Passions of Representative Politics

In this presentation I will introduce a very preliminary draft of the text “Passions of Representative Politics”. My ambition is to sketch a first chapter of my book project “Struggles of the people: nationalism, populism and democracy in Scandinavian politics, 1928-2010”. The passions of representative politics refer to the delicate balancing between the functional needs of the system and the emotive appeals to the people. Recognising the passions of representative politics, I emphasise the struggles of the people as a basis for how politics is performed and communicated between the citizenry and the mediated elites; how the Pathos continuum between the acceptable normalcy and the pathological deviance is established differently in Sweden, Denmark and in Norway. The book aims to explain the appearance and development of three nationalist parties, by means of scrutinizing and comparing changing perceptions of the people in these countries. The main thesis is that the nationalist parties (Dansk Folkeparti in Denmark, Sverigedemokraterna in Sweden and Fremskrittspartiet in Norway), by acting as the true heirs of Social Democracy – i.e. the proponents of the people – gain resonance for their politics. The ambition is, by way of extrapolation, to illuminate differences and similarities concerning the contemporary debate on national self images (and threat images), integration and migration in contemporary Scandinavian politics