NORDCORP Ideological transformations, organizational development and mainstream reactions. A comparison of populist parties in four Nordic c

Our project offers comparative knowledge on how, why and when popular attitudes towards the out-group population translate into party political preferences in countries that share very similar socio-political attributes; hence, the Nordic countries. The N ordic countries seem to constitute a fruitful design so as to move beyond demand side explanations and to acknowledge supply-oriented explanations for the varying electoral fortunes of the four nationalist-populist parties. This project involves contextua lized comparisons over time, which are situated between the thin large N studies and the thick single case accounts. In this project we call attention to the rise of national-populist parties in the four Nordic countries: the Sweden Democrats (SD) in Swe den; the Danish People?s Party (DPP) in Denmark; the Progress Party (PP) in Norway and the True Finns (TS) in Finland. These parties have experienced their greatest electoral success during the recent years and since 2010 they are all represented in the n ational parliament. The main research question is why these four parties differ in terms of electoral support, policy influence and governmental experience. Our empirical focus is on how the national-populist parties have changed ideologically and organiz ationally and which strategies the mainstream parties have adopted faced with a new political competitor arena and mainstream reactions to their development in the public debate. Firstly, we analyze the ideological transformation of these parties over tim e to discern to what extent they have converged in terms of influence, policy positioning and political rhetoric. Secondly, we focus on the ?internal life? of the parties by means of analyses of party statutes and surveys among the ?middle-level elite? (i .e. delegates at the annual conference. Thirdly, we analyze the mainstream reactions to the development of these four parties, ranging along a continuum from repressive to permissive.