The Policy Relationship between Youth Wing and Parent Party in Scandinavia

The relationship between political parties and their youth organisations is under-explored in the study of political parties. Political parties nearly always include a youth party in their organisation. However, their integration within the parent party organisation may be more or less formal. The youth party is tasked with campaigning among the youth and organising support for the parent party. Youth parties may adopt a political program of their own instead of merely mirroring the election manifestos of their parent parties. Where most studies on youth and politics have focused on either participation or socialisation little attention has been devoted to the youth parties as political actors. Empirically this presentation will explore how policy positions of youth parties mirror those of the parent parties in three Scandinavian countries and consider the results in relation to the political context in the period covered. Using quantitative text analysis this question is explored on data from youth party political programs and parent party manifestos in Denmark, Norway and Sweden at the last general election, and a further longer study of 20 years of youth party political programs and parent party manifestos from Denmark. The findings suggest that over time youth parties have more stable positions than their parent parties, however, there is quite some variation when it comes to the closeness of their position to their parent parties. Possible theoretical and methodological explanations of this will be discussed.