Centre Party (Sweden)

2006 election

Former four-leaf clover party logo, used from 2005 until 2018.

The 2006 Swedish election was a success for the Centre Party. Its support had been slowly increasing through recent elections; in 1998 it received 5.1% of the votes, and this increased to 6.2% in 2002.^[21] In the 2006 elections 7.88% of the vote went to the Centre Party (C), entitling them to 29 of the 349 seats in the Swedish Riksdag.^[22] Furthermore, their alliance with the other parties in the Alliance for Sweden, a coalition which won a majority of parliament seats in this election, meant that the Centre Party shared the ministry posts with their Alliance for Sweden allies: the Moderate Party, the Liberal People's Party and the Christian Democrats. The strong victory by C in the 2006 election has been studied by political scientist Dr. Lina M. Eriksson., who in her dissertation from the Department of Government at Uppsala University, entitled "Natural Disasters and National Election", performs a rigorous statistical analysis of election data combined with interviews with Maud Olofsson, Eskil Erlandsson, Ulrica Messing and Mona Sahlin. Dr, Eriksson's research finds that both the Indian Ocean’s 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami and 2005 Storm Gudrun (Erwin), which struck only two weeks following the tsunami, are major events that impacted government popularity in the 2006 election and contributed to the redistribution of voter support, within and across party-blocs, with particularly interesting results for C. "The core findings from this thesis show that the Social Democratic (S) government’s poor crisis response to Gudrun, which is the hitherto most costly natural disaster in Swedish history, alone has an estimated effect of a magnitude that likely contributed to the 2006 historic regime shift, while the tsunami also seems to have mattered. The tsunami is particularly interesting, as S’s poor international crisis response to the event constitutes the first natural disaster situation to knowingly have affected an election on the other side of the planet. Moreover, to some degree voters recognized the active opposition by C as effective representation and rewarded the party for its strong stance on the poor handling of both events by S. In fact, the active voice of C concerning these disasters likely helped move the party from the periphery of party politics to becoming the third-largest party in Swedish politics".^[23] Part of the dissertation has been published in Electoral Studies, which is to be considered the leading scientific journal in election research. In the article^[24] long-term effects are also found over the 2010 and 2014 election, which implies that the Storm, in particular, triggered long-lasting changes in voter support from the left to the right side of the political spectrum. A comprehensive summary of the dissertation is available for download via Uppsala University.^[25]

National economy

Centerpartiet has in both liberal, socialist and conservative medias been described as one of Sweden's most market liberal parties.^[26] However, the party describes themselves as a party with a green, social and earthy liberalism.^[27] The party leadership has many times taken distance from neoliberalism and libertarianism. The party advocates lower taxes, greatly reduced employer contributions, a freer market and an increased RUT-deductioned. The party is a big advocator for small-business, farmers and entrepreneurs.^[28] They also want to invest in the infrastructure and transportation so employees could work in bigger cities but still live in the rural areas (and vice versa). On economic policy, they've described their opponents to be the Swedish Social Democratic Party and the Sweden Democrats.

Immigration

Centerpartiet is a liberal immigration party, who stands that they want to combine a generous immigration policy with an initially more restrictive contribution policy to the immigrants. After the big immigration wave in autumn 2015, the party proposed to replace the existing establishment grants with establishment loans, similar to the Swedish student loans.^[29] The party is very clear with the responsibility of Sweden to receiving refugees but also the responsibility of the immigrants to establish and to become a part of the society. In January 2016 the party for example proposed to give all immigrants compulsory civic education^[30] in both rights and expectations from the society.

European Union

Centerpartiet is a decentralist pro-EU party who believes that the European Union is an important union to secure peace, freedom and trade between the European countries. But the party also advocates a smaller but sharper EU^[31] that focuses on democracy and peace, free movement and trade, vigorous action against climate change and collaboration against organized crime. Centerpartiet believes that Sweden should stay outside the monetary union and keep the SEK, and not shift to the Euro.^[32]

In the European Parliament the Centre Party is a member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Party.^[33] Centerpartiet MEPs, Fredrick Federley is the vicepresident of the ALDE Party^[34] and the group leader of the ALDE group in the European Parliament Committee on Industry, Research and Energy.