Awakening the Giant? An in-depth case study of the presence of and contest over European issues during the Swedish national election cycle of 2022.

Sammanfattning: The Swedish national election of 2022 paved the way for potentially witnessing European issues being more prominent and contentious than ever before among the national parties. However, as the Member State has historically been characterised by its ambivalence towards the EU, there exist reasons to question this assumption. By drawing upon the context of the election, both before and after election day, this study sought to examine when and why European issues were present and contested in the Swedish national election cycle of 2022. Based on the theoretical notions of politicisation, the study regarded electoral and coalitional incentives as possible explanations. The study, which considered parties’ election materials, political debates, and speeches, used a mixed-method approach by analysing the content and relations of explicit statements on European issues. The analysis showed that the issues were more contentious after election day, although they were more prevalent before election day. Although the thesis could not acknowledge a depoliticisation of the EU, tendencies towards this emerged in the analysis. A suggestion for future research is therefore to continue investigating the topic, mainly because of democratic interests and the lack of research on the case.