The Danish People’s Party’s downfall, a possible future for the Sweden Democrats? : Comparative analysis between far-right populist parties in Sweden and Denmark

Abstract: The purpose of this thesis aimed at trying to find out why the Sweden Democrats have increased their support, to become the second largest party in the Swedish parliament, while, the Danish People’s Party, has lost the majority of their support after being the second largest party in the Danish parliament to almost falling out a few years later. Is it possible for the Sweden Democrats to share the same fate? To find this out, we’ve decided to conduct this study using a qualitative comparative method, with a Most Similar System Design. The analysis mainly consists of two concepts to explain this phenomenon which are “Cordon Sanitaire” and “Normalization”.  The results of the analysis show that in Denmark, the Danish People’s Party’s views and policies on migration, have gotten normalized across the political spectrum. As such, they can no longer argue that they are anti-establishment, but instead, they have become a part of the establishment themselves. In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats have been kept out of power, with a “cordon sanitaire”, and thus their view and policies have not gotten normalized and adopted by other parties, and therefore they have continued to grow. An interesting aspect of this is that recently, the Sweden Democrats have gotten normalized and they are now a support party for a right-wing government, which we argue might lead to a similar situation as in Denmark, meaning that the Sweden Democrats might lose support in the future.