A Law and Order Election - Sweden 2022

Glenn Svedin, Mid Sweden University

The 2022 Parliamentary election in Sweden primarily focused on "law and order". Harsher enforcement and penalties as ways to reduce crime were vote-winning concepts and put a conservative coalition in government in collaboration with the far-right. The many gang shootings came to the fore in the election debate, and issues of immigration and integration were related to these. As a result, the election campaign and news coverage were dominated by alarmist messages, with accompanying proposals for a stricter crackdown on serious gang-related violent and drug-related crime. The three largest parties, the Social Democrats, the Sweden Democrats, and the Moderates, were, according to several researchers who, early after the election, reviewed their criminal policy plans and proposed measures, essentially agreed on the importance of pushing back suburban gangs with above all repressive measures, such as more police, increased surveillance, and more extended imprisonment. This paper aims to comparatively analyze the criminal policy of the Swedish parliamentary parties ahead of the election in Sweden in autumn 2022. Therefore, the study is limited to dissecting the representations of crime and the proposed solutions from the political parties from the start of the election campaign in June to the election on September 11. The study is done through discourse analysis. Daily press and election manifestos are used as source material.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 194. Legal Claims to Legitimacy, Expertise, and Truth