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Due to their foreign policy opposition, the left socialist parties in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden remain among the few parties in Western democracies that lack governmental experience. When political parties confront political issues, they can either choose a competitive or a cooperative strategy. The Norwegian and Swedish left socialists chose competition when the EU issue appeared on the scene in the early 1990s. The Danish Socialist People's Party, on the other hand, opted for a cooperative strategy and accepted EU membership and the 1993 Edinburgh Agreement. Drawing on coalition theory, this article asks why.

The centre parties of Norway and Sweden both have their background as traditional farmer parties. They have faced the unavoidable challenge of a shrinking agrarian electorate. This article focuses on how they have responded to this challenge and argues that both agricultural identity and contextual variations are important in explaining differences in their electoral adaptation. The article shows how strong loyalties towards the farmers' union may strengthen traditional party loyalties.

Terrorism often leads to increased stigmatization of groups perceived as "out-groups". We test two versions of out-group theory and ask whether citizens clearly distinguish between radical Muslims and Muslims in general, or if the fear of terrorism is associated with a general distrust of Muslims? We conducted a survey experiment among Norwegian citizens designed to determine the effect of group treatments on the participants' attitudes towards wiretapping. We find that our group treatments strongly influence the participants' attitudes towards wiretapping. However, the hypothesis that the fear of terrorism leads to a backlash against Muslims in general is rejected. Still, Norwegians are prepared to give the police leeway towards the two groups identified by the police as the greatest security risks, i.e., radical Muslim and extreme right-wing groups. Our evidence suggests that citizens are capable of discriminating between groups who aim explicitly at undermining democracy and groups perceived as different from themselves. ; publishedVersion

AbstractTerrorism often leads to increased stigmatization of groups perceived as "out-groups". We test two versions of out-group theory and ask whether citizens clearly distinguish between radical Muslims and Muslims in general, or if the fear of terrorism is associated with a general distrust of Muslims? We conducted a survey experiment among Norwegian citizens designed to determine the effect of group treatments on the participants' attitudes towards wiretapping. We find that our group treatments strongly influence the participants' attitudes towards wiretapping. However, the hypothesis that the fear of terrorism leads to a backlash against Muslims in general is rejected. Still, Norwegians are prepared to give the police leeway towards the two groups identified by the police as the greatest security risks, i.e., radical Muslim and extreme right-wing groups. Our evidence suggests that citizens are capable of discriminating between groups who aim explicitly at undermining democracy and groups perceived as different from themselves.