Äldres intresserepresentation i svensk politik - en kvalitativ textanalys

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether older people may have political representation of interests in Swedish politics. The problem formulation is in the reasoning of democratic inclusion of citizens. The relevance to conduct such a study is about our communities in the future will contain more elderly people. Then it becomes even more important to the elderly as a group can be considered to be politically represented and achieve full citizenship. Empirical material will be collected from three different pensioner organizations via a qualitative text analysis. The material consists of different types of programs and articles. The empirical data from pensioner organizations will then be compared with empirical data from the public policy of the Swedish Parliament. This is meant to provide a basis to be able to discern whether older people are represented in the Swedish democracy. Three theoretical framework is applied in the study to facilitate the analysis. The three theories are ageism, political representation and interest groups relations to the politics. My study suggests that seniors get a relatively hearing for their interests in matters relating to economics and social care as well as in issues related to health care. However, the elderly has more difficult to get political attention on issues related to their living situation as well as their democratic participation and continued presence in the community production. On a general level, this study argues that we need to change the attitude of older people continued presence in the community and that among other things requires a democratic inclusion via the political representation of interests.