Ron DeSantis utbildningspolitik : Analys av de konservativa idéerna bakom politiken

Sammanfattning: Ron DeSantis has become one of the most important and debated American politicians in recent years largely because of his education policies. This thesis aims to study the existence of conservatism in his laws Stop WOKE Act, Parental Rights in Education Act, and HB 1069 with research questions formulated to study the laws’ conservative idea structures and their similarities and differences. Heywood’s (2021) definition of conservatism lays the ground for the thesis, but it is primarily guided by Marietta’s (2012) four types of American conservatism used to distinguish different conservative types. The method used is a qualitative idea analysis directed by ideal types and a set scale used for a qualitative assessment, which is applied to a material consisting of official legal texts.  The analysis shows that all three laws studied have a Social Conservative and Culture Conservative idea structure. National Defense Conservatism and Economic Conservatism are also expressed, but only in the Stop WOKE Act, while the Parental Rights in Education Act and HB 1069 have similar conservative idea structures. Culture Conservative ideas mainly characterize DeSantis' education policy overall and are the main basis for the debate and criticism surrounding it.