ABSTRACT
Parties are the main actors in the Swedish Riksdag. Both among electors and the elected, the parties serve as the central entity. When the daily life of party politics is presented in the media, parties are portrayed as unitary actors. Concepts such as party-as-a-whole indicate, however, that party members can be active in several party domains (Cf. Katz and Mair 1992:2-6). While significance of the party domains may vary, it is becoming increasingly clear that the importance of the Swedish parliamentary party groups is growing.1 The purpose of this chapter is to describe the parliamentary party groups in the Swedish Riksdag (both the emergence and the modern structure), and their relationship to other party domains. We will then analyse the activity of the Riksdag members in four party domains: the local extra-parliamentary organisation domain, the central extra-parliamentary organisation domain (both of these domains belong to the extra-parliamentary organisation), the parliamentary party domain and the party-in-government domain.
