The Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) has in recent years distinguished themselves in the arena of library policy and have initiated several controversial proposals in this field that goes against what can be considered the traditional public library mission in Sweden. These proposals, although much written about in media has been the focus of few studies and not one single study has focused exclusively on the Sweden Democratic library policy field as a whole. Therefore it has been my intention to do a textual analysis on thirteen political documents concerning library policy from the Sweden Democrats during the years 2018 to 2021 on all the political levels of decision making in Sweden: national, regional and municipal. With the help of researcher Dorte Skot-Hansens model of rationalities in nordic cultural policymaking I have tried to identify the predominant lines of policy in the material and the conclusion is essentially two main rationalities. The first one is the social conservative rationality in which the main goal is to preserve traditional Swedish values, which can be found on all political levels. The other one is the radical right rationality which is mostly distinct in the municipal and regional level and in which the main goal is to assimilate citizens into the Swedish culture. Both these rationalities make up the main political currents in the library policy of the Sweden Democrats which I have christened the the rationalitities of national identity.

The Sweden Democrats describe themselves as a social conservative party with a nationalistic view, others consider the Swedish democrats as a populistic party. Research on the Sweden Democrats describes the party as a nationalistic, populistic, and conservative party, but very little research has been conducted on the party’s ideological connection to the social democratic ideology or the social conservative ideology. The aim of this essay is therefor to examine if the Sweden Democrats’ politics is rooted in the social democratic ideology or in the social conservative ideology and if so to which extent. This is done through a qualitative idea analysis. The analysis is based on the Sweden democrats’ 2022 election manifesto on the basis of the ideologies social conservatism and social democracy. The analysis is based on the analysis of the Sweden Democrats’ standpoints on freedom, equality, and community in both the state and the civil society. Subsequently the analysis is made based on the analysis schemas for both social conservatism and social democracy to see if the Sweden Democrats’ politics can be connected to any of these ideologies. The result of the analysis shows that the Sweden Democrats 2022 election manifesto is largely rooted in the social conservative ideology, but there are parts of the election manifesto that fall into the social democratic ideology. The conclusions that can be made based on the result shows that more social conservative incentives can be found in the party’s election manifesto rather than social democratic incentives, even though some social democratic elements occur they are a lot less prevalent than the social conservative ideology.

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The political party Sweden democrats became Sweden’s third largest party in 2014 after entering the Swedish parliament back in 2010 for the first time. During this time discussions about the party background and ideology have increased both from other parties and in the society. The controversy surrounding the party can partly be traced back to its foundation and the period before the party entered the national parliament in 2010. Sweden democrats was founded in 1988 by the remains of two right wing extremist movements, today the party has distanced itself from Nazism and calls itself a social conservative party. According to studies Sweden democrat’s ideology is considered as right-wing radical populism. This difference of identification is a problem, because it creates questions why it exists. Are the Sweden democrats really a social conservative party or is the party rendering a false image, and why. In this essay I will use ideal types of the two ideologies social conservative and Right-wing radical populism to evaluate which ideal type can describe the ideology in the party materials of the Swedish democrats most adequate. Additionally this essay will compare the ideal types to see how different the two ideologies are. The analysis and conclusion shows that the two ideologies differs from each other, but they share a few aspects. The evaluation of Sweden democrats party material does show that the party shares the fundamental value of right-wing radical populism and contains attributes from that theory, including etno-nationalism and etno-pluralism. The essays conclusion is therefore that Sweden democrats appears to be a right-wing radical populist party. That creates a question for future research, why the party identify itself as a social conservative party.

Denna uppsats undersöker Sverigedemokraternas kvinnoförbund SD-Kvinnor och hur förbundet ser på jämställdhet. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur ett kvinnoförbund på högerkanten formeras och att analysera denna formering utifrån ett genusperspektiv. Utgångspunkten har varit att svara på huruvida SD-Kvinnor representerades i SD-Kuriren under 2010–2012, vilka föreställningar som genomsyrar SD-Kvinnor och deras idéer om jämställdhet samt vilka politiska ämnen som diskuteras i kvinnoförbundets podcast ”Snedsteg” och vilka idéer och föreställningar dessa ämnen laddas med. Det teoretiska förhållningssättet är genusbaserad. Metoden utgörs av en kvalitativ textanalys där såväl fysiskt som digitalt material används. SD-Kvinnors idéer om jämställdhet bygger på konservativa grunddrag. De föreställningar som genomsyrar SD-Kvinnors idéer om jämställdhet är att de vill att den enskilda familjen har rätt till självbestämmande och att detta skall respekteras. Kvoteringsfrågan är SD-Kvinnor starkt kritiska till då de menar att jämställdhetspolitik handlar om att lösa problem som är ojämna hellre än att fördela lika mellan könen. Den övervägande politiska människosyn som kvinnoförbundet har handlar i hög grad om att bejaka de biologiska skillnaderna mellan könen. I SD-Kuriren är det tydligt att kvinnor är underrepresenterade i medlemstidningen under den period som undersöks. SD-Kvinnor presenteras på ett visst sätt i medlemstidningen,och gärna separat från det övriga innehållet i medlemstidningen. En slags idealbild av SD-Kvinnan skrivs fram där den socialkonservativa idén om idealkvinnan konstrueras. De politiska ämnen som diskuteras i podcasten Snedsteg är hämtade direkt från Sverigedemokraternas politik där endast sverigedemokrater är inbjudna. De ämnen som diskuteras är breda samhällsfrågor i form av brottslighet, invandring, hedersfrågor, den egna utanförskapen samt vårdfrågor. Dessa laddas med idén om Sverige som ett otryggt samhälle i förfall. Den här uppsatsen visar även att SD-Kvinnor inte nämns i SD-Kuriren förrän i juni 2011 trots att kvinnoförbundet funnits sedan oktober 2010. / This paper explores the women’s union called SD-Women of the political party Sweden Democrats and where they stand in terms of gender equality. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how a women’s union in the far right is formed and analyze this from a gender perspective. The basis has been to find out whether SD-Women are represented in their newspaper SD-Kuriren during 2010-2012, which type of concepts are raised by SD-Women and their ideas regarding gender equality, and lastly also which political topics are discussed in SD-Women’s podcast “Snedsteg” and the notions and concepts these topics are saturated by. The theoretical approach is based on gender and the method constitutes of a qualitative textual analysis where both physical and digital material is used.SD-Women’s ideas in terms of gender equality are based on a conservative essence. The concept that saturates SD-Women’s ideas regarding gender equality is that every individual family should be allowed to govern itself without outside influence and this is something that should be respected. The subject of electoral quotas is strongly criticized by SD-Women as they imply that gender equality politics should revolve around solving inequality problems rather than dividing equally amongst the genders. The predominant political views of SD-Women in terms of mankind is to affirm the biological differences between genders. In SD-Kuriren it’s clear that women are less represented during the period that is analyzed. SD-Women is presented in a very specific way in SD-Kuriren, and often separated from the other contents of the newspaper. A type of ideal image of a Sweden Democrat women is offered where the social conservative idea of an ideal woman is constructed.The political topics that are discussed in the podcast Snedsteg are directly imported from the politics of Sweden Democrats themselves where only other Sweden Democrats are invited to the podcast. The discussed topics are often the larger societal issues like crime, immigration, family honor, health care and also the Sweden Democrats own alienation. These topics are saturated with the idea of Sweden being an insecure society under decay. This paper will also shed a light on the fact that SD-Women is not mentioned at all in SD-Kuriren until June 2011, even though they were in existence since October 2010.