De nya Moderaterna : Förnyelse eller 'samma gamla visa'

The purpose of this thesis was to explore how the ideological self-image of the biggest Swedish governmental party, Moderaterna, has developed between 1993 and 2011. The second purpose was to compare this development on a fundamental ideological level, with development on the operative ideological level. This was to be made by qualitative analysis of the party’s ideological programs and election manifestos. Hopefully this would expose a pattern of the party’s ideological development. The findings of this thesis however, suggested that while the ideology on the fundamental level had radically changed, the ideology on the operative level has been characterized by continuity. The self-image changed from being purely oppositional to ‘state-bearing’, while the ideological positioning as a right-wing modernistic party remained pretty much the same