Attitudes and Adaptation Towards the EU : A Case Study of the Swedish Social Democratic Party and the Moderate Party

Abstract: This study focuses upon the adaptation of the Swedish Social Democratic Party and Moderate Party towards the European Union. Adaptation is explored by examining attitudes the political parties have on different issues related to the EU. In other words it is assumed that adaptation is dependent on attitudes, amongst other things, and the attitudes are examined by studying officially expressed opinions by the parties in party programmes and in parliamentary protocols. By expanding the study to three years possible alterations in the attitudes can be detected and something can be said on the level of adaptation the parties show towards the EU in each research question. The questions are (1) Should Sweden take an active part in developing the European integration process?, (2) Is it believed that participation in international collaboration provides output benefits that the nation state no longer can provide?, (3) Is pooling of sovereignty problematic?, (4) Is military non-alignment important for Sweden? and (5) Is it important that Sweden participates in a common European security policy? The three years of research are 1995, 2006 and the first half of 2010. Two of the questions are developed by utilising the fusion perspective, that is a part of the fusion approach, which is also the theoretical framework of this study. The findings of this study show that both the Social Democratic Party and the Moderate Party experience attitudinal alterations in almost all the questions investigated. This causes some shifts in their level of adaption towards the European Union. Furthermore the results show that the Social Democratic Party and the Moderate Party are adapted towards the Union in most of the years researched.