Coalition Formation in the Presence of Pariah Parties: Evidence from the Swedish Local Level

Government formation in proportional parliamentary systems typically entails coalition bargaining. When a party is considered a “pariah” and is systematically isolated from political cooperation, however, the coalition formation process is fundamentally altered. This study explores changing coalition patterns at the Swedish local level, where the radical right party the Sweden Democrats was, for a long time, considered uncoalitionable by all other parties. Using statistical analysis of all 290 Swedish municipalities across three elections (2006, 2010 and 2014), the results show that the presence of this pariah party contributed to increasing the coalitions’ policy diversity by making the other parties more willing to cooperate across the established blocs of left and right. The results also show, however, that the right bloc is more likely to form minority governments that rely on informal support from the radical right, while the left bloc is more dependent on negotiating parliamentary support across the blocs. The results give an indication of how the parties at the local level navigate the constraints imposed by an isolation policy dictated at the national level without engaging in formal cooperation with the pariah party.