Counting Kronor, Losing Trust: Austerity and Populism in Sweden, 1990–2024

Austerity has been central to Swedish economic governance since the 1990s and the political effects of austerity is a well-established research area. While comparative research linkscrisis-driven austerity to rising populism, Sweden presents a paradox: it adopted a permanent fiscal framework during a period of economic stability and high trust but have experienced a strong surge in populist mobilization. This thesis addresses this gap by examining whether different types of austerity (fiscal, welfare, contextual, institutional, and local) have produced distinct forms of populism between 1990 and 2024. Drawing on national time-series survey-based data (SOM, ESS and WVS) and regional panel data from 96 municipalities aggregated into three regions, the study tests five theoretically derived hypotheses using regression analysis, lagged models, random- and fixed-effects estimations, robustness tests, and diagnostic procedures. The results show that fiscal tightening, contextual austerity, and especially institutional austerity increase attitudinal populism, while welfare retrenchment does not systematically drive cultural populism. Locally, cross-sectional analyses show that regions experiencing greater fiscal strain exhibit higher Sweden Democrat vote shares, although this relationship weakens in fixed-effects models due to limited within-region variation. This pattern suggests that local populism in Sweden is shaped partly by structural fiscal pressures, but that demographic factors remain important. Overall, the findings show that in high-trust welfare states, populist reactions emerge primarily from long-term institutionalized austerity while local and welfare-based mechanisms act more unevenly.