In the recent five decades two trends have been especially evident for social democratic parties in general and the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) in particular; declining electoral support and a rightward movement on specifically economic issues. This thesis examines the main outlet for SAP ideological thought, party programs, using a discourse analysis in order to shed light on how this rightward shift has been constructed and communicated. The results show that SAP discourse has changed drastically on several aspects of foundational economic analysis, such as economic democracy, market economy and capitalism. At the same time the overarching goals of the party, as expressed in the party programs, have stayed reasonably similar. This suggests a tension between more traditionally social democratic overarching values and underlying, neoliberally influenced analysis and problem description. Building on the theoretical framework of neoliberal rationality, the thesis offers a complementary way of understanding neoliberal influence on the party, not only as something that can be traced in practical policies, but in the way that core ideological values are depoliticized and stripped of their underlying, traditional ideological projects. If one supposes that electoral support is dependent on ideological coherence, this might also offer a clue to why the party is consistently losing voters.
Hannah Dässman (Wed,) studied this question.