Political Parties in Sweden

Let's talk a little bit about political parties in Sweden. In Secrets, Lies, and Sneaky Spies, Katrina and the crew find themselves revisiting a previous political assassination. There are all sorts of parties mentioned, but none of them are real. Well, that's not exactly correct. While the names are entirely made up--there's definitely not a Kvinnor på Toppen, or a Liberalkonservativa party--if you're familiar with Swedish politics, you can probably guess who they're supposed to represent.

I thought it might be handy to do a basic compare-and-contrast between the US and Sweden. In the US, we have two major parties: Democrats and Republicans. There are smaller groups such as the Libertarian party or the Green party, but based on our political and voting structure, it's functionally a two-party system. (Now, within the Democratic and Republican parties there are all sorts of factions, which, in a different system would present themselves as smaller parties, but that is a topic for another post).

In Sweden (and indeed in many other non-US countries), it works differently. While there are larger parties such as the Moderates or the Social Democrats, more than two parties make up the government. Indeed, the Riksdag (parliament) is currently made up of eight parties. Basically, if you can get 4% of a national vote, you can get a seat.

Sweden has a very interesting political history and system. I was in Sweden during their 100 year celebration of women's suffrage (2021) and it was very big and very cool thing to see celebrated, and will be a topic for a future post.