While a more comprehensive welfare state tends to have a population less chauvinistic towards immigrants (Crepaz & Damron, 2009), not all welfare states with population that has significant anti-immigrant, welfare-chauvinistic attitudes see these attitudes proportionally translated into political space, as indicated by the electoral successes of parties that support these attitudes and by the discourse of mainstream political parties. Welfare decommodification data (Scruggs, 2004; Esping-Andersen, 1990) and surveys that reveal welfare chauvinism (Crepaz & Damron, 2009) show that Finland and Sweden have similar low levels of commodification and levels of political disinterest and alienation (Oskarson, 2010), yet Finland scores highly on indicators of welfare chauvinism among its population while Sweden scores rather low. In Sweden, however, addressing attitudes and concern over immigration and welfare has found its way into the political discourse of mainstream parties to a greater degree than has occurred in Finland. Likewise, in Finland, the mainstream political parties do not address these issues as prevalently as is the case in Sweden, despite rather high sentiments of welfare chauvinism I combine historical institutionalist studies of Finland and Sweden with content analysis of political discourse of the competing parties in each case to determine where differences in institutions in these two similar welfare state models have led to different outcomes. I suggest that the structure of Finland’s social and political institutions and the ways in which the state has included its traditional minority groups (such as Swedish-speaking Finns) have blunted the infiltration of anti-immigrant welfare chauvinism into its mainstream politics in ways that have not occurred in Sweden, despite higher levels of welfare chauvinism among Finns. In each case, mainstream parties appear to respond more to perceived threats as constructed within the existing political systems, and not to the views of their constituents – a representation incongruity that holds implications for all democracies.
