Abstract
The 2006 Swedish election drew attention with a power shift after 12 years of Social Democratic rule. The chief factor in the Right-centers' victory was an unprecedented and elaborate cooperation strategy. This article discusses the following three points. Firstly, there appeared ‘contract parliamentarism’ under the Social Democratic administration in the 1990s. Under contract parliamentarism, parties sought a majority of votes not by formal coalition, but by some written policy agreements. Secondly contract parliamentarism compelled Right-center parties to cooperate with each other, and eventually resulted in ‘preelectoral coalition’. Thirdly, the result of the 2006 election, in turn, forced the left camp to adopt the same strategy. Further, this article points out that the present situation in which two camps compete with each other by showing their clear coalition-building plans has gone beyond the traditional ‘block politics’. Taking the changing nature of political parties and the trends of voters' behavior into consideration, this article suggests that a profound structural change has been under way in Sweden's electoral politics for a decade now.
