I krisens hetta – ideologi eller struktur? : En jämförelse av riksdagspartiers idéer om finanspolitiken vid tre finanskriser

Sammanfattning

Since the 1990s, Swedish fiscal policy has become institutionalized, whileseveral financial crises have occurred, putting its ability to act to the test.Scholar Hibbs argues that the ideology and voter base of political partiesgovern fiscal policy, while scholar Cusack believes that ideology has becomeless important as party political conflicts in fiscal policy are structurallylimited by international/national restrictions. The research problem istherefore to examine the extent to which the Left Party, Social Democrats,Center Party, Liberals, Moderates, and Christian Democrats' ideas aboutfiscal policy during the financial crises in Sweden 1990–94, 2007–10, andthe Covid-19 pandemic in 2020–21 have been characterized by ideologicallydriven policy or structurally limited policy. This will be studied through ananalysis of political ideas during the Swedish Parliament’s budget debatesduring the crises. The results showed that the Left Party usually had anideologically driven policy during all crises, while the other parties variedmore, but more often had structurally limited policy during the later crises.The conclusions are that parties in government have more structurally limitedpolicies today and find it tougher to express their ideology due tointernational/national constraints.