The Tidö Agreement : A Poststructural Analysis

Sammanfattning: The area of interest for this study is contemporary right-wing political discourse in Sweden, exemplified by the written coalition agreement called “the Tidö agreement”, struck between the Sweden Democrats, the Moderate Party, the Christian Democrats and the Liberal Party shortly after the 2022 elections. This deal enabled Moderate Party leader Ulf Kristersson to form a government. The Tidö agreement contains a large number of policy points that the Kristersson government is expected to implement to retain its parliamentary support. The four-party coalition behind the Tidö agreement is historically unique. To better understand the ideas of this coalition, this study analyses the Tidö agreement using Foucauldian discourse analysis and the WPR (What’s the problem represented to be?) approach to answer the research question: In what ways does the Tidö agreement representmajor political “problems”? The study identifies several problem representations in the Tidö agreement’s chapters and discusses genealogies, presuppositions, rationales, and argumentation techniques. The study finds stylistic consistency in problematisations across several policy areas, with a preference for rule-making and individualisation of responsibility. The main implication of this study is to provide several promising openings for further research.