The purpose of this study is to find explanations for why Göran Persson and Stefan Löfvén and their respective governments chose different political expressions towards the state of Israel. The two theories I have chosen are about whether the political leadership of these two different prime ministers has been significant for the political relationship with the state of Israel, and whether there has been an existing personal interest in the foreign policy context precisely with regard to Israel. I want to know if the different attitudes of these two prime ministers to Israel may be due to the two different types of leadership styles that Persson and Löfvén had. Göran Persson has also seemed to expressed a deeper interest in the Jewish state, which results me wanting to investigate whether this may be a factor in Göran Persson being more anxious to change the Social Democrats' foreign policy towards Israel, compared toStefan Löfvén. What I find remarkable is that these two prime ministers who belong to the same ideological party with the Social Democratic political principles as their basis still ended up on two such different levels when it comes to relations with Israel. I will do study with a qualitative method, and with a research design called a comparative case study. To my help I will use the “Most Similar Design System” which is a research design that compares two similar cases, in this context two Social Democratic prime ministers, but which stands out remarkably on one point; the foreign policy and the relationship with the state of Israel.

Denna uppsats undersöker hur argument som bygger på statistik kan förstås utifrån den klassiska retoriken. Utgångspunkten är den vanligt förekommande uppdelningen av bevismedel som antingen tillhörande konsten eller inte, där statistik ofta placeras i den senare kategorin. Denna uppdelning undersöks kritiskt genom en nyläsning av Aristoteles, Cicero och Quintilianus. Uppsatsen visar att Cicero ger ett bättre retoriskt perspektiv än Aristoteles eller Quintilianus för att förstå hur statistikargumentation fungerar. Därför används just Ciceros topiker (loci) såsom de är systematiserade i verket Topica för att analysera två debatter om jobbfrågan mellan Fredrik Reinfeldt och Stefan Löfvén under valåret 2014. Analysen finner främst 9 loci i debatterna, och belyser därmed flera olika sätt som statistik kan användas för att skapa argument i retoriska syften.

The study chronologically maps the argumentations concerning migration and refugee policy made by Stefan Löfvén, chairman of the Swedish Social Democratic Party as of January 27, 2012, and Prime Minister of Sweden as of October 3, 2014. It examines how and why the reasoning coming from Löfvén in the subject has changed during his time as a political leader and that is done with the help of two guiding independent variables. To do so the study answers the following primary research question: - How has the mediated image and reasoning coming from Stefan Löfvén on migration – and refugee policy changed and why? The two independent variables consist of two big happenings for Stefan Löfvén as a political leader. The first variable “from party leader in opposition to prime minister” tells us how his reasoning is affected by becoming prime minster. The second variable “the increasing amount of asylum applications” tells us how his reasoning is affected by an increasing amount of filed asylum applications. These two independent variables create the following two précised research questions: - How has the mediated reasoning, its theses and arguments, coming from Stefan Löfvén been affected by going from being “only” a party leader in opposition to becoming the country’s prime minister? - How has the mediated reasoning, its theses and arguments, coming from Stefan Löfvén been affected by the increasing amount of asylum applications? The result of the study shows that both independent variables and the happenings characterizing them has affected the generally mediated image and reasoning coming from Stefan Löfvén in the subject of migration and refugee policy. The results also shows that the “subject” of migration – and refugee policy is a bit more complex and two sub-categories besides the more general subject were identified and the mediated reasoning in these were in some cases affected in a different way.