Perceptions of Sweden’s Welfare State: Cause for Concern?
This article critically explores perceptions of the Swedish welfare state, three decades after the much-documented Choice Revolution fundamentally altered the traditional model. This research examines qualitative data from focus group interviews conducted in Sweden in 2021 and 2022. This paper investigates the current status of folkhemmet (the people’s home) according to those who experience it. From its peak in the […]
Migration, Crime, and Politics: Democratic Decay in Sweden and Ireland
By examining the current status of Sweden’s constitutional democracy, this book addresses two complex societal problems: forced migration and democratic decay. The interdisciplinary empirical approach finds a relationship between right-wing populism and non-Western migration to Sweden. Based on extensive qualitative research with Swedish residents, the book develops both the meta-concept of democratic decay and crimmigration theory. Significantly, the book […]
Youth Justice in Transition: Penal Populism and the Decline of Nordic Exceptionalism in Sweden How to investigate a constitutional culture?: The case for the focus group method in comparative constitutional studies
By Orlaith Rice, Silvia Gagliardi and Daniela Rodriguez Gutierrez (2025) In E. Pearce & G. Martin (Eds.) Research Handbook on Youth Criminology. Elgar. Abstract The Nordic model of youth justice is highly regarded globally for its penal welfarist approach. Sweden’s rehabilitative attitude when it comes to young offenders has a long history. Sweden also has a more recent […]
Right-wing populism reaches Argentina
By Demian Iglesias Seifert & Somsubhra Banerjee A recent Loop article by Massimo D’Angelo explored the election of right-wing contender Javier Milei in the primary polls. The withdrawal of ex-presidents Macri and Fernandez de Kirchner from the race led to victory for the libertarian nominee. Building on D’Angelo’s piece, Demian Iglesias Seifert and Somsubhra Banerjee contend that this unexpected […]
Sweden Democrats: another win for right-wing populism and illiberalism in Europe?
By Orlaith Rice Frustration with integration policy and fear of crime, two issues which Swedish political rhetoric and public opinion increasingly conflates, fuel the Sweden Democrats’ onward journey into mainstream politics. Orlaith Rice considers where this party sits under labels of populism and illiberalism In her recent piece for The Loop, Gefjon Off discusses how the Sweden Democrats […]
Has Right-Wing Populism Reached Argentina?
By Demian Iglesias Seifert Last Sunday, August 13, Argentina held elections to determine the candidates who will run in next October’s national presidential elections. In a surprising turn of events, the far-right candidate Javier Milei, an outsider that started in politics around 2019, surged ahead in the preliminary elections, sending shockwaves through Argentina’s political landscape. Milei won […]
Swedish Exceptionalism: Pandemic Response, Public Trust, and Constitutional Design
By Orlaith Rice Sweden’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic is one that has attracted global commentary. It has been categorised as ‘the EU’s exception’, a ‘pariah state’, and been labelled ‘anti-lockdown’, ‘experimental’, ‘light-touch’, and ‘naïve’. Since Covid-19 was first declared a pandemic in March 2020, Sweden has never imposed a national lockdown, enforced general quarantine […]
Gender, religion and identity conundrums and the rise of populism and nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America
By Silvia Gagliardi “Public Law, (Dis)trust and Dissent” ‘Gender, religion and identity conundrums and the rise of populism and nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America’ In the context of the 2021 ICON-S Conference ‘Mundo’ on ‘Public Law, (Dis)trust and Dissent’, members of the ERC-funded FIAT project convened and chaired a panel to […]
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