Jens Rydgren

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Stockholm University

This paper analyses the responses of the Swedish labour movement-the Social Democratic Party and the blue-collar union confederation, the LO-to the populist radical right-wing party the Sweden Democrats between 2007 and 2018. Yet it does so from a novel perspective, highlighting the role of 1) temporality and 2) intra-party/organizational dynamics...

This paper analyses the responses of the Swedish labour movement-the Social Democratic Party and the blue-collar union confederation, the LO-to the populist radical right-wing party the Sweden Democrats between 2007 and 2018. Yet it does so from a novel perspective, highlighting the role of 1) temporality and 2) intra-party/organizational dynamics...

This position paper argues for an interdisciplinary agenda relating crises to on-going processes of normalization of anti- and post-democratic action. We call for exploring theoretically and empirically the ‘new normal’ logic introduced into public imagination on the back of various crises, including the recent ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Europe, COVID-19...

The “radical Right” in Scandinavia refers to a diverse set of political actors within the Northern European countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Radical right‐wing movements and parties vary in their aims and origins, but are linked through a shared nativism that fuels the contemporary radical Right internationally. Nativism pairs nationalism...

This article contributes to the analysis of the politics of nostalgia by focusing on its content, conditions, and mechanisms. Frame theory is used to understand the contested nature of nostalgia through the central framing of the past. We explore ways in which nostalgia relates to ethnic nationalism and populism and its close relationship to the rh...

Considering the current political relevance of anti-immigration sentiments, we examined preference to avoid interacting with immigrants – conceptualized here as a manifestation of xenophobia – among radical (Sweden Democrats, Sverigedemokraterna, N = 2216) and mainstream (Conservative Party, Moderaterna, N = 634) right-wing voters in Sweden. Correl...

This book examines how social democratic parties have responded to populist radical right parties in the battle for support from working-class voters. It focuses on the paradigmatic examples of social democratic parties in the Nordic countries. Historically these have been the strongest social democratic parties, but they have declined in recent y...

The study explores how social network determinants relate to the prevalence and frequency of alcohol use among peer dyads. It is studied how similar alcohol habits co-exist among persons (egos) and their peers (alters) when socio-demographic similarity (e.g., in ethnic origin), network composition and other socio-cultural aspects were considered. D...

The linkage between political right-wing orientation and climate change denial is extensively studied. However, previous research has almost exclusively focused on the mainstream right, which differs from the far right (radical and extreme) in some important domains. Thus, we investigated correlates of climate change denial among supporters of a ra...

With the aim of studying the role of contextual factors for explaining within-country variation in the vote share of the radical right-wing party, the Sweden Democrats, in the 2014 Swedish election, we specify and test hypotheses pertaining to social marginality, ethnic threat, the contact hypothesis, and the halo effect. We study the variation in...

Background The study explores how social network determinants relate to the prevalence and frequency of alcohol use of members of social networks. In a so-called dyadic design we study how similar alcohol habits co-exist among individuals (egos) and their peers (alters), when variables such as ethnic background, network composition, and other socio...

As in many other European countries, the political system has undergone rapid changes in Sweden while a radical right‐wing party – The Sweden Democrats (SD) – has grown from a negligible position into one of the country's largest parties. SD has been winning voters from both the right and the left sides of the political spectrum, and particularly f...

Ethnonationalism and anti-immigration sentiments are increasingly influencing voting behavior in Western countries. This study investigated the role of xenophobia in explaining support for right-wing parties and whether xenophobia correlates with the same psychological variables among voters of a radical right-wing party (Sweden Democrats, Sveriged...

Europe has experienced major political changes over recent decades, with new political parties having emerged and become established in many countries. The same development has also been seen in Sweden, where the Sweden Democrats has rapidly grown from a once marginal position to become one of the country’s largest parliamentary parties. This repo...

Objectives Cultural behaviors are theoretically linked to future life chances but empirical literature is scant. We use heavy metal as an example of cultural identities due to its high salience. We first assess the social morphology of metal preferences in terms of socio-economic and socio-structural positions, and then asses the short term outcome...

Survey SWE.docx. The survey in Swedish. (DOCX)

Survey ENG.docx. The survey machine translated to English. (DOCX)

Like in many other European countries, the political system has undergone rapid changes in Sweden as a radical right-wing party – The Sweden Democrats (SD) – has grown from a negligible position into one of the country’s largest parties. SD has been winning voters from both the right and the left sides of the political spectrum, and particularly fr...

Previous research found that weight-related behaviors and body weight tends to be similar between individuals and peers. Rather little is known how different domains of weight-related behaviors co-evolve in peer networks. Hence, this study explores how young adults' self-reported dieting relates to perceived body weight and weight control behaviors...

This paper analyses the politicisation of the Eurozone crisis in Finnish public debate, in May-November 2010. We emphasise how the mainstream parties responded to the radical right Finns Party's framing, in addition to two context factors: first, the constraints posed on domestic policymakers by EU and EMU-level decisions, and secondly, the sharp,...

We combine routine activity theory, lifestyle-victimization theory, and a social network perspective to examine crime victimization. In particular, we study to what extent crime victimization is associated with having close contacts who have been victimized and/or who engage in risky lifestyles. We use the data (collected in 2014) of 1,051 native S...

This article explores the ethno-nationalist rhetoric promoted by radical right-wing parties in Europe; its perceived threats against national identity translated into a nostalgia for the past based on ethnic homogeneity. Five anti-immigrant frames have been especially instrumental in attracting voters, merging with other central components to const...

Sverigedemokraterna har på kort tid blivit ett av Sveriges största riksdagspartier. Det är också ett av flera liknande partier som på senare tid har fått ett växande väljarstöd i Europa, och därför kunnat flytta fram sina positioner i respektive lands partisystem. Den här rapporten söker svar på en mängd olika frågor om Sverigedemokraternas väljar...

The aim of this symposium is to further probe understandings of those parties typically placed in the ‘far-right’, ‘niche’ and ‘populist radical right’ categories It also considers whether there is a .need to look beyond socio-economic factors to explain their upward trajectory in recent years. The articles included formed part of the panel - ‘Comp...

Fifteen years ago, Rydgren (Scand Polit Stud 25(1):27–56, 2002) asked why no electorally successful radical right-wing party had yet emerged in Sweden. In this respect, Sweden was a negative case. Rydgren posited four main explanations: (1) social class mattered more in Sweden than elsewhere. Working-class voters identified strongly with their soci...

The resurgence of strong radical right-wing parties and movements constitutes one of the most significant political changes in democratic states during the past several decades, particularly in Europe. This resurgence has attracted interest from political scientists, sociologists, historians, and other scholars, most of whose research focuses on pa...

Motivated by a recent controversy over handshaking, a survey of the personal networks of young Swedes (n=2244) is used to describe greeting practices across social class, gender, immigrant background, and geographic location. While greeting practices in the sample are fairly uniform, there are also important differences. Handshaking is predominantl...

Sweden was long considered an ”exceptional case” with no representatives of the radical right in parliament. However, the Sweden Democrats (SD) entered parliament in the 2010 parliamentary election, pointing towards the demand for ethnic nationalism also in Sweden. This article explores the party’s rhetoric with particular references to the politic...

Social capital research has recognized the relevance of occupational network contacts for individuals’ life chances and status attainment, and found distinct associations dependent on ethnic background. A still fairly unexplored area is the health implications of occupational networks. The current approach thus seeks to study the relationship betwe...

The study investigates inequalities in access to social capital based on social class origin and immigration background and examines the role of transnational ties in explaining these differences. Social capital is measured with a position generator methodology that separates between national and transnational contacts in a sample of young adults i...

Ethnic acculturation in a sample of 19-year-old individuals of Yugoslavian and Iranian origin in contemporary Sweden was studied, with a focus on how acculturation is contingent on social structure and social context. Acculturation was measured as orientation to the majority and the parental culture of origin. The results suggest, first, that the t...

In this paper I discuss, critically, the literature on populism and the extent to which it applies to the contemporary radical right-wing parties in Europe. These parties are often – and increasingly – referred to as populist parties. I argue that it is misleading to label these parties ‘populist parties’, since populism is not the most pertinent f...

In this chapter, we focus on the social integration of young immigrants in Sweden who themselves and/or one or both of their parents came from Iran or former Yugoslavia. In particular, we look at the share of alters in their core networks who are of the same parental national origin and how this has changed within a period of four years. To explain...

This paper examines beliefs about the past across ethnic groups in conflict ridden Northern Iraq, and the extent to which such beliefs are associated with interethnic trust and political trust. Using individual-level survey data (N=1,440) collected in 2010 and 2011 in the cities of Erbil and Kirkuk, our quantitative analyses show that beliefs about...

This article examines the multiple mechanisms by which beliefs are formed — from observation, social influence/socialization, induction, deduction from other beliefs, adaptation to desire (wishful thinking), and dissonance-reduction mechanisms — as well as the conditions under which each arises and the characteristic processes (and problems) associ...

Aims: This study explored the sex-specific associations between friendship trust and the psychological well-being of young Swedes from late adolescence to early adulthood. Methods: A random sample of native Swedes born in 1990 was surveyed at age 19 years and again at age 23 years regarding their own well-being and their relationships with a max...

Objectives The present study examines how the composition of social networks and perceived relationship content influence peer clustering in smoking, and how the association changes during the transition from late adolescence to early adulthood. Methods The analysis was based on a Swedish two-wave survey sample comprising ego-centric network data....

Random effects logistic regression for the balanced panel: Odds ratios and average marginal effects for daily smoking by gender. (DOCX)

Proportion of smokers in subsamples. (DOCX)

The social mechanism program has been successful in sociology and neighboring social science disciplines, such as criminology and political science. However, in our view the literature on social mechanisms is still too preoccupied with intratheoretical and metatheoretical discussions, and we find very few empirical applications. This is surprising...

Background The importance of supportive social relationships for psychological well-being has been previously recognized, but the direction of associations between both dimensions and how they evolve when adolescents enter adulthood have scarcely been addressed. The present study aims to examine the gender-specific associations between self-reporte...

Youth unemployment is a contemporary social problem in many societies. Youths often have limited access to information about jobs and limited social influence, yet little is known about the relationship between social capital and unemployment risk among youth. We study the effect of social capital on unemployment risk in a sample of 19 year olds of...

Acknowledging that the composition and structure of personal networks is affected by meeting opportunities, social distance, and national origin similarity, we aim to disentangle their association with triadic closure in the core of personal networks. We use data (collected 2009) on the core networks of three groups of Swedes (all born in 1990): na...

In this article, we study the effects of the 2004 terrorist bombings in Madrid on ethnic segregation in Spain. Using large-scale Spanish register data consisting of information on 5.4 million international migration events on a monthly basis and 13.9 million intermunicipal migration events, of which 3.8 million events concern the foreign-born popul...

All ethnic groups have norms and values according to which one is expected to behave. Immigrants in particular have personal networks that simultaneously consist of co-ethnics and friends of a different ethnic background. As a consequence, they may be accustomed to the behavior, norms, and values of their own ethnic group, and also be expected to b...

The position generator is a widespread method for measuring latent social capital in which respondents are queried about contacts on a list of occupations predefined by the analyst. We separate out the unique contribution of each occupation to aggregated measures of social capital. It turns out that this contribution varies vastly: knowing a person...

In this article, we study 19-year-olds in Sweden (n = 2,942) with and without an immigration background (Iran, Yugoslavia, and Sweden). We follow-up on a recent study, which shows that religion and happiness tend to be positively associated at the individual level only in countries with high aggregate levels of religiosity and proposes that what af...

This paper is a critique of analytical sociology as presented in Peter Hedström's book Dissecting the Social. Our critique has two main targets. First, we believe that too little attention is being paid to the macro-to-micro link, and we argue for the importance of macro-level entities such as culture, social categories, and groups - all of which h...

This article uses social network data to study the integration of local elites in four Swedish municipalities. Four research questions are asked. First: How integrated are the elites? While the results modify the picture that there are two rather distinct elites in Sweden – that is, a political elite dominated by the labour movement and an economic...

A large number of studies have shown that friends' smoking behavior is strongly associated with an individual's own risk for smoking. However, few studies have examined whether other features of social networks, independently or conjointly with friends' smoking behavior, may influence the risk for smoking. Because it is characterized by the growing...

Aims: The aim of the present study was to examine the association between friendship networks and psychological well-being among 19-year-olds. Methods: The data used was a random sample of Swedish individuals born in 1990 who answered a questionnaire in 2009-2010. Friendship networks were considered in terms of three measures of emotional suppor...

Research suggests that the growing prevalence of obesity may be related to the influence of the health behaviours of peers. We look at clustering of exercise and eating health behaviours amongst a previously unstudied group, young adults in Sweden. Previous research has mainly been conducted in the United States and Britain, countries that have rel...

This article examines correlates of social trust and tolerance within a high-violence context. The authors study first the extent to which friendship ties that cross ethnic boundaries are associated with specific interaction spaces (neighborhoods, workplaces, civil society organizations, and political parties) and, second, the extent to which inter...

This paper provides a thorough test of important contextual explanations of variation in electoral support for radical right-wing parties. It has been proposed that support of the radical right is particularly strong in areas that are socioeconomically poor and/or where the concentration of immigrants is high. A variant of the latter hypothesis, kn...

Women occupy a small minority of elite positions in contemporary society. In addition, the minority of women who gain access to influential elite positions are often assumed to have their actual influence circumscribed by mechanisms of marginalization. However, systematic evidence to support the latter view is relatively scarce. We apply social net...

One of the most significant events in European politics the past two decades is the emergence of radical right-wing parties, mobilizing against immigration and multiethnic societies. Such parties have established themselves in a large number of countries, often with voter shares exceeding ten and sometimes even twenty percent. Many of these parties...

The social surroundings in which the individual grows up and spends her everyday life have an effect on her life chances. Much of the research into this phenomenon focuses on so called neighborhood effects and has put particular emphasis on the negative effects of growing up in a poor neighborhood. Originating from the sociological study of inner c...

Sweden is no longer a negative, exceptional case regarding the presence of radical right-wing populist parties. The Sweden Democrats has continually grown stronger, and in 2010 they won seats in the Swedish parliament. However, their electoral support varies considerably across Sweden. This study analyses their electoral support in 290 Swedish muni...

This article is focusing on radical right-wing populist voting in Eastern Europe, and shows that neither the mass society thesis nor the theory of social capital, in Putnam's tradition, has much explanatory value for explaining the support for radical right-wing populism. Individuals with low participation in civil society are shown not to be signi...

Ethnic relations in Iraq have been strained since the collapse of the Baath regime in 2003. Looking specifically at Kirkuk in northern Iraq, ethnic relations have been particularly uncooperative and violent. At the surface level, it is difficult to imagine interethnic reconciliation. The main conflict in the city, between Kurds and (settled) Arabs,...

This paper aims to present possible explanations as to why radical right-wing populist parties have been highly successful in Denmark but have largely failed in Sweden. It shows that Denmark and Sweden shared several important opportunity structures, in particular related to anti-immigrant sentiments among the electorates and feelings of disenchant...

Wir bieten in diesem Beitrag eine kritische Betrachtung der Analytischen Soziologie, wie sie von Peter Hedström in seinem Buch „Dissecting the social“ (2005, dt. Anatomie des Sozialen, 2008) vorgestellt hat. Es ist für uns von größter Wichtigkeit, schon an dieser Stelle zu bemerken, dass wir eine definitiv positive Einstellung gegenüber der Analyti...

In this book, leading sociologists expand the scope of their discipline by revealing the sociological aspects of the works of great philosophers, scientists, and writers. Sociologists have long recognized that sociological insight can be gleaned from creative thinkers outside their formal discipline. Sociological Insights of Great Thinkers: Sociolo...

Proceeding from mass society theory and the theory of social capital, this article discusses the effect of social isolation, social trust, and membership in voluntary organizations on radical right-wing voting in Belgium, Denmark, France, Norway, and Switzerland. By using data from the first and third rounds of the European Social Survey, a number...

Given how central the immigration issue has been for the new radical right-wing parties in Western Europe, many have turned to immigration-related factors in trying to explain their emergence and electoral mobilisation. This research has convincingly shown that immigration scepticism (i.e., wanting to reduce immigration) is among the principal fact...

The Front National (FN) has been one of the most successful of all populist parties in Western Europe. Indeed, during the 1980s and 1990s, the party became a model for others through its combination of ‘fervent nationalism, opposition to immigration, and a populist hostility to the political establishment’ (Eatwell, 2000: 408). The Front National s...

The last two decades have seen a resurgence of the radical right in Western Europe. These parties, which hereafter will be called radical right-wing populist (RRP) parties, share a fundamental core of (a) ethno-nationalist xenophobia — manifested in strong anti-immigration stances and opposition to multiculturalism; and (b) anti-political establish...

During the past two decades, the radical right has reemerged as an electoral force in Western Europe, as well as in other stable democracies such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Aside from discussing the ideology of this party family and how it relates to older forms of right-wing radicalism and extremism, such as fascism, this review deals...

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the ways in which the past matters for ethnic conflict in the present. More specifically, by presenting a sociocognitive approach to the problem, this article sets out to specify macro-micro bridging mechanisms that explain why a history of prior conflict is likely to increase the likelihood that new confli...

Während der letzten zwanzig Jahre konnten wir ein Wiederaufleben der radika-len Rechten in Westeuropa beobachten: Parteien wie z.B. die Dänische Volks-partei, der französische Front National, die italienische Lega Nord und die FPÖ erreichten hohe Stimmenwerte und wurden in einigen Fällen sogar Teil der Re-gierungskoalitionen. Diesen radikalen recht...

This article examines economy and politics in Sweden from a network theoretical perspective. In Sweden, economic and political elites make up two distinct catnets that are largely separated from each other, although there are bridges between them. The article contributes to an understanding of what brokerage roles are at work within the institution...

This article presents a new model for explaining the emergence of the party family of extreme right-wing populist parties in Western Europe. As the old master frame of the extreme right was rendered impotent by the outcome of the Second World War, it took the innovation of a new, potent master frame before the extreme right was able to break electo...

By reviewing recent labour market research, this article presents strong arguments for the existence of rather extensive ethnic discrimination in the Swedish labour market. Migrants--in particular non-European migrants--have considerably higher unemployment rates and lower wage incomes than native Swedes. Although reduced, a significant gap remains...

This article aims to explain the emergence of the Danish People's Party, a radical right-wing populist party, by using a model combining political opportunity structures and the diffusion of new master frames. The article shows that because of dealignment and realignment processes - as well as the politicisation of the immigration issue - niches we...

In this article I discuss the subjective rationality of xenophobic and racist beliefs. Although such beliefs are mostly non-rational from an objective perspective, because of their incongruence with reality, under certain conditions they may appear rational from people's subjective point of view - in particular in situations of uncertainty. The rea...

Increases in popular xenophobia and racism in a society may (partly) have meso-level reasons. The presence of a xenophobic Radical Right Populist (RRP) party may cause increases in racism and xenophobia because (a) it has an influence on other political actors; and (b) because it has an influence on people's frame of thought. I will identify and di...

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