Tuomas Iso-Markku
The Finnish and Swedish cases show that involving the far right in government decision-making can stop its growth or even decrease its popularity. However, the Finns Party and the Sweden Democrats have consolidated themselves as major parties and have not moderated their views.
Finland and Sweden are currently ruled by right-of-centre governments with a significant far-right element. In Finland, the Finns Party (Perussuomalaiset, PS) is the second largest force in a four-party coalition led by the conservative-liberal National Coalition Party. In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna, SD) support a three-party minority government led by the conservative-liberal Moderate Party. A formal arrangement, the Tidö Agreement, allows the SD to shape the government’s policies alongside the three government parties in key areas. It is the first time that the SD can directly influence government decision-making. The PS, by contrast, was already once part of a government coalition between 2015 and 2017.
Although the PS and the SD are closely aligned within the same political group in the European Parliament (European Conservatives and Reformists, ECR) and can both be classified as populist radical right, the two have different backgrounds and have gone through somewhat different experiences in recent years.
The rise of the Finns Party and the Sweden Democrats
The PS was established as a successor to the Finnish Rural Party, a small agrarian populist party, in 1995. It was only from the 2000s onwards that the influence of anti-immigration and far-right forces within the PS started to grow. This development culminated in 2017 when Jussi Halla-aho, the most prominent figure of the party’s far-right wing, was elected as chair of the party.
The SD, by contrast, was founded as a successor to the far-right Sweden Party and had strong ties to neo-Nazism. Efforts to clean up the SD’s image and make it more respectable did not begin until the mid-1990s. This strategy started to bear fruit in the late 2000s under party leader Jimmie Åkesson, who has continued in his position to the present day. However, nationalism, a highly critical attitude towards immigration, and Euroscepticism remain central tenets of the SD’s agenda.
The PS and the SD rose to national prominence in their respective countries around the same time, in the aftermath of the global economic crisis of 2008. The PS’s real breakthrough was the 2011 national parliamentary election, in which it finished third with a vote share of 19%. The SD gained its first seats in the Swedish parliament in the 2010 general election with 6% of the vote and this share has grown in every general election since. The group became Sweden’s second-biggest party in 2022 (21%).
Because of the distinct backgrounds of the PS and the SD and the differing political cultures of Finland and Sweden, the two parties have been treated differently by the other parties. The non-extremist roots of the PS and Finland’s consensus-oriented political culture meant that the PS was seen as a potential government party as early as 2011. In 2015, it joined a three-party right-of-centre coalition led by the Centre Party. However, the PS’s government term ended dramatically after Jussi Halla-aho was elected as the new party chair in 2017. Considering him too radical, the two other government parties were ready to tear the coalition apart. This provoked a split within the PS. The more radical party wing kept the Finns Party name but joined the opposition.
After 2017, Finland’s centre-right parties initially kept their distance from the PS. However, the National Coalition Party soon changed tack, stating that government cooperation with the PS would be possible if the parties could agree on substance. The probability of cooperation increased when Riikka Purra was elected as the new leader of the PS in August 2021.
By contrast, the SD’s extremist past meant that the party was long kept on the margins of Swedish politics, with the other parties consistently refusing any cooperation. However, the SD’s success made this increasingly difficult. Sweden’s party system traditionally revolves around two rivalling blocs, a left-wing bloc and a right-wing bloc, but due to the SD’s growing support, both blocs struggled to build majorities. After the 2018 general election, almost all parties of the centre-right bloc gradually lifted the cordon sanitaire around the SD, paving the way for the Tidö Agreement with the party.
The far right in government
Finland’s 2023 national parliamentary election revolved largely around the state of the Finnish economy. The four government parties are united by the conviction that Finland needs to balance its public finances with large-scale cuts to government spending, with defence being an exception. Moreover, the government aims at making the Finnish labour market more flexible. Finally, as demanded by the PS, the government has adopted a very restrictive asylum and immigration policy.
Although concerns about Finland’s economic outlook are broadly shared, many of the government’s measures have proven unpopular. Even more importantly, the government has not managed to improve the economic situation. This has been reflected in the government’s polling numbers, which have declined significantly. The PS, whose leader Purra holds the office of finance minister, has had to bear a considerable share of this burden. A photo of Purra with big scissors has become a symbol of the government’s austerity measures – and is frequently used by political opponents to highlight the PS’s central role in executing them. The Finnish government has also been embroiled in several racism scandals involving PS members.
As a result, the PS has fared badly in recent elections. In the European elections in June 2024 and the municipal and county votes in April 2025, the PS was only the sixth-biggest party nationwide with 8% of the vote. However, these results should not be overemphasised, as the PS has often struggled to mobilise its voters in municipal and European elections. Nevertheless, in the most recent polls (November 2025), the Finns Party stood at 14%, up from 10% in May 2025. However, this is still 6% below its 2023 election result.
In a marked contrast to Finland, the state of the national economy has not been a major concern for Sweden. At the time of the 2022 Swedish general election, the main issues for the voters were health care, law and order, energy policy, as well as immigration and asylum. Especially frequent incidents of gang crime allowed the Sweden Democrats to push electoral debates to its favoured battlegrounds and frame immigration as a threat to Swedish society.
In line with the major concerns of the electorate, the seven policy projects that the government parties and the SD agreed to work on in the Tidö Agreement concerned social and health matters, climate and energy, schools, economic growth as well as – importantly for the SD – criminality, migration and integration. Since then, major disagreements between the ruling coalition and the SD have not emerged, and the government has mostly been able to concentrate on implementing its policy agenda. Even revelations by the Swedish media that the SD had been running a troll factory, using anonymous social media accounts to attack both its political rivals and its centre-right allies, led to a rather muted reaction on the part of the government parties.
Like the PS, the SD did struggle in the 2024 European elections, finishing fourth with 13% of the vote. However, at the national level, the SD’s polling numbers have remained stable (around 21%), and the party has maintained its position as the strongest of the right-wing bloc ahead of the Moderate Party. Thus far, the main losers of the government term have been the smallest government parties and particularly the Liberal Party, which has long been polling below Sweden’s 4% electoral threshold.
Towards the next elections
The next national parliamentary elections are set to take place in autumn 2026 in Sweden and in spring 2027 in Finland, respectively. The opposition social democrats hold a comfortable lead in the polls in both countries. However, this does not mean that the social democrats have found a durable recipe for success. At present, they are simply the main beneficiaries of whatever grievances the electorate has against the ruling centre-right coalitions.
While the polls in both countries have been rather stable, there is still ample time for the parties to change the situation. On the other hand, it is very common in Finland for voters to punish the leading government party at the ballot box. In this case, the main victim of this phenomenon would be the National Coalition Party. The PS, for its part, has often significantly improved its standing just ahead of the elections.
In the last two Finnish parliamentary elections, less than one percentage point has separated the largest party from that in third place. Finishing first continues to be important in Finland, as the party that gains most votes gets the first go at forming a government – and traditionally succeeds in this task. In Finland, several government coalitions remain possible. However, at present it is very difficult to see the Finns Party enter any government led by the Social Democratic Party.
In Sweden, the centre-left opposition is currently clearly ahead of the government in the polls. However, the final set-up of the next government will depend on which small parties will manage to cross the electoral threshold. The results gained by the Centre Party could prove particularly relevant. A long-time member of the centre-right bloc, the party supported a centre-left government between 2019 and 2021 and firmly rejects cooperation with the SD. However, its economic agenda remains closer to that of the right-wing bloc than the Social Democratic Party.
Here to stay
The Finnish and Swedish cases show that involving the far right in government decision-making can have a negative impact on the support for the far-right party and/or its coalition partners. Indeed, it is possible – even likely – that the far right will be out of power in both countries after the next elections. However, this would not mean a definite defeat for the far-right parties. Instead, by now, the PS and the SD have consolidated themselves as major parties in their respective countries. As such, their support can fluctuate like that of any other party. Previous expectations, harboured especially in Finland, that sharing power with the far right would help to debunk its narratives have largely proven false despite the current troubles of the PS. What is even more important is that involvement in government decision-making has also not led either the PS or the SD to moderate their views.
Tuomas Iso-Markku, Senior Research Fellow, Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA)
Co-financed by the National Freedom Institute – Centre for Civil Society Development in the framework of the Civil Society Organisations Development Programme for 2018-2030 CSODev
