Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetareparti

Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetareparti Swedish Social Democratic Workers' Party
Party leader	Stefan Löfven
Secretary General	Lena Rådström Baastad
founding	1889
head office	Stockholm
Youth organization	Sveriges Socialdemokratiska Ungdomsförbund (SSU)
Alignment	Social democracy
Colours)	Red
Parliament seats	100/349
Number of members	105,000
International connections	Progressive Alliance
MEPs	5/21
European party	Party of European Socialists (PES)
EP Group	Group of the Progressive Alliance of Social Democrats in the European Parliament (S&D)
Website	www.socialdemokraterna.se

Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetareparti ( SAP ; German  Social Democratic Workers' Party of Sweden ), Socialdemokraterna ( S ) for short , is a partly left-wing political party traditionally represented in Sweden's Reichstag . It received the highest number of votes in all Reichstag elections since 1917 and, from 1923 onwards, was the Swedish Prime Minister for the longest period of the 20th century. In the 2018 Reichstag election, SAP received 28.3% of the vote and 100 of the 349 seats. This was her worst result since the Reichstag election in 1908 .

Stefan Löfven , party leader of the SAP since January 27, 2012, was elected Prime Minister of Sweden on October 2, 2014.

story

Founding of the party and the struggle for the right to vote (1889–1920)

The Social Democratic Labor Party is the oldest party in Sweden. It was founded on April 23, 1889. The formation of trade unions in the 1880s and the founding of social democratic newspapers in Malmö in 1882 and Stockholm in 1885 by August Palm were the first important steps on the way to founding a party.

At the beginning, the party was heavily influenced by German social democracy . The first party programs took over much of the German Gotha program and later the Erfurt program . The desired socialist transformation of society should take place through reforms after a democratically legitimized takeover of government through elections.

In 1896 Claes Tholin became the party's first chairman. In the same year Hjalmar Branting was elected to the Reichstag as the first Social Democrat with the support of the Liberals. In 1898 a trade union umbrella organization, the state organization ( Landsorganisation LO) was formed. The close link between the party and the trade union has been of great importance in the history of the labor movement.

The political struggle at the beginning of the 20th century was mainly about the introduction of universal suffrage. The Liberals were allies in this struggle , and between 1917 and 1920 the Social Democrats were coalition partners in a Liberal-led government. After the goal with the introduction of universal suffrage and women's suffrage in 1921 had been achieved, this collaboration was ended. During the First World War , the internal party disputes between the reformist party leadership and the more radical left wing of the party also culminated, which ultimately led to the exclusion of radical forces and the founding of the Swedish Social Democratic Left Party ( Sveriges socialdemokratiska vänsterparti ), which from 1921 called itself the Communist Party ( Kommunistiska Partiet ) , led.

Between the wars and the Second World War (1920–1945)

The expectations of winning a majority in the Reichstag after the electoral reform of 1921 were high, but they were not fulfilled. The first social democratic prime minister, Hjalmar Branting, was able to rule with two brief interruptions between 1920 and 1926, but the governments did not have a parliamentary majority and were accordingly weak. At the same time there was radicalization within the party, and the demand for socialization / nationalization became louder and louder.

Under the impression of the world economic crisis and mass unemployment as well as the threat of fascism , the socialization policy was put on the back burner. After the 1932 election , a minority government under Per Albin Hansson (1932-1946 Prime Minister) was formed with parliamentary support from the Peasant Party , which mainly dealt with crisis policy. After the 1936 election , cooperation between the two parties was deepened in a government coalition. The stable parliamentary situation also made it possible to conduct an active social policy, and a welfare state program intended to create a “ people's home ” was worked out and set in motion.

The outbreak of the Second World War delayed the implementation of the social program. A concentration government with the participation of the three bourgeois parties was formed in order to be able to meet the political and economic challenges of the war.

Since 1945

After the departure of the rally government in 1945, there was a hard political argument between the Social Democratic Workers' Party and the bourgeois bloc. Tage Erlander was able to secure the continued existence of a social democratic minority government after the 1948 election . Full employment policy and the establishment of the welfare state outlined before the Second World War ensured the party a long term in office. She achieved the greatest electoral success in the 1968 election , when she received more than 50% of the vote. The constitutional reform of 1971, the economic problems resulting from the 1973 oil crisis and the nuclear power debate posed problems for the party, which contributed to its election in 1976 .

After a break of six years, the Social Democrats regained power in the 1982 election . The 1986 murder of Olof Palme shook the party deeply. His successor Ingvar Carlsson got into a government crisis in 1990 when he was forced to take various measures such as a price and wage freeze, strike ban, etc. due to the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. propose. The 1991 election was lost by the Social Democrats and a bourgeois coalition government was formed.

After the 1994 election , the Social Democrats were able to form a minority government again. In the same year, a vote was also taken on joining the EU , which the party leadership supported. However, it became apparent that the party was deeply divided on the EU issue, and after accession these issues were no longer paid any attention. A party congress in 2000 decided to propose a referendum on joining EMU . This referendum was held in 2003. Strong anti-EU sentiment emerged from many party and government members during the campaign.

The 2006 election brought the Social Democrats the worst election result since 1920. A continuation of the previous minority government with the tolerance of the Greens and the Left Party was no longer possible, so that the Social Democrats had to switch to the opposition after 12 years in government. The electoral defeat was attributed, among other things, to the government's management of the crisis in the 2004 tsunami and the general unpopularity of Prime Minister Göran Persson . Persson stated immediately after the election that he would no longer run for the office of chairman at the party conference in March 2007. Mona Sahlin was elected as her successor . In the 2010 election , the party's share of the vote fell again to 30.7 percent. The party was only half a percentage point ahead of Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt's moderate rallying party and remained in the opposition. Sahlin retired as party leader, Håkan Juholt , leader of the Social Democrats in Kalmar Lan , was elected as his successor . Juholt, for his part, resigned on January 21, 2012. On January 27, 2012, Stefan Löfven was his successor, whose party was able to keep the result in the 2014 election and was elected Prime Minister of a red-green coalition.

Reichstag elections

Elections to the Second Chamber until 1968. Information from Statistiska Centralbyrån .

1908 14.6% 1911 28.5% 1914 (I) 30.1% 1914 (II) 36.4% 1917 31.1% 1920 29.7% 1921 36.2% 1924 41.1% 1928 37.0% 1932 41.1% 1936 45.9% 1940 53.8%

1944 46.6% 1948 46.1% 1952 46.1% 1956 44.6% 1958 46.2% 1960 47.8% 1964 47.3% 1968 50.1% 1970 45.3% 1973 43.6% 1976 42.7% 1979 43.2%

1982 45.6% 1985 44.7% 1988 43.2% 1991 37.7% 1994 45.3% 1998 36.4% 2002 39.9% 2006 35.0% 2010 30.7% 2014 31.0% 2018 28.3%

Party leader

• 1896-1907: Claes Tholin
• 1907–1925: Hjalmar Branting , Prime Minister 1920, 1921–1923 and 1924–1925
• 1925–1946: Per Albin Hansson , Prime Minister 1932–1936 and 1936–1946
• 1946–1969: Tage Erlander , Prime Minister 1946–1969
• 1969–1986: Olof Palme , Prime Minister 1969–1976 and 1982–1986
• 1986–1996: Ingvar Carlsson , Prime Minister 1986–1991 and 1994–1996
• 1996–2007: Göran Persson , Prime Minister 1996–2006
• 2007-2011: Mona Sahlin
• 2011–2012: Håkan Juholt
• 2012– 0000: Stefan Löfven , Prime Minister since 2014

literature

• Jens Gmeiner : Farewell to the social democratic stronghold of Sweden? Challenges, reforms and perspectives of the Swedish social democracy after the loss of power in 2006 . ibidem , Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-8382-0411-6 .
• Bernd Henningsen : The left in Sweden. History, programs, politics . In: Hans Rühle , Hans-Joachim Veen (Ed.): Socialist and Communist Parties in Western Europe. Publication of the social science research institute of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung . Volume 2: Nordländer (= Uni-Taschenbücher . Vol. 762). Leske + Budrich (UTB), Opladen 1979, ISBN 3-8100-0241-0 . Pp. 123-200.

Web links

Commons : Socialdemokraterna  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Socialdemokraterna.se official website
• Program Committees Official blog of the SAP Program Committee

Individual evidence

1. ↑ SVT: Fred agent rapping places ring från Social Democrat Erna's extra-congress
2. ↑ http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/juholt-jag-avgar-som-partiledare_6786823.svd
3. ↑ Historical election statistics ( Memento of the original from July 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Statistiska Centralbyrån, accessed June 24, 2012