The Demise of Social Democracy

Abstract

Mainstream parties have been seeing a decline in their vote share for a long time. Different scholars have come up with different reasons for that. Especially social democratic parties seem to draw attention and specific theories of their problems have been developed. At the same time during some elections, they are more successful. In this thesis a case study will shed light on the welfare backlash and how it contributes to the downward trend. It will also examine if the theory that by attracting higher educated voters while keeping as much working-class voters as they can, could explain the occasional success. In the end, neither theory seems to hold.