Ett smalare men vassare Centerparti?

Abstract

A smaller but More Focused Centre Party?

In 1973, the Swedish Centre party managed to attract 25.1 per cent of the votes in that year’s election. A quarter of a century later the once agrarian party hovered precariously close to the four per cent election threshold. During the long and unbroken decline, the party was a member of the centre-right bloc – yet was intermittently drawn to the Social Democrats. Throughout, it retained a strong focus on countryside, agrarian and environmental issues (with a particular emphasis on the decommissioning of nuclear power plants). By the late 1990s it was clear that the party’s electoral strategy needed an urgent and comprehensive overhaul. In this effort we analyse this overhaul (including a rejection of left-leaning tendencies); its structural antecedents; its intrinsic success potential; and its, and the party’s, future prospects.