<p>The economic policy of the Swedish Social Democrats has undergone major changes during the last thirty years. From using a so-called Keynesian policy to promote full employment in the economy, the Social Democrats have switched to a more monetaristic policy to promote low inflation instead. What I intend to do with this study is to see if the policy change also can be noticed in how the party describe their own policy. Have the Social Democrats been open and transparent with their change in priorities, or have they tried to hide this in their rhetoric?</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to examine if one can notice a change from a Keynesian to a monetaristic policy in the Social Democrat’s descriptions of their economic policy. The main research question, which I intend to answer, is: "Is it possible to notice a change from a Keynesian to monetaristic policy in the Social Democrat’s descriptions of their economic policy?"</p><p>I have chosen to study the descriptions found in the financial forecasts, presented by the Social Democrats during their time in government rule between 1970 and 1999. The research method I use is the qualitative text analysis.</p><p>After analyzing the descriptions found in the financial forecasts I present an answer to the main research question: Yes, it is partly possible to notice a change from a Keynesian to monetaristic policy in the Social Democrat’s descriptions of their economic policy.</p><p>I only say partly possible because it is possible to notice the policy change that took place between the 1970s and 1980s, when low inflation was given the same priority as low unemployment. Whereas it is not possible to notice the change that took place between the 1980s and 1990s, when low inflation was given the highest priority, above low unemployment.</p>

The purpose with this study is to investigate how the two biggest political parties, the Social Democrats and the Moderate/Conservative Party, looks at a membership in the defense alliance North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The question have the illegal annexation of Crimea affected how the parties look at a membership in Nato will be answered and analyzed. How they discuss, how they believe that a membership can affect the Swedish foreign policy will be examined in this paper.   Nato is a topic that during the last century’s have divided the Swedish population into two groups: one that advocates a membership and one that fight’s against a Swedish membership in the alliance. The debate about Nato has, since the illegal annexation of the Crimea, changed and are now more relevant than ever to discuss. This paper illustrates how the Moderate/Conservative Party and the Social Democrats argues in the debate regarding a membership in Nato.   Since 2003 the Moderate/Conservative Party are in favor of a membership in the defense alliance Nato, what this paper will find out is why they want Sweden to become a member in Nato and how they argue for a membership. The Social Democrats are not in favor of a membership in the defense alliance, they advocates the defense line Sweden have had since the mid 1900s, the Non-alignment.

Welfare, and the role of social democracy in defining its content and meaning, is often described as one of Sweden’s distinguishing features. However, in the quest for liberalization and marketization, reforms in past decades have substantially changed the political landscape. These developments have led many to question the viability of describing the main political actors and their attitudes towards the welfare state in terms of left or right. This dissertation contributes to the understanding of ideological convergence and past and current political cleavages by analysing the welfare debate on freedom of choice between the two main political opponents in Swedish politics over three decades. Using a morphological approach, where ideologies are viewed as distinctive configurations of political concepts creating specific conceptual patterns depending on how they are combined, the analysis focuses on the content of the concept of choice by examining the conceptual relationships between political concepts such as choice, the public and the private, equality, equity and need. The analysis reveals a convergence suggesting that the parties have united around a narrower concept of freedom of choice that relates to how it is implemented in welfare services, that is, the choice between different providers of welfare services. However, important differences remain, which are expressed in the parties’ differing conceptions of the power resources citizens need to become truly free individuals. These findings suggest that, while freedom of choice has become a central concept in the political debate, it is not central to the parties’ ideologies. Instead, the core of the parties’ ideologies appears to be articulated in e.g. the political cleavages that remain, which can be described as differing views on the role of politics and competing conceptions of need and equality.  It is how these cleavages are translated into policies that will determine possible welfare choices in the future.

Den här studien undersöker skillnaderna i de sätt på vilka Junilistan respektive Socialdemokraterna officiellt talar om demokrati, samt tillskriver begreppet värde. Med en kombination av diskurs- och ideologianalys, med tyngdpunkten på diskursanalys, granskas det sätt på vilket de båda organisationerna, i idéprogram samt debattartiklar, använder demokratibegreppet vid diskussioner om EU som institution, samt vid resonemang om hur det svenska partiväsendet representerar de svenska väljarnas åsikter i unionen. Tanken bakom studiens fokus är att demokratibegreppet, med sin legitimitet och positiva värdeladdning, blir oerhört viktigt att knyta till sin verksamhet för att kunna visa på grundläggande demokratisk förankring i sina resonemang och därigenom vinna väljarnas bifall. En av studiens centralaste slutsatser är att de båda organisationerna i stor utsträckning talar om varandra. Det vill säga att när Junilistan talar i negativa formuleringar så talar Socialdemokraterna i positiva, utan att argumentationen på allvar möts i detaljfrågor.

The purpose of the essay is to examine the Swedish Social Democrats (SAP) and its relation to the EU. The specific area of interest is the SAP in its relation to the process of the constitutional/reform treaty. The process period researched in this essay stretches from 2000-april 2008. The research question is, How has the SAP evolved in relation to the EU during the time period 2000 till 2008 and are there signs of external EU pressure changing the party behaviour or position? This case study has the methodological approach of a qualitative text analysis. The concept of Europeanization makes it possible to construct an analytical framework which measures possible impact from the EU on domestic political parties. This impact is measured in three different areas, first if the party is adapting its internal structure to ease its engagement with the EU, secondly if the party is adapting its policy because of the EU and thirdly in the area of patterns of party competition. With the analytical framework drawn from the concept of Europeanization it is possible to point at indicators that are signs of EU-impact. The SAP seems to have both a practical adaptation and a policy adaptation but it still remains somewhat EU-sceptical in the area of patterns of party competition. The conclusion is that there are quite massive amounts of evidence of possible EU-pressure on the SAP.

Abstract: The purpose with this study is to analyse the political debate about freedom of speech in Sweden and Denmark, after the caricatures of the Islamic Prophet Mohammed that the Danish newspaper Jyllandsposten published in September 2005. For this debate four political parties have been chosen. These are: Socialdemokratiska Partiet and Moderata Samlingspartiet in Sweden and Socialdemokraterne and Venstre in Denmark. An idea analysis has been chosen as method, and dimensions as an analysing tool. The overall result of the analysis is that right- and left political parties in Sweden and Denmark are more alike, than different in their political debate about free speech. They all wish for total freedom of speech, and see that as the foundation of the democratic society. The difference between the parties is that left parties put more weight on personal responsibility and minorities, than right parties that mostly debate about the meaning of democracy and why freedom of speech should not be restricted.

Syftet med detta arbete är att undersöka socialdemokraternas organisering av medelklassen och tjänstemännen i Karlstad under mitten av 1900-talet och varför det startades en socialdemokratisk tjänstemannaförening i Karlstad. Grunden till arbetet baseras på källmaterial i form av mötesprotokoll, samt års och verksamhetsberättelser från Karlstads socialdemokratiska tjänstemannaförening. Karlstad arbetarekommun och Karlstads kvinnoklubb. Detta källmaterial har granskats kvalitativt för att presentera majoriteten av resultatet men även en kvantitativ analys har genomförts för att presentera medlemsutvecklingen inom tjänstemannaföreningen. Tjänstemännen var den grupp i samhället som växte mest under mitten av 1900-talet vilket förklarar den snabbt växande socialdemokratiska tjänstemannaföreningen. Efter en snabb medlemstillväxt följdes en liten minskning av medlemmar vilket sedan stabiliseras och skiftar fram till slutet av 60-talet då en snabb nedgång får organisationen på fall och resulterar i upplösning år 1972. Eftersom kvinnliga tjänstemän också ökade i antal under 1900-talet kommer detta arbete även att analysera hur de kvinnliga medlemmarna visar sig. Medlemmarna inom tjänstemannaföreningen har granskats ur ett manligt, homosocialt perspektiv för att förstå bristen på kvinnliga medlemmar i den socialdemokratiska tjänstemannaföreningen. Tjänstemännen har även analyserats med hjälp av tre teorier om tjänstemännens klasstillhörighet för att undersöka vilken förklaringsmodell som bäst passar in på källmaterialet och för att förklara varför tjänstemännen inom socialdemokraternas föreningar startar en egen socialdemokratisk tjänstemannaförening år 1948. Arbetet undersöker också varför organisationen hade en snabbt växande medlemsutveckling. / The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the social democrat’s organization of the middle class and the working official’s in Karlstad during the mid-2000 century and to analyze the female participation within the working official’s social democratic organization. The foundations of this work are based on meeting minutes, protocols, annual reports and business stories from the working official’s social democratic organization, the social democratic women club and from the social democratic working municipality. These sources have been analyzed qualitatively to provide most of the results, but the members have been analyzed with a quantitative method to explain the member development within the working official’s social democratic organization. The working officials was the group of people in society that grew the most during the mid-2000 century which explains the rapid growth of the working official’s organization within the social democrats. After a rapid growth the organization has a small decline in members but stabilizes until a rapid decline in members during the late sixties which results in the fall of the organization 1972. Since females within the working-officials also rose in numbers during the 2000 century this thesis will also describe the women roles within the working official’s social democratic organization. The members of the working official’s organization have been analyzed with a male homosocial view to understand the shortage of women in the organization. The working officials have also been observed with three different theories about the working official’s class affiliation to help explain which model of explanation fits to the source materials and help explain why the working officials within the social democrats parts from the main party to create their own organization in 1948. This Thesis also examines why the organization had such a rapid membership growth.

The Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) was in power for decades by successfullyimplementing a “third way” policy based on Marxist ideology. This policy was unique since itsimultaneously spurred economic growth, welfare, and equality between classes. Therefore,this study examined why the party lost the election 1976, despite implementing this “thirdway” policy. By scrutinizing scientific books, articles, and a dissertation on the subject, fourtheories were identified. These four theories were tested against three books that identify whySAP lost the election 1976. The results show that SAP lost primarily by going against theSAP voters’ opinion by supporting the use of nuclear energy. In addition, a weak economyand unemployment hampered the party’s ability to continue implementing welfare reforms.The conclusion is that SAP lost the election 1976 due to supporting nuclear energy use wheneconomic growth declined and voters had little trust in the party’s ability to stimulate welfare.

Crisis management as a concept is newly arrived in Sweden but well researched in other parts of the world. Sweden in recent years has been affected by everything from forest fires to a terrorist attack and now a pandemic. During the ongoing pandemic both crisis management and risk management has undergone a major change in the eyes of the Swedish population. The pandemic has shown an unreliable crisis management from politicians and their parties.  This study therefore aims to explore the ideologies behind the two biggest parties, the moderates and their ideology liberal conservatism and the social democrats and their ideology democratic socialism. The purpose is to find out how the ideologies affect the crisis management policy. The case study is limited to liberal conservatism and democratic socialism with the respective party, the social democrats and the moderates. Throughout the analysis of the parties crisis management policy and its connection to the ideologies the results showed that crisis management is highly affected by the different parties ideologies.

<p>The thesis concentrates on Hofors and a local trade union environment between 1917 and 1946, where important parts of the trade union’s power were held by parties to the left of the social democrats. The overall aim is to problemize and discuss the issue of what characterised and made possible this deviation from the usual picture of a trade union movement dominated by social democracy. What characterised the conditions in such a local trade union environment and to what extent can local norms and political culture be linked to the conditions and the development in the trade union movement in Hofors?</p><p>The factors behind the radicalism in Hofors can be found in the local union and political context. The investigation points out the following main reasons: the left-wing local council of the Social Democratic Party and its successors’ organisational lead, the local labour council’s working method being close to what has been considered “social democratic”, their representatives being highly trusted in the local community, and the growth of a local radical tradition.</p><p>The political culture and the norms that gradually developed were based on a left-wing social democratic tradition. The local council of the Social Democratic Party that left the party in 1917 to join the left-wing social democratic faction was the same local council, despite their names and change of parties in the 1920s and 1930s. It became the local labour movement’s bearer of traditions and represented the continuity in the local trade union environment, which contributed to the leftwing socialist project being long-lived in Hofors. The central aspects were the trade union work and the practical-concrete tradition that developed.</p><p>Primarily through successful trade union work, the local labour council and its trade union representatives gained strong and long-term support from a large proportion of the local trade union movement’s members and the population of Hofors.</p><p>Against this background it may be stated that, even though it was often impossible for the parties to the left of social democracy to maintain a local trade union and political power position that was stronger than that of the social democrats for a lengthy period of time, it was not entirely impossible. It may also be stated that for the trade union member as such, a communist or socialist party affiliation was not a real obstacle in the election of shop stewards. Their focus was primarily put on the would-be representatives’ personal qualities and ability to live up to the demands and expectations placed on them by the members, and not so much on their ideological persuasion.</p>