As the first country in the world, Sweden introduced its Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) in 2014. The article investigates how Sweden's FFP is communicated in quality newspapers in 11 EU Member States (2014–2020). It focuses on whether the coverage of FFP signals the adoption of media logic or political logic, and whether the newspapers' images of FFP serve to strengthen or counteract the existing tendencies on gender equality in the different Member States. The findings demonstrate that reports on FFP are heavily influenced by media logic. They give priority to political conflicts and focus on short-term events and persons rather than long-term consequences and content of the policy. FFP is least reported and explained in Member States with lower levels of gender equality, which can serve to strengthen existing views. In more gender-equal Member States, the reports on FFP are more frequent and elaborate, especially in the left-leaning newspapers.
Stratagems adopted by democratic leaders to try to insinuate, or anchor, a preferred course of action into the larger collective will have a variety of repercussions. Beyond the apparent success of the venture itself, the long-term integrity of the democratic fabric may be at stake if simmering rancour and discontent is left unheeded. These questions would seem particularly pertinent when studying the national side of the evolution of the European Union. The periodic shunting of competencies to European institutions is highly complex, so much so that popular legitimacy for the momentous changes is in effect something of an ephemeral commodity. The referendum, with its unique potential to determine the prevailing vox populi, has from time to time been employed to offset these problems, and lend continued credence to the relinquishment of sovereign power. The political entities that will be the powerhouses in this contest for the hearts and minds of the public are, inevitably, national political parties. They, too, are likely to pay whatever political price will be exacted as a consequence of this unusual form of battle – including the exposition and potential widening of internal rifts. Noticing a dearth of investigative tools that can help us unravel these processes, the author develops a structured framework of analysis specifically designed to "parse" strategic or tactical action, with the aim to gauge likely party-democratic fallout. She makes a first-level distinction between "convincing" strategies (basically conceptualised as compatible with deli¬berative-democratic tenets), and "persuading" strategies (closely associated with a subset of negotiation theory principles focusing on strategic action). While both strategies may lead to the desired short-term outcome – where leadership preferences are duly propagated – a convince/persuade analysis is shown to yield improved understanding of the concomitant, longer-term effects. The author studies the Swedish Social Democratic Party's internal handling of the debates leading up to two pivotal referenda – the EU membership referendum of 1994, and the EMU referendum of 2003. Reviewing a wealth of secondary sources and conducting more than 40 interviews with high-level party officials and other centrally positioned actors (representing both sides of the two issue divides), she is provided with a unique material, which is parsed through the framework (which at this point also proves to be a sound analytical instrument). The study is primarily qualitative in nature, but an entire chapter is devoted to a complementing quantitative analysis where an existing Discourse Quality Index (DQI) is used to determine the level of deliberation prevalent in four party congresses (two preceding the EU referendum; two preceding the EMU referendum). One "convince" sub-dimension, respect, proved to be the one most easily affected by external events, not to mention deadline imposed by the referendum. The qualitative analysis revealed a generally higher level of justification (another "convince" sub-dimension) in the EMU case than in the EU case, and the reverse was true for the respect dimension. In both instances, the party leadership acted to pacify [persuade] the debate, notably by prohibiting government ministers from being active in the respective no-campaigns. A preliminary hypothesis that "deliberative space" shrinks as the final deadline looms was in part corroborated, as turned out to be valid for the respect dimension.
Few empirical studies have investigated career‐related incentives for party membership, including for young party members. Through the lens of rational choice, we ask what career‐related incentives young and active party members consider when calculating costs and benefits of party membership. We argue for a broad understanding of career‐related incentives, including careers outside party politics. The study is based on in‐depth interviews with 25 young party members in Sweden. Our main empirical finding is that the interviewees experience a 'super‐dilemma': Although the young party members might consider a political career, they think it is important to leave the party if it departs from their perceived ideology. Hence, these young members must keep non‐political career options open. At the same time, many of the interviewees express concern that their party membership could negatively affect their non‐political career.
