ABSTRACT
The Green party in Sweden was founded in September 1981. However, a few local green and alternative parties were already founded and gained some electoral support in several communities throughout the country in the 1970s. The left-right conflict dimension concerns the economic struggle between capital and labor, employers and employees, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The rise of new environmental and ecological concerns in the late 1960s and early 1970s placed the ingrained patterns of the Swedish party system under stress. Since 1981 the popular support of the Green Party exhibited a puzzling pattern. The Swedish constitution contains a four percent hurdle to national parliament which seems to function as an invitation to strategic voting, that has disfavored the Greens, but favored for instance the Left-Party Communists. The elections of 1982 and 1985 were dominated by worries concerning Sweden's deteriorating economy and the role of the public sector in the welfare state.
