Med makten som insats: den franska regeringskrisen 2024 och Macron som risktagande beslutsfattare : En kvalitativ innehållsanalys med utgångspunkt i prospektteori och inramning

Sammanfattning

On the 9th of June 2024, French President Macron unexpectedly called a snap parliamentary election in a televised announcement after suffering a defeat at the hands of the National Rally in the European parliamentary elections. According to analysts, this decision was predicted to risk the entirety of Macron’s power in the national assembly. The study relates to investigating decision-making and political risk-taking, which could be considered going beyond the explanations provided by rational decision theory. The purpose of this thesis is to use the theoretical framework of prospect theory and framing trying to understand why Macron made this risky decision. The gap that this case will fill lies in its recent nature, along with the application of prospect theory within the field of political science which is relatively recent and has previously mainly been applied on American cases. The study uses the methodological framework of a qualitative content analysis. It is applied to the empirical material of Macron’s speeches as well as newspaper articles analyzing the decision. It finds that Macron perceived the reference point in French politics as difficult, but that he was still able to continue pursuing his policies. The loss in the European Parliament elections, however, could be interpreted as a significant deterioration of the status quo, which interprets into a loss domain. Prospect theory holds that decision-makers become more risk-seeking when facing losses, which is why Macron can be considered to have taken the risky decision to call a snap election as the only possible decision alternative. He framed the consequences as predominantly positive, as opposed to analysts who instead predicted more negative outcomes. The conclusion is that prospect theory can be considered to have an overall good explanatory value in this specific case.