Far right in Scandinavia: achievements and failures

This diploma thesis deals with far right parties in Scandinavia and their achievements and failures since their birth in the beginning of the seventies. Conditions of the origin and development of the contemporary far right parties and a definition of this ideological party family are analyzed on the background of a broader theoretical framework. The thesis pursues ideological-political and programmatic shifts of the Progress Party (FrPd) and Danish People's Party (DFP) in Denmark, Progress Party (FrPn) in Norway and New Democracy (NyD) in Sweden and their contemporary role within the system using Beyme's concept of three waves of the postwar far right in Western Europe. The aim of this diploma thesis is to find out which factors and conditions were relevant for the emergence and subsequent consolidation of new far right parties in the three respective Scandinavian party systems chosen as subjects of this comparative analysis. Comparing the two successful far right parties - the Norwegian and Danish Progress Parties plus the Danish People's Party - with the negative case of Sweden's New Democracy, the thesis concludes that economic stability and prosperity with low unemployment rate on the system level and charismatic leadership with strong party organisation on the party level are most favourable to the..