Danish parliament blame rises sharply among right wing parties
Blaming Across the Aisle: Political Contrasting and Blame Attribution in the Danish Parliament
Computation and Language
Summary
Political blame in the Danish Parliament decreased until about 2016, then increased significantly from 2019 onwards. The study found opposition parties blame more than governing parties, an effect called political contrasting. Right-wing parties, especially those with extreme views, blame others more frequently, showing a growing harshness in language focused on the right side of politics. These findings suggest that the increase in hostile political talk is not general, but tied to ideological positions.
What this means in practice
- •For political analysts: Detect shifts in blame rhetoric by party and ideology to better analyze political conflict trends over time.
- •For social media moderation teams: Identify ideological patterns in blame language to inform moderation policies focused on political discourse.
Authors
Markus Lundsfryd Jensen, Rune Egeskov Trust, Kenneth Christian Enevoldsen, Sara Kolding
Abstract
Political discourse is widely perceived to be growing more hostile, yet robust evidence remains scarce. This study examines blame attribution in the Danish Parliament from 1997 to 2026, combining a purpose-built classifier, BlameBERT (F1: 0.80), with multilevel statistical modeling. The classifier is constructed using an annotation-efficient pipeline for blame attribution in low-to-mid resource languages. The results reveal a banana-shaped trajectory, with blame declining until around 2016 before entering a significant and sustained increase in recent years (2019-2026). Government status consistently influenced blame attribution - an effect we term political contrasting - with opposition parties blaming substantially more than governing parties. This effect was moderated by ideology: The blame-dampening effect of governing was less pronounced among right-wing parties, and ideological extremity amplified blame more strongly on the right. In recent years, the interaction between political wing and ideological extremity intensified, suggesting an ideological hardening of the blame rhetoric concentrated on the right of the political spectrum. Taken together, these patterns suggest that the perceived rise in harsh political language reflects not merely a general rhetorical drift, but an ideologically asymmetric hardening of political discourse. A sensitivity analysis showed that the conclusions were robust to varying classification thresholds.