Den svenska monarkin - Ett försvarbart statsskick En normativ analys av den svenska monarkin och en innehållsanalys av tidningsartiklar om Bruneiaffären

Sammanfattning: Although Sweden has democracy implemented in its Constitution, because of being a monarchy, it has a non-elected Head of State. The purpose of this thesis is on the one hand to show if it is possible to normatively legitimate the Swedish monarchy and on the other hand to display if and how the three biggest Swedish newspapers Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter and Expressen justify monarchy by making a content-oriented analysis of their coverage of King Carl XVI Gustaf's political statement during his state visit in Brunei 2004. By using consequentialism and deontology as perspectives I will show that it overall is not possible to normatively justify the Swedish monarchy compared to a Swedish republic with an elected Head of State. This is mainly because democracy is implemented in the Swedish Constitution. In all three newspapers there is only little debate on the Constitution. Most commonly journalists criticize the King's statement but not monarchy as an institution. Yet those journalists who argue for or against monarchy mostly do so by using consequensialistic argumentation. The thesis concludes by pointing out the correlation between the lack of debate in the newspapers and the constant high support of the monarchy by the Swedish people.