De politiska partierna och författningen

• The purpose of this article is to study how Sweden’’s political parties handled the processof constitutional review from 2004-2008. In particular the analysis examines howparties choose between their office-seeking, policy-seeking and vote-seeking goalsand the desire to maintain intra party agreement. Three expectations are identified: (a)parties’’ different strategic situations lead them to advocate different long-term goals;(b) different party levels will take different stands in order to increase their influencevis-a-vis other levels; (c) party leaderships will try to increase their freedom to negotiatewith others by avoiding extensive intra party debates or decisions. The study isbased on 30 interviews with representatives closely involved in the constitutional-reformprocess. The conclusion is that parties have self-interested goals as regards thequestion of how the political game should be regulated. The conflict between differentintra-party levels is also obvious. However, due to party members’’ disinterest inthe constitutional review, party leaders did not need to adopt a variety of strategies toavoid a large scale intra-party debate. It was enough for them to claim that the resultingcompromise was actually something of a victory for each party.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap -- Statsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science -- Political Science (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Författningsfrågor

politiska partier

statskunskap

political science

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)