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International Conference on Complex Networks and Their Applications

COMPLEX NETWORKS 2020 2020: Complex Networks & Their Applications IX pp 275–285Cite as

Evolution of Spatial Political Community Structures in Sweden 1985–2018

Part of the Studies in Computational Intelligence book series (SCI,volume 944)

Abstract

Understanding how the electoral behaviour of a population changes in a country is key to understand where and why social change is happening. In this paper, we apply methods from network science to the study the middle-long-term evolution of Swedish electoral geography. Sweden is an interesting case since its political landscape has significantly changed over the last three decades with the rise of the Sweden Democrats and the Green Party and the fall of the Social Democrats. By partitioning the Swedish municipalities according to their similarity in voting profiles, we show that Sweden can be divided into three or four main politico-cultural communities. More precisely, a transition from three to four main politico-cultural communities is observed. The fourth community emerged in the early 2000s, and it is characterized by a large vote-share for the Sweden Democrats, while almost all other parties underperform.

Keywords

  • Electoral geography
  • Swedish parliamentary elections
  • Network science
  • Community detection
  • Partition
  • Fragmentation
  • Convergence
  • Evolution

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Uppsala University, 751 26, Uppsala, Sweden

    Jérôme Michaud, Ilkka H. Mäkinen, Emil Frisk & Attila Szilva

Authors
  1. Jérôme Michaud
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  2. Ilkka H. Mäkinen
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  3. Emil Frisk
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  4. Attila Szilva
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jérôme Michaud .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Grupo de Sistemas Complejos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Prof. Rosa M. Benito

  2. IUT Lumière, University of Lyon, Bron Cedex, France

    Prof. Chantal Cherifi

  3. LE2I, UFR Sciences et Techniques, Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France

    Prof. Hocine Cherifi

  4. Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos, Departamento de Matematicas, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Leganés, Madrid, Spain

    Prof. Esteban Moro

  5. Center for Social and Biomedical Complexity, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Prof. Luis Mateus Rocha

  6. Department of Chemical Engineering, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Tarragona, Spain

    Prof. Marta Sales-Pardo

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Michaud, J., Mäkinen, I.H., Frisk, E., Szilva, A. (2021). Evolution of Spatial Political Community Structures in Sweden 1985–2018. In: Benito, R.M., Cherifi, C., Cherifi, H., Moro, E., Rocha, L.M., Sales-Pardo, M. (eds) Complex Networks & Their Applications IX. COMPLEX NETWORKS 2020 2020. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 944. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65351-4_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65351-4_22

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