Globalization, economic crisis and recent developments of welfare policies have been claimed to give rise to new cleavages between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in terms of social risk positions and also in in political engagement and trust (Kriesi 2006; Solt 2008). Most previous studies have focussed either on political interest and participation (Solt 2008; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995), or on political trust (Dalton 2004). The central argument presented in this paper is that in order to fully comprehend the political marginalization of more risk-exposed groups we need to simultaneously incorporate both the interest dimension and the trust dimension of people’s relation to politics., We know from numerous previous studies what individual traits is associated with low political engagement and involvement, but we know less on what explains changes in these associations and thus creates or deepens the cleavages. This proposed paper investigates the relationship between a social risk position and political alienation over 22 years in Sweden, a country often characterized as a generous and encompassing welfare state with low inequality, but with increasing social and economic cleavages in later decades. By a longitudinal analysis of the relationship between social risk position and political alienation in Sweden 1988-2010 the paper finds an increasing strength in the association between a social risk position and political alienation. By multi-level analysis it is concluded that this association is stronger under right wing incumbency than under social democratic incumbency whilst there is no effect found of economic crisis in the early 1990’s or in 2008-2009. In the final discussion, the increasing trend in the effect of social risks on political alienation is related to changes in welfare policies and to changing conflict lines in the political debate – from class to exclusion.
