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Title: "Public safety – The main freedom question of our time? A discourse analysis of the Swedish Moderate Party’s election manifesto 2022" The present study aims to explore the Moderate Party’s (Moderaterna) construction of public safety (trygghet) during the Swedish election campaign 2022. Mainly, the topic of choice is motivated by an interest in how a political party, whose election results were successful, navigated the mediatized politics and approached policy issues particularly important to the voters. The study's specific focus on trygghet is in view of the fact that the word is closely knit to political domains like “law and order”, which to a high extent dominated the political debate during the Swedish election 2022. The purpose of this study was achieved by examining Moderaternas election manifesto for 2022, as it holds the party’s collected ideological viewpoints and simultaneously serves as a primary outlet for media coverage on the political subjects of concern. Particularly we found it interesting to examine how the meaning of trygghet is established in response to insecurity (otrygghet) as its negative counterpart, and how Moderaternas description of the Swedish political and societal conditions in relation to trygghet contributes to shape peoples’ perceptions of their social environment. After initially identifying the political contexts in which trygghet is constructed as especially necessary in the manifesto, the theoretical and methodological framework allowed us to further examine how Moderaterna shapes the idea of trygghet, occasionally even beyond what may be considered the traditional understanding of the word. This study points out how Moderaterna largely motivates societies need for trygghet by pointing out an alleged increased crime rate in Sweden, as well as how the actors which are constructed as threatening to the public safety is consequently constructed as external from the community that is argued for. We claim that Moderaterna implicitly presents the desired community as constituted by a specific set of values, to a high degree associated with their ‘orderly’ politics. The construction of community in opposition to threaths is somewhat problematized, as we highlight how the reproduction of discourses with polarizing characteristics could potentially have adverse implications on societal level. Throughout the analysis, each theme is approached with a methodological perspective which allows us to see how Moderaternas legitimization of their politics in response to the increased need for trygghet, can be seen as a mode of exerting power. |
