Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Ratio Working Papers,
The Ratio Institute

No 115: Explaining Party Emergence in Swedish Local Politics 1973–2002

Gissur Ó. Erlingsson ()
Additional contact information
Gissur Ó. Erlingsson: The Ratio Institute, Postal: The Ratio Institute, P.O. Box 5095, SE-102 42 Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract: Since individuals demanding formations of new parties face a collective action problem, I inquire why people form new parties, and why this political strategy became increasingly popular between 1973 and 2002 in Swedish municipalities. Case-studies indicate that ‘strong emotions’ – i.e. anger, frustration and indignation – mobilize rational actors to start up new parties. However, ‘strong emotions’ only explain why individuals form parties in the first place, not why party formation has become a popular strategy. Hence, I hypothesize that entrepreneurs forming parties at t inspire potential entrepreneurs in neighbouring municipalities at t + 1. Since previous attempts to explain the increasing number of new parties in Sweden have failed, I maintain that the support the hypothesis gains adds important knowledge to this field.

Keywords: Party entrepreneurs; new parties; emotional arousal; rational imitation; local politics; Sweden

JEL-codes: D01; D71; D72; H41

32 pages, January 3, 2008

Full text files

ge_emerge.pdf PDF-file 

Download statistics

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Martin Korpi ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

This page generated on 2024-02-05 17:13:21.