Abstract
Although the Great Recession of 2008 did not hit Sweden much, very many people perceived that the Swedish economy was suffering a crisis. This chapter investigates this phenomenon and demonstrates that men perceived the presence of a very serious economic crisis significantly more than women; those with lower income and own experience of crisis perceived the presence of crisis more than others; and supporters of the radical right party (Sweden Democrats) perceived the severe crisis more often than supporters of other parties. While our analysis does not allow making a causal argument, it is suggested that the perceived seriousness of crisis might be more related to the distrust toward authorities than the real experience of economic downturn.
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Notes
- 1.
It should be recalled that the Swedish economy was restructured considerably during the 1990s, when the country experienced a truly serious economic crisis (Jensen and Davidsen 2016).
- 2.
In the case of media coverage, there is some dispute, as Shehata and Falasca (2014) demonstrate that negative crisis-priming in the media had no effect on public approval of the government in Sweden.
- 3.
One could also use a measure related to worsened job conditions, but issues like reduction of pay, unpaid overwork, increased workload, and so forth, apply only to employed respondents and thereby reduce the sample. The question wording used here was as follows: “In the past 5 years, have you or anyone else in your household had to take any of the following measures for financial/economic reasons?”
- 4.
Prior studies also note that SD supporters have little political trust and tend to have a more authoritarian than libertarian value position and that the left-right ideology plays much less of a role in their identity than trust and authoritarian values do (Oskarson and Demker 2015).
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Uba, K. (2018). Critical Men? Perceptions of Crisis Without Crisis in Sweden. In: Giugni, M., Grasso, M. (eds) Citizens and the Crisis. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68960-9_10
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