<p>The aim of this paper is to study and outline the factors governing political leadership at the party leader level, and to conclude to what extent a party leader rules and to what extent the party leadership is contextually determined. The theories used are based on Elgie's interactionistic study of political leadership and Stewart's organisational model of leadership as well as political culture.</p><p>Thus, the questions raised are if the leader leads or if the leader follows; if the leadership environment is formed by the leader or if it is, merely, implemented on the leader; and what a model of the political leadership consist of? To answer these questions a text analysis comparing Sahlin’s speeches to the party’s political programme is used as well as in-depth interviews with members of the Board of Party.</p><p>The conclusion shows that the leadership is contextually framed, but the leader is free to implement his or her ambitions within that frame as long as it is coherent to the party line.</p>

Based on the concept of rhetorical situation, the purpose of this study is to compare and describe the three Socialist leader's May Day speech from the years 1954, 1978 and 2011. The results of the analysis showed that there is a big difference in how the leaders chooses to appeal to the rhetorical audience. Erlander, 1954, never appealed directly to his audience which Palme, 1978, did both initially as repeatedly throughout his speech. Juholt, 2011, has a personal and frequent appeal which is repeated throughout his speech, which is interpreted as a sign of the intimization of the public language. It proved difficult to discuss the Socialist rhetoric as one unified form. The rhetoric realm is influenced by too many external factors, such as the media, which makes it impossible to speak of it as one. The analysis revealed that the language of the 1th may-speeches is characterized by the people who use it. It is inevitable that the speaker puts his utmost emphasis, in both language and speeches. It would require a larger and more comprehensive analysis to allow any conclusions about a social-democratic language.Keywords: Rhetorical situation, genre, ethos-logos-pathos, 1th May, the Swedish Social Democratic Party, Tage Erlander, Olof Palme, Håkan Juholt

The aim of this paper is to study and outline the factors governing political leadership at the party leader level, and to conclude to what extent a party leader rules and to what extent the party leadership is contextually determined. The theories used are based on Elgie's interactionistic study of political leadership and Stewart's organisational model of leadership as well as political culture. Thus, the questions raised are if the leader leads or if the leader follows; if the leadership environment is formed by the leader or if it is, merely, implemented on the leader; and what a model of the political leadership consist of? To answer these questions a text analysis comparing Sahlin’s speeches to the party’s political programme is used as well as in-depth interviews with members of the Board of Party. The conclusion shows that the leadership is contextually framed, but the leader is free to implement his or her ambitions within that frame as long as it is coherent to the party line.

The overarching aim of this essay is to understand why gender equality policy proposals sometimes fail to be adopted even in very favorable circumstances. The paper searches to do so by examining the political debate and the process that lead to the Swedish Social Democratic Party’s decision in 2014 to not adopt a law against gender discrimination in commercial in Sweden, despite their longstanding arguments to impose such a ban. The case is considered being a “failed case”, that is, a situation where gender policy adoption failed. Drawing on feminist political theory and frame analysis the study examines the arguments made by proponents and opponents in the debate. The study finds that the Liberal People’s Party possibly might have managed to pursue the Social Democratic Party to switch position by reframing the issue regarding gender discrimination in commercial. The study also observes that freedom of speech can be seen as a competing and higher valued interest to gender equality. Furthermore, the paper demonstrate that Sweden generally have been reluctant to reach gender equality through harder measures, which additionally can be seen as an explanation to the failure of the proposal.

Denna uppsats analyserar två tal av Sveriges statsminister Stefan Löfven; det ena från Socialdemokraternas partikongress 2015 och det andra från Almedalen samma år. Syftet är att ge en inblick i hur visioner för framtiden uttrycks av en samtida högt uppsatt politiker och att undersöka om det finns några skillnader i hur dessa visioner uttrycks beroende på om talaren i första hand vänder sig till sitt eget parti eller till en bredare opinion. Uppsatsen lyfter fram tre olika aspekter av politiska visioner (praktiska, utopiska och imaginära) och analyserar talen med fokus på dessa. Detta kombineras med en retorisk situationsanalys som syftar till att belysa och förklara skillnader i hur visionerna uttrycks i de två talen. Resultatet visar att de visioner som Löfven uttrycker i båda talen lägger ett större fokus på att lösa omedelbara praktiska problem än att bygga ett framtida samhälle. Det framkommer även att talet från partikongressen mer tydligt kopplar visionerna till socialdemokratin som ideologi än vad talet i Almedalen gör. / This thesis analyses two speeches by the Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven; one from the Swedish Social Dmocratic Party's congress in 2015 and the other from Almedalen week the same year. The purpose is to provide insight into how visions for the future are expressed by a contemporary high-profile politician and to explore if there are any differences in how these visions are expressed depending on whether the speaker is primarily adressing his own party or a broader public. The thesis features three different aspects of political vision (practical, utopian and imaginary) and anyses the speeches focusing on these. This is combined with an analysis of the rhetorical situations, intended to highlight and explain differences in how the visions are expressed in the two speeches. The results show that the visions expressed by Löfven in both speeches tends to focus more on solving immediate problems than buildning a future society. The thesis also reveals that the speech from the congress connects the expressed visions to social democratic ideology more clearly than the speech from Almedalen Week does.

This thesis aims to map what arguments are used by the two biggest parties in Swedish politics, The Social Democratic Party and the Moderate Party, when discussing European politics in the European Affairs Committee (EAC) of the Swedish parliament. In order to realise this, frames used by the party representatives in the committee have been analysed. With the typology of Helbling et. al. (2010), a categorisation of four frames is applied, where each frame corresponds with a side of the left-right or the GAL-TAN-dimension. The study is structured by a number of hypotheses constructed based on findings of previous research, comparing both between the parties and changes over time. The results are assessed in relative terms, meaning that the study focuses on the parties’ relative use of frames rather than the absolute. All hypotheses find full or partial support, confirming expectations of previous research made on other European countries. However, some surprising results are found, highlighting new potential research questions for future studies.

The Swedish ecological breakthrough of the late 1960’s and the early 1970’s entailed a rapid proliferation of competing perspectives on the environment, on man’s relation to it, and on the possible – dystopian or utopian – futures that lay ahead. By drawing on the theoretical concept of sociotechnical imaginaries as defined by Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim, this thesis aims to explore the critical role played by these perspectives, and by these visions of the future, during this formative period of the emerging environmental consciousness and of early Swedish environmental politics. With this purpose in mind, the thesis examines the sociotechnical imaginaries mobilized in three Swedish books on environmental politics written by politically concerned scientists, as well as the two first environmental manifests published by the ruling Social Democratic Party in 1968 and 1972. By comparing the imaginaries mobilized in each text, the thesis then argues that the party incorporated certain elements of the critical perspectives into the dominant paradigm, but that they never wavered in their commitment to industrial development. The thesis also shows how these environmental imaginaries were used to legitimize political power, as well as the social democratic hegemony.