scholarly journals Room for Realignment: The Working-Class Sympathy for Sweden Democrats

2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 629-651 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Oskarson ◽  
Marie Demker
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Nationalist Party ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Voting ◽  
Ideological Dimension ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Swedish Politics

How is it that the Swedish populist nationalist party the Sweden Democrats receives its strongest support from the established working class, in spite of the high degree of class voting and left–right mobilization which is known to characterize Swedish politics? Based on surveys from the SOM (Society, Opinion, Media) Institute as well as the Swedish National Elections Studies, this article shows that this is not a result of increasing anti-immigrant attitudes in the working class or of decreasing left–right polarization among voters. Rather, we present the argument that the weakening alignment between the working class and the Social Democratic Party and the weakened left–right polarization between the main parties have created a structure which has left room for a realignment between large parts of the working class and the Sweden Democrats along the alternative underlying ideological dimension of authoritarianism/libertarianism.

Worker and the Welfare State in Imperial Germany

1991 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 18-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Steinmetz
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Imperial Germany ◽  
The Social ◽  
Insurance Funds ◽  
The Welfare State

A complex relationship existed between working-class formation and the development of the welfare state in Imperial Germany between 1871 and 1914. In the 1880s, the Social Democratic party voted against the three major national social insurance law's, and many workers seemed to spurn the incipient welfare state. But by 1914, socialists were active in social policy-making and workers were participating in the operations of the welfare state. Tens of thousands of workers and social democrats held positions in the social insurance funds and offices, the labor courts and labor exchanges, and other institutions of the official welfare state. Hundreds of workers had even become “friendly visitors” in the traditional middle-class domain of municipal poor relief. This shift is interesting not only from the standpoint of working-class orientations; it also challenges the received image of the German working class as excluded from the state —an interpretation based on an overly narrow focus on national parliamentary politics.

The “Polishness” of Production: Factory Politics and the Reinvention of Working-Class National and Political Identities in Russian Poland's Textile Industry, 1880-1910

Slavic Review ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura A. Crago
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Textile Industry ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
National Union ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Important Place ◽  
The Social ◽  
Polish Society

While the development of nineteenth-century Polish nationalism has received considerable scholarly attention, it has almost always focused on how the intelligentsia became the standard-bearers of Polish national consciousness. As a result, we know very little about how other members of Polish society constructed national identities. This is particularly perplexing when it comes to studying Russian Poland's workers, for there was no dearth of Polish nationalist activity among these workers. National demands articulated by Łodź's Polish workers during strikes in 1892, for example, inspired a group of social democrats to abandon internationalism and instead create the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). During the revolution of 1905, nationalism once again assumed an important place in both working-class protest and organization. Workers played a prominent role in the Polish school strikes. They also supported and sustained a uniquely Polish phenomena—a nationalist working-class political party, the National Union of Workers (NZR). Although the NZR and its constituent trade unions could be found within every industry within Russian Poland, the organization gained its greatest foothold within the textile industry. Moreover, it was within the textile industry in 1906 where bitter debates between nationalist and socialist workers erupted in violence after a disgruntled weaver from the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) concluded a political argument with an NZR coworker by gunning him down in the street.

Luxemburg on Popular Emancipation

2020 ◽  
pp. 168-183
Author(s):  
Camila Vergara
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
National Council ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Partial Control ◽  
German Government ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Revolutionary Party

This chapter focuses on Rosa Luxemburg, who proposed to embrace workers' councils as a political infrastructure of emancipation at a moment when the modern party system had begun to consolidate. It explains the Social Democratic Party as a party in support of the interests of the working class, which had gained partial control of the German government. It discusses Luxemburg's realization that the liberty of the working class demanded a different political infrastructure. The chapter cites the betrayal of the revolutionary party that proved to Luxemburg the truth of Karl Marx's argument that the “working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.” It highlights Luxemburg's proposal to alter the foundation and base of the social constitution by institutionalizing workers, soldiers, and peasant councils and establishing a national council of workers as part of a revolutionary constitutional political order.

Rumanian Socialists and the Nationality Problem in Hungary, 1903-18

Slavic Review ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-90
Author(s):  
Keith Hitchins
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
First World War ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
New Members ◽  
The Social ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

The history of the Rumanian socialists of Hungary in the decade before the outbreak of the First World War and during the final crisis of the Dual Monarchy in 1918 offers a striking illustration of the importance of national feeling in socialist and working-class movements of peoples who had not yet achieved their national-political emancipation and who were still overwhelmingly agrarian. In seeking support, Rumanian socialists had to compete with the middle-class Rumanian National Party, which was well established as a staunch defender of Rumanian rights against the aggressive nationality policies of the Hungarian government, and the church, which maintained a strong hold over a devout and traditional peasantry. They were hampered also by having only a modest constituency of their own. Not only was the Rumanian working class small, but in those places where Rumanian factory workers had congregated in significant numbers—Budapest, Arad, Timisoara—they were swallowed up in the greater masses of Magyar and German workers.and were in danger of losing their national identity. They provided only a fragile base for an independent socialist party. Until the First World War, Rumanian socialists developed their activities under the aegis of the Social Democratic Party of Hungary (MSZDP). In time, they found ideological and financial subordination to the MSZDP to be a serious handicap in efforts to recruit new members. At a time of growing national tension, they were hard put to explain how a party dominated by Magyars, even socialists, could benefit Rumanians. Yet, in spite of their protestations of socialist internationalism and their open disdain for nationalistic impulses, they could not ignore nationality. Indeed, the idea of nationality lent their movement a distinctiveness that set it apart from the other socialist movements of Hungary and, in the end, gave it its reason for being.

The Changing Relations Between Trade Unions and the Social Democratic Party in West Germany

1978 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 399-415
Author(s):  
Klaus von Beyme
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Cooperative Movement ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Democracies

In western democracies different patterns of cooperation among working class organizations have developed. The three ‘pillars’ of the working class movement in Britain, the trade unions, the party and the cooperative movement, have no equivalent in the history of Germany, for two reasons.

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