Producers and Takers: The Socioeconomic Narrative of Sweden Democrat Voters

Författare

David Evertsson

Summary, in English

Recently, several academic studies have proposed a theoretical ‘producerist framework’ to address the lack of research and conceptual clarity on the economic dimension of national populism. Essentially, this framework refers to a narrative that pits the producers, understood as citizens that contribute to the nation’s economic wealth, against parasitic takers, who threaten the producers’ well-being by exploiting the welfare system. This thesis contributes to this growing scholarly interest in the economic dimension of national populism by qualitatively interviewing Sweden Democrat voters and analysing their articulation of the producerist narrative. The approach is innovative in two ways: by being the first empirical study of Swedish producerism and by focusing on the previously understudied voters’ narrative. Having analysed the meanings and ideas articulated in the interviews, the thesis indicates the existence of a Swedish producerist narrative that shares many features with other European narratives, while at the same time having several key particularities related to the social democratic Swedish welfare system. Moreover, it is acknowledged that the meanings of the Swedish producerist narrative differ from the American, while still fitting within the overarching theoretical framework.

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