Från militär alliansfrihet till Nato-ansökan : Socialdemokraternas legitimering av en förändrad Nato-position: en kvalitativinnehållsanalys av åren 2008–2022

Sammanfattning

This study examines how Sweden's Social Democratic Party linguistically legitimized and constructed the transition from military non-alignment to an application for NATO membership. The Swedish security policy doctrine has been characterized by neutrality and military non-alignment for most of the post-war period, a position that the Social Democrats not only defended for a long time, but also actively shaped as a part of the party's political identity. Against this background, the study aims to examine whether the 2022 NATO Application can be seen as an abrupt rupture, or as an outcome of a gradual transformation. The analysis covers the period from 2008 to 2022 and focuses on three temporal junctures: 2008-2010, 2014-2015 and 2022. Based on Gunnar Sjöblom's theory of parties' strategic actions in three arenas, the internal arena, the electoral arena and the parliamentary arena, a qualitative content analysis with elements of narrative analysis is conducted drawing on official political documents and public statements. Particular emphasis is placed on how threat perceptions, responsibility and discourses of continuity and change are linguistically articulated over time. The study's results show that the Social Democrats' legitimization strategies evolved gradually during the period, with military non-alignement being reinterpreted rather than abandoned. Until 2022, the discourse was characterized by an emphasis on freedom of action, international cooperation and an expanded conception of security policy responsibility, which facilitated a discursive bridge to the NATO application following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The 2022 shift thus does not appear as an isolated rupture, but rather as a politically feasible decision within the framework of an ongoing discursive repositioning. The study contributes to an understanding of how established parties can reconfigure long-standing security policy identities through incremental legitimation, rather than ideological breaks. It demonstrates how internal party norms and shifts in public opinion interact to enable a historic reorientation in national security policy.