The main purpose of this study is to examine two political parties, the Social Democrats and the Center Party, to see if an ideological convergence have occurred between them during the time period 1990 through 2013. Furthermore, given that ideological convergence has occurred, this study intends to investigate the possible democratic problems that convergence between traditional opposition parties tends to bring about. The main research questions are: - To what extent has ideological convergence occurred between the parliamentary parties the Social Democrats and the Center Party during the period of 1990-2013? - Given that party convergence has occurred, what possible problems can this entail from a democratic perspective? The methodological approach of this study is based on a qualitative comparative text analysis of ideological character. The material that has been studied is the party´s respective idea programs from 1990, 2001 and 2013. This is done in order to investigate whether an ideological convergence has occurred between the parties. The main ideologies that have been analyzed are liberalism, neoliberalism, socialism and democratic socialism. Together with convergence, these constitute the theoretical framework. The study concludes that ideological convergence seems to have occurred between the parties. The study also argues that party convergence between traditional competing parties can lead to a democratic problem, especially in representative democracies such as Sweden. If parties that, from a historical perspective, are seen as opponents to each other converge, this can lead to confusion for the voters and the trust in the political parties risks being damaged.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:du-30507 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Eriksson, Martin |
| Publisher | Högskolan Dalarna, Statsvetenskap |
| 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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