Centerpartiet  fallet med mitten : En rationalistisk motivanalys av Centerpartiets vägval iregeringsfrågan 2018 och 2022

The Center Party’s election results in 2022 was a great loss in comparison to the previous election. A distinguishing difference was the Center Party’s attitude to and choice of coalition partner where they 2018 proclaimed the Social Democrats to one of its main contenders along with the Sweden Democrats for to in the coming election express a will to partake in the same government as the Social Democrats, even though many party members and voters indicated that it wasn’t something they would prefer. This study therefore aims to explain the change in attitude by investigating underlying motives based on Gunnar Sjöblom’s rational theory about parties as strategic actors acting on three arenas: the internal arena, the electoral arena and the parliamentary arena. The arenas have different objectives and the motives are predefined based on these arenas to consist of reaching party cohesion, vote maximization and parliamentary power. Motive analysis is the method which is used to analyze the empirical material which is then analyzed in relation to the arena theories. The result shows that in similarity with previous research, a single motive cannot itself explain a party’s behaviour, however the motive indicators together with the party’s actions that the parliamentary arena’s motive showed to weigh heavier than the other motives