the ability of mainstream parties to rebuild stronger representative linkages with citizens?
Dr. Sofie Blombäck: I think what could really mark a shift is if the government formation turns out to involve neither of the two teams or blocs that we have discussed throughout this election cycle. There have been persistent attempts by some parties to form a more centrist type of government that is not dependent on either V or SD.
If that were to happen, it would change the balance within the party system and would probably also have electoral repercussions next time around. So, in terms of the Swedish political system as a whole, that would probably be the most momentous development that could emerge from this election.
In terms of what this says about SD and the attitudes and policies associated with it, if, for some reason, we end up with a new Tidö agreement—it is not completely out of the question, even if it is not the most likely scenario—and SD is included in government, that would probably be what we remember from this election. It would mark the end of the party’s pariah status and could also have repercussions across a wide range of policy areas.
In this inaugural interview of the ECPS Youth Program’s new interview series, ECPS-ECRN member Andrei Gheorghe discusses his comparative research on populism, illiberalism, and nationalism in Romania and Hungary. He conceptualizes populism through the construction of “the people,” examining how populist actors define belonging, exclusion, and collective identity. Gheorghe highlights the contrast between Hungary’s historically rooted nationalist discourse and Romania’s comparatively understudied populist politics, arguing that “national populism in Romania is very poorly studied and researched.” He also reflects on the challenges facing early-career scholars, including limited funding, differing academic traditions, and the importance of international scholarly networks. For Gheorghe, populism may define the twenty-first century, yet Romania remains insufficiently integrated into comparative international research.
Interview by Natalia Crane*
In this inaugural interview of the ECPS Youth Program’s new interview series, designed to introduce a younger generation of scholars working on populism and related fields, ECPS Early Career Researchers Network (ECRN) member Andrei Gheorghe reflects on the conceptual, comparative, and professional dimensions of researching populism in Central and Eastern Europe. The series aims to provide emerging researchers with a platform to present their work, explain their methodological choices, and bring greater visibility to new research agendas in populism, illiberalism, nationalism, and democratic politics.
Gheorghe is a PhD student pursuing a joint doctorate at the University of Bucharest and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His research focuses on populism, illiberalism, and nationalism in Eastern Europe, particularly Romania and Hungary, while his doctoral thesis examines how “the people” are constructed in populist discourse in the two countries between 2010 and 2020. He has also published on the political instrumentalization of collective memory in Romania and currently holds a French Government Scholarship.
At the heart of the interview is Gheorghe’s concern that Romania remains significantly understudied in international scholarship on populism. While Hungary has generated extensive academic attention, he argues that “there are very few studies of Romanian populism and Romanian politics on the international stage, and also very few in Romania.” For Gheorghe, this imbalance helps explain his comparative research design: “that is why I chose to compare the two countries: national populism in Romania is very poorly studied and researched.”
His intervention also speaks to a broader diagnosis of contemporary politics. Drawing on Pierre Rosanvallon’s Le siècle du populisme, Gheorghe observes that the twenty-first century may become “the century of populists” amid the decline of traditional ideological formations and the rise of both left- and right-wing populism. “And until now,” he adds, “he has been right.”
The interview further explores Gheorghe’s understanding of populism as a process of constructing “the people,” his comparison of Hungarian and Romanian populist discourse, and the different historical resources mobilized in each case. He also discusses the practical challenges confronting early-career researchers, including limited funding, navigating different academic traditions, and building international scholarly networks—making his reflections especially pertinent to the ambitions of the ECPS Youth Program itself.
Here is our interview with ECRN member Andrei Gheorghe, lightly edited to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
National Populism Rose Even as Living Conditions Improved After EU Accession
People display Qanon messages on cardboards during a political rally in Bucharest, Romania on August 10, 2020. Photo: M. Moira
Thank you so much, Andrei, for joining me for my first interview for this ECPS Voice of Youth project. I have a couple of questions for you about your research. To my understanding, your research interests primarily lie in populism in Romania and Hungary between 2010 and 2020. To begin, could you introduce yourself, outline your academic journey, explain how your research interests developed, and why you believe this research is significant in today’s global environment?
Andrei Gheorghe: Thank you for the question. I am a PhD student in a program under double coordination. It is a PhD program hosted by the University of Bucharest and École des Hautes Études des Sciences Sociales in Paris. I have two coordinators, one Romanian and one French.
I also teach seminars in political science at the University of Bucharest. I have published several articles and one chapter concerning my particular interest in sports and politics, especially how memory is used by the football gallery from my natal town. So, it is a particular interest in politics and sports.
I also work on populism, as you already said. My PhD thesis is on how the people are constructed in populist discourse in Romania and Hungary between 2010 and 2020. I am also a researcher at the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives. You know about the Securitate Archive—what the Securitate was and what Securitate means? It was the political police during the communist regime in Romania.
This political police produced roughly three million files, including files on dissidents, people who were watched by the Securitate and who were against the communist regime, but also files concerning collaborators of the Securitate. It is a public governmental institution. I am a researcher at this institution.
My interest in the topic of national populism comes from my childhood because I grew up during the transition. My parents, friends, and all my relations also grew up during the transition. So, I want to understand why this resurrection of national populism occurred, why this ascension of national populism happened after accession to the European Union, basically after 2008. Because, it was a much more problematic period during the transition after the fall of communism.
Then both countries, Hungary and Romania, became members of the European Union, and living conditions and life in general became much better than during the transition. So, I want to understand what triggered this ascension.
Populism Begins with Constructing a Narrow Definition of “the People”
That’s very interesting. I loved hearing about that. My next question for you is: how do you define populism in your own research, and why have you adopted that particular conceptual approach? And has your definition of populism changed throughout your academic career?
Andrei Gheorghe: Actually, I don’t have a personal definition of populism. What I observe in my research is that populism involves a narrow definition of “the people.” Populists define and construct the people, and that is also the focus of my research.
Basically, all populists try to construct a people and give that construction a particular image, with specific traits and symbolic values. They also seek to exclude “the enemies” and draw the boundaries of the ideal people. In this sense, populism is a kind of amalgam—an arrangement of ideology, populist logic, and artistic representation. But all these elements converge around the idea of “the people” because populists seek to imagine and define who that people is. This is particularly evident in right-wing populism.
As for left-wing populism, we do not really have it in Romania or Hungary. Although my research examines speeches by a prime minister from the Social Democratic Party, the Romanian Social Democratic Party is not particularly social democratic. It is more nationalistic because it inherited old communist networks and communist nationalism, and it is more nationalistic and traditionalistic than socialist.
Hungarian Populism Looks to a Heroic Past, While Romanian Populism Targets Contemporary Elites
Romanian citizens demand an end to a corrupt system. Photo: Constantin Opriș.
My next question is: how do you measure populism in your own work, especially when comparing two different countries? Given that the definition and representation of populism can vary from country to country, how do you balance different research approaches?
Andrei Gheorghe: I start with the definition of populism and apply a qualitative research approach. From this starting point, I analyze speeches and discourses, including through automated analysis. I extract the most important and relevant semantic elements in these speeches and compare the historical and social resources they draw on, as well as the ways in which they seek to construct “the people.”
We can see that Viktor Orbán, in his speeches, constructs the Hungarian people by appealing to the Hungarian nation and its historical existence. He speaks about the millennial state, the millennial nation, the Hungarian nation, the Christian nation, and the Hungarian Christian nation. Hungarians resisted multiple empires, including the Habsburg Empire, the Russian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. They have always been in the Pannonian Basin. So, in this narrative, they will also resist Brussels, which is compared with the old imperial capital, Vienna.
This is an appeal to the historical roots of the Hungarian people. Orbán invokes the national revolution of 1848 and the 1956 spring revolution against the Soviets. When he speaks about his 2010 revolution, when he won the elections, he presents it as a new transformation, a new revolution for a new generation, while drawing on earlier Hungarian revolutions fought in the name of freedom.
His victory in 2010 was therefore presented as a new revolution, but again through an appeal to history. His speeches and the constitution are full of historical references and appeals to ethnic and cultural identity. This concerns all Hungarians beyond the country’s borders. He presented himself as the prime minister of all Hungarians, not only those living in Hungary. So, it is a transborder community.
In Romania, by contrast, appeals to nationalism, the nation, and history are less prominent in populist discourse. Instead, populists define “the people” as working people, poor people, enslaved people—Romanian people betrayed by Western elites and by Romanian elites who believe in Western values. In their speeches, they portray Romania as a second-class citizen within the European Union.
So, this discourse does not rely as heavily on history or on the idea of a great nation. This began to change after 2020, with the rise of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) and George Simion. After 2020, the nationalist-populist movement AUR—whose acronym means “gold” in Romanian—entered Parliament. In 2024, they doubled their score. They have 20% of Parliament, and now they are estimated at 40%. It is an astonishing rise.
They now emphasize this nationalistic discourse. They speak about the Romanian people and the great achievements of the Romanian people during communism, including industrial development and other achievements from that period, despite the fact that they are not communist.
So, my comparison is thematic: it is a thematic and qualitative analysis. That is my main approach. I have also conducted a brief quantitative analysis because I wanted to highlight the differences between Hungarian and Romanian discourse. Hungarian discourse is deeply historical and densely populated with references to history and to the ancient past of the Hungarian people.
They try to construct the Hungarian people by referring to their heroic past, when Hungary was an independent kingdom and included regions that are now part of Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, and Croatia—the idea of Greater Hungary. In Romania, by contrast, there is more of an appeal after 2020 to the recent past, particularly to the communist period, although my research stops in 2020. Before 2020, the discourse was directed against foreigners, international companies, globalism, liberalism, and multiculturalism, while portraying Romanian people as second-class.
ECPS-ECRN Helped Turn Academic Networking into Concrete Research Collaboration
It’s very interesting to look at the comparative approach in the speeches and how frequently you use qualitative analysis. I found that really compelling. Thank you for that. For my next question, I’d like to shift gears a little and ask about your cooperation with other scholars. Contemporary research increasingly depends on international collaboration. How has cooperation with other scholars, academic networks, and initiatives such as the ECPS Early Career Researchers Network (ECRN) influenced your research, professional development, and intellectual outlook?
Andrei Gheorghe: Actually, before becoming a member of the ECPS-ECRN Network, collaboration with other scholars was virtually non-existent. Despite participating in quite a few international conferences—not so many, around nine or ten, but for me that is a lot—I tried to develop my network, but it did not really happen.
After joining the ECPS-ECRN Network, however, I connected with an Italian scholar, and we decided to work together, collaborate, and write an article comparing Italy and Romania.
So yes, I think ECPS is a very good network. It has been a very positive factor in this kind of development.
Romanian Scholars Face Serious Barriers to Participating in International Academic Life
Photo: Shutterstock / GagoDesign
That’s really great to hear. Thank you for answering that question. My next question is: throughout your academic journey, what professional challenges have you faced, and what have been some of the most rewarding moments in your research?
Andrei Gheorghe: The most challenging thing for me was the transition between the French type of analysis and research and the English, Anglo-Saxon type of research, because the French approach is relatively less empirical. Despite being a PhD student in France, my participation in French academia has been quite limited, even though I want to participate more.
My work can be seen as too empirical and not sufficiently elaborate or theoretically sophisticated. But it is also very extensive because I compare two countries, while French scholars often take much narrower subjects for their analysis and go very deeply into a specific topic. So, this transition between French and Anglo-Saxon research has been one major challenge.
Another challenge is that, for Romanian scholars, it is very difficult to participate in academic events outside Romania because funding is almost nonexistent. You often have to pay all the expenses yourself, which is very challenging. There is also the question of how your work is appreciated in Romania.
As a PhD student, you also have to work to make a living. You cannot dedicate all your time to research, so you have to make sacrifices from this point of view.
On the other hand, one major achievement was publishing a chapter in a book edited by Routledge. That was a big achievement for me, as were publishing my articles and participating in conferences.
Romanian Populism Still Remains on the Margins of International Research
That’s great. Thank you so much. And I do agree with you when you say that there are challenges when studying in different countries and adapting to the different approaches that academic cultures take. I completely agree. I’ve experienced it myself. I’m going to give you one last question because, since this is my first interview for this project, I think I overestimated how many questions I would be able to fit in, but I’m getting a good sense of the time frame now. So, let me ask you one final question. Looking ahead, where do you see populism studies evolving over the next decade, especially regarding Hungary and Romania? What areas remain neglected and deserve much more attention?
Andrei Gheorghe: It’s a good question because, in his book Le siècle du populisme (The Century of Populism), Pierre Rosanvallon argues that the 21st century will be the century of populists because of the decline of traditional ideologies—the left, the right, especially the left—and the rise of populism, both left-wing and right-wing populism. But it will essentially be the century of populism. And until now, he has been right.
Concerning Hungary and Romania, Hungary is very well studied. There are many studies and a great deal of research on Hungarian populism. But there are very few studies of Romanian populism and Romanian politics on the international stage, and also very few in Romania. So, that is why I chose to compare the two countries: national populism in Romania is very poorly studied and researched.
I think that my research, and perhaps my participation in international conferences outside Romania, will make more researchers interested in Romanian politics and Romanian populism. To make a confession, when I participated in international conferences outside Romania dedicated to populism, illiberalism, and nationalism, I was the only Romanian, and they looked at Romania and my research as rather exotic. They know about Hungary, they know about Poland and Bulgaria. They know much more about Serbia because of the Yugoslav Wars. What about Romania?
That’s wonderful that you are bringing attention to a subject that is not so widely researched internationally, introducing it at different conferences, and giving it more traction. I think that’s really great for academia. So, I want to thank you very much for talking to me today and for helping me with my project. I think your research is very interesting, and I was really glad to be able to talk to you about it. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Andrei Gheorghe: Thank you, Natalia.
(*) Natalia Crane is currently serving as a Grant Writer at Femme Incroyable ASBL and as a Research Assistant at the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), where she contributes organizational and writing skills to support impactful initiatives. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Germanic Studies, with a focus on International Relations and Global Security, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She also completed a Master’s degree in International Politics at KU Leuven, further deepening her expertise in international relations. Her previous roles include research and teaching positions at esteemed institutions, reflecting a strong commitment to analyzing and addressing global political challenges. She is fluent in Polish and English and proficient in German.
In this commentary, Dr. Hafza Girdap examines Turkey’s intensifying anti-gender politics through the interconnected concepts of gendered populism, gendered authoritarianism, and differentiated citizenship. Using the September 2026 “My Family Is Safe” crackdown as a focal point, she argues that family, morality, sexuality, childhood, and national belonging are increasingly mobilized to distinguish ‘legitimate citizens’ from threatening “Others.” Central to her framework is the proposition that “gendered populism” constructs and mobilizes the boundaries of legitimate belonging; “gendered authoritarianism” institutionalizes and enforces those boundaries; and the “established citizen” embodies the normative subject whom these processes simultaneously produce and claim to protect. The article situates contemporary anti-LGBTQ+ repression within a longer transformation of citizenship, political homophobia, and family-centered authoritarian governance in Turkey.
In September 2026, Turkish authorities launched a nationwide crackdown under the strikingly familial title “My Family Is Safe” (Ailem Güvende). According to the Turkish Minister of Justice, investigations encompassed 162 individuals, nine associations, and 13 businesses across 15 provinces. Police raids, arrests, searches, seizures, and restrictions on websites and social media accounts disproportionately affected LGBTQ+ organizations, activists, journalists, and spaces associated with queer communities. The authorities have framed the crackdowns through allegations including obscenity, prostitution, exposure of children to inappropriate content, and questionable financial relationships, while presenting the broader campaign as part of the state’s protection of children, families, and social order.
The prosecution of journalist Tuğba Tekerek makes the expanding boundaries particularly visible of this campaign. Tekerek was detained in connection with an article she had written two years ago for Kaos GL magazine/website about LGBTQ+ experiences surrounding elections in Georgia; she was subsequently arrested pending trial on suspicion of obscenity. The significance of these developments therefore extends beyond the immediate policing of sexuality. They raise a larger sociological question about how family, morality, gender, sexuality, childhood, and national belonging become politically interconnected categories through which ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ subjects are distinguished (Girdap, 2026).
It is important to note that the current campaign is not an isolated episode but a particularly visible manifestation of a longer transformation in the gendered politics of citizenship in Turkey. Well before the current anti-LGBTQ+ crackdown, women’s rights had increasingly been reframed through a family-centered policy discourse in which women were positioned predominantly through motherhood and wifehood; feminist organizations and LGBTQ+ identities were simultaneously subjected to delegitimizing discourses (Sarac et al, 2023). Following the failed coup attempt of July 2016, these processes intensified as women’s organizations were closed, women associated with political opposition were subjected to gender-specific forms of punishment, and women’s identities and familial relationships themselves became sites through which political repression could operate. Post-coup migration similarly demonstrates that state-led and state-sanctioned gendered violence increasingly targeted not only women but also people positioned outside dominant understandings of national belonging on the basis of gender and sexual identity, ethnicity, religion, and political affiliation.
The campaign surrounding the Istanbul Convention provides an especially important bridge between these earlier developments and the present moment. As I have previously argued, contemporary right-wing populism frequently makes gender and sexuality central to the production of political antagonism: the heteronormative family is elevated as the normative model of social organization, while reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ identities, and gender ideology are constructed as challenges to it. In Turkey, the government’s renaming of the Ministry of Women and Family as the Ministry of Family and Social Policy symbolically relocated women within the family, while political discourse increasingly presented motherhood, children, religion, and the traditional family as markers of legitimate gendered belonging. The subsequent representation of the Istanbul Convention as a threat to the family demonstrates how gender discourse can participate in constructing an antagonistic ‘Other’ while simultaneously legitimizing the consolidation of political authority.
I conceptualize this process as gendered populism operating through gendered authoritarianism (Girdap, 2026). Gender here is not merely another policy domain upon which authoritarian politics happens to act. Rather, it becomes one of the mechanisms through which political membership itself is imagined and regulated. Populist distinctions between the ‘legitimate people’ and ‘threatening Others’ acquire gendered, sexualized, familial, religious, and moral content. Authoritarian power can subsequently translate those distinctions into institutional practices through law, policing, prosecution, censorship, restrictions on civil society, and regulation of public visibility. The family consequently functions not simply as a private institution or conservative value but as a political technology of boundary-making: protecting the familysimultaneously requires defining which families, gender performances, sexualities, bodies, relationships, and forms of public participation are recognizable as legitimate.
Drawing on the conception of gendered citizenship, Turkish citizenship has historically been organized through hegemonic masculinities and heteronormative requirements of belonging, while nationalism, militarism, religion, ethnicity, and gender intersect in producing differentiated access to social and political membership (Unlu, 2023). Turkishness, thus, is not merely a formal legal identity but an institutionalized regime of belonging in which gendered, racialized, ethnic, and religious hierarchies regulate who can inhabit the national subject without having their belonging questioned. This distinction between formal citizenship and substantive belonging is particularly important: minority women and LGBTQ+ individuals may be citizens in law while remaining positioned outside a narrower heteronormative conception of the socially legitimate Turkish citizen (Girdap, 2026).
I therefore employ the concept of the established citizen to capture this relationship between formal membership and normative belonging. The established citizen is not simply the person who possesses Turkish citizenship. Rather, it is the subject whose gender, sexuality, familial position, religion, ethnicity, political comportment, and relationship to dominant national narratives most readily conform to the historically shifting expectations of legitimate Turkishness. Importantly, this ideal is neither historically fixed nor produced exclusively by contemporary political Islam. Competing hegemonic masculinities, including modernist-secularist, Islamist, ultranationalist, and other political formations, have differed in their prescriptions while repeatedly making women’s bodies, appearance, sexuality, reproduction, and public participation sites upon which competing projects of nationhood are enacted (Özbay & Soybakis, 2020). Gendered authoritarianismtherefore does not invent gendered citizenship; it intensifies, reorganizes, and politically mobilizes its already existing boundaries.
Seen through this framework, the September 2026 crackdown poses a question considerably larger than whether the Turkish state is becoming more hostile toward LGBTQ+ people. It asks who can inhabit citizenship without having to continually establish their legitimacy. When family, morality, childhood, sexuality, national values, foreign influence, and public order converge within the same political vocabulary, the boundary between protecting an institution and policing a population becomes analytically crucial.
The current moment can therefore be read as an intensified stage in a longer process through which gendered populismidentifies the normative people, gendered authoritarianism disciplines those positioned beyond its boundaries, and the established citizen ideal supplies the gendered and moral architecture of belonging. Hence, rather than treating today’s crackdown as the beginning of a new politics, I ask what its vocabulary of family, morality, danger, and protection reveals about the gendered architecture of citizenship that made this politics possible in the first place.
Homophobic Populism, Populist Homophobia, and Anti-Gender Politics
Political homophobia is not merely hostility toward LGBTQ+ identities; it can function as a technology of political boundary-making through which the ‘legitimate people,’ the ‘threatening Other,’ and the moral boundaries of national belonging are constructed (Unal, 2024). Drawing on the concept of ontological security, Unal (2024) examines people’s need for a relatively stable sense of self, identity, continuity, and social world. Populist crisis discourse can generate ontological insecurity by presenting family, nation, morality, and culture as endangered. From the perspective developed here, this insight adds another dimension to the established citizen: the established citizen is not only the citizen who conforms to normative expectations but can also be constructed as the citizen who must be protected.
The contemporary mobilization against LGBTQ+ rights should be understood not as an isolated national political development but as part of a broader transnational anti-gender movement whose organizational strategies and discursive repertoires have developed through earlier anti-abortion campaigns (Kahlina et al., 2025; Ojeda et al., 2024). In this transformation, political struggles previously organized around opposition to abortion have increasingly expanded toward opposition to transgender rights, LGBTQ+ visibility, feminism, and what activists and political actors describe as gender ideology. Since the 2010s, populist leaders in diverse political contexts have adopted increasingly aggressive anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-feminist positions, often using gender and sexuality as politically mobilizing issues. While these strategies frequently seek alliances with conservative religious constituencies, their appeal is not limited to religious voters; anti-gender politics can also mobilize secular constituencies through broader narratives concerning family, children, morality, social stability, and national values (Corrales & Kiryk, 2022).
Homophobic populism, the strategic adoption of homo- and transphobic positions by populist political actors seeking electoral and political advantages, can create what amounts to a marriage of convenience among anti-pluralist populists, socially conservative secular actors, and conservative religious groups (Corrales & Kiryk, 2022). Populist politicians may promise socially conservative gender and sexuality policies in exchange for electoral support and, importantly, the political acquiescence of religious authorities toward other illiberal or anti-pluralist practices. Homophobic populism therefore operates simultaneously as an electoral strategy and a co-optation strategy. Gender and sexuality become useful not only for attracting socially conservative constituencies but also for constructing alliances that can facilitate broader challenges to political pluralism and democratic constraints.
A related but analytically distinct phenomenon is populist homophobia. Whereas homophobic populism describes political actors’ strategic deployment of homo- and transphobia, populist homophobia refers more specifically to the discursive mechanism through which anti-LGBTQ+ politics is translated into populist language (Corrales & Kiryk, 2022). Its central rhetorical mechanism is harm or victim inversion: groups that have historically experienced marginalization are reconstructed as powerful actors allegedly threatening the majority (Corrales & Kiryk, 2022). LGBTQ+ communities consequently cease to appear as minorities seeking equal rights and instead become represented as an intrusive or privileged elite whose demands are portrayed as radical, foreign, coercive, or dangerous to children, families, religion, and society.
This inversion is particularly important because it enables anti-gender politics to be articulated through the language of protection rather than exclusion. Opposition to LGBTQ+ rights can be presented not explicitly as hostility toward sexual and gender minorities but as the defense of apparently universal public goods: children, families, parental autonomy, religious freedom, morality, social stability, or even sustainable development. Within this discursive structure, the political subject is reorganized through a binary opposition: “ordinary people / families / children”versus “gender ideology / LGBTQ+ activists / foreign influence / threatening elites.”
Gender and sexuality thus become central terrains upon which the populist distinction between ‘a legitimate people’ and ‘an illegitimate Other’ is constructed. Unal (2024) similarly identifies the distinction between the ‘morally superior us’andthe ‘morally corrupt them’ as central to populist constructions of ‘the people.’ ‘The Other’ is not merely different but is represented as threatening the homogeneous nation. Once positioned outside ‘the good people,’ such groups may become targets of stigmatization through discourse, policy, and legislation.
This framework also explains why cultural panic is politically consequential beyond LGBTQ+ rights themselves (Corrales & Kiryk, 2022). By representing gender and sexuality as existential threats to families and children, political actors can encourage voters to prioritize cultural and moral conflicts over material questions such as economic redistribution (Corrales & Kiryk, 2022). Anti-gender mobilization can therefore facilitate a broader political realignment in which disputes concerning sexuality become vehicles for constructing political identities, consolidating coalitions, and legitimizing anti-pluralist politics. The restriction of LGBTQ+ rights is consequently not necessarily the endpoint of homophobic populism; rather, attacks on gender and sexuality may function as an entry point through which broader restrictions on pluralism become politically acceptable.
These distinctions provide an important theoretical foundation for the gendered populism argument in this article that captures a broader process in which gender, sexuality, reproduction, and family are not peripheral themes within populist politics but constitutive mechanisms for defining ‘the people.’ The imagined legitimate citizen is produced relationally against subjects represented as violating normative gender, sexual, reproductive, familial, or moral expectations. Anti-gender discourse therefore does more than identify political enemies: it establishes normative boundaries around belonging.
Unal (2024) identifies three modalities through which political homophobia operated during Turkey’s 2023 election campaign: culturalist and nativist othering at the intersection of Islam and anti-genderism; the vilification of political opponents as “inner enemies”; and movement toward the legal and institutional incorporation of political homophobia. These modalities are particularly significant for understanding how anti-gender discourse can move from rhetorical boundary-making toward institutionalized forms of exclusion.
When this discursive politics becomes embedded in institutions, it intersects with what I conceptualize as gendered authoritarianism. The distinction is analytically important: gendered populism constructs and mobilizes the boundary; gendered authoritarianism institutionalizes and enforces it. The former identifies who supposedly threatens the family, children, morality, nation, or “the people”; the latter can translate those representations into law, policing, prosecution, censorship, surveillance, restrictions on organizations, and other mechanisms of state power. The relationship can therefore be conceptualized as:
If populist anti-gender politics establishes the heteronormative family as a symbolic representation of the legitimate social order, conformity to particular gendered and sexual norms can become intertwined with the conditions of legitimate national membership. Family is therefore not simply something the state claims to protect; it becomes a political template through which ‘the legitimate citizen’ is imagined.
Unal’s (2024) concept of the crisisification of policymaking further helps explain how this boundary-making can become institutionalized. Crisisification describes the transformation of policymaking around a continuing sense of urgency, exceptionality, and insecurity, through which crisis becomes normalized rather than treated as an exceptional condition. Within the framework proposed here, this process provides an important link between gendered populism and gendered authoritarianism: once gender and sexuality are constructed as existential threats to family, morality, and nation, extraordinary forms of state intervention can increasingly be presented as necessary acts of protection.
This framework allows the analysis of Turkey to move from contemporary anti-LGBTQ+ mobilization toward the deeper historical question at the center of this article: How have gender, sexuality, family, religion, ethnicity, and political loyalty historically structured the boundaries between the established citizen and those whose belonging remains conditional, contested, or punishable?
The political function of anti-gender populism is therefore not exhausted by the production of an LGBTQ+ ‘Other.’Through that ‘Other,’ the normative citizenis simultaneously produced. Political homophobia tells us not only who does not belong but also who the state imagines as properly belonging.
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Girdap, H. (2026). “Contextual racialisation of women in Turkey: Their response through embodied identification.” In: Shilan Fuad Hussain (Ed.), Women, power, and gender in the Middle East. Routledge.
Kahlina, K.; Ristivojevic, D. & Rudgren, H. (2025). “Transnational politics of anti-gender mobilizations.” Redescriptions: Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory, 28(1).
Ojeda, T.; Holzberg, B. & Holvikivi, A. (2024). “A transnational feminist approach to anti-gender politics.” In: A. Holvikivi, B. Holzberg, & T. Ojeda (Eds.), Transnational anti-gender politics: Feminist solidarity in times of global attacks (pp. 1–32). Palgrave Macmillan.
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Unlu, B. (2023). “The Turkishness contract and the formation of Turkishness.” In: F. M. Gocek & A. Alemdaroglu (Eds.), Kurds in Dark Times. Syracuse University Press.
In this ECPS interview, Associate Professor Karl Loxbo of Stockholm University examines Sweden as an increasingly striking case of radical-right mainstreaming. He argues that the Sweden Democrats’ electoral decline should not be confused with diminishing political influence, since the party’s rhetoric and policy positions—especially on immigration—have become widely normalized. Assoc. Prof. Loxbo stresses that Sweden has moved “from one extreme to the other,” with SD incorporated into the right-wing bloc and restrictive migration policies broadly accepted across mainstream politics. He also discusses changing boundaries of political acceptability, elite cues, the “bandwagon effect,” Social Democratic accommodation, and the wider European consequences of legitimizing the radical right. Ultimately, he links these developments to “the declining legitimacy of mainstream politics.”
Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Associate Professor Karl Loxbo, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University, argues that Sweden has become an unusually far-reaching case of radical-right mainstreaming. For Assoc. Prof. Loxbo, the Sweden Democrats’ electoral setback in the September 13 election should not be read as evidence that their political influence has receded. On the contrary, he stresses that the party’s ideas, rhetoric, and policy preferences have become deeply embedded in Swedish political competition. “Sweden is a special—or I would even dare to say extreme—case,” he says, pointing to the speed with which the Sweden Democrats have been incorporated into the right-wing bloc and accepted by other parties.
The central paradox of the interview is therefore the growing distance between electoral support and ideological influence. Although SD lost votes, Assoc. Prof. Loxbo argues that the party has helped transform the boundaries of acceptable political debate, particularly on immigration. Sweden, he notes, has moved from a comparatively liberal migration regime to a radically more restrictive one, a transformation that is “largely due to the SD.” More significantly, he observes that there is now “no opposition in principle to this among the mainstream parties.”
This process, in Assoc. Prof. Loxbo’s account, goes beyond policy convergence. Restrictive positions on immigration have become “highly normalized throughout the political debate and in the media,” while SD’s “rhetoric and policy positions have been extensively normalized in Sweden.” The result is not simply that the radical right has entered the mainstream, but that the mainstream itself has shifted.
Assoc. Prof. Loxbo also emphasizes how dramatically the boundaries of political acceptability have changed. “What would not have been considered acceptable 10 years ago certainly is today,” he says, adding that these boundaries have been “completely erased and redrawn.” In his view, this transformation is reinforced when mainstream elites adopt positions previously associated with the radical right, creating what he describes as a “bandwagon effect” in which citizens either shift their views or become more willing to express preferences they already held.
The Swedish experience, Assoc. Prof. Loxbo warns, carries broader European implications. Once mainstream right parties legitimize the radical right, he argues, “the party system can be reshaped beyond recognition.” Sweden’s incorporation of SD into the right-wing bloc has already produced long-term changes that, while perhaps not fully permanent, now appear deeply entrenched.
Ultimately, Assoc. Prof. Loxbo situates radical-right mainstreaming within a wider crisis of representation. The radical right, he argues, is “just a symptom of a broader phenomenon: the declining legitimacy of mainstream politics.” The democratic challenge, therefore, is not merely whether SD loses votes, but whether mainstream parties can once again develop distinctive agendas and reclaim the capacity to shape political conflict on their own terms.
Here is our interview with Associate Professor Karl Loxbo, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
SD’s Decline Reflects a Shift in Voters’ Political Priorities
Sweden’s 2026 general election produced a narrow parliamentary majority for the red-green parties, with 176 seats compared with 173 for the Tidö parties. The Social Democrats remained the largest party with 28 percent of the vote, followed by the Moderates at 19.8 percent and the Sweden Democrats at 17.5 percent. Source: SVT.
Professor Loxbo, welcome! Let me begin with the recent election result and what it may tell us about the Sweden Democrats’ position. After years of growth, SD fell to around 17.5 percent in the September 13 election, while the centre-left bloc won a very narrow majority. How should we understand this setback? Has SD reached an electoral ceiling, or is this more likely a temporary decline linked to its role in supporting the Tidö government?
Assoc. Prof. Karl Loxbo: It’s difficult to say, but what is clear is that the issues they own, especially the immigration issue have not been that salient among the electorate during this election campaign. In fact, the electorate has turned back to more traditional materialist and redistributive issues during this election. This is one of the reasons why the focus has not been on the urgency of the topics they raised and, as a result, on which they had increased their support in all elections so far since 2010. I guess there is a perception among the electorate that these issues are not as important as they were in the last election.
That result also raises an important question about the difference between electoral support and political influence. SD lost votes, but many of its positions on migration, integration, deportation, crime, and assimilation have become more mainstream. Should we therefore distinguish between electoral loss and ideological success? Can a radical-right party lose support because other parties have adopted parts of its agenda?
Assoc. Prof. Karl Loxbo: Sweden is a special—or I would even dare to say extreme—case, in the sense that, in a very short time, the Sweden Democrats have been incorporated into the right-wing bloc as almost a full member. They are now fully accepted by all of the other parties, including the Liberals, and I am not really aware of a similar situation elsewhere.
Their current position, and what you referred to as the mainstreaming of their issues, has to be understood in light of that. The mainstreaming of their agenda is closely connected to their incorporation as a completely normal part of the right-wing bloc. In a very short period—roughly four years—it is almost like moving from one extreme to the other.
Sweden’s Immigration Policy Has Gone from One Extreme to the Other
This connects directly to your research on how radical-right parties shape political debate. You describe SD as an “issue entrepreneur” that helped make immigration more central to Swedish politics. If immigration is now firmly established on the agendas of mainstream parties, has SD become less necessary to voters? Can a party lose ownership of the issue it helped make dominant?
Assoc. Prof. Karl Loxbo: This again needs to be seen in light of the Sweden Democrats being incorporated into the right-wing bloc as a fully accepted part of it, and that also applies to their position on immigration. At the same time, the leading party on the other side, the Social Democrats, have also adopted this position, so in that sense, maybe the Sweden Democrats can lose ownership of the issue.
But when immigration is highly salient in an election campaign, they are bound to benefit from it. The thing is, it was not really a highly salient issue in this election.
Sweden stands out as a rather special case because immigration policy has gone from one extreme to the other. Before the refugee crisis, Sweden had a highly liberal immigration policy compared with many other European countries. This has changed completely, and it is largely due to the SD. And there is no opposition in principle to this among the mainstream parties. None.
This also raises the question of how mainstream parties react to SD’s success. When established parties adopt stricter positions on immigration to compete with SD, do they weaken the party—or do they instead help normalize SD’s language and way of defining political problems?
Assoc. Prof. Karl Loxbo: Going back to the previous question, you have to distinguish between the issue of immigration and the actor. Whereas the policy position of being strict on immigration is now highly normalized throughout the political debate and in the media, this was not always the case. The view of the actor itself—the radical right as a political actor—is different. The Sweden Democrats have been mainstreamed within the right-wing bloc, but there is still some tension surrounding the party itself. At the same time, it is certainly the case that their rhetoric and policy positions have been extensively normalized in Sweden.
Policy Influence Does Not Automatically Translate into Electoral Reward
Sweden Democrats’ Square Meeting in Umeå. Jimmie Åkesson speaks to the people on the city square where opposition left-wingers have formed a chain and protest in Umeå, Sweden on August 14, 2018. Photo: Shutterstock.
There is also a puzzle about the relationship between influence and electoral reward. SD had considerable influence over migration and criminal-justice policy during the last four years, yet it still lost support. Does this suggest that voters distinguish between getting the policies they want and supporting the party that first promoted them?
Assoc. Prof. Karl Loxbo: Again, voting depends very much on issue saliency, and in this election, the issue was not particularly salient. But it could, of course, be that many voters effectively free-rode on the Sweden Democrats: the policies had already been advanced, and the work had, to some extent, been done.
Let me turn to the relationship between SD and Social Democracy. Your research shows that Social Democrats can sometimes reduce losses to the radical right by taking a tougher line on immigration. But does this create a longer-term problem? Can Social Democrats win back working-class voters without also accepting the idea that welfare and solidarity should be more closely tied to nationality?
Assoc. Prof. Karl Loxbo: No. In the short term, it seemed that they could do this in some Scandinavian countries, as we saw in Denmark. The Swedish Social Democrats attempted to do the same, but in this election they won little or nothing back from the Sweden Democrats.
So, this appears to be a losing gamble, as much of the research in this field suggests. Accommodation generally does not work, and it works particularly poorly for social democratic parties. In that sense, voters tend to go with the original.
That creates a very slippery slope for social democracy. In the Swedish case, they seem to have adopted this position in order to neutralize the issue and make it less salient, but it has not won them votes. It is difficult to say whether this contributed to the Social Democrats’ weak election result or whether the more important factor was the general ambiguity of their campaign.
Immigration Has Become a Lasting Feature of Swedish Party Competition
This brings us to the wider structure of political conflict in Sweden. Your research suggests that immigration has become more important in shaping how voters understand left and right, while traditional economic issues have become less central. But cost of living, healthcare, welfare, and household finances were also important in 2026. Are economic issues becoming more important again, or has immigration permanently changed Swedish party competition?
Assoc. Prof. Karl Loxbo: Yes, immigration has become a lasting feature of Swedish party competition—although “permanent” may be too strong a word. Party competition in Sweden has clearly changed, and there is no longer a stable political supply of long-term redistributive platforms.
At the same time, demand for such platforms is highly fragmented and no longer consistently sustained over time. The reason is that the main dimensions of political conflict have become increasingly intertwined. Cultural and economic issues now overlap to a much greater extent, and party competition reflects this development. As a result, Swedish politics has become increasingly centered on cultural issues, particularly immigration.
The election also showed clear geographical differences. SD remained strong in many smaller towns and rural areas but faced more resistance in large and diverse cities. How should we understand this divide? Are different parts of Sweden developing increasingly different political cultures around immigration, identity, and social change?
Assoc. Prof. Karl Loxbo: You see the same divide everywhere between cities and rural areas. The radical right tends to be stronger in rural areas and somewhat less strong in more affluent urban environments. This is not a division that is specific to Sweden. But to answer your question, yes, for sure, there are different political cultures. Sweden, however, does not deviate in any significant sense from other countries in this respect.
Younger Generations Remain More Libertarian and Cosmopolitan
Greta Thunberg, climate activist, has been demonstrating on Fridays outside the Swedish Parliament. Photo: Liv Oeian
Another interesting result concerns younger voters. SVT’s exit poll suggests that SD lost significant support among 18–21-year-olds. What might explain this? Are younger voters becoming less attracted to radical-right politics, or are they simply moving between parties more easily than older voters?
Assoc. Prof. Karl Loxbo: Younger voters are not generally that attracted to radical right-wing politics. In fact, the general tendency is that younger generations are more libertarian or more cosmopolitan in their mindset. However, in the last election, it was clear that the SD was strong among young men. The decline now probably also reflects the decline in issue saliency. There are other issues on the agenda, and they are not the issues that the SD own. As a result, you see a decreasing gap between young girls and boys, who are becoming less likely to support the radical right.
Let me turn to the question of normalization. In your earlier work, you argued that strong criticism and isolation of SD could sometimes help the party present itself as an outsider and strengthen its internal unity. Today, SD is much more established. How has the line between what is seen as racist, xenophobic, radical-right, or simply legitimate migration policy changed in Sweden?
Assoc. Prof. Karl Loxbo: It has changed dramatically—substantially. As I said before, it is like moving from one extreme to the other. What would not have been considered acceptable 10 years ago certainly is today.
The boundaries around these issues have been completely erased and redrawn. One example is the recent debate about why the right-wing side lost the election. The Sweden Democrats quickly argued that this was because immigrants vote for the left, and the narrative seemed to imply that these votes somehow did not count.
Yet hardly anyone reacted to that, except on the left. Ten years ago, it would have caused a major scandal. Today, it does not, and that illustrates how profoundly the boundaries around this issue have shifted.
Democracies Should Be Wary When Political Arguments Target Particular Groups
That leads to a difficult but important distinction. Democratic states clearly have the right to control migration and set rules on citizenship and integration. At what point does a restrictive migration policy become nativist or exclusionary? What signs should scholars and people look for?
Assoc. Prof. Karl Loxbo: You should look for signs such as the one I just mentioned: when political rhetoric begins to single out specific groups. When particular groups become the focus of political argument—when people are told to be wary of this group or that, or when individuals are treated as if they act collectively—that is, at least from the Swedish case, one warning sign.
Your research with Mike Farjam also shows how people respond to what they think the majority believes. Could this help explain the normalization of radical-right ideas? If restrictive views are increasingly presented as “common sense” or the voice of a “silent majority,” can this make people more willing to accept or express such positions?
Assoc. Prof. Karl Loxbo: Yes, definitely. It’s the same mechanism here, but it is more about people revealing preferences they already hold. They do so in response to elite cues. When elites shift their positions on these issues, people often shift as well.
The key point is that this broader change does not occur simply because the Sweden Democrats move in a certain direction. They tend to reach a more limited electorate, particularly those who already hold strongly anti-immigrant views. The broader shift comes when mainstream parties also change their positions.
In the Swedish case, that can produce a bandwagon effect: people either shift their positions on these issues or become more willing to express views they already held. That is what redraws the boundaries.
Swedish Exceptionalism Was Greatly Exaggerated
Jimmie Åkesson speaks to the people on the city square where opposition left-wingers have formed a chain and protest in Umeå, Sweden on August 14, 2018.
This also connects to Sweden’s image as a highly trusting and tolerant society. You have questioned the idea that high social trust automatically means high tolerance toward outsiders. Looking at Sweden’s shift toward a more restrictive migration debate, was the idea of Swedish exceptionalism always somewhat exaggerated?
Assoc. Prof. Karl Loxbo: Yes, somewhat exaggerated, perhaps. But if you compare Sweden with many other countries, it is still more tolerant. Although these issues have been normalized here as well, the idea of Swedish exceptionalism has certainly been greatly exaggerated. The belief that Sweden was immune to radical-right populism was actually widely held around 20 years ago. That turned out to be highly naive and reflected an exaggerated belief in the liberalism of Swedish public opinion.
Let me broaden the discussion to Europe. Your recent research with Brigitte Pircher suggests that European integration has reduced conflict in some economic areas while leaving more room for political conflict over identity and social protection. Could this help explain why migration, borders, and national identity have become so important for radical-right parties?
Assoc. Prof. Karl Loxbo: Yes, and this is a traditional explanation in the literature for the general rise of right-wing populism: the convergence of established parties on economic issues. To some extent, European integration has pushed them toward similar positions on issues that were previously more politicized. As a result, this creates political space that can be exploited by other parties, including the radical right. So yes, I believe that.
Sweden Shows the Risks of Mainstream Conservatives Embracing the Radical Right
The Swedish case also has wider European relevance. Germany faces the AfD, France the National Rally, and Britain Reform UK. What lessons can these countries draw from Sweden about isolating the radical right, adopting parts of its agenda, or giving it influence over government?
Assoc. Prof. Karl Loxbo: As soon as mainstream right parties legitimize the radical right—not only by accommodating its main issues and adopting the same positions, but by actively saying that it was right all along—the party system can be reshaped beyond recognition. I doubt that will happen in Germany with the AfD, but if it does, the consequences would be profound.
That is what happened in the Swedish case. When the right-wing bloc included the Sweden Democrats, it produced long-term shifts that now look almost permanent, although I would hesitate to call them fully permanent.
So, it is a significant risk, as the Swedish conservatives have shown. If the German CDU were to follow the same path, I would be worried.
The Radical Right Is a Symptom of the Declining Legitimacy of Mainstream Politics
Finally, let me end with the broader democratic question. If SD continues to lose votes but much of the political agenda it helped create remains in place, how should we judge democratic resilience? Is it enough for the party itself to weaken, or do mainstream parties also need to regain the ability to shape political debate on their own terms?
Assoc. Prof. Karl Loxbo: Yes, definitely. Otherwise, someone else will come along. I would say that the radical right is just a symptom of a broader phenomenon: the declining legitimacy of mainstream politics.
This does not occur in a vacuum. It is the result of a long-term decline in the legitimacy of mainstream parties, which in turn creates space for the mobilization of new parties. So, if the radical right declines, someone else will come along, as long as we have voting rights.
So yes, of course, mainstream parties need to develop clear agendas and political issues of their own again. The question is: can they?
In this ECPS interview, Associate Professor Ov Cristian Norocel of Lund University examines how the Sweden Democrats’ electoral decline can coexist with the continued normalization of their political agenda. He argues that Sweden’s mainstream right has itself shifted, noting that on immigration “the other parties [are] radicalizing themselves, rather than the Sweden Democrats normalizing their political messaging.” Norocel discusses the emergence of a Swedish “right-wing continuum,” welfare chauvinism, differential grievability, the racialized reinterpretation of the folkhem, gender equality, masculinities of crisis, and youth radicalization. His central argument is that SD’s influence cannot be measured by vote share alone: even as the party loses electoral ground, ideas it helped mainstream remain politically powerful and continue to shape debates over migration, welfare, belonging, and Swedish identity.
Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Associate Professor Ov Cristian Norocel of the Department of Sociology at Lund University argues that the Sweden Democrats’ (SD) electoral decline in Sweden’s 2026 election should not be mistaken for a retreat of the political ideas the party has helped normalize. Rather, he emphasizes that the more consequential development may be the transformation of Sweden’s mainstream right itself. As he puts it, on immigration “we see the other parties radicalizing themselves, rather than the Sweden Democrats normalizing their political messaging.”
At the center of Norocel’s analysis is what he calls the crystallization of a Swedish “right-wing continuum” bringing together SD, the Moderates (M), the Christian Democrats (KD) and, to a certain extent, the Liberals (L). While the SD have moderated elements of their presentation in pursuit of governmental legitimacy, Norocel stresses that this has occurred alongside movement in the opposite direction by established center-right parties: “the M, KD, and L, to a certain extent, have radicalized their political messaging.” The result, he argues, is a convergence in which parties that once occupied more distinct ideological positions “have been drawn to one another.”
This convergence is particularly pronounced on migration. Norocel notes that SD has remained “very persistent and consistent” on the issue, while other parties have moved increasingly closer to it. He therefore rejects a simple interpretation of the 2026 result as evidence that the radical right’s influence is waning. Indeed, he argues that “the party had already achieved part of its policy agenda,” as ideas associated with welfare chauvinism and restrictive migration policy have been “appropriated and transformed into policies by the parties in power.”
The interview also broadens the discussion beyond immigration alone. Drawing on his work on “differential grievability,” Norocel explains how political discourse ranks some lives as “more deserving of the state’s concern than others,” linking migration politics to welfare, ethnicity, race and national belonging. He similarly traces how SD’s reinterpretation of the folkhem has become increasingly “narrow and nationalistic,” turning the welfare-state ideal of “the people’s home” into “a home only for the Swedish people.”
Taken together, Norocel’s analysis points to a central paradox of contemporary Swedish politics: SD may be losing votes while the ideological terrain it helped reshape remains firmly in place. The crucial question, therefore, is no longer only how many voters support the SD, but whether mainstream conservative parties will “continue along the path of further radicalization and closer alignment with the SD” in the post-Tidö period.
Associate Professor Ov Cristian Norocel of the Department of Sociology at Lund University.
Here is our interview with Assoc. Prof. Ov Cristian Norocel, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
The Sweden Democrats Have Already Achieved Part of Their Policy Agenda
Professor Norocel, welcome! Let me begin with the idea of normalization, which runs through much of your work. You have shown how the Sweden Democrats moved from fringe nationalism and open racism toward welfare chauvinism, cultural racism, and a more acceptable conservative language. Yet SD lost support in the September 13 elections after four years of major influence through the Tidö Agreement. Does this electoral setback tell us very little about normalization? Could SD be losing votes while the political ideas it helped normalize are becoming more deeply rooted?
Assoc. Prof. Ov Cristian Norocel: Yes, this is a very interesting question, because if we look at the results and how electoral support has been distributed among the mainstream parties, but also pay attention to the parties that have fallen below the 4% threshold, the picture becomes quite complicated.
On the one hand, we could argue that the universe of ideas—of welfare chauvinism, of an increasingly restrictive migration policy, and also of a very aggressive migration policy, have gained a solid foothold among the mainstream parties. Here, of course, it is worth bearing in mind that the Tidö Agreement, and thus the government that had been in power until now, had been deeply dependent on the support of the Sweden Democrats, and the Sweden Democrats have had a major impact on the policy agenda of that government.
That conceptual universe had been appropriated and transformed into policies by the parties in power. So, this means that, in a sense, the party had already achieved part of its policy agenda. At the same time, their ambition to be able to nominate their own ministers and to hold specific portfolios in a future Tidö 2 agreement had not materialized. So, on the one hand, the ideas had been appropriated and had partly been transformed into policies. We have seen clear avenues for these to be continued further by the Sweden Democrats, and they were very explicit about what they were planning to do should the Tidö Agreement continue into a Tidö 2. However, at the same time, if we look further to the right of the party, particularly at the parties that have landed below the 4% threshold, we see an even higher radicalization of the same kind of ideological content as that of the Sweden Democrats. This is something that tells us that, across the ideological—or ideational—continuum of these parties, certain ideas have seeped into the mainstream and gained political currency. At the same time, the Sweden Democrats, as the vehicle of this ideological content, are considered not radical enough, particularly among the voters of Alliance for Sweden (AfS) or the Örebro Party—the local regional party in Örebro city and county.
So those 50,000 votes that basically made the difference between the red-green side of the political spectrum and the conservative side could have come from those voters who voted further to the right. On the other hand, I am quite skeptical that those votes would automatically have been transferred to the Sweden Democrats.
So, my argument would be that the Sweden Democrats actually suffered a significant defeat. If we look at the final data, they registered a decrease of 3.05% in voter share. And I would argue that those 50,000 that went to the smaller parties do not really account for that entirety, but that actually a lot of these votes, most probably went to the main conservative right party, the Moderates (Moderaterna / M), as well as the conservative-right Christian Democrats, or Kristdemokraterna (KD).
A Clear Right-Wing Continuum Is Crystallizing in Swedish Politics
That brings us to your idea of a “right-wing continuum.” In your work with Felicia Hägerbäck, you describe the growing alignment between SD, the Moderates, and the Christian Democrats, especially on migration and welfare. In the 2026 elections, SD declined while M and KD gained. Does this suggest that voters can now move between these parties without leaving the broader restrictive policy framework? Has the deeper change taken place in the mainstream right rather than simply in SD’s vote share?
Assoc. Prof. Ov Cristian Norocel: I think part of my earlier answer was pointing exactly to this aspect: on the one hand, we see the crystallization of a clear right-wing continuum in which not only the conservative-right Moderates, or the conservative-right Christian Democrats, and, to a certain extent, the so-called Liberal Party are included, but also the Sweden Democrats.
What I find extremely interesting—and this is something that I am working on at present in a manuscript—is paying attention to the dual forces in the creation of this right-wing continuum. On the one hand, we have a normalization of the radical-right populist parties. So, in our case, we have the Sweden Democrats, which, in pursuit of being perceived as more ready to be part of a governmental coalition, had toned down some of their more radical messaging. At the same time, what has happened is that the other parties themselves—Moderaterna, Kristdemokraterna, and Liberalerna to a certain extent—have radicalized their political messaging. So, we see how, from rather different positions on the ideological map these parties have been drawn to one another.
What I find interesting, however, is that on the issue of immigration, which is the core issue of the Sweden Democrats, they have not moderated their messaging. So, they have accepted negotiations and compromises on other policy areas. However, immigration has actually been an issue on which we see the other parties radicalizing themselves, rather than the Sweden Democrats normalizing their political messaging.
So, this also leads me to be rather skeptical of the interpretation that the Sweden Democrats have lost at the hands of the small radical parties. I would rather argue that their voters had perhaps been attracted to a more mainstream packaging of the same anti-immigration message.
Certain Lives Are Considered More Deserving of the State’s Concern Than Others
This convergence is also visible in debates about welfare and belonging. Your concept of “differential grievability” shows how migrants can be presented as less deserving of welfare protection and social concern. After four years of the Tidö framework, has welfare chauvinism moved beyond SD and become more firmly embedded in Swedish center-right politics?
Assoc. Prof. Ov Cristian Norocel: I would argue that it very much has. To explain in lay terms what grievability means—and this is a concept for which I am very much indebted to the scholarship of Judith Butler, who articulated it—my colleague Felicia and I have used the concept in our research to examine how, in political debates in the Swedish Parliament, certain lives are considered more valuable, and certain lives are considered more deserving of the state’s concern than others.
In that context, we noticed that when it comes to welfare provision, the lives of Swedish citizens and of Swedes, narrowly defined as an ethnic and racial community, are clearly placed higher on a hierarchical ladder than the lives of people of migrant descent, first-generation migrants, and people whose allegiance to the Swedish state and its values is constantly questioned. That is the distinction we identified.
What we also noticed in that research, and what I am continuing to explore at the moment, is that while the Sweden Democrats had accepted certain compromises in other policy areas—such as tax reduction, privatized schools, and privatized welfare infrastructure—they have been very persistent and consistent on migration. By the same measure, we noticed how both Moderaterna and Kristdemokraterna, and, to a certain extent, Liberalerna, had moved closer and closer to the Sweden Democrats.
In that context, we saw—and now we have tangible evidence of this, because our article was written before the Tidö Agreement came into force and before we could see its political effects—that the anti-immigration policies pursued over the past couple of years have become increasingly repressive. We also see policies that question the sincerity of people who have gone to great lengths to demonstrate, to a certain extent, even assimilation into Swedish society. Their sincerity is still being questioned.
That manifests itself, for example, in very young children from migrant families being expelled from the country, or in people who do not meet a rather high threshold of self-sufficient employment being forced to leave for that reason. So, we see how, on the issue of immigration, the right-wing continuum is very clearly taking shape. Not only that, but we also see how the mainstream parties have actually moved in a more radical direction, rather than the Sweden Democrats budging in any way on this issue.
SD’s Migration Agenda Endured Even as Voters Prioritized Other Issues
A Sweden Democrats (SD) campaign poster ahead of Sweden’s September 13, 2026 parliamentary elections, featuring the slogan “This is how we make Sweden Sweden again” and highlighting the party’s policies on immigration, crime, Islamism, citizenship, welfare, and the economy.
This creates an important paradox. SD lost around three percentage points, but migration, crime, citizenship, integration, and welfare deservingness remain central political issues. Could this be a case of electoral weakness combined with broader ideological success? How should we distinguish between losing votes and successfully changing the boundaries of acceptable political debate?
Assoc. Prof. Ov Cristian Norocel: Here we need to take a step back and acknowledge that, on the one hand, the Sweden Democrats had been rather successful in imposing their understanding of migration matters on the Tidö parties. To a certain extent, the Social Democrats have also started talking more about, and leaning more toward, a restrictive approach to migration.
However, in the context of the 2026 elections in Sweden, migration as a specific policy issue was not highest on the agenda of the Swedish electorate. There were other topics that voters considered much more important, and here one could point to two in particular: the economy and economic matters, and the climate and the issue of climate change. Matters of migration and law and order therefore ranked significantly lower on the political agenda of the electorate.
We could then argue, perhaps—and my colleagues, like Anders Hellström, would perhaps agree on this matter—that the party had been out of sync with the wider electorate. Even though the Sweden Democrats maintained their direction on migration and remained very critical on migration matters and law-and-order issues, the electorate had moved on and prioritized slightly different topics.
The Liberal Party Is Becoming a Party Without an Electorate of Its Own
The Liberals offer another interesting example of this normalization. After facing the risk of falling below the electoral threshold, they reached around 5.4 percent and moved toward accepting SD participation in government. Does this show that normalization can happen not only through ideological change but also through coalition strategy and political survival? How important is it when a liberal party begins to see cooperation with the radical right as necessary?
Assoc. Prof. Ov Cristian Norocel: On this matter, the Liberal Party has had a very surprising journey. If you think back to the 2022 elections, and even earlier, the Liberals were one of the parties that took a very clear stance against allowing the Sweden Democrats to have any influence on governmental matters whatsoever. However, it seems that, under a series of party leaders, this red line has been crossed several times: from actively trying to prevent the Sweden Democrats from gaining any meaningful influence on governmental matters, to presenting themselves as the party that would guarantee, in a governmental constellation like the Tidö Agreement, that the Sweden Democrats’ policy influence would not be as significant as if the party were itself in power and in government; and, nowadays, to the present leader of the Liberals physically embracing the Sweden Democrats’ leader and saying that a vote for the Liberal Party actually secures a continuation of the Tidö political agenda.
So, we see how the party, at least its leadership, seems to have dropped any ethical concerns regarding its policy guidelines, what sits at its core, and what the core values of the party are. From this point of view, if I may go back to the electoral results, and particularly the VALU research on the party’s voter profile, what I find extremely telling is that, if we compare the 2022 elections with the 2026 elections, only around a third of the original electorate that had voted for the Liberal Party in 2022 continued to vote for the party in 2026.
This means that support for the Liberals had come from elsewhere. Interestingly, that elsewhere was actually the Moderate Party. People who had voted for the Moderate Party in 2022 constituted approximately 40% of the Liberal Party’s new voters in 2026. So it seems that, at present, one could even go so far as to argue that the Liberal Party is no longer a party with a clear ideology of its own or an electorate of its own. Rather, it is a party without its own electorate and is supported mainly by a specific wing that previously backed the conservative-right Moderate Party.
The Folkhem Is Becoming a Home Only for the Swedish People
Celebrating Sweden’s National Day in Norrköping, Sweden, on June 6, 2014. Immigrants and native Swedes participate together in National Day celebrations. Sweden’s National Day is an official public holiday. Photo: Dreamstime.
Let me turn to SD’s use of the Swedish welfare tradition. Your earlier work shows how SD reinterpreted the ‘folkhem’ around a distinction between a deserving national “us” and outsiders. Have the September 13 elections changed this strategy, or shown how durable it has become? Is SD support about more than immigration—about a wider idea of who belongs within Swedish welfare and solidarity?
Assoc. Prof. Ov Cristian Norocel: It is becoming increasingly clear that the way the Sweden Democrats understand and deploy the concept of the folkhem—which, in plain English, means “the house of the (Swedish) people”—makes it self-evident that it is about Swedish people. In this sense, it is becoming more and more of a right-wing project.
Previously, the party had used the concept of the folkhem to mobilize an electorate around the idea that the Social Democrats—the party that had dominated Swedish politics for most of the 20th century and the early 21st century—had forgotten the ideals of the folkhem. The Sweden Democrats then sought to present themselves as its true defenders. Nowadays, however, this use of the concept is becoming increasingly narrow and nationalistic. We are no longer talking simply about a home of the people, as the concept itself would be translated, but increasingly about a home only for the Swedish people. It is defined within the confines of the national community, with a very clear racial and ethnic dimension.
At the same time, and also as part of their participation in the Tidö Agreement, the Sweden Democrats have moved further to the right. The folkhem, as it is now used and deployed by the party, is not only becoming more racialized—a project for the Swedish nation, ethnically and racially defined—but also increasingly a right-wing project in which tax reductions, punitivity, and privatization have become more important.
Even within this understanding of a folkhem for the Swedish people, a certain hierarchy appears to be constructed, in which only certain Swedish people are included in the Sweden Democrats’ folkhem: those who are comfortably middle class and who live in specific locations across Sweden—not in areas with significant migration, but in places with a rather distinct profile, somewhere between rural and highly urbanized areas, in peri-urban locations across the country.
SD’s Vision of Future Sweden Is Necessarily Ethnically and Racially Swedish
Your intersectional research broadens this question further. You show that radical-right ideas about “us” and “them” are shaped through gender, class, ethnicity, race, sexuality, welfare, and traditional values at the same time. Does this help explain why SD can remain strong even when immigration is not always the top concern? Are voters responding to a broader social and moral worldview rather than one issue alone?
Assoc. Prof. Ov Cristian Norocel: At least in the research I’ve been publishing over the past decade or so, gender has been a very important lens for better understanding the ideological universe of the Sweden Democrats. Gender, and intersectionality in particular, has been one of the main theoretical lenses that has allowed me to understand the articulation and re-articulation of the folkhem concept. It is through this intersectional perspective that I became aware of the growing stratification of the folkhem.
As I was just saying, I became aware of a certain racial stratification that excludes migrants, regardless of how much they attempt to become integrated or even assimilated into Swedish society. There is always a distinction, as reflected in statements by several highly ranked Sweden Democrats who have basically argued that no one of migrant descent will ever be able to consider themselves fully Swedish.
This extends to a certain social stratification within the folkhem, and this is part of what I have described as the mainstreaming of the radical-right populist party in Sweden. The moment tax reductions become important for the party or at least become part of the governmental package that the party supports, this leads to a tacit stratification of the folkhem. Comfortably middle-class Swedes become the preferred members of the folkhem, as opposed to working-class Swedes who may live in highly diverse neighborhoods and who, together with people of migrant background, have other, more socially acute political priorities, such as rent control, redistribution of resources, proper schools, and proper welfare infrastructure.
From that point of view, intersectionality has been very important because it has allowed me to see this stratification and how the concept of folkhem has, little by little, undergone a similar process in which certain people are discursively sorted out and the concept becomes focused on a rather narrowly defined group, not only in terms of ethnicity and race, but also in terms of class.
The issue of gender is also very important here, because we have seen how the party, over at least the past 10 or 15 years, has become increasingly adamant not only about preserving Sweden as it is, but also about ensuring that future Sweden—the future generations of citizens living in this country—will necessarily be ethnically and racially Swedish. This means that there is a very purposeful idea, in rather mechanicistic terms, about who is to be encouraged to reproduce.
Here, of course, this goes back to the idea of turning their gaze toward women and defining their task narrowly as those entrusted with reproducing the Swedish nation and ensuring that this traditional worldview continues into future generations that are, according to the Sweden Democrats, necessarily ethnically and also racially Swedish.
From that point of view, we can see how this understanding of the folkhem, and of the tasks allocated respectively to men and women, has also had certain electoral consequences, because the party still has a significant gender imbalance among its members. We can also look at the leadership, which is dominated by men, with very few women in positions of power. Those few women who do reach positions of power generally leave after a relatively short time, so there are very few who were promoted within the party from the beginning and have continued to occupy a central place in it.
This has also allowed me to see how gender has repercussions both in the way it is articulated politically by the Sweden Democrats and in the party’s internal structure. We see how the party structure does not allow women to progress easily into the leadership, and we also see the consequences among the electorate. There is still a significant difference between how men and women across all age groups and across the country vote for the Sweden Democrats, with a clear imbalance toward the male electorate across all age groups.
SD Presents Itself as Returning to What “Gender Equality Once Meant”
Children enjoy the Malmö Festival in Malmö, Sweden. Photo: Kim Carlson / Dreamstime
Gender equality is a particularly interesting part of this picture. You have shown how radical-right actors can support gender equality rhetorically while using it to contrast a supposedly modern Swedish majority with a racialized and patriarchal migrant “other.” Has this way of speaking spread beyond SD? Has gender equality itself become a way of drawing boundaries around migration, Islam, citizenship, and Swedish identity?
Assoc. Prof. Ov Cristian Norocel: This is also part of an ongoing research project that I’m working on at the moment. Together with a colleague from Sciences Po, we have been very interested, on the one hand, in the crystallization of the right-wing continuum and, on the other hand, specifically in the issue of gender equality: how and to what degree this concept has been used both by the Sweden Democrats and by the other parties along the right-wing continuum, and how it has changed over time.
It is rather interesting because, when it comes to gender, the party clearly takes a stance against what it considers to be” feminism that has gone too far.” The various efforts toward emancipation pursued by feminist actors, including civil society organizations and political parties that have embraced such an agenda, have been portrayed by the Sweden Democrats as their enemies. The party has instead consistently claimed to promote a return to what “gender equality once meant.”
They have a rather mechanicistic understanding of gender equality in this respect. Their approach is, on the one hand, to count very strictly how many men and how many women have access to specific positions and, on the other hand, to emphasize that gender quotas are not something to be pursued. The party has consistently opposed gender quotas across all sections of society, arguing that every individual, whether woman or man, should demonstrate their own qualities and that this assessment should be reflected in the positions they are able to attain in society.
In this sense, they are largely impervious to questions of structural inequality and the structural barriers that prevent women from reaching certain positions in Swedish society. Interestingly, parties that previously supported a rather different and more encompassing approach to gender equality, women’s advancement, and emancipation—such as the Liberal Party and, to a certain extent, the Moderate Party—are now also gradually moving toward this narrower understanding of gender equality.
Gender equality thus comes to mean, basically, having a certain number of women and men in particular positions in society, while emphasizing that this balance should be achieved not through state intervention or governmental policies, but through each individual’s own qualities and willingness to attain those positions. It is a very interesting change in tone among these parties.
The Far-Right Has Been Quicker to Incorporate Crisis into Its Political Agenda
Your work on far-right masculinities also focuses on the politics of crisis. You describe a “masculinity of crises,” in which repeated crises help create an embattled “us” and strengthen ideas of hierarchy and protection. Sweden has faced debates framed around migration, crime, welfare, energy, and security crises. Has crisis become a permanent political language through which authority, masculinity, and national belonging are organized?
Assoc. Prof. Ov Cristian Norocel: Unfortunately, we are living through very interesting times, and these times are indeed marked by a continuing series of crises. This means that all parties in Parliament, as well as those outside it, have to develop their own strategies for dealing with these issues and package those responses in ways that make sense to their potential electorate. My analyses have led me to argue that, along this right-wing continuum, and even further to the right, these actors have been much quicker to incorporate crisis into their political agendas.
Looking specifically at gender, I noticed a clear resonance between the idealized masculinities these actors promote and the politics of crisis. This led me to develop the concept of “masculinities of crises” as a way of conceptualizing these idealized models circulating in these political circles. Put simply, masculinities of crisis refer to a type of masculinity articulated along the ideological continuum further to the right that is not merely a reaction to repeated crises, but a specific construct that actually thrives in a context of crisis. I would go so far as to say that these masculinities would not have the same political impact they have today if there had not been so many crises in recent years.
What we are witnessing in relation to economic inequalities, insecurity, climate denialism, and war very close to our borders has therefore been conducive to the type of masculinity that is crystallizing and being promoted in these circles.
Young Men Are Being Attracted to Parties Further to the Right of SD
The youth vote adds another dimension. SD appears to have lost support among the youngest voters, while young men remain more right-leaning than young women. Should we distinguish between support for SD as a party and the wider spread of nativist or anti-egalitarian ideas among young men? Could younger men move to other right-wing parties while keeping political identities partly shaped by radical-right discourse?
Assoc. Prof. Ov Cristian Norocel: I haven’t had a very close look at exactly how young men and young women, respectively, are voting for and supporting right-wing populist parties, as well as parties further to the right. But from the little I have already seen, a very interesting picture is taking shape. The Sweden Democrats are beginning to lose their appeal as outsiders on the political landscape, while younger men in particular are being attracted to parties further to the right of the Sweden Democrats.
What I find extremely telling is the episode playing out in one of the most privileged social settings in Sweden: Manillaskolan, one of the most prestigious schools in central Stockholm. Interestingly—“interesting” in quotation marks—the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) received votes from a significant number of young people at the school.
This raises questions about the interaction between, on the one hand, a younger generation, particularly men, who find the messaging of the more extreme manifestations of right-wing and far-right ideology more appealing, and, on the other hand, class distinction, because Manillaskolan is actually a setting for highly privileged segments of Swedish society. So we see a stronger resonance between social class, upper-class distinctions, and far-right ideology.
The Key Question Is Whether the Mainstream Right Will Continue Its Radicalization
And finally, Professor Norocel, let me return to the larger question of political success. SD lost votes and seats in the September 13 elections, yet many ideas it helped introduce about migration, welfare, belonging, and national identity remain influential, and cooperation with SD has become more accepted. Should we therefore look beyond SD’s vote share and ask how deeply its ideas about belonging, deservingness, gender, welfare, and Swedish identity have entered the political mainstream?
Assoc. Prof. Ov Cristian Norocel: Yes, this is something we will definitely have to research in the coming years. As we can see from the results, the party registered a significant decline, with the Sweden Democrats losing around 3% of the vote and experiencing a notable decrease in parliamentary representation. This is not the first time such a decline has occurred, as it was already evident in the [2024] European Parliament elections. So, for the time being, the party appears to be on a downward trajectory.
However, these ideas will remain important in the years to come, because it is still unclear how the conservative parties—both Moderaterna and the Christian Democrats—will react in a post-Tidö context. We are still at a very early stage. At the moment, we do not know what the future governmental constellation that will lead Sweden during the coming mandate will look like. This is still to be decided.
The Social Democrats will be the ones to lead the first negotiations on forming a government. We do not yet know exactly whether all the parties involved will be willing to negotiate and agree on a governmental formula. So, it remains to be seen whether, in this post-Tidö context, the social-conservative Moderaterna and the conservative Christian Democrats will return to their previous positions on migration, social welfare, gender equality, and so on, or whether they will continue along the path of further radicalization and closer alignment with the Sweden Democrats in preparation for another decisive moment, perhaps in 2030, with the next national elections.
In this ECPS interview, Dr. Gefjon Off examines the Sweden Democrats’ 2026 electoral setback against the backdrop of their continuing political and ideological influence. She argues that declining vote share should not automatically be read as “denormalization,” stressing that electoral strength is only one measure of radical-right success. SD’s “agenda-setting power and policy influence have been very significant,” she notes, extending beyond the Tidö parties as migration-critical positions have spread across the wider party system. Dr. Off also discusses issue salience, youth voting, gender gaps, economic insecurity, tactical voting, coalition fragmentation, and comparisons with Germany’s AfD. Her central insight is that electoral losses can coexist with enduring normalization: “The influence of the Sweden Democrats is clear.”
Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Gefjon Off, a postdoctoral research associate in Comparative Politics at the University of Hamburg, argues that the Sweden Democrats’ electoral setback in Sweden’s September 13, 2026 election should not be mistaken for a corresponding decline in the party’s broader political influence. At the center of Dr. Off’s analysis is a distinction between electoral strength and normalization. While acknowledging that electoral growth can be one indicator of normalization, she stresses that it is far from the only one. “There are many other indicators of normalization,” she notes, including how a party is treated by the media, discussed in public debate, and regarded as a legitimate political actor. For this reason, she cautions against reading SD’s losses as evidence of “denormalization”: “Electoral growth can be an indicator of normalization, but there are many other indicators that matter, too.”
This distinction becomes particularly important because, in Dr. Off’s assessment, SD’s agenda-setting and policy influence have extended well beyond its own electoral constituency. She observes that the party has exercised “considerable policy influence and agenda-setting power” and that this influence has not been confined to the Tidö parties. The Social Democrats have also moved toward more immigration-critical positions, leading Dr. Off to conclude that “SD’s agenda-setting power has extended beyond the right-wing bloc and some center parties.”
The interview therefore explores a central paradox of contemporary radical-right politics: a party may lose voters while some of the issues, narratives, and positions it helped elevate become increasingly embedded in mainstream political competition. Dr. Off suggests that once immigration and crime become widely politicized across the party system, the Sweden Democrats may lose part of the credibility advantage they previously enjoyed as the most prominent owners of those issues. “These issues have become mainstream,” she says, adding that SD’s earlier agenda-setting advantage “has become smaller.”
Yet electoral losses remain consequential. Dr. Off emphasizes that votes are ultimately indispensable to sustaining political leverage: “Without votes, a party eventually loses influence.” Still, she insists that the broader picture cannot be captured by vote share alone. “The influence of the Sweden Democrats is clear,” she concludes, and their “agenda-setting power and policy influence have been very significant.”
The interview thus examines SD’s 2026 setback not simply as an electoral story, but as part of a larger process through which radical-right ideas can reshape political agendas, party competition, coalition strategies, and the boundaries of what is considered politically mainstream.
Here is our interview with Dr. Gefjon Off, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
A Party Can Become More Normalized Even Without Continuing to Grow
Sweden’s 2026 general election produced a narrow parliamentary majority for the red-green parties, with 176 seats compared with 173 for the Tidö parties. The Social Democrats remained the largest party with 28 percent of the vote, followed by the Moderates at 19.8 percent and the Sweden Democrats at 17.5 percent. Source: SVT.
Dr. Off, welcome! Let me begin with your distinction between mainstreaming and normalization.In your work with Anna-Sophie Heinze, you distinguish between mainstream parties adopting far-right positions and the wider normalization of those positions in society. SD fell to around 17.5 percent in the September 13 elections after four years of major influence through the Tidö Agreement. Does this show that normalization does not necessarily lead to continued electoral growth? Can a radical-right party become more normalized even while losing votes?
Dr. Gefjon Off: Electoral growth is one indicator of normalization. As a party grows—especially a party that is new and was originally considered extremist, at least when it was founded, and clearly not normalized at that point—we can consider electoral growth an indicator of normalization.
But there are many other indicators of normalization. How does the media deal with this party? How is it talked about? Is it considered a legitimate political actor in society? So even people who do not vote for the party might consider it a legitimate party and a democratic actor in the political party landscape of the country.
And so, I wouldn’t say that a decline in electoral growth is a sign of denormalization or something like that. I would rather say that electoral growth can be an indicator of normalization, but there are many other indicators that matter, too.
It Is Quite Unusual for Center-Right Parties to Win Voters Back from the Far Right
This raises an important question about who benefits from mainstreaming. SD lost support even though migration, citizenship, integration, and crime remain central issues on the Swedish right. Can a radical-right party shape the agenda so successfully that mainstream conservative parties eventually benefit from positions it helped normalize? And does Germany show that policy mainstreaming can develop even when a party like the AfD remains formally excluded?
Dr. Gefjon Off: Usually, comparative research from other countries shows that center-right parties do not gain electorally by accommodating far-right positions. This pattern has been observed across many European countries, and there is quite a strong consensus on this in the research. So, yes, we would not normally expect center-right parties to win votes by accommodating the far right.
It is therefore quite unusual for center-right parties to win back voters from the far right, as has happened to some extent in Sweden. We usually do not expect this because far-right voters tend to support the party they consider most credible on the issues they care about. If immigration is especially important to them, the far-right party is usually seen as the most credible opponent of immigration because it made the issue its own in the first place. When a center-right party adopts a similar position, it may be seen as less credible because the far-right party was there first.
According to the exit polls, 7% of those who voted for the Sweden Democrats in 2022 voted for the center-right Moderate Party this time, and this is something we have not really seen much elsewhere, so it is quite unusual.
In Germany, regarding your second question—can policy mainstreaming develop even when a party like the AfD remains formally excluded? —yes, that is definitely happening. The center-right CDU still says it will not collaborate with the AfD or form coalitions with it, either at the national or federal-state level. This remains a formal exclusion rule. But, of course, the CDU is still adopting anti-immigration policies, and not only the CDU; we also see other parties doing this. So yes, the influence is still there, even though the AfD remains excluded from formal collaboration.
Can Now Use the Outsider Argument to Re-Establish That Image
Sweden Democrats’ Square Meeting in Umeå. Jimmie Åkesson speaks to the people on the city square in Umeå, Sweden on August 14, 2018.
SD’s position during the last four years was also unusual. It remained outside government but had major influence through the Tidö Agreement. Could its decline partly reflect the cost of becoming associated with government while losing some of its outsider appeal? And does the AfD’s exclusion in Germany help it preserve that outsider position?
Dr. Gefjon Off: I don’t think SD lost votes because it lost its outsider appeal. This is not a mechanism I would expect to find in other countries either, including cases where far-right parties have entered government. But this morning (Friday), the Sweden Democrats’ party leader, Jimmie Åkesson, made exactly this claim at the press conference. He argued that the party had lost some of its outsider appeal because it had worked with established parties.
I find this unlikely for two reasons. First, since becoming party leader in 2005, Jimmie Åkesson has consistently tried to make the Sweden Democrats appear more established. The party was founded by extremists, including Nazis, and since Åkesson came to power within the party, he has worked to clean up its image. Some people were expelled, the rhetoric was de-radicalized, and for a long time his strategy was precisely to make the party appear more established. So now, to claim that they lost votes because they worked with established parties—which has always been their goal—does not seem entirely convincing to me.
Of course, this is also rhetoric he can now use to re-establish more of an outsider image. The other reason is that, even though Åkesson himself does not usually engage in this kind of behavior—or does so only to a limited extent—there are leading figures within the party who have been around for a long time and who have made very controversial statements and sparked highly provocative public debates. In that sense, they have not always acted in an established way. They use provocative language, make controversial statements, and regularly trigger debates over whether such behavior is appropriate.
So, overall, I don’t think it is straightforward to say that SD lost votes because it worked with established parties.
Regarding the second question about the AfD: does its exclusion in Germany help it preserve its outsider position? Yes, of course. The AfD can use this exclusion to construct an identity around the idea that “we are the ones who are being unfairly excluded.” This strengthens an “us against them” group identity and helps the party build a partisan identity around being unfairly excluded.
The Right-Wing Bloc Remained Strong Despite SD’s Electoral Losses
The movement of voters within the Tidö bloc is also interesting. The Moderates moved ahead of SD, while the Liberals survived with around 5.3 percent, helped partly by tactical voting. Does this suggest that voters can move between parties for strategic reasons without changing their broader ideological views? Can SD lose votes while the wider right remains strong?
Dr. Gefjon Off: The exit polls show that the Liberal Party gained votes mostly from the Moderate Party, but not particularly from the Sweden Democrats. So, in this case, tactical voting was taking place, but not so much among Sweden Democrat voters. The Sweden Democrats’ losses therefore do not appear to have been driven by their voters switching to the Liberal Party.
This is also in line with what SD leader Jimmie Åkesson said. A few weeks before the election, he urged his own voters not to support the Liberal Party or engage in strategic voting. So, strategic voting did occur, but it came mainly from other right-wing parties, not from the Sweden Democrats, at least according to the exit polls.
The reason the rest of the right-wing bloc remained strong is probably, first of all, that the Sweden Democrats lost 3 percentage points, some of which went to the Moderate Party. But the Social Democrats also lost 2.3 percentage points, and some of that support went to the Moderate Party as well. This probably helps explain why the right-wing bloc remained quite strong overall.
In general, there was not much movement apart from the losses of the Social Democrats and the Sweden Democrats, who lost 2 and 3 percentage points, respectively. Otherwise, voter shifts were relatively limited. The election was also very tight. So, overall, we are talking about relatively small voter movements.
Once SD’s Issues Become Mainstream, Its Electoral Advantage Can Become Smaller
Your research also distinguishes between what people believe and which issues they consider most important. Could the 2026 election show that restrictive views on migration or crime remain widespread even if these issues no longer benefit SD as strongly at the ballot box? Can a radical-right party win the battle over the agenda but lose some of the electoral advantage once its issues become mainstream?
Dr. Gefjon Off: Yes, I would say these issues have become mainstream. In that sense, if other parties can act credibly in line with what SD stands for, it seems that other right-wing parties have become credible enough to SD voters on immigration and crime as well. That may mean the credibility advantage the Sweden Democrats gained through their agenda-setting power—by raising these issues, or at least by raising them most prominently in the first place—has become smaller. That could be one interpretation of the results.
Compared with 2022, however, immigration and crime were also somewhat less important to voters in 2026. They were still among the top-ranked issues, but we can see some movement. Healthcare, for example, has become even more important than before, and that is also a rather left-wing issue.
So perhaps part of the shift reflects the fact that immigration and crime have become less important in voters’ eyes. The question, then, is why. I can think of at least two possible explanations. One is that immigration and crime rates have gone down, so these issues may simply feel less urgent to many voters.
The other is that some of the immigration and crime policies proposed by the Tidö government were perceived by parts of the public as very harsh and therefore generated considerable public criticism. For example, debates about deporting children and teenagers, as well as incarcerating teenagers, sparked strong reactions. It may be that some voters reacted against the way these policies were ultimately implemented in practice.
So, these are two possible explanations for why immigration and crime may no longer have been as important as before. And that, in turn, could also have affected why SD was not as successful as it had been previously.
Values Tend to Remain Stable, but the Salience of Issues Can Change
This brings us to the importance of issue salience. Your earlier research showed that when gender equality becomes politically prominent, conservative gender attitudes can become more closely connected to SD support. Should we focus less on whether voters changed their values in 2026 and more on which issues parties successfully made important? Is radical-right support often about activating existing attitudes rather than creating entirely new ones?
Dr. Gefjon Off: Usually, research assumes that values are relatively stable. Attitudes may change somewhat more, but values are the deeper underlying beliefs people hold. Views on immigration or gender equality are often closely connected to values developed at an early age. People are generally socialized into these values while growing up, particularly during their teenage years and early adulthood, which we consider the formative years. After that, values tend to remain relatively stable. So, we would not expect people to completely change their minds between elections.
What can change are other factors: whom people trust, how they view political leaders, whether scandals occur, how the government performs, and so on. Another important factor is how salient a particular issue becomes. For instance, after 2015, when immigration increased in many countries, immigration became a more important political issue. It was discussed extensively by politicians, the media, and, of course, the far right. The same applies to other developments, such as the economic crisis or, later, worldwide feminist movements. When events like these occur, certain issues become more salient.
When an issue becomes more salient, the attitude people already hold toward it becomes more important in their vote choice. So, it is less about changing attitudes than about how important those attitudes become politically. This happens through major events, but also through the way political parties politicize particular issues.
Far-right parties across Europe—although the Sweden Democrats somewhat less so—have increasingly politicized anti-gender and anti-feminist views, as well as women’s rights and LGBTQI+ rights, by positioning themselves against these issues. Of course, if I am, say, a far-right voter who sympathizes with such a party and consumes its rhetoric and positions, this can also influence me. By politicizing an issue, the party therefore also increases its salience.
SD Lost 7%Points Among First-Time Voters, but the Broader Youth Picture Is More Stable
People shop in Gamla Stan (Old Town) in Stockholm, Sweden on August 23, 2018.
The youth vote is especially interesting in this respect. SD lost support among younger voters, while the gender gap between young men and young women remains substantial. Does this suggest a weakening of SD specifically rather than a reversal of the wider rightward movement among young men?
Dr. Gefjon Off: It’s interesting. According to the exit polls, the Sweden Democrats lost 7 percentage points among first-time voters. That is quite substantial, considering that they lost 3 percentage points in the electorate overall. Among 18- to 21-year-olds—a very small group—they lost 7 percentage points.
I don’t think this is easy to explain, except by noting that first-time voters are a very volatile group. They are not yet fully socialized into the political system, do not really have a partisan identity, and have not yet developed strong partisan attachments. So perhaps it is not too surprising that voting patterns among first-time voters can change considerably from one election to another.
Still, it is quite striking that the Sweden Democrats lost 7 percentage points in this group. But if you look at slightly older voters, the picture is more stable. Among 22- to 30-year-olds, they actually gained 1 percentage point, according to the exit polls. So, what is happening among young voters depends a great deal on how you define “young.”
I prefer to include voters up to the age of 29 or 30, because if you focus only on first-time voters, the group becomes very small, making it difficult to draw substantive conclusions. Among somewhat older young voters, the Sweden Democrats still gained a little. So, the overall picture really depends on which age group you examine.
We Do Not Yet Fully Understand Why Youth Gender Gaps Are Widening
Your comparative research also warns against assuming that all young men are moving toward the far right in the same way. What conditions determine whether culturally conservative young men support a radical-right party rather than a mainstream conservative party? How important are economic conditions, party strategies, and political institutions?
Dr. Gefjon Off: We see that in some countries, young men have been moving toward the far right, and Sweden was one of these countries until this election. For this election, however, we still need to see the numbers to know whether this trend is continuing.
Sweden has been one such case. But in many other countries, the youth gender gap is driven more by young women becoming more progressive. So, the explanatory factors shaping these patterns remain somewhat unclear. We do not really know why young women become more progressive in some places while young men become more conservative in others. What we do see is a widening gender gap in many countries.
The patterns differ, however, and we do not yet fully understand why. Some research suggests—although this still needs to be tested more rigorously—that in countries where gender equality is more advanced, more young men may move toward the far right. But this remains tentative.
As for economic conditions and party strategies, these certainly matter. They matter for many far-right voters, not just young men. A great deal has to do with economic grievances related to housing, prices, inflation, and perhaps job conditions. But it is also very much about perceived grievances. People’s own economic situation may not always be objectively bad, but they may feel that it is worsening or could worsen in the future. So it is often more about perceptions than about objective conditions. The two can, of course, go hand in hand, but they do not always have to.
This does not necessarily affect men and women differently, however. Everybody experiences economic insecurity when it occurs. Party strategies, on the other hand, do matter. Far-right parties are very effective at mobilizing on social media. And because of gender differences in social media algorithms, far-right content is more often shown to young men than to young women. So, we do think that these party strategies, especially in social media communication, matter.
Political institutions probably matter as well, perhaps in terms of the level of gender equality in a country, but this remains very tentative, as I said.
Voters Can Change Parties Without Changing Their Broader Cultural Values
Your concept of “protective masculinity” helps connect these developments to wider cultural attitudes. It brings together views about immigration, gender equality, sexuality, crime, hierarchy, and national identity. Could these attitudes remain stable even when party support changes? Can voters move between SD and mainstream right-wing parties without changing their broader cultural outlook?
Dr. Gefjon Off: “Protective masculinity” is a concept coined by Katarzyna Wojnicka; it’s not my concept. But I think it is much more about underlying cultural values concerning both immigrants and women, as well as the relationship between men and women, than about specific attitudes that might change from one election to another. That is why I expect these values to remain relatively stable. It is largely about how people view societal relationships between different groups. So, I do think these values remain stable, and they probably do not change even if, in this example, a person decides to vote for a party other than SD.
A More Diverse Electorate Is More a Sign of Far-Right Success Than a Hindrance
Black Lives Matters Protest in Stockholm, Sweden on June 3, 2020.
Your work also shows that radical-right voters are far from a single, uniform group. SD has drawn support from anti-immigration voters, economically insecure groups, former Social Democrats, and younger right-wing voters. Does its 2026 decline suggest that this coalition has become harder to hold together?
Dr. Gefjon Off: The growth of far-right parties necessarily means that their electorates become more diverse. As a party grows, more and more people vote for it, which naturally brings a wider range of voters into its electorate. This is more a sign of success than a hindrance. Being able to attract different population groups shows that these parties have become more successful, so I would not consider this a disadvantage for them. It is probably a good thing.
What is more interesting is that, at least in this case, some SD voters did not identify strongly enough with the party to remain loyal to it. This suggests that the partisan identity far-right parties often create very successfully may not have been as strong among some parts of the electorate. That is quite interesting. It suggests that in Sweden, perhaps this year at least, it was somewhat easier to win back voters from the far right than, for instance, what we have been seeing in Germany.
Far-Right Rhetoric Draws Heavily on a Sense of Unfair Treatment
Threat perceptions are another important part of your research. You show that cultural concerns can become stronger when combined with economic insecurity, distrust, and feelings of unfair competition. How useful is this framework for understanding Sweden today? Could these grievances remain strong while increasingly being expressed through parties other than SD?
Dr. Gefjon Off: As I said before, perceptions of economic insecurity, as well as the feeling of being unfairly disadvantaged in one’s own economic situation, can help fuel far-right support across Europe, not just in Sweden. But again, much of this is about perceptions and a sense of unfair treatment. This is something the far right often draws on in its rhetoric. They may tell people that they are being treated unfairly and that immigrants, for example, are being advantaged at their expense.
We have also seen some of this discourse directed toward men, especially young men, although less so in Sweden. They are told that they are being discriminated against, treated unfairly in society, and deprived of opportunities. This is part of the rhetoric, and it draws heavily on these kinds of perceived grievances.
At the same time, we see that many workers also vote for the far right. Workers traditionally voted for the Social Democrats, and they still do to a large extent, but many voters have also shifted from the Social Democrats to the far right. This has happened in both Sweden and Germany.
This year, 25% of workers voted for the Sweden Democrats, compared with 17.5% of the electorate overall. So, a substantial proportion of workers, who often live in more precarious economic circumstances, supported the party. Economic insecurity, therefore, definitely plays a role.
SD’s Agenda-Setting Power Has Extended Beyond the Right-Wing Bloc
Sweden’s Social Democrats campaign ahead of the general election in Malmö, Sweden, on September 2, 2022, in support of then-Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson’s bid for a second term. Photo: Francis Joseph Dean / Dreamstime.
The election also shows why different forms of political influence need to be separated. SD remains a major party, but electoral strength, policy influence, agenda-setting power, coalition leverage, and government participation are not the same thing. How useful is it to distinguish these different forms of normalization when assessing SD’s position?
Dr. Gefjon Off: I think this is important. As I said, electoral strength is one indicator of a party’s normalization, but there are many other ways to assess how successful it is. Over the past few years, SD has had considerable policy influence and agenda-setting power.
This influence has not been limited to the Tidö parties; it has gone beyond the coalition leverage SD exercised as a support party. The Social Democratic Party has also adopted more immigration-critical positions. So, SD’s agenda-setting power has extended beyond the right-wing bloc and some center parties.
There is therefore a great deal of influence, and it is useful to look at different indicators when assessing it.
The Rise of the Far Right Has Made Coalition Building More Complicated
Government formation shows how SD has affected the wider party system as well. The Center Party rejects dependence on SD, while also resisting Left Party participation in government, and the Left Party is demanding influence if its support is needed. Does this show that the rise of the radical right reshapes coalition choices even among parties that oppose it?
Dr. Gefjon Off: Yes. Since the rise of the far right across different European countries, party systems have become more fragmented, making coalition formation more difficult. Different countries have responded to this challenge in different ways.
For instance, in Germany, we have seen more grand coalitions over the past 20 years, with the center-left and center-right forming governments together to secure a majority. In Sweden, by contrast, we have not seen such grand coalitions in the past decade. Instead, governments have relied on minority arrangements supported by other parties. The Tidö government, for example, was a minority government that depended on the support of the Sweden Democrats.
A similar arrangement may now emerge with a new, more left-wing or center-left government, which could also be a minority government relying on support from another party. So, there are different ways of dealing with this challenge, but the broader pattern is that the rise of the far right has contributed to greater fragmentation in the party landscape, making coalition building more complicated.
The Liberals Survived with Help from Tactical Voting by Other Tidö Voters
The Liberals are particularly interesting here. Their survival strengthened the Tidö bloc, but the party has also struggled internally over cooperation with SD. Does this reveal a tension between electoral survival, ideological identity, and coalition strategy? Can the same tactics that help a party survive also make governing alliances more difficult?
Dr. Gefjon Off: The Liberals are a very interesting case because, traditionally, they were in favor of welcoming refugees. When they joined the Tidö government, which relied on the support of the Sweden Democrats, many prominent members left the party. There was also considerable internal disagreement, which significantly weakened the party. For a long time, it remained below the 4% threshold required to enter Parliament.
Now they have made it. But Simona Mohamsson, their party leader, has only been in the role for about a year. There were also strong disagreements between her and Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Åkesson over what it means to be Swedish and who can be considered a Swede, especially given Mohamsson’s own background as the daughter of immigrants.
So, the situation has been very unstable. In this case, what probably helped the Liberals survive was tactical voting by supporters of the other parties in the Tidö government—not so much by Sweden Democrat voters, but by voters of the other parties.
Swedish Opposition to SD Is Directed More at Its Policies Than at Its Legitimacy
Your experimental work with Amy Alexander and Nicholas Charron suggests that polarization can grow through both conservative backlash and liberal countermobilization. Could the September 13 elections reflect this two-sided process? Might years of SD influence have mobilized not only its supporters but also voters who are specifically concerned about its growing normalization?
Dr. Gefjon Off: I think there were definitely people reacting against some of the policies of the Sweden Democrats and the Tidö government. We see left-wing counterreactions to some of these policies, but I do not think we see a broader questioning of SD’s legitimacy as a political party. So, I would say that people are reacting more against particular policies than against the normalization of the party itself.
I am therefore not sure that there is such a strong concern in Swedish society about the normalization of the Sweden Democrats. In my impression, the question of whether SD is a legitimate democratic actor is not especially prominent in public debate. The opposition is directed more toward the party’s positions than toward its existence as a political actor.
In Germany, by contrast, there are major public debates about whether the AfD is a legitimate political actor, whether the party should be banned, or whether certain branches of it might be banned. Some branches have been labeled right-wing extremist and unconstitutional, the youth organization was dissolved, and a new organization was founded last year. So there is much more public debate, including formal statements by government authorities about whether the party can be considered a legitimate democratic actor and how it should be dealt with if it is not.
There have also been waves of demonstrations in which hundreds of thousands of people across different German cities have taken to the streets. These protests occur relatively regularly and are directed against the AfD as a political party and political actor.
So, I think the way people have reacted to normalization is quite different in the two cases. The counterreactions to particular policies may be similar, but the reaction to the normalization of the party itself is different.
Electoral Support Matters, but It Tells Only Part of the Story of SD’s Influence
And finally, Dr. Off, let me return to the broader meaning of radical-right success. Should we measure it mainly through vote share and government participation, or also through policy influence, agenda-setting power, mainstream adoption of its positions, and the weakening of stigma around them? If a party loses votes while many of its ideas become more accepted, does that suggest that electoral results alone tell us only part of the story?
Dr. Gefjon Off: Yes, I agree with this. SD lost votes, and it was also the party that lost the most votes in this election, which is probably an indication of the significance of that loss. But the party has gained considerable influence, and that influence remains.
It will be very interesting to see how the Social Democrats, having also lost votes, formulate migration policy in their coalition agreements. Will they continue along the rather conservative path they have been moving toward, or will they try to appeal to their more left-wing coalition partners and step back somewhat from these anti-immigration positions?
So, the situation is quite interesting, but the influence of the Sweden Democrats is clear. I am not sure they themselves would consider this a success, given that they lost votes. Of course, electoral support may still be the most important indicator because, without votes, a party eventually loses influence.
Still, their agenda-setting power and policy influence have been very significant, and that is certainly part of their success.
Africa’s centrality to the global energy transition rests increasingly on its vast reserves of critical minerals, yet mineral abundance alone does not guarantee developmental sovereignty. Dr. Oludele Mayowa Solaja’s commentary argues that the key challenge is whether African states remain low-value extractive peripheries or convert geological advantage into industrial capacity, technological learning, regional value chains, ecological accountability, and democratic bargaining power. It develops the concept of transition sovereignty to capture the ability of resource-rich societies to shape extraction, processing, governance, knowledge, finance, and value distribution on their own terms. Rather than rejecting foreign investment, the article calls for strategic interdependence, stronger regionalism, and accountable institutions capable of ensuring that decarbonization produces not only cleaner technologies, but also more equitable and developmentally transformative outcomes for African societies.
The global energy transition is frequently framed as a clean break from the extractive political economy of fossil fuels. But decarbonization technologies such as digital infrastructure, electricity grids, electric vehicles, batteries, and wind turbines rely on another extractive frontier—critical minerals. Strategic materials such as lithium, cobalt, copper, manganese, graphite, and rare earth elements are emerging as essential materials for a low-carbon economy. In Africa, this transition is dominated, yet its importance is underutilized: the continent provides substantial amounts of minerals needed by clean-technology industries. Still, it receives only a small share of the value (IEA, 2025). The big question is not whether Africa will provide the green transition, but what it will look like and whether African societies have the political, industrial, and technological capacity to define its terms.
This is different from green colonialism and what this commentary calls transition sovereignty. Green colonialism is not just the extraction of African minerals by foreign companies. It describes a larger political-economic trend that is creating a material geography of global decarbonization where the rents of processing, technological control, knowledge, finance, and supply chains lie disproportionately elsewhere, particularly in Africa. The language of the commodity shifts, from oil to coal, lithium to cobalt and copper—but so does the underlying asymmetry. The threat is not the exclusion of Africa from the green transition. It is that Africa will be represented on conditions that mirror its historical role as a low-value exporter of ecological wealth.
A new yardstick exists for measuring Africa’s involvement: transition sovereignty. It means the ability of resource-rich societies to decide on the extraction, processing, governance and distribution of transition minerals, as well as to develop their own and regional skills and expertise in industry, technology, knowledge, financing and ecological regulation. It’s less restrictive than state ownership and less strict than local content rules. A country has transition sovereignty if mineral wealth increases its bargaining power, builds productive capacity, benefits society, safeguards ecological and community interests, and lets African actors shape the organization of global green value chains. The issue is not only who owns the mine, but who decides and has the power to make the decisions and technologies that start underground and end up at the surface of the decarbonization technologies.
Beyond Resource Control: Building Productive and Technological Capacity
But Africa is starting to challenge the conditions of the transition. The African Union’s Green Minerals Strategy focuses on value addition at source, regional industrialization, climate resilience, and integrated value chains, rather than relying on raw mineral exports (African Union, 2025). National export controls also indicate a clear direction of travel. Since 2023, Africa has implemented at least 14 measures to limit the export of raw or semi-processed minerals, and in February 2026, Zimbabwe banned the export of all raw minerals and lithium concentrates to encourage in-country beneficiation and accountability (Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, 2026; Reuters, 2026a). Such measures cannot be idealized as definitions of sovereignty. They are better understood as efforts to renegotiate where value exits African economies.
Zimbabwe provides a revealing illustration of both the possibilities and limits of resource sovereignty. The action was directly tied to in-country value addition, accountability and beneficiation (Reuters, 2026a) in its February 2026 suspension of exports of raw minerals and lithium concentrates. This policy reflects a well-known model in which upstream mining companies in Africa export concentrates, and downstream processing and value-added manufacturing occur elsewhere. But restricting exports is just the first step. An export ban can generate ‘protected extraction without transformative industrialization’ without reliable electricity, transport, finance, processing technologies, skilled labor, industrial demand and credible institutions. The real question is: Does export restraint build productive capabilities, or does it merely shift rents at the mine gate?
Thus, the Zimbabwean example illustrates an overarching lesson in the theory of transition sovereignty: control of the commodity is not enough if it is not matched by control over the capabilities attached to it. Industrialization does not need to be confined within the national boundaries. It needs to develop, process, create, capitalize, and integrate mineral production resources into local economies. The IEA sees Africa’s opportunity in spreading the transition’s economic value across the global value chain, because its economic value is distributed unevenly along the chain (IEA, 2025). In this sense, sovereignty is not realized by stopping the extraction; it is realized by transforming a geological advantage into a sustainable productive capacity.
Knowledge Sovereignty and the Regionalization of Green Value Chains
Another aspect of the issue is related to knowledge sovereignty, as demonstrated in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In September 2026, the Congolese government stepped up its efforts to centralize geological information by creating a national geological databank, along with new aerial surveys and digital mapping. The goal is to strengthen state control, reduce the information imbalance, and boost the state’s negotiating leverage in mining deals (Reuters, 2026b). This is important because mineral sovereignty is also epistemic (knowledge-based). Information on the location, quality, access, and strategic value of deposits shapes investment, licensing, negotiation, and long-term planning. Formal ownership of mineral deposits can coexist with informational dependency, as long as geological intelligence, technical standards, and data infrastructures are externally dominated.
The DRC case also reminds us to see transition sovereignty beyond the state. If enhancing the bargaining power of government is to produce “public value,” “transparency” in contracts, “environmental accountability,” and “meaningful benefits” to “communities” and “workers,” then sovereignty is becoming “developmental.” It’s not just a matter of African States regaining control from foreign companies. It is the extent to which mineral control is institutionalized in institutions capable of making mineral governance socially accountable. Otherwise, the language of sovereignty can be used to justify a transfer of control from an outside entity to domestic elites, without changing who gets the benefits and who bears the costs.
The DRC-Zambia battery and electric-vehicle project provides a better regional prospect. Instead of treating copper and cobalt as a commodity that must leave the region before higher-value use can begin, the two nations have worked to develop a cross-border value-chain model that includes mineral processing, battery production, and industrial capabilities. The UN Economic Commission for Africa and other regional institutions have technically supported the activity. In 2025, measures were taken to strengthen engagement by firms, financial institutions, and other actors in the battery and electric-vehicle value chain. This is not limited to battery production. It shows how mineral-rich countries can be viewed as hubs of regional industrial coordination, not just sources of raw materials being bid for by foreign extractors.
Regionalism matters because many constraints to African benefaction are too great for individual states to overcome alone. Processing plants need stable energy, transport tie-ups, technical expertise, markets, capital, and volume. A regional strategy can then transform uncoordinated mineral resources into coordinated industrial systems. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) initiative on environmentally and socially responsible energy-transition mineral value chains also aims to keep mineral wealth within the region and encourage livelihoods and industrialization in several southern African nations (UNECA, 2026). This requires a multi-level understanding of transition sovereignty at the national, regional, and continental levels.
Strategic Interdependence: Partnerships on Whose Terms?
But the new mineral race reveals a more profound paradox. African minerals are now being talked about in terms of partnership, supply-chain security and strategic cooperation with powers, many of them global, who seek them out. The US, EU and China have legitimate reasons to acquire access to critical minerals. For instance, in September 2026, the US government announced its support for developing critical mineral processing in Kenya, including the proposed development of the Mrima Hill resource, while stressing the importance of local processing and value-added production (Reuters, 2026c). These partnerships could be real opportunities. Diversifying external partners is not sovereignty. African countries may expand the number of buyers of their products but not substantially alter the nature of their political economy if they switch from one big buyer to a few smaller ones and they still export their low-value resources.
That is why the question “with whom?” has to be asked alongside a deeper question: “with whom for?” or “with whom on whose terms?” Colonial elements in external capital, technology, and markets are not the same. The developmental consequences relate to bargaining power, institutional design, ownership structures, local linkages, environmental protection, and rent distribution. Hence, the target should not be autarky or opposition to foreign investment. Strategic interdependence means the ability to involve global partners without giving up control over the developmental paths of mineral societies.
From Mineral Abundance to Developmental Sovereignty
The politics of critical minerals also reveal the boundaries of a technologically driven view of decarbonization. A battery can have a range of emissions during its use, whereas its material components can include land dispossession, unsafe mining practices, water stress, labor exploitation, or ecological degradation. Thus, the environmental legality of green technologies cannot be judged solely by their carbon performance. This transition is likely to result in a “cleaner” global economy, but at the cost of African communities in the mining sector. The political feasibility of green development lies in jointly considering the costs of extraction and the benefits of decarbonization.
This will expand to include community and labor. Foreign ownership does not inevitably mean environmental damage, and state ownership does not necessarily mean that it is socially just. The key is whether the rights of people living and working around the mineral frontiers are meaningful and include access to information, voice, and benefits of extraction. Artisanal and small-scale miners are important in this context. Formalization cannot be used to criminalize informal miners; it should provide avenues to formalize their lives, safety, skills, and value addition. Otherwise, the switch could perpetuate the traditional scenario where people near the source of value bear the risk of extraction, while value is generated further up the chain.
The strategic question for Africa is then no longer whether to accept or reject the green transition, but rather how to do so. It’s a choice between engaging in it as an extractive periphery and as an industrial, technological, and political actor. The latter requires reliable and affordable energy, transport infrastructure, mineral-processing capacity, regional markets, skills, research and development, transparent contracts, accountable institutions, and effective protections for communities and workers. It also demands that governments differentiate between resource nationalism and transformation. National control may be a tool for development, but it is not development.
Decarbonization on Africa’s Terms
The green colonialism and transition sovereignty binary should thus be viewed as a spectrum of political-economic options. An African country can boost state bargaining power without excluding communities from the benefits; it can boost local processing but remain highly technology-dependent; or it can attract several foreign investors but keep exporting the bulk of the value contribution of its minerals. On the other hand, through mineral policy, a country can pursue regional industrialization, develop its own capacities and skills, improve ecological governance, and increase democratic involvement. The shift is therefore not necessarily green, just, sovereign, or developmental. Its character is being politically constructed.
This is therefore a both-and situation for the developing critical-mineral economy. Africa’s strategic position, which it could use to renegotiate its role in global geopolitics, will not create sovereignty if it is merely geologically abundant. The important question is whether mineral extraction becomes a basis for industrial potential, technological learning, fiscal independence, ecological responsibility, and democratic negotiating strength. The question is no longer just whether the world can decarbonize, but how. It’s about who has the power to decide, who receives the value created along the chain, who pays the environmental and social costs, and who controls the material foundations of decarbonization.
If Africa is the source of the mines, then others are the source of the manufacture, and the color of colonialism can vary without its political economy changing. The energy transition may be more than just a change in energy systems if Africa’s mineral wealth is translated into regional industrial capability, technological capability, ecological responsibility, and democratic bargaining power. It may be a chance to reimagine Africa’s economics in the international arena. This is the true measure of transition sovereignty—whether Africa provides the green transition or whether Africa can help regulate the transition.
In this ECPS interview, Dr. Sophie Suda, Postdoctoral Researcher in Comparative Politics at the University of Basel, examines the AfD’s transformation from a protest party into a broader political force capable of mobilizing multiple grievances across Germany. She argues that the party’s rise cannot be explained by eastern German exceptionalism or immigration alone, but reflects the interaction of structural neglect, economic insecurity, political distrust, and effective grievance mobilization. Dr. Suda cautions that dismantling the Brandmauer or imitating AfD positions would further legitimize the radical right rather than win voters back. Instead, she emphasizes effective policy delivery, sustained investment in neglected regions, political representation, and clearer party differentiation as the more viable democratic response to the AfD’s continued advance.
Germany’s party system is entering a period of profound strain as the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) expands beyond its earlier identity as a protest formation and establishes itself as a durable force across an increasingly broad range of policy domains. In this interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Sophie Suda, Postdoctoral Researcher in Comparative Politics at the University of Basel, argues that the AfD’s recent trajectory cannot be reduced either to eastern German exceptionalism or to a single grievance such as immigration. Instead, she describes a party that has become “a broader political phenomenon rather than simply a vehicle for protest,” increasingly credited by voters not only on migration and security but also on the economy and social security.
For Dr. Suda, the AfD’s rise reflects the convergence of long-term structural grievances, economic insecurity, distrust of political elites, demographic decline, and the party’s capacity to mobilize disaffected and previously non-voting citizens. In eastern Germany, post-reunification legacies still matter: unemployment, infrastructure deficits, regional neglect, and the perception that political elites “did not care about” large parts of the population have created fertile ground for the party. Yet she cautions against treating this as a uniquely eastern phenomenon, stressing that far-right and nativist attitudes have existed elsewhere as well and that the crucial change is the emergence of a party capable of effectively mobilizing them.
At the center of the conversation is the increasingly contested question of how mainstream parties should respond. Dr. Suda firmly rejects the idea that the Brandmauer, or firewall, has failed simply because the AfD has continued to grow. Its purpose, she argues, is not “to keep the AfD small,” but to define the limits of political cooperation and prevent its entry into office. Bringing the party into government, in her view, would produce “greater legitimization and inclusion, not fewer voters for the AfD.” Nor does she expect governing responsibility to moderate the party ideologically: institutional constraints may limit what populist or extremist parties can do, but “participation in government is more likely to lead to legitimization.”
Her prescription for mainstream parties is therefore sharply defined: do not dismantle the firewall, do not imitate the AfD, but deliver. Copying its positions—particularly on immigration—“does not win voters back either; it simply legitimizes those positions, while voters still choose the original in the end.” The more promising strategy lies in effective governance, sustained investment in neglected regions, political representation, and clear programmatic differentiation. As Dr. Suda puts it, parties must remain “distinguishable while also demonstrating that [they] can deliver.”
Dr. Sophie Suda is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Comparative Politics at the University of Basel.
Here is our interview with Dr. Sophie Suda, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
The AfD Is No Longer Simply a Protest Party
Dr. Sophie Suda, welcome! Let me begin with Saxony-Anhalt. AfD’s 43.8% victory appears to mark more than the consolidation of a marginal protest constituency. Should we interpret this primarily as the deepening of an eastern German exceptionalism rooted in post-reunification grievances and regional alienation, or as evidence that AfD has crossed a more consequential threshold—from protest party to potential governing force, with implications for Germany’s national party system and coalition politics?
Dr. Sophie Suda: In general, the AfD is strong across Germany, not only in the east. What is particularly striking is the extent of its strength and the positive trajectory it has shown, including doubling its vote share compared with the previous election there. So, this is not necessarily a phenomenon specific to Eastern Germany. What is especially interesting is how the party has evolved. You mentioned that it may once have been described as a protest party, but we have now reached a point where that characterization no longer seems adequate.
We can see this particularly in the policy areas in which citizens attribute competence to the AfD. Traditionally, these include migration and security, where the party is perceived as highly competent, but increasingly also areas such as the economy and social security. This suggests that the AfD has become a broader political phenomenon rather than simply a vehicle for protest. There are, of course, regional differences within Germany, but these relate more to the degree of legitimization than to a phenomenon confined to particular regions.
The AfD Has Been Able to Exploit Multiple Grievances
Germany was long regarded as one of Europe’s most resilient party systems, with strong institutions, stable coalitions, and a powerful cordon sanitaire against the radical right. What, in your view, went most fundamentally wrong: economic stagnation, migration politics, distrust of elites, weak political leadership, eastern German alienation, failures of representation—or the mainstream parties’ own strategic choices?
Dr. Sophie Suda: You mentioned a lot of points, and there isn’t really one reason I can give. There are long-term grievances, including economic grievances, as well as crises and weaknesses among other parties, and all of these factors contribute to one another. Some have longer-term effects, while others are more immediate.
Especially in Eastern Germany, many people have long felt that political elites did not care about them. After reunification, unemployment was high, and there are still infrastructure problems compared with the West. At the same time, nativist attitudes have always been present, and the AfD has been able to mobilize around them. What we can see, particularly in the last election but also more generally, is that the party is very effective at mobilizing people, especially non-voters. It managed to attract more non-voters than all other parties combined.
So, there is no single reason. It is more about all these factors coming together and the AfD being able to exploit them. There is also demographic decline in many areas. All of this contributes to distrust of political elites, the federal government, and incumbents, along with the perception that people are being left alone with their problems. So, it is more about this broader sense of how people perceive politics and political elites than about any single wrongdoing.
Cooperating with the AfD Would Lead to Greater Legitimization
Photo: Shutterstock.
The Brandmauer (firewall) was designed to isolate the AfD, yet the party has continued to grow. Has exclusion protected democratic norms, or has it unintentionally reinforced AfD’s outsider narrative by allowing the party to claim that an entire political establishment is conspiring against its voters? At what point does democratic containment risk becoming electorally counterproductive?
Dr. Sophie Suda: As you mentioned, the Brandmauer is not there to keep the AfD small, but rather to make clear which parties you are willing to cooperate with, allow into office, or include in your decisions. So, it is not a failure in any way, because it has kept, and continues to keep, the AfD out of office.
The first question is what the alternative would be. If the alternative were to bring the AfD into office or cooperate with it, that would lead to greater legitimization and inclusion, not to fewer voters for the AfD. Another important point is that the AfD is an anti-democratic party and, at least in Saxony-Anhalt, is classified as right-wing extremist. So, parties do not really have a great deal of choice. Where they can differ, however, is between cooperating with the AfD, on the one hand, and, on the other, taking the concerns of its voters seriously and responding to this part of the population.
Parties Should Not Adapt to and Tolerate the AfD
In your research with Andorff-Woller and colleagues, you find that coalitions including populists tend to be less stable, but that this destabilizing effect diminishes where populist participation becomes more common. Does Saxony-Anhalt suggest Germany may now be approaching precisely that moment—where the question is no longer whether AfD can be excluded indefinitely, but whether the system will begin adapting to its presence?
Dr. Sophie Suda: Yes, it’s quite a difficult situation. We do find, in general, that having populist parties in government correlates with premature government dissolution. At the same time, they are also more likely to enter government in situations where there is already instability, which may further reinforce this lack of cooperation.
So, if the question is whether the political system should adapt simply to their presence, this relates to the point I mentioned earlier: they are undemocratic and an extremist party. The real question is whether other parties should adapt to that and tolerate it, and I believe they should not. They should draw a clear line where certain forms of behavior begin to pose a risk of democratic decline.
Populists in Government Do Not Generally Become More Moderate
Your work raises a difficult possibility: populist parties may become institutionally normalized without becoming ideologically moderate. If AfD eventually enters a state government, should we expect governing responsibility to constrain it, or could normalization instead legitimate radical positions while leaving its anti-pluralist core largely intact?
Dr. Sophie Suda: To some extent, they would be institutionally constrained, because in a state or federal government, you cannot simply do whatever you want. There are constraints from the courts, the EU, and the federal government. But those constraints are institutional, not ideological. Ideologically, extremist or populist parties in government do not generally change their positions or become more moderate. Instead, participation in government is more likely to lead to legitimization.
Other research also shows that when such parties enter government—whether as a junior partner, senior partner, or in a single-party government—democratic quality immediately declines, particularly in terms of minority rights and liberal freedoms. So, this is not a situation in which governing responsibility would necessarily make them more moderate.
The AfD Is No Longer Defined Primarily by Anti-Immigration
AfD demo with slogan Stop Islamization and counter demonstration of the Left in Luetten Klein in Rostock, Germany on May 14, 2018. AfD, Alternative for Germany, is a right wing political party in Germany. Photo: Shutterstock.
AfD’s victory in Saxony-Anhalt coincided with deep dissatisfaction with the CDU-led political establishment, economic insecurity, cost-of-living pressures, and very low confidence in Chancellor Merz. Yet immigration was not necessarily the dominant concern for all voters. Does this suggest AfD is now succeeding because it has transformed itself from a single-issue anti-immigration party into a broader vehicle for accumulated anti-system discontent?
Dr. Sophie Suda: The AfD has always been quite effective at incorporating many different sources of dissatisfaction. Even when it began as an anti-EU party and later became strongly associated with immigration, its appeal was never limited to that issue. During COVID, around pro-Russian attitudes, and amid various other crises, the party was able to capitalize on a wide range of grievances.
I think the main difference now is this broader approach. At least in Saxony-Anhalt, immigration was not even such a major issue, nor the most important one. Yet the AfD manages to gain credit, or to be perceived as competent, across a wide range of policy areas. That is what is new. So, becoming broader and being seen as competent in almost all policy areas marks a significant change.
Reunification Provided Fertile Ground for AfD Support
Your earlier work on Mecklenburg-Vorpommern highlighted persistent east-west differences, weaker economic performance in eastern districts, border effects, and the importance of regional neglect, while also warning against monocausal explanations. How much of AfD’s strength today can still be explained by post-reunification grievances, and how much has become a more contemporary rebellion against the Federal Republic itself?
Dr. Sophie Suda: Looking only at historical explanations is definitely too simplistic. Historical legacies matter, and they matter considerably in shaping the level of support, but they do not really explain why the AfD suddenly doubled its number of voters, or its vote share, and why this increase occurred.
There are still many structural factors that were, or are, the result of reunification, such as economic problems and infrastructure. Many companies were also dissolved or bought up by Western German firms. These are structural factors that can benefit the AfD everywhere, but in eastern Germany many of them come together. There are also longstanding far-right strongholds that the party can now draw on. In that sense, reunification created many of the conditions that help explain why people vote for the AfD and provided fertile ground for its support.
At the same time, when we look at social norms and the way far-right ideas have become normalized, this is not something specific to eastern Germany. Far-right and nativist attitudes existed elsewhere as well; what has changed is that there is now a party capable of mobilizing them. So, the recent increase is better explained by shorter-term factors that the AfD has been able to exploit and mobilize around.
Neglected Areas Can Be Won Back
Your 2021 analysis showed that targeted regional investment, stronger political attention to neglected areas, and a popular, credible incumbent helped the SPD cut into AfD strongholds in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Does the current AfD resurgence there suggest that those gains were temporary, or that mainstream parties failed to institutionalize the lesson that territorial neglect and political distance must be addressed continuously rather than episodically?
Dr. Sophie Suda: To some extent, it shows the latter. In 2021, several factors came together to explain why the SPD performed so well. There were a number of short-term factors: the incumbent was quite popular, the AfD candidate was very weak, and there was also a favorable federal trend for the SPD.
But the previous government had also pursued this Vorpommern strategy, especially in the east of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the AfD was, and remains, strong, and where it had previously been particularly strong. They had a long-term strategy of investing in the region. So, it was not only about short-term factors. They also had a parliamentary state secretary who focused on this region. It was therefore also about political attention and representation.
They also managed, perhaps more than now, to deliver on a number of policies, such as childcare. So, it was this combination of short-term factors and a longer-term strategy of reaching voters, especially in the East.
Saxony-Anhalt Could Produce Either AfD Momentum or Counter-Mobilization
AfD posters displayed on a stand during Germany’s 2025 federal election campaign. Such posters were relatively rare in public spaces, as they were often quickly torn down. Photo: Dreamstime.
AfD now leads the latest Mecklenburg-Vorpommern poll with 35%, while the SPD has recovered to 32%. Given that AfD received only 16.7% there in 2021, what would a possible AfD victory on September 20 signify? Would it confirm a durable realignment of eastern German politics, or could candidate effects, government satisfaction, and late mobilization still reproduce something closer to the 2021 outcome?
Dr. Sophie Suda: Looking at the polls now, it seems quite likely that the AfD will make enormous gains. At the same time, the candidate effect still favors (Minister-President of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) Manuela Schwesig, whom voters across most of the political spectrum continue to prefer over AfD’s Leif-Erik Holm —though not, of course, among AfD voters.
There are also still many undecided voters, so the key question now is who will be able to mobilize them. It will also be important to see whether the AfD can benefit from the momentum generated by its success in Saxony-Anhalt, or whether that result instead produces a counter-mobilization among other voters.
Berlin Would Show That the AfD Is Not Just a Rural Party
Berlin presents almost the opposite social and political environment: a large, diverse, metropolitan electorate in which CDU, Linke, Greens, and AfD are all competing near the top while the SPD has fallen sharply. If AfD approaches or exceeds 18–20% in Berlin, would that be more consequential than an even larger result in eastern rural Germany because it would demonstrate that AfD’s appeal has broken decisively out of its traditional geographic and sociological strongholds?
Dr. Sophie Suda: Yes, perhaps symbolically to some extent, because they can show that they are not just a rural party. But, in general, they are strong across all German states, and the difference is that in Berlin they will not be able to govern. So, the actual consequences would not be as significant as they potentially are in Saxony-Anhalt. This result would therefore confirm that the AfD is strong, but it would not necessarily have the same consequences as the party reaching almost 44% in other states.
Parties Must Cooperate without Losing Their Political Identity
Germany’s mainstream parties have increasingly been forced into ideologically awkward coalitions whose principal common denominator is excluding AfD. Can such alliances remain democratically persuasive if voters perceive them as programmatically incoherent? At what point does coalition engineering to contain AfD begin to deepen the very anti-establishment resentment on which AfD thrives?
Dr. Sophie Suda: It fits the AfD narrative quite well when all other parties are portrayed as the same and as part of a corrupt elite, while the AfD presents itself as the only alternative that looks after voters. But the AfD makes that claim regardless of who is governing. So, while this fits its narrative, it does not necessarily change what the party is doing or the approach it takes.
I think the more important point is that these coalitions have to govern and cooperate effectively. That is, of course, difficult when they bring together more parties with greater ideological differences. On the one hand, they have to cooperate; on the other, they must show voters what they stand for and demonstrate that not all elites are the same. Each party has to maintain a clear identity, deliver for its voters, and show that it can produce effective policies. That is the greater difficulty with these coalitions.
Cooperation and Efficiency Can Reinforce Each Other
Your research with Detlef Jahn shows that executive efficiency and consensus capacity need not be opposites and can jointly improve policy performance. Has Germany’s current problem become precisely a failure to combine the two—a political system still oriented toward consensus but increasingly perceived by citizens as unable to deliver decisively on growth, migration, infrastructure, energy, and public services?
Dr. Sophie Suda: Yes, this is exactly what we find. Sometimes cooperation and efficiency are perceived as a trade-off, but in fact they can reinforce each other and produce better policy outcomes. The key question is how to combine them, in which areas, and how governments coordinate effectively enough to achieve both.
There has always been competition between parties, and there still is. But when parties govern together, they also have to cooperate across many areas. At the same time, they need to remain sufficiently distinct for voters to understand what each party stands for. So, you need consensus to reach decisions, but also efficiency in implementing them.
To some extent, this is where Germany has struggled in the past. We had many grand coalitions in which center-left and center-right parties governed together, but the compromises they reached did not necessarily satisfy voters on either side. In recent years, parties have probably failed to communicate clearly enough what they stand for.
The AfD Is Very Effective at Exploiting Crises
Your recent work on critical events finds that governing parties tend to converge and project unity during externally driven shocks, whereas opposition parties have incentives to differentiate themselves and exploit grievances. Has AfD become unusually effective at turning successive crises—Ukraine, migration, inflation, energy insecurity, the Middle East, and economic stagnation—into a permanent opposition advantage?
Dr. Sophie Suda: Yes, they are quite good at exploiting this. In general, this is what all opposition parties do to some extent when there is a crisis or external event. They can use that to show how they are different, and they can criticize the government, especially when it is an important event. There have been many crises now, which also leads to a lot of insecurity, and the AfD works on that, builds on that, and exploits it, essentially.
We Should Not Expect a Change in German Foreign Policy
The Bundestag building at dusk, with German and EU flags waving in front, in Berlin, Germany, on November 17, 2024. The Reichstag dome is visible, symbolizing Germany’s democracy. Photo: Margarita Kosareva.
AfD’s pro-Russian orientation and opposition to continued support for Ukraine distinguish it sharply from the German foreign-policy mainstream. Your research shows that critical foreign-policy events usually strengthen cohesion among governing parties while opposition parties strategically distance themselves. Could AfD’s electoral rise eventually break Germany’s post-2022 foreign-policy consensus and constrain Berlin’s ability to lead within NATO and the EU?
Dr. Sophie Suda: At the moment, no. Part of the campaign in Saxony-Anhalt focused on foreign policy, but state governments do not decide foreign policy, so they have little power to change it. Supporting Ukraine, for example, is an essential part of Germany’s foreign policy, and there is no intention to change that.
Our research on cohesion shows that governing parties tend to stick together and become more cohesive during foreign-policy crises, at least to some extent and for a certain period. This is also an area where Friedrich Merz enjoys support within his own party and among voters, especially compared with other policy areas. So, for him, this is probably one area he should not change.
I therefore do not think he will. Of course, there will be pressure from the AfD, and there are other parties with different foreign-policy positions, such as the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance -BSW). But these parties are not governing at the federal level. So, there will certainly be debate, but I do not think we should expect a change in German foreign policy.
Don’t Break the Firewall, Don’t Imitate the AfD—Deliver
And lastly, Dr. Suda, stepping back, what should mainstream German parties do now? Continuing the firewall may reinforce AfD’s anti-establishment appeal; accommodating AfD risks normalizing its radical positions; imitating its migration and cultural agenda may validate its diagnoses; and broad anti-AfD coalitions can appear incoherent. Is there still a viable democratic strategy for defeating AfD electorally—and if so, does it require better policy delivery, renewed social and territorial representation, clearer ideological differentiation, or a fundamental reconstruction of Germany’s party system?
Dr. Sophie Suda: Unfortunately, there is no single strategy for winning back 44% of voters. But the first thing parties should not do is break the firewall, because that would only lead to further legitimization of the AfD and the radical right, normalize those attitudes, and reinforce those positions. It would not win voters back.
The same applies to trying to imitate the AfD, which is something the CDU in particular, but also other parties, have tried to do in the past, including by adopting its positions on immigration. That does not win voters back either; it simply legitimizes those positions, while voters still choose the original in the end.
What parties can do—and this is easier said than done—is deliver effective policies. We saw in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern that neglected areas can be won back if there is a long-term strategy to address voters, respond to their concerns, and give them a sense of being represented, including through policies on the economy, infrastructure, and public services.
This does not require a fundamental reconstruction of the party system. It may instead require parties to adapt how they work together so that politics is not reduced to the AfD versus all other parties. At the same time, each party has to ensure that its policies remain distinguishable while also demonstrating that it can deliver. I think that is the more difficult trade-off parties are facing now.
Ahead of the 2026 US midterms, Professor Lane Kenworthy argues that Trumpism’s apparent dominance should not be mistaken for permanence. Although the Republican Party has acquired “an entirely new identity,” he stresses that this “could easily change after Trump,” especially if a more appealing political agenda emerges. Professor Kenworthy places MAGA within a longer cycle of ideological realignment, cultural backlash, and generational change, while cautioning against reading election outcomes as durable historical trends. He is equally skeptical that rising billionaire influence necessarily amounts to a new plutocratic order. Instead, he points toward Nordic-style social democratic capitalism—combining markets, public provision, economic security, and liberal democracy—as a more promising long-term model. Politically, however, he reduces the path forward to a simple proposition: “Democrats need to win elections.”
Ahead of the 2026 US midterm elections, the durability of Trumpism—and the political future of the Republican Party after Donald Trump—has become one of the central questions confronting American democracy. In an interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Lane Kenworthy, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Yankelovich Chair in Social Thought at the University of California, San Diego, argues that the institutionalization of Trumpism should not be taken for granted. His scholarship on inequality, social policy, political economy, and shared prosperity provides the broader framework for a conversation that ranges from MAGA and executive power to plutocratic influence, democratic socialism, and the prospects for social democratic capitalism in the United States.
Professor Kenworthy cautions against interpreting the current Republican transformation as necessarily permanent. Reflecting on the rapid succession from George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” to the Tea Party and then to Trumpism, he stresses how unusually vulnerable the two major American parties are to sudden ideological takeover. “The two major American political parties are so weak, so hollow,” he observes, adding that they are “unusually susceptible to takeover in unpredictable ways.” Although the Republican Party has acquired “an entirely new identity” after a decade of Trump’s dominance, Professor Kenworthy emphasizes that “that could easily change after Trump.”
This uncertainty is even more pronounced when considering whether MAGA can survive its founder. Professor Kenworthy notes the “extraordinary passion” Trump supporters display toward him, but remains skeptical that this necessarily translates into a deeply rooted and durable ideological project. Historical precedents suggest caution: political agendas that once appeared dominant—Bush-era conservatism or the Tea Party—evaporated far more quickly than expected. J.D. Vance and others may attempt to preserve Trumpism, he argues, but its future will depend on whether the movement’s ideological commitments are genuinely deep or merely contingent. “It’s quite possible that it could disappear very easily,” Professor Kenworthy says, “if somebody with a more appealing agenda and a more appealing election campaign comes along.”
Professor Kenworthy also situates Trumpism within a longer cultural transformation. Drawing on the Inglehart-Norris thesis, he suggests that MAGA relies heavily on cultural traditionalists whose relative weight may decline through generational replacement. If that argument is correct, Trumpism “maybe survives another couple of election cycles, but after that, it could simply disappear.”
The interview ultimately places the 2026 midterms within a wider debate over American political economy. Professor Kenworthy questions both alarmist assumptions about an inevitable plutocracy and claims that democratic socialism offers a fundamentally different policy model. Instead, he repeatedly returns to the Nordic-inspired social democratic capitalism he has long advocated: combining markets with strong public provision, economic security, and liberal-democratic institutions. For Professor Kenworthy, the most plausible path toward that model remains politically straightforward, even if institutionally difficult: “Democrats need to win elections.”
Professor Lane Kenworthy is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Yankelovich Chair in Social Thought at the University of California, San Diego.
Here is our interview with Professor Lane Kenworthy, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Trumpism, MAGA, and the 2026 Midterms
Professor Kenworthy, welcome! The 2026 midterms are increasingly being framed as a referendum not simply on President Trump’s second administration but on the durability of Trumpism itself. You have argued that the rise of right-wing populism is driven less straightforwardly by economic hardship or inequality than by effective political entrepreneurs who mobilize already-existing cultural and political dispositions. If Republicans suffer substantial losses in November, should we interpret that as a rejection of Trump himself, a cyclical midterm correction, or evidence that the political coalition sustaining Trumpism has reached its limits? Conversely, if Republicans retain control of Congress despite Trump’s low approval ratings, what would that tell us about the depth and institutional durability of the MAGA transformation of the Republican Party?
Professor Lane Kenworthy: Interesting question. My view about the increased electability of right-wing populist parties comes mainly from Larry Bartels’s book from a few years back. I think the story of improved leadership among these types of parties is less about charismatic personalities like Trump—although that certainly played a role in the United States—and more about leaders who are willing to make their parties more acceptable to ordinary voters: shedding ties with neo-Nazis, embracing the welfare state, and taking moderate positions on some other issues.
I don’t think we know how things will play out over the midterms here in the United States. For a while in the early 2000s, it looked as though George W. Bush’s so-called compassionate conservatism was going to become the core Republican identity, replacing Reaganism and the idea that the central goal was to shrink the government. Then the Tea Party came into vogue after the 2010 wave elections, with its obsession with the national debt, the government deficit, and so on. And then came Trumpism, more or less out of the blue.
So, these things are very difficult to predict because the two major American political parties are so weak, so hollow. They are strong in some respects, but they are unusually susceptible to takeover in unpredictable ways, and that is basically the story of what happened with Trump in 2016. Almost nobody saw it coming. He entered the presidential nomination contest somewhat late, ended up winning the nomination narrowly, and then won the general election narrowly. Now we have had 10 years of this, and the Republican Party has an entirely new identity. But that could easily change after Trump. I don’t know if it will, but I think these things are very difficult to predict.
The other thing I would mention is that American elections since around 2000 have been somewhat unusual in that the country has been pretty closely divided—something along the lines of 45% Democrat, 45% Republican, and perhaps 10% of voters who may change their vote depending on what is happening. As a result, a lot of marginal, unpredictable factors can end up swinging election outcomes in ways that are very difficult to predict in advance. I also think it is dicey to interpret those outcomes as long-term trends—ones that are going to last or that are deeply embedded or deeply held among American voters.
Congressional Control and the Limits of Presidential Power
Republicans currently hold only a very narrow House majority, while Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take the Senate. How consequential is the congressional arithmetic for the trajectory of Trump’s presidency? If Democrats capture one or both chambers, would divided government meaningfully constrain what critics regard as Trump’s illiberal or executive-centered tendencies, or has presidential power expanded to the point that congressional control is less consequential than conventional separation-of-powers theory assumes?
Professor Lane Kenworthy: Here too, we don’t really know the answer to this question. Right now, it looks like Democrats will end up with a majority in the House of Representatives, although we’re still a little ways off from the election. Normally, in this kind of situation, when a president’s party holds majorities in both legislative bodies during the first two years, they get some things done but then typically lose one or both chambers in the midterm elections. The party that holds the presidency almost always loses one or both legislative bodies in the United States in the midterms. Then, typically, the president is able to get far less done, so his attention turns to foreign policy, where he has somewhat more autonomy and is able to take more action.
So I suspect that should be our default prediction for what happens in the last two years of this presidency. But this presidency has so far been very different. Trump has been trying much more aggressively to do things outside Congress, even though Republicans hold a majority in both houses. It’s a narrow majority, and Trump wants to do things that many Republicans in the Senate or House of Representatives don’t necessarily favor. So he has been trying to do a great deal through executive actions and concocting all sorts of justifications to get the Supreme Court and other judicial decision-makers to allow them. Sometimes they have; sometimes they haven’t.
My best guess is that he would continue along this path. But at the same time, because he has done so much outside what we have traditionally understood to be the bounds of presidential authority, my guess is that, especially if Democrats win the House of Representatives, they’ll launch a large number of investigations into actions he has taken in this first term, and possibly into things he did even before taking office. A lot of attention and time will be consumed by these investigations, as a great deal of media coverage, and the president—or the administration—will be forced to spend considerable time responding and reacting to them. So both the reality of what the administration will try to do and what it can do, and the narrative ordinary Americans are exposed to and think about, will shift pretty significantly.
But again, we’re in somewhat uncharted territory here with Donald Trump, so it’s difficult to have much confidence in predicting what’s going to happen in these last two years—hopefully the last two years.
Trump cannot constitutionally seek another term in 2028, yet the Republican Party remains organized to an extraordinary degree around his political identity. You emphasize the importance of capable populist leaders in converting latent cultural conservatism into electoral support. Does that imply that Trumpism may prove unusually dependent on Trump as an individual political entrepreneur? Or has he already constructed a sufficiently durable ideological coalition—around immigration restriction, protectionism, nationalism, hostility to liberal elites, and executive power—that figures such as JD Vance could successfully institutionalize Trumpism after Trump?
Professor Lane Kenworthy: Here I’ll go back to what I said in response to the first question, which is that the most important answer is that we just don’t know. It’s very difficult to predict this. Given the seemingly extraordinary passion that Trump supporters—or MAGA supporters—evince for Donald Trump, one might think there is a deep passion not only for him but also for his political project among a sizable segment of the American population.
But my best guess is that, as with almost all ideologies, movements, public philosophies, or whatever you want to call the set of policy proposals and the sort of aggressive approach to the presidency that Trump has pursued in his second term, it’s really difficult to know whether this is deep or lasting. Again, support for George W. Bush’s agenda seemed really strong, and public opinion surveys suggested that in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. But then, when the Iraq War went sour, it evaporated really quickly, and Democrats won a huge election in 2006 and an even bigger landslide in 2008.
The same thing happened with the Tea Party. It was widely thought to represent the overwhelming wave of the future. Members of the Tea Party, or those running on the Tea Party agenda, defeated some of the best-known and longest-serving Republican members of the House of Representatives in Republican primaries. And yet it, too, went away almost overnight in 2016 when Trump came along.
So J.D. Vance will certainly try, because he believes in a number of the same things that Trump does. But whether because of his limited skill as a politician, his limited ability to create the same passion among followers, or simply because commitment to this particular set of policy views is actually fairly thin, it’s quite possible that it could disappear very easily if somebody with a more appealing agenda and a more appealing election campaign comes along.
I should also say that there’s a view espoused most clearly by political scientists Ron Inglehart and Pippa Norris in a book they wrote about five years ago, which offers a long-term perspective on shifts in attitudes, especially on cultural and social issues. It suggests that since roughly the end of World War II, as rich democratic countries like the United States have become richer and richer, we’ve seen a slow but steady process of liberalization in views on all kinds of social and cultural issues. This happens mostly through cohort replacement.
Their hypothesis about the rise of right-wing populism is that we’re at a point in the evolution of this long-term shift where support for more traditionalist views on social and cultural issues is still fairly strong. It has been declining, but it remains fairly strong, and so this backlash against cultural liberalism, or social liberalism, is particularly fervent and particularly strong because we’re right at the point where this view is about to become—not disappear, but become—a clearly distinct minority.
Here too, Trumpism—the MAGA approach to politics—relies very heavily on cultural traditionalists in the United States. It’s not the only thing central to Trumpism, but it’s a really important part of that approach. If the Inglehart-Norris hypothesis is correct, maybe it survives another couple of election cycles, but after that, it could simply disappear. So there are lots of possibilities here, and again, I think we just don’t know.
Plutocracy and the Political Influence of the Rich
In your work on capitalism, inequality, and democracy, you acknowledge that affluent Americans have substantially more political influence than lower-income citizens, but you are cautious about concluding that increasing economic inequality has produced an ever-deepening plutocracy. How should we reassess that argument in the contemporary United States, where billionaire donors, super PACs, private political networks, and extraordinarily wealthy officeholders have become increasingly visible? At what point does disproportionate influence cease to be an inequality within democracy and become something more accurately described as oligarchic or plutocratic rule?
Professor Lane Kenworthy: Here too, I would say this is a possibility, but we don’t know. The problem with trying to draw any firm inference from what has happened during the first two years of this second Trump presidency is that he is a very idiosyncratic elected official. As a businessman, he strongly favored a transactional approach, and he has shown that he favors the same approach to politics. He is very interested in increasing the financial assets of himself and his family. He is also comfortable rewarding supporters and flatterers with positions in his company or, in this case, in his administration.
So, does the apparent rise in the influence of rich Americans and certain corporations in this second Trump administration represent a new era of plutocracy? Or is this simply an aberration, something unique to Trump? We won’t really know the answer until he’s gone.
One other thing to keep in mind is that although Trump has put billionaires in his cabinet and allowed Elon Musk to effectively destroy US foreign aid, the administration’s biggest policy changes have been in immigration and tariffs. And it is not America’s rich who have driven those policy commitments. Rather, it has been Trump himself and a few of his other non-billionaire advisors, such as Stephen Miller.
Tech Billionaires and New Forms of Political Power
The 2026 cycle has seen unprecedented political spending from technology, AI, cryptocurrency, and related sectors, while figures such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other Silicon Valley billionaires have moved from financing politics to attempting to shape its ideological and institutional direction. Does the emergence of these “tech bros” represent merely another iteration of wealthy interest group influence, or are we witnessing the formation of a qualitatively new political elite whose control over capital, platforms, algorithms, artificial intelligence, and information infrastructure gives it forms of power that earlier industrial magnates did not possess?
Professor Lane Kenworthy: Yes, once again, this is a possibility, but it’s too early to know. One thing that makes me skeptical is that, because the United States is such a large country, the landscape of sources of influence—including mainstream media, social media, think tanks, universities, and more—is quite broad and fairly diverse. Even if a conservative billionaire like Larry Ellison buys a major media outlet such as CBS or Paramount, or Elon Musk buys Twitter, there are still plenty of other sources and alternatives, including new ones that emerge all the time for people to turn to.
So, yes, it is very much possible that we are seeing new forms of influence and new ways—and degrees—in which affluent individuals or companies can exert influence. But it is also possible that they will try and fail, or at least not succeed very much.
Does Extreme Wealth Produce Unlimited Political Power?
Anti-Trump protesters gather across from Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue during the annual Labor Day Parade in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on September 6, 2025. Photo: Dreamstime.
One of your more counterintuitive arguments is that although money clearly produces unequal political influence, there may be diminishing returns to additional wealth: once affluent actors already possess substantial access and influence, further increases in inequality may not produce proportionately greater political power. Does the extraordinary concentration of wealth at the very top—and the ability of individual billionaires to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on elections—challenge that thesis? Is there perhaps a threshold beyond which wealth ceases to yield merely diminishing returns and instead produces new forms of agenda-setting, institutional capture, and veto power?
Professor Lane Kenworthy: Possibly, yes. Like all the other questions or issues we’ve gone through so far, this is very much an empirical question, and we’ll have to see how it plays out. Here, I would emphasize that income and wealth inequality in the United States have been rising for roughly half a century, and the richest tend to give disproportionately to the Republican Party.
Despite that, and despite the Citizens United Supreme Court decision in 2010, which made it even easier for big money to enter politics—especially elections in the United States—Democrats have so far matched Republicans in campaign contributions and election spending.
It’s also important that a great deal of messaging and advertising now goes through the free channel of social media, so it’s simply not clear. Again, it’s quite possible that things will play out as your question suggests, but I also think there is reason for skepticism. Ultimately, we just have to wait and see how this plays out.
Non-Inclusive Growth and the Rise of Populism
You have described the United States since the late 1970s as a paradigmatic case of “non-inclusive growth,” in which economic growth continued while wages and middle-class incomes stagnated and a disproportionate share of gains flowed to the top 1 percent. How politically consequential is this “great decoupling” today? Even if inequality itself is not the primary cause of right-wing populism, has the failure to translate aggregate prosperity into broadly shared improvements weakened the legitimacy of liberal capitalism and made both Trumpist nationalism and democratic socialism more politically plausible?
Professor Lane Kenworthy: I strongly suspect that it has contributed, but I don’t think we know by how much, because there are so many competing explanations for the rise in support for right-wing populism and left-wing populism more generally, not only in the United States but in other countries as well. In addition to economic inequality, there is income stagnation. There is also regional and local decline—decline in particular cities, areas, and regions—which cannot be reduced simply to incomes or inequality.
There is cultural backlash, the pervasive negativity of social media, and rising loneliness and mental health concerns, especially among teenagers and people in their twenties. There has also been a strong reaction to the inflation of the early 2020s, which was relatively new. Inflation had been very limited for almost a generation, so many people grew up in a world where it simply was not a major concern. Then, all of a sudden, it returned, much as it had in the 1970s.
And then there is the interaction of these factors, perhaps alongside others. So, yes, I do believe economic inequality has contributed, but I’m not at all certain that it has been the main factor driving these political developments.
Inequality Versus Improving Ordinary Lives
Your work repeatedly makes a distinction that is often blurred on the American left: inequality is not necessarily the same problem as poverty, insecurity, weak opportunity, or stagnant living standards. Indeed, your recent framework treats inequality reduction as “sensible but secondary.” In an era of extraordinary billionaire wealth, is that distinction still politically and normatively sustainable? Should progressives concentrate less on how much Elon Musk or other billionaires possess and more on whether ordinary Americans enjoy secure healthcare, housing, education, employment, childcare, and rising incomes?
Professor Lane Kenworthy: In terms of actual policy, I strongly favor focusing on the latter—that is, secure healthcare, housing, and so on: bringing up the bottom and ensuring that as many people as possible have access to these critical components of a good life.
In terms of winning elections, the question may be somewhat separate. It’s possible that the same approach—focusing on particular policies—will also help you win elections. But it’s also quite possible that, especially at this moment in the United States, you’re more likely to win by focusing on inequality, billionaire wealth, and the evils of particular billionaires like Elon Musk.
So it may be that this more extreme or radical approach is better for winning elections. But once you do win, I’m very much convinced that the way forward is to bring up the bottom and expand access to these goods and services, rather than focusing first and foremost on reducing inequality or the income and wealth of billionaires.
Rawls, Billionaires, and the Least Well-Off
St. Patrick’s Cathedral with pedestrians, pigeons and a homeless man outside in Manhattan, Fifth Avenue on September 11, 2023. Photo: Dreamstime.
Your approach to distributive justice draws significantly on John Rawls, particularly the proposition that inequality can be justified if it improves the absolute position of the least well-off. But how should the Rawlsian “difference principle”be applied to an economy in which the wealth of the top has multiplied while many households still struggle with housing, healthcare, childcare, and economic insecurity? Is the relevant Rawlsian question whether billionaires deserve their fortunes, or whether the institutions that permit those fortunes simultaneously generate the best realistically attainable conditions for those at the bottom?
Professor Lane Kenworthy: Good question. My view on this is loosely inspired by Rawls’ emphasis on lifting up the floor first and reducing inequality of outcomes second. If it turns out that the best way to lift up the floor is to prevent people from becoming billionaires, or perhaps to tax away a substantial share of their wealth once they become billionaires, then I’d be in favor of doing that. If, however, a society can allow people to become billionaires—even mega-billionaires—while still doing a very good job of ensuring a high floor and a good life for the rest of the population, then I don’t worry as much about billionaires.
For me, it’s ultimately a pragmatic question. The experience of the Nordic countries in particular, but also some other Western European countries and, in historical comparative terms, even the United States—where things have improved considerably over the past 100 years, even if we are still a long way from performing as well as the best countries—suggests that the latter is possible. It is possible to have a good society even in the presence of individuals or corporations with enormous wealth and power.
But perhaps we are reaching a point where that is changing—where extreme wealth has become so concentrated that it prevents the United States, or perhaps other societies, from achieving good outcomes. Or perhaps the power of these unelected wealthy individuals and corporations will prevent further policy progress. If that is the case, then, again, for purely pragmatic reasons, we would be in a situation where we need to worry much more about inequality.
Democratic Socialism and the Nordic Model
In“Would Democratic Socialism Be Better?”, you argue that democratic socialism would likely reduce inequality but may not outperformsocial democratic capitalismacross most dimensions of well-being. Yet Sanders, AOC, Mamdani, El-Sayed, and others have made democratic socialist ideas increasingly viable. Are they diagnosing the right problems—concentrated wealth, insecurity, weak worker power, and corporate influence—but prescribing too radical a remedy, or does their success suggest that incremental social democracy is no longer enough for much of the Democratic electorate?
Professor Lane Kenworthy: The so-called democratic socialists you mentioned actually favor something very much like the Nordic model in terms of the policies they would like the United States or New York City to adopt and implement. The fact that they call themselves socialists is an idiosyncrasy of American politics. Bernie Sanders came of age in the 1970s, at a time when it was acceptable in parts of the American left to call yourself a socialist, and he has consistently run for election in Vermont, where that has not hurt him politically. So he simply kept doing it. Because he received so much attention and support when he ran for president in 2016, some others followed in his path and called themselves democratic socialists. In some cases, they have not paid a political price for it either.
That has very much been the case with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and it also turned out to be the case with Mamdani in New York. We’ll see how that plays out with the Michigan Senate election in November. So, for the most part, I think they are prescribing the correct remedy because, in policy terms, they basically favor the Nordic model. Are they diagnosing the problems correctly? Here again, we should distinguish between what will make for effective policy and what will get people elected. I’m not convinced that concentrated wealth and monopolies are the main obstacles to getting better policy enacted in the United States, but focusing on them when you’re running for election might be a very effective strategy for getting yourself into office in at least some districts and states in the US at the moment.
Social Democratic Capitalism as a Democratic Governing Project
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the “Bernie Is Back” political rally in Queensbridge Park, Queens, New York, on October 19, 2019. Photo: Aleksandr Dyskin / Dreamstime.
You describe“social democratic capitalism”as a democratic polity combined with a mostly capitalist economy, strong education, extensive public insurance, employment-promoting services, and moderate regulation. Could this provide the Democrats with a more coherent post-neoliberal governing philosophy than either technocratic centrism or democratic socialism? And if so, why has the Democratic Party struggled to articulate such a model as a recognizable political project capable of competing emotionally and symbolically with the much clearer identity offered by Trumpism?
Professor Lane Kenworthy: Here too, I think we want to distinguish between the policies that are actually being enacted, implemented, and favored by many who call themselves Democrats, and what seems to resonate with at least a certain share of voters in the country at this moment. I do think movement toward the Nordic model, or what I call social democratic capitalism, is the direction the Democratic Party has been heading in, especially since around 2020, but to some degree even before that.
During the Biden administration, from 2021 to 2024, much of the policy emphasis was on expanding healthcare and childcare, creating a child allowance, and considering other elements of these public services. The administration and its Democratic allies in Congress ultimately chose to emphasize the transition to clean energy over these services, at least in terms of their rhetoric and symbolism, and I think they were right to do so. This is a really important and time-limited policy focus, whereas shifting toward the Nordic model can be done over a longer period.
But there is actually much more support within the party and in adjacent organizations for expanding public services and public goods these days than there used to be. As I just said, this is mainly what so-called democratic socialists are advocating in policy terms. If we look at Democratic Party-dominated states across the country—California, Massachusetts, New York, and some others—we also see real movement in this direction, through the enactment and implementation of these types of public services and public goods, or their expansion where they already exist.
But this policy approach might not have the same emotional resonance for many voters as right-wing or left-wing populism. So it could be that we’ll see more Democrats getting elected as so-called socialists while nevertheless governing as normal Social Democrats.
I would characterize what we see so far in the Mamdani administration as exactly that. He is governing mostly as a normal left-of-center Democrat, or what you might call a social democrat, while rhetorically continuing his commitment to what he calls democratic socialism and to certain issues that resonate strongly, especially with younger left-wing voters. Yet, in policy terms, those issues turn out to be secondary to what he is doing as an executive in a very large and important city.
Predistribution, Public Provision, and the Future of Wages
You have been skeptical that “predistribution” alone—raising wages through market institutions, stronger bargaining power, or labor-market reform—can solve the problem of stagnant earnings, and you have emphasized public insurance and transfers as essential mechanisms for ensuring shared prosperity. Given the long-term weakening of unions and the changing structure of work, should Democrats stop promising to reconstruct the mid-twentieth-century wage bargain and instead build a twenty-first-century social settlement in which government more explicitly socializes the costs of healthcare, childcare, education, retraining, and income security?
Professor Lane Kenworthy: I do think that’s partly true—that Democrats should focus more on the public provision of these services and public goods, and, to some extent, on transfers. As I just said, I do think that’s the direction many who consider themselves Democrats are moving in.
But at the same time, I also think government needs to step in more actively on the predistribution side to try to ensure that wages, as much as possible, rise more or less in sync with the economy. In the absence of strong labor unions and collective bargaining, I think this means using monetary and fiscal policy to keep the labor market tight.
We know that tends to be effective here in the United States. We saw it in the late 1990s, and we’ve seen it in the period since around 2015 or 2016. When the unemployment rate is below 5%, we almost always see wages rise—in many cases, or in fact most cases, faster than inflation. And that’s true all the way down to the bottom of the distribution.
This probably means doing more with minimum wages, and we’ve seen a lot of action at the state and local level in the United States. Going forward, we probably need to think more about shifting toward a system in which, instead of a crude universal minimum wage, we have occupation-specific or sector-specific minimum wages. Here in California, the state government has just enacted a specific minimum wage for the food service industry, and so we probably need to go further in that direction.
The Earned Income Tax Credit is another mechanism that can help. This is a government transfer, but it’s closely tied to wages and pay. There should perhaps also be more support for the widespread adoption of profit sharing.
So yes, I do think predistribution can also be critical. We see movement in this direction in Western Europe as well, with greater emphasis on minimum wages, first and foremost, as labor unions in many countries appear to be weakening. Not quite as dramatically as here in the United States, but nonetheless significantly, and in some cases collective bargaining is weakening as well.
CEO Pay, Bargaining Power, and Corporate Governance
Your comparative work on executive compensation shows that market forces alone cannot explain enormous differences in CEO pay and that the relative power of labor and executives matters significantly. Does this imply that today’s extreme top-end inequality should be understood less as an inevitable reward for productivity and innovation than as an institutional outcome shaped by bargaining power, corporate governance, taxation, and political choices? If so, what reforms would most effectively rebalance power without undermining the dynamism that you believe capitalism can provide?
Professor Lane Kenworthy: Bargaining power, corporate governance, taxation, and political choices have all mattered, and the rise of top incomes and top wealth is not simply a story about the economy or supply and demand.
So, what would help? I’m pretty pessimistic about resurrecting labor union strength. I hope I’m wrong about this, but the fact that union membership has declined so much in nearly all rich democratic countries, not just here in the US, suggests that the story we’ve told for half a century in the United States—that we have bad laws that make it too easy for employers to fend off unions or get rid of them when they exist—no longer seems very compelling, given declining union membership in so many other rich democratic nations.
A shift in corporate governance back toward emphasizing stakeholders rather than only shareholders would be really good, but here, too, I have trouble seeing the path forward. The governance model that was in place in the decades right after World War II was heavily influenced by the fear among business leaders and politicians of a return to economic depression, and especially by the fear of communism becoming more attractive. As a result, they were willing to give workers rising wages and a seat at the bargaining table in order to ensure that the whole system survived. But that is long gone now.
I think policies requiring works councils within firms and allowing employees to elect a third or half of the board of directors would be helpful. To get more money from those at the top, taxes are our main recourse at the moment.
I don’t want to see another world war if that’s what it takes to get business leaders or conservative politicians to say, “Oh yeah, okay, we need to go back to accommodating labor unions.” But in the absence of that, I don’t really see what the path is.
I think the focus probably has to be on these two institutional requirements—work councils and workers being allowed to elect board members—and then on taxes.
Liberalism and the Contemporary Backlash
Tea Party protest rally in Boston, Massachusetts. The demonstration, attended by roughly 5,000 people, took place near the historic site of the original Boston Tea Party. Photo: Dreamstime.
Your conception of liberalism places individual well-being, equal moral worth, and evidence-based reasoning at its core. Yet contemporary populists increasingly portray liberalism as an ideology of technocratic elites, cultural cosmopolitanism, weak borders, and indifference to community and national belonging. Does liberalism today suffer primarily from a communication problem, a problem of institutional performance, or a deeper philosophical tension between individual autonomy and citizens’ demands for solidarity, identity, order, and collective membership?
Professor Lane Kenworthy: This is a very difficult question for me, and I don’t have a strong view on it—or, I should say, a confident one. The main point I would make is that liberalism has been criticized and challenged for centuries, and I’m not convinced that the negative views of it today are any more widely or deeply held than they were during previous periods of backlash.
Unlike some people, I’m not fully convinced that liberalism needs a dramatic reappraisal or fundamental shift. It’s possible that, 10 years from now, much of this backlash will have weakened or disappeared, and we’ll look back and say that the period from the mid-2010s through the mid- to late 2020s was simply another episode in a long history of intense criticism, rethinking, and backlash. These things ebb and flow.
I might be wrong. There are quite a number of thinkers making the case for a more dramatic reconsideration. I’ve just been reading Daron Acemoglu’s book, What Happened to Liberal Democracy. It is a very new book and one among many arguing for a significant shift or reappraisal of liberalism, but I’m simply not convinced that such a shift is actually warranted. And I hope I’m right, though I might turn out to be wrong.
Toward an Expanded Rawlsian Conception of Social Justice
A striking implication of your work is that a society can tolerate substantial income or even wealth inequality and still achieve high levels of economic security, opportunity, freedom, inclusion, and subjective well-being—as the Nordic cases suggest. Does that mean the left should reconceptualize social justice away from equality of outcomes and toward what might be called an “expanded Rawlsian” framework: strong basic liberties, genuine opportunity, income security, universal public goods, and steadily improving living standards for the least advantaged? What, then, becomes of the traditional egalitarian aspiration to narrow the distance between the top and the rest?
Professor Lane Kenworthy: Yes, that is exactly my view. I do consider myself an egalitarian, and I think reducing inequality of outcomes remains a goal worth pursuing, especially in a high-inequality nation like the United States. But I do think it should be secondary to the other goals you mentioned.
The Deeper Choice in the 2026 Midterms
And lastly, Professor Kenworthy, stepping back from individual races, what do you see as the deeper political choice represented by the 2026 midterms? Is the United States choosing between Trumpist right-wing populism and a liberal-democratic alternative, between plutocratic capitalism and a more egalitarian political economy, or between competing visions of how capitalism itself should be governed? And if your evidence is correct that social democratic capitalism remains the most successful institutional arrangement yet devised, what would have to happen politically for the United States to move in that direction rather than toward either more radical market nationalism on the right or democratic socialism on the left?
Professor Lane Kenworthy: Because the United States is so large and geographically diverse, and because in our elections we vote for individual candidates rather than parties, I think very few US elections actually pose such a clear, big-picture choice between competing visions of policy, capitalism, liberalism, or democracy. We often over-interpret elections here in exactly those terms. But in most cases, people are voting for many different reasons. It may be about individual candidates, a single issue, or a particular set of issues, or they may simply have picked their party and stick with it no matter what.
Now, if that’s true, then for the United States to move toward something like the Nordic model in policy terms, Democrats need to win elections. It’s more complicated than that, of course, but basically, that’s how we’ve seen the country move historically over the last century in the direction of something like social democratic capitalism.
That’s also what we see at the state and local levels today. I mentioned before that a number of states have moved quite aggressively in this direction. There are limits to what states and cities can do, both because they have limited money at their disposal and because they face institutional constraints. They can’t do certain things that only the federal government can do. But they can do a lot.
When Democrats hold the governorship and both houses of the legislature, as they have in California, Massachusetts, Washington, Oregon, and elsewhere, we see substantial movement in this policy direction. My guess is that this will continue. And if and when Democrats again control all three decision-making bodies at the federal level, they’ll probably move in that direction again, as they did in 2021 when Biden came in, and in 2009 when Obama came in with Democratic majorities.
They’ll make limited progress, but they’ll probably make some real progress, and in most cases that progress lasts. There are no guarantees, of course. But it turns out that this is a pretty simple story, and I think it’s the right one.
If populist anti-gender politics establishes the heteronormative family as a symbolic representation of the legitimate social order, conformity to particular gendered and sexual norms can become intertwined with the conditions of legitimate national membership. Family is therefore not simply something the state claims to protect; it becomes a political template through which ‘the legitimate citizen’ is imagined.
