May’s law may prevail: Evidence from Sweden

Abstract

Are party members more radical than voters and party elites? This is the expectation according to May’s Law, which has faced significant challenges from recent scholarship. Utilizing several survey sources covering four levels of all Swedish parliamentary parties between 1985 and 2018, this paper shows that the Swedish case follows May’s propositions with some qualifications. The parties organized along the left-right dimension follow the pattern of the mid-level being more radical in this respect, while on a secondary GAL-TAN dimension the parties that organize along this dimension rather exhibit a pattern of elite polarization. Additionally, the relative order of groups within parties is stable over the considered time period, when party membership is sharply declining. This suggests that party members are not becoming less ideologically representative over time, while they are consistently more radical than respective parties’ voters and elites.