Social democrats, liberal conservatives or just friends of the EU? : A study of ideolory and conflict inSwedish parliamentary debates about the EU

National debates on European Union politics have long been viewed as a consensus-oriented activity. This applies especially to big mainstream parties, both to the center-left and the center-right. The perceived lack of ideological conflict over European issues is connected to the problem of the democratic deficit, and has led scholars to call for deeper politicization. Consequently, the aim of this study is to describe the presence of classical ideologies and ideological conflict in Swedish EU debate. This is done by analyzing statements from two major parties, the Social Democratic Party (Socialdemokraterna) and the Moderate Party (Moderaterna), in chamber debates in the Swedish parliament during the parliamentary year 2018/19. A qualitative ideational analysis is performed by systematically categorizing the ideological content based on ideal types. The results show that although ideological arguments and left-right conflict did occur, they were not common in the debates as a whole. Ideological conflict was most pronounced in debates on the EU’s social dimension and migration policy, while the economic issue area was characterized by liberal consensus. It is also argued that the Social Democratic Party faces greater challenges in transferring their ideology to the EU level. Moreover, I discuss how the results relate to previous research and the issue of the democratic deficit