The cultural policy area has a tendency to be seen as a consensus area, where there are no big conflicts between the parties. The aim of this master’s thesis is to study the moderate party’s cultural motion 2005/06Kr:233 with the party leader Fredrik Reinfeldt as first author. If consensus rules, the party’s ideology should not be visible in the motion, but the assumption in the thesis is that it is visible. The main issue is to find out which obvious ideological features the motion contain, in which of Jenny Johannisson’s three discourses the moderate party’s cultural policy best fits into and what consequences there could be with the party’s cultural policy. A short cultural policy background as a consensus area is presented along with the moderate party’s history and ideologies, neo-liberalism and conservatism. The method used is argumentation analysis. The theoretical starting point is Jenny Johannisson’s three discourses of cultural policy, which is partly based upon the researcher Dorte Skot-Hansen’s theories of cultural policy in the Nordic countries. The analysis shows that both neo-liberalism and conservatism are clearly visible in the motion. Conservatism is strong regarding the argumentation concerning cultural heritage and the traditional cultural arts. Neo-liberal concepts like market, competition, supply and demand, the individual and the individual’s freedom of action and choice are strong throughout the motion. The neo-liberal features of the moderate party’s motion best fits in Johannisson’s alliance discourse, which is marketing oriented. The consequences of a moderate party’s cultural policy are probably an even more marketing oriented cultural policy than they have today. / Uppsatsnivå: D

This master’s thesis attends to a debate in the Swedish daily press concerning the public library which arose after the Swedish Moderate Party’s publication of their cultural political document Kulturen 2.0. This document contains a number of standpoints, of which three directly concern the public library: charges on book loans, libraries on contract and politically balanced purchase policy. In all, 28 articles are examined by means of an idea and ideological analysis. The purpose is to find out what is behind the conflicts surrounding attitudes about the public library's mission and activity in an era of needs for change. On the basis of Douglas Raber’s account of three ideological strategies - social, conservative and populist - that constitutes the theoretical framework, the ideologies behind the ideas that stand out in the debate are to be identified. Four main conclusions are deduced from twelve preliminary inferences: (A) the combination of the social and the conservative strategy by the critics in the debate; (B) the conflict between critics' position according to (A) and populist strategy by advocates of the Moderate Party’s suggestions; (C) and (D) treats intrinsic dilemmas in the Moderate Party’s idea systems, there social respectively conservative strategy stands against populist strategy. Dilemmas concern either inconsistencies between different levels or on a metaphysical level with their fundamental principles contradicting each other. Factors influencing the results are constituted of various contents ascribed to certain central concepts such as education, access and democracy. This associates the statement ”the public library as the cornerstone of democracy” with alternate meanings. / Uppsatsnivå: D