Historical and doctrinal roots of scandinavian national-populism

There has been an increase in the number of populist parties and movements, especially in Europe, yet their electoral successes have been sporadic. In Scandinavian countries the presence of such parties and movements has become a steady and, it seems, permanent feature of the political landscape. Their once shocking rhetoric and policies have become part of the political mainstream. The ability of populist political parties in Scandinavia to gain electoral success, hence to stabilise, may suggests that populism in Scandinavia may either result from a peculiar type of diversification within the very broadly conceived populist political stream, or may be one of unexpected outcomes of the so-called Scandinavian model of politics to be regarded then as a rather fertile ground for populists. The contribution that this study aims to offer is two-fold: placing Scandinavian populism in a wider context, thereby addressing the issue of the uniqueness of Scandinavian political culture; problematizing the rather common assumption that the variance among populist phenomena has increased exponentially over time. Indeed, the following specific key-questions have been asked and answered: are there distinctive facts that set today’s populist movements in Scandinavia apart from populist and nationalist ideas and programmes of the past? What are the ties relating the different populist movements in Scandinavia to each other? Are there any compelling indicators that may convince us that Scandinavian populism is somewhat different from its counterparts elsewhere? Finally, based on a number of findings, we shall evaluate the claim that a distinct, Scandinavian form of populism exists. The first part of the text deals with the complex question choosing a working definition of populism. It then moves on to describing the historical understandings of ‘populism’ and ‘nationalism’, as well as identifying some of the main distinguishing features of populist and nationalist movements in the past, for then to describe, through case studies, some of the many features we may find in different, contemporary, populist party ‘families’. We sustain the that a typology defined by two overarching families of populism - whether it allows for further sub-families or not - fails to capture the full range of phenomena referred to as populist politics in Scandinavia. By first identifying some of the historical cases in which evident traces of populism are detectable, we shall see that the split nature of populism itself is not a result of a process of diversification, but rather a case of different phenomena that, from the very outset, happened to share a few common features. We propose an interpretation by which, rather than fascism being a form of populism, or combining populism with another ideology, the two belong to a similar type of ideology: they can both be understood as belonging among the so-called ‘thin-centred ideologies’. Here we do not mean that a similarity in content is necessarily significant, but rather that they both, when combined with ideological content from the more traditional left – or right-wing, or with a combination of policies from both ends of the spectrum, become political programmes with high potential and appeal, especially during times of (perceived) crisis. Thus, what we have been able to observe is that the theory that nationalism arises in times of crises where, typically the lower middle classes, or the lower classes, feel the pressure of economic decline in combination with factors such as immigration, seems to hold the first test against historical cases. We further conclude that populist radical right parties in Europe share a core ideology of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. In the contemporary context, we conclude that a definition of populism in terms of one or more fixed, necessary and exclusive common feature(s) is unfeasible, and we must then continue with a definition of populism which is in line with Sartori’s minimal definition, in combination with the presumption that a plethora of sub-categories may exist. The common denominators are thus: the reference to the ‘people’ as harbouring the real essence of a particular society, to the ‘populists’ as having discovered the best way of letting the spirit of the people speak, and to the perceived conflict of interest between the people on the one hand and a particular, or general, elite on the other. The investigation of the parallels between the historical definitions of ‘populism’ and ‘nationalism’ helps us understand the ideological roots of each of the populist parties and movements in Scandinavia. For example, the abandonment of the use of the rational and legal concept of ‘citizenship’ in favour of the use of the vague concept of ‘Volk’ among the German romantics is one of the features that emphasize how the Scandinavian parties have adopted many of the ideas of this particular movement; especially in terms of defining the concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘national-culture’, or ‘-character’. The second part of the text includes a general introduction to some interesting social and political features of each of the national contexts within which our subjects of study belong. We propose the term ‘national-populist’ to denominate the general typology of most Scandinavian populist parties and movements. We also show how many of these parties have direct links with both national-socialist parties of the past and with each other, and how the promotion of Scandinavian regionalism has created a sense of shared experience and ontology. We also show, however, how local circumstances and historical features have shaped some of these parties. We then move on to treat the societal features that are most frequently used by journalists and scholars, not to mention by Scandinavian populist leaders themselves, to explain the founding of the populist parties and movements in Scandinavian countries on the one hand, and their relative popularity on the other. It becomes clear that many of the features of the populist parties in Scandinavian countries are shared (such as ideas about what constitutes a ‘folk’ and a nation, a shared Scandinavian regionalism and a common perception of economic and social crisis), the emphasis on each of these features differs from party to party. It also become clear, however, that the features that are shared among these parties, cannot claim exclusivity. Scandinavian national-populist parties and movements do thus not constitute a separate sub-category of populism, but rather constitute examples of the slightly wider sub-category of ‘national-populism’.