Do Anti-immigration Parties Matter?The Case of the Sweden Democrats and Local Refugee Policy
Year: 2014
Type of text: Vetenskaplig artikel
Published by: Nordic Political Science Association
Language: English
Author: Bolin, Niklas, Lidén, Gustav & Nyhlén, Jon
Pages: 21
Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-9477.12031
Short description of text
Analyzes the impact of the anti-immigration parties in Sweden, SD, on the local level especially on the policies of refugee reception. It tries to investigate if there is a correlation between the SD’s representation and the impact on asylum policy due to the methodological inconsistency of previous studies and due to the few studies on the local migration policy. The text aims to investigate migration policy change from a party political perspective (3).
Most important results
“While some argue that anti-immigration parties have made an impact on public policy, others find no such evidence” (1). This inconsistency can be seen as the result of the methodologies that have been used, and due to the reason that in the previous studies “different parties in different institutional settings are compared, making it difficult to estimate the actual impact of the party of interest.” (ibid.) and because the previous studies rely on cross-nationally instead of “variation within the country” and suffer from “shortcomings in comparability” (15).
“While unable to find an independent effect of the size of the representation of the SD, it appears that the party’s impact is conditioned by them holding the balance of power. Also, SD’s impact is not dependent upon whether there is right-wing or left-wing rule, although local migration policy is stricter when the main right-wing party has strong support” (1).
The text claims that “it is not anti-immigration parties that induce policy change, but rather restrictions are believed to mirror changes in general opinion” (15).
Theoretical perspective/framework
Migration policy impact, seat share, balance of power.
Method
Policy analysis
Time-series cross-section data (TSCS)
Suggestions for further research
The article suggests further research on “cases with little or no refugee reception where the SD holds representation could be a first step. Such an analysis could be conducted using a mixed method approach, including both a replication of the statistical analyses in this study (with a subset of cases) and a number of in-depth case studies in order to grasp why the SD is less successful in what seems to be favourable conditions” (16).
