Mittuniversitetet

This study aims to investigate what type of view politicians have on representation. This in the context of political mavericks, which in this study is explained with a popularly elected politician who leaves his party but chooses to stay in the elected assembly. The study looks at the political debate in the Swedish media to get an answer to its question. The image of the political maverick is a complex phenomenon in Sweden and that they shift both in the social debate and in the political debate. By studying the political debate, it can help to get an overall idea of how politicians view political mavericks and thus guide society's perception of the phenomenon. Thus, the discussion and debate that occurs about political mavericks actions of the political mandate can be reduced. The study is based on a qualitative ideal type analysis based on selected articles dealing with political mavericks. The ideal types are created based on Sjölin's representation theory, which includes three ideas about how to interpret the political mandates. The analysis is based on looking to see if the different ideal types appears in the material and if there is any ideal type that is argued for more than others. The result shows that one of the three ideal types seems to occur to a greater extent in comparison to the other two. The view of the political will that characterizes the political debate aims at an individualistic view of the role of representation where the politician in question makes his own decisions based on his moral conviction in relation to the public good. The analysis shows a complexity that it’s possible to interpret the material in different ways and the different ideal types can be placed in more of the same material. Deficiencies in the material are also discovered as a large part of the articles cannot be used due to irrelevant data. This affects the analysis in the sense that it is not as comprehensive, and the result can therefore be considered vague. The conclusions from this study are that there are more arguments for a certain view of the political mandate in political debate, but that the result is not completely clear. There is also a large research gap in the research on the phenomenon of political mavericks and more studies on the subject would be needed to be able to draw firm conclusions that are of importance in order to contribute to a greater impact.