Premium
New Parties: Game Changers or ‘Much Ado About Nothing'?
Author(s) -
Bischoff Carina Saxlund
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
scandinavian political studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.65
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9477
pISSN - 0080-6757
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9477.12163
Subject(s) - parliament , political science , politics , salient , political economy , danish , immigration , nothing , government (linguistics) , conversation , public administration , law , sociology , linguistics , communication , philosophy , epistemology
This article is about the new parties that competed at the Danish parliamentary election of 2019. It addresses three key questions: why did they emerge, what types of parties were they and what impact did they have on Danish party politics. We can identify the causes for their emergence and participation in interplay of relatively lenient rules for party registration, personal ambition, recent events – particularly the Syrian crisis and arrival of refugees – as well as anti‐establishment sentiments on the political right. The three new parties shared salient characteristics: they had dominant leaders, were genuinely new, had extraparliamentary origins and were independent of societal organizations. In terms of effects on the party system, the main impact was during the campaign where the strongly anti‐immigration agenda proposed by two of the parties dominated the conversation and appeared to cause some movement by established parties in a more immigrant friendly direction. Only one of the far right parties won seats in parliament and its prospects of wielding influence on policy with a Socialdemocratic government are slim.