| With the rise of post-materialism and environmental movement, especially the public's accusation of developing nuclear power, the Swedish Green Party (Miljopartiet de Grona) was founded in 1981. After seven years, the party successfully broke the four percent threshold and entered the parliament (Riksdag) in 1988, which shocked the longstanding stable Swedish party system. While participating politics in the national level, the green party has gradually found that it is important to accept the existing rules. With this sense in mind, the green party has adjusted its political strategies, and the party roles have also changed over time. At first, Swedish green party rejected to cooperate with any other party in the parliament. However, with the deeper participation, it changed the strategy and began to cooperate with Social Democratic Party, as the latter's support party. Eventually, it has become one of the governing parties in the current Red-green government.The purpose that the Swedish green party has undergone a series of adjustment is to balance between the external pressures and internal development. This process has been influenced by three factors:the Swedish party system, political system and process, as well as the party's self-development. The first one is party system. Swedish has multi-party system, with Social Democratic Party in dominance and the significance of bloc politics. In such system, in order to realize its political goals, the green party has to adjust its earlier stance of neither left nor right, but choose one side. However, even though it has joined the left bloc, the green party, given its small size, is still in a passive position of being chosen. It is Social Democratic Party's attitude that decides whether the cooperation can be realized.The second factor is political system and process. Minority government is the government formation rule in Sweden, which means that abstention is identical to support, and only clearly opposition can prevent the formation of a new government. However, voting against the Social Democrat Party government would, on one hand, risk the loss of center-left voters in the next general election; on the other hand, it would caused the internal conflict. This is why the green party only gave support outside the cabinet. Another one is the budget process reform during 1990s. After the reform, the new government has to push forward an overall budget in the parliament instead of items by items. Therefore, each vote is important to the governing party. So in order to secure majority support, the new government has to concern more about the requests of small partner, in this case being the green party.The third factor is the self-development of the party. The loss of 1991 election induced fierce debates between the idealists and realists within the party. With the organizational reform, the realists gained the upper hand and adjusted the party goals. From the year of 1998 onward, office-seeking has become the priority party goal. In order to enter the cabinet, it is critical to ally with others. Accordingly, the party has expanded its policy range to change the "one-issue party" image. Besides, it has changed the attitude towards EU-issue from opposition to acceptance, thus reducing one big barrier of the cooperation with Social Democratic Party. In addition, given the fact that it is risk and difficult to adjust strategies at the national level, the coalition built at the local level could provide valuable experience. |
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