In this paper we examine the Swedish Social Democratic Party within the context of representation. Party membership, voter engagement and citizen influence over politics are all trending downwards in Sweden. At the same time, the interest in politics among citizens is peaking and voter turnout remains strong. This sparks a question regarding how the Social Democratic Party may have changed itself because of this development. The one specific question that we’ve decided to focus on in this paper is if the party manages to sustain sufficient inter-party democracy towards its own members. By applying opinion-based representation as understood in Hanna Pitkin’s book “The Concept of Representation” we will examine this by the usage of three critical case studies that have brought this idea into question. The first case deals with the financing of the party and focuses on the role of lotteries as a means of party finance. The second case deals with the party's process and subsequent decision to join NATO. The third case deals with a party election in a Stockholm suburb (Botkyrka) and the exclusion of party members. The cases were chosen because of their differences and their ability to encase different aspects of opinion-based representation. The analysis was done from a question-based instrument taken from the ideas of Pitkin and then applied to the actions of the party and its representatives. What we found was that the party systematically fails to fulfill Pitkin’s idea of representation in all three cases. We find this to be significant due to its implications for the development of democracy. A representational democracy without representation is not a fully functioning democracy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mdh-62852 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Jervinge, Isak, Alm, Niklas |
| Publisher | Mälardalens universitet, Akademin för ekonomi, samhälle och teknik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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