Political opposition in crisis? : A comparative study of political opposition in Swedish EU affairs before and during the Covid-19 pandemic

In the last decades, the EU has faced several crises. These crises have been seen to also have implications on the state of democracy in the EU. While many studies on crises and their effects on democracy have focused on the EU integration and on the weaker democratic states in the Union, little is known of how crises affect the quality of democracy in stronger democratic states. Further, there is a remaining research gap on how political opposition in EU affairs is affected during crises. This thesis focuses on Sweden, one of the stronger democratic states in the Union, during one of the most extensive crises the EU has faced – the Covid-19 pandemic. Focusing on the element of political opposition, it adds new empirical evidence to examine the patterns of parliamentary political opposition in the Swedish European Affairs Committee during the period of the Covid-19 crisis, compared to ‘politics as usual’ consisting of the period of 1995–2016. The results show that the share of statements containing opposition in general was smaller during the crisis, and that the patterns of political opposition developed differently during the Covid-19 pandemic depending on the type of the statement, as well as on party type. These results contribute to a broader understanding on how the state of democracy and the patterns of political opposition can develop in EU affairs in a strong democracy during crisis.