The shift to the right: Neo‐liberalism in argumentation and language in the Swedish public debate since 1969

In this article, a study is presented of the ideological shift to the right that took place in the Swedish elite‐dominated public debate between 1969 and 1989. The first aim of the article is to present the results of a number of analyses of the shift. Two questions guided the analyses: first, what was the ideological content of this swing to the right? Second, how comprehensive was it? The results indicate that the shift could best be described as a neo‐liberalization of the debate, and that conservative ideas were still virtually absent from the arenas of public debate in the late 1980s. The comprehensiveness of the shift was studied (a) as the proportion of neo‐liberal ideas put forward as explicit statements in the debate arenas, and (b) as influence on the normative and descriptive use of political terms such as the Swedish words for “democracy”, “justice” and “equality”. The results showed a ‘neo‐liberalization’ of the usage of some of the terms. The second aim of the article is to suggest, by example, certain methods for the analysis of ideological change and to evaluate those methods.