Abstract C-level in Political Science by Christoffer Odén, vt-08 “Traditionalism versus Modernism. The Ideology Debate in Left-Socialist Party Today” Instructor: Mats Lindberg The purpose with this essay is to describe the ideology debate in Left-Socialist Party between traditionalists and modernists. This essay have the following questions: 1 ) What are the differences between traditional and modern politics in the Left-Socialist Party? 2 ) What is similar between traditional and modern politics in the Left-Socialist Party? My method is to analyse the Left-Socialist Party programme from 2004 and analyse a programme from the modernist organisation Vagval Vanster. Then I shall compare the political views between those programmes. My results show that there are many differences but also similarity. For example the traditionalism wants to keep their political views and wait on the citizens to realise that a better world is possible. The modernists seek to renew their political views beacause they believe that no party has a self-value. The big similarity between the two groups are that they think the present society is unjust and not democratic enough. I think this essay has been very stimulating and I was suprised of some of the differences between the two groups.

With the change from the most stable party system in Europe to a decline in party membership and a fragmented parliament, Sweden has lost its’ unique status in European politics. A weakened collective identity and changes to social structures have brought the phenomenon of personalization of politics to the attention of scholars. The phenomenon, which centres on the increasing meaning of individual politicians at the expense of a decreasing importance of the political collective, is this studies’ theoretical framework. This study aims to examine the presence of personalization of politics among Swedish parliamentary parties on Instagram. In order to analyse the Instagram accounts a quantitative content analysis was conducted over three separate periods from the election month of 2014, 2018, and 2022. The findings suggest that no linear trend is to be found, however the level of personalization of politics is generally high among the parties on Instagram. Furthermore, the centralized personalization, the focus on party leaders, is exceedingly prominent among the studied cases.

The aim of my essay is to examine the discourse on the human rights within the Swedish political parties from a right-left perspective. Through an idea and ideology analysis of Liberalerna and Vänsterpartiet party programs from 1944, 1972, 1990 and 2013, the tworesearch questions will be answered. The idea and ideology analysis will be conducted into three parts, first i will conduct a text analysis to determine the subject matter of the text and understand what ideology is presented in the analyzed text.The first research question deals with how Liberalerna and Vänsterpartiet present human rights in their party programs, the second question will be addressing if there has been a change in how the parties present human rights based on the historical turn in human rights. The previous research in the essay will provide and establish a basic understanding between human rights and the political parties in Sweden. The analysis will conclude that there has been a change in how the parties talk about human rights and that human rights are closely linked to a liberal thought tradition. The analys will also conclude that the human rights has been more beneficial for liberal ideology and liberal thought in comparison to socialism and to some extent marxism

There are two parallel developments in European and, particularly important for this study, Swedish policy. The trend is that the individual's self-determination of his gender identity, rather than psychological investigations, medical assessments and legal sections, should be legitimate in recognizing gender identity. Furthermore, there are intensive political debates on positive discrimination of women as a tool for achieving gender equality in response to that men and masculinity are still claiming and maintaining a leading role in society. This study takes root in these two political developments and investigates how two Swedish parliamentary parties, Vänsterpartiet and Socialdemokraterna, take position to transgender womens’ right to determine their gender identity and, at the same time, determine which women should be able to be gender quoted. The result showed that the parties, in political material regarding transgender, assume a trans-inclusionary attitude towards trans women in relation to women as a group, whereas the political material on gender equality of women has a trans-exclusionary approach. The conclusion is that there is a need for a political strategy for managing flexible identities in formal systems.

Denna uppsats ämnar utforska ett statsvetenskapligt område med en sociologisk teori för att ge ett nytt verktyg i läsandet av partiprogram. Med hjälp av Peter L. Bergers teori om kosmiskt världsbyggande kallad Nomos läses partiprogram för att fram den politiska världsbyggnaden. Genom att identifiera Objektivering (politiska idéer) och Externalisering (politisk handling) i partiprogrammen försöker uppsatsen bryta ner partiprogrammen för att underlätta läsningen. Detta underlättande ger ett verktyg för förståelse av partiprogram och kan i förlängningen leda till en förbättrad källkritisk aspekt genom att läsaren förstår och kan ta ställning till de idéer och mål som presenteras, och inte bara anfalla en vägg av text. / This essay aims to explore a problem within the political sciences with a sociological theory to provide a new approach to reading political parties campaign publications. Through Peter L. Bergers sociological theory about cosmic world construction called Nomos the essay aims to capture a societal world construction through the political parties’ conceptions of society through their campaign publications; a political nomos. By identifying objectivation (political ideas) and externalization (political acts) in the publications we can try to capture the parties’ political nomos that they try to convey to the reader. In extension this provides a tool for educational purposes when trying to explain political parties’ publication to pupils or aiding in the understanding of parties underlying ideas and goals.

The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze the behavior among political parties in the Swedish parliament in the debates on foreign policy from year 2000 to year 2015. The aim is to find out if and how much the parties have politicized the topic of Sweden’s standpoint towards the military non-alignment that has characterized the country’s foreign politics throughout the years. The aim was also to see if turbulence in the international sphere has led to a tendency among the parties to keep a more unanimous debate about Sweden’s military non-alignment for reasons that stem from the interest of maintaining national security. The analysis did not show that parties politicized this political area to a greater extent during this period, but rather kept a low profile in these matters. However, this analyze indicates that parties tend to bring up the topic to a higher degree right after a conflict in Sweden’s surrounding area has occurred. There are therefore reasons to reevaluate the theory that says that parties tend to stick together when international turbulence occurs, as the result of this analyze rather shows a higher level of politicization in the debates on foreign policy during these times.

Förvånansvärt lite forskning har ägnats åt ungdomars deltagande i partipolitiska ungdomsförbund trots en långvarig nedåtgående trend i medlemsantal. Studier visar att ungdomsförbunden har svårt att rekrytera samt behålla sina medlemmar vilket är oroande då vi behöver ungdomars röster i partipolitiken för vår representativa demokrati och för att ungdomförbunden är den främsta rektryteringskällan till våra moderpartier. Denna studie syftar till att få en djupare förståelse kring varför ett urval av ungdomar väljer att gå med i partipolitiska ungdomsförbund samt vad de har för motiv till att stanna kvar. Studien består av semistrukturerade intervjuer med åtta ungdomar som är eller har varit aktiva inom ungdomsförbunden Ung Vänster och Moderateras ungdomsförbund MUF. För att undersöka detta har studien fokuserat på individuella resurser och faktorer och moraliska, sociala och materiella motiv till partipolitiskt deltagande. Resultatet visade på att individuella resurser och faktorer som politiskt intresse, motivation och sociala nätverk var viktiga kopplat till varför ungdomarna väljer att gå med i ett partipolitiskt ungdomsförbund. Sociala och moraliska motiv var högst förekommande bland ungdomarna för både varför de väljer att gå med men också vad som gör att de stannar kvar inom förbundet. / Surprisingly little research has been devoted to young peoples participation in party-affiliated youth organizations, despite a prolonged downward trend in membership numbers. Studies indicate that these youth organizations struggle to recruit and retain their members, which is concerning since young peoples voices in party politics are crucial for our reprecentative democracie and because these organizations serve as the primary recruitment source for their motherparties. This study aims to gain a deeper understanding of why a selection of young individuals choose to join party-affiliated youth organizations and what motivates them to remain. The study consists of semi-structured interviews with eight youths who are or have been active within the youth organizations Ung Vänster and Moderaternas ungdomsförbund MUF. To investigate this, the study focuses on individual resources and factors and also moral, social, and material motives for political participation. The results indicate that individual resources and factors such as political interest, motivation, and social networks are significant in why young people choose to join a party-affiliated youth organization. Social and moral motives are most common motives among the youth for why they choose to join and what keeps them engaged within the organization.

Detta är en studie av hur ’äldre’ som språklig och social kategori samt åldrande som process konstrueras i tre sammanlänkade offentligheter. Avhandlingens övergripande syfte är att studera och kritiskt granska olika sätt varpå ’äldre’ som kategori förstås och representeras i relation till pågående omförhandlingar av innebörden i den senare delen av livet som livsfas. Valet av material har gjorts utifrån utgångspunkten att medierade offentligheters betydelse för bildandet och upprätthållandet av sociala och kollektiva identiteter, liksom deras roll som platser för diskussion om hur samhället ska organiseras, har ökat. Studien utgår från tre kontrasterande empiriska material; artiklar från dagstidningar, texter från ett pensionärsparti, och en offentlig utredning om den framtida svenska äldrepolitiken. Det studerade materialet är publicerat mellan 2002 och 2004 Genom att materialen analyseras som ingående i en dialog med varandra, ett offentligt samtal, synliggörs relationerna mellan olika konstruktioner. Skillnaderna mellan de olika materialen är betydande. Men analysen visar också på hur samma argument och föreställningar finns närvarande i alla tre offentligheter. Hur ’äldre’ som kategori konstrueras i de olika materialen är relaterat till olika föreställningar både om äldre människor och deras samhälleliga status, men också om samhället och nationen som en föreställd gemenskap. Studien visar bland annat att ’äldre’ är en kategori som det talas om, men inte till. Det är också sällan som ’äldre’ är en position det talas utifrån. I samklang med detta konstrueras kategorin som ett objekt för den nationella gemenskapens ansvar och omsorg. / This is a study of how ‘older people’ as a linguistic and social category, and ageing as a process, is constructed in three interrelated publics. The aim of the thesis is to study and critically investigate the different ways in which ‘older people’ as a category is understood and represented in relation to ongoing negotiations about the meaning of later life as a stage of life. The increased significance of mediated publics for the formation and maintenance of social and collective identities, as well as their role as spaces for deliberation on the organization of society, is a starting point for the study and has bearing on the choice of data. The study is based on three contrastive sets of empirical material; newspaper articles, texts from a pensioner’s party, and a government report on the future old age policy of Sweden. The studied texts were published during the period 2002 – 2004. The publics have been studied as in a dialogical relation with each other. This strategy highlights the relations between different constructions of the category. The differences between the publics are significant. At the same time the analysis also shows overlaps of arguments and in the way that the category is understood between the publics. The ways that ‘older people’ are constructed in the material is related to different notions about older people and their societal status. But also to ideas about society and the nation as an imagined community. The study shows, among other things, that ‘older people’ is a category that is spoken about, rather than to. ‘Older people’ rarely functions as a subject in the studied material. In relation to this, the category is constructed as an object for the care and responsibility of the national community.