Sweden’s Post-Election Impasse

577
DOI: 10.20542/0131-2227-2019-63-3-30-39

I. Grishin (i.grishin@inbox.ru),
Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences (IMEMO), 23, Profsoyuznaya Str., Moscow 117997, Russian Federation

Abstract. The article examines results of the Swedish general election in September 2018, grave consequences of which have affected the ability of the Parliament to form a government and hereby to ensure continuity of exercising of the legislative and executive powers. The main outcome of the election was a relapse of a hung parliament with the antiimmigration Sweden Democrats holding the balance of power, while neither the centre-left nor the centre-right bloc is willing to do a deal with them. Compared to the results of the previous election of 2014, in 2018, the situation was aggravated by strengthening of the Sweden Democrats’ position in the riksdag and the establishment of equilibrium between the blocks that made it difficult to resolve the issue of a legitimate contender for the government formation. Although all the parties agree that the time of bloc politics has passed and cross-bloc cooperation is necessary, it has proved extremely complicated to implement this idea. Never before has process of forming the government been so timeconsuming. The original cause of the complication is to be sought in sharp rise of culturally different immigration since the beginning of the 21st century. This is the rise that generated the electorate’s demands for refusal to unrestricted immigration policy and for a party insisting on a serious restriction of the culturally different immigration. The Sweden Democrats have become such a party. Sweden will now contend with a fractured party-political landscape in which the center-right and center-left coalitions that have defined its politics for decades are deadlocked, and in the absence of the cross-bloc cooperation, the party-kingmaker is in a position to be a decisive force. All of this means that government crises and snap elections unknown to the country for many decades can become a usual thing. Thus, the Swedish election of 2018 has manifested that an accelerated multiculturalisation of a democratic society carries with itself acute political imbalances.

Keywords: Sweden, riksdag, parliamentary coalition building, culturally different immigration, Sweden Democrats, deformation of the party-political system, parliamentary elections, formation of the government


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For citation:
Grishin I. Sweden’s Post-Election Impasse. World Eñonomy and International Relations, 2019, vol. 63, no. 3, pp. 30-39 . https://doi.org/10.20542/0131-2227-2019-63-3-30-39



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