Far-right parties gain governing power in Sweden and France

Summary

Two of Europe's most watched political experiments are converging on the same uncomfortable question: what happens when parties that were once too radioactive to touch end up running things? In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots that every mainstream party once pledged to quarantine, now props up the governing coalition and shapes national policy on immigration, crime, and integration. They didn't win the prime ministership, but they don't need it. Budget leverage and legislative dependence have given them the kind of influence that formal cabinet seats can't always buy. France is tracking a different but related trajectory. Marine Le Pen's National Rally has spent years on a 'de-demonization' project, softening its image while the center has fractured around it, and recent electoral cycles have brought the party closer to real executive power than at any point in its history. The through-line in both countries is the same: the cordon sanitaire, the old gentleman's agreement among mainstream parties to simply refuse cooperation with the far right, has lost its structural integrity. Voters didn't suddenly radicalize overnight. What changed is that decades of frustration with mainstream parties on immigration and economic insecurity quietly eroded the social consensus that once kept these movements at the margins.