Mid Sweden University

The general aim of this masters thesis is to analyze and compare Terry Cook's och John Ridener's theories of historical archival paradigms with empirical material taken from a Swedish archival context, in order to test the general explanatory value of the theories. The selected source material consists of three politically commissioned archival investigations from the period 1988-2019. Two research questions are formulated. The first question is: How do central problem formulations and proposed solutions differ from each other in the three commissioned archival investigations from the period 1988-2019? The second question is: How do central problem formulations and proposed solutions in the three commissioned archival investigations relate to Terry Cook's and John Ridener's theories about different archival paradigms during the same period? The method of investigation is WPR-analysis, which focuses on how political solution proposals relate to conceptualized problems in particular societal spheres. Two conclusions are presented. The first conclusion is that it is possible to trace a continuity between problem formulations and proposed solutions in the three commissioned investigations, where similarities are generally more common than differences. The second conclusion is that the relationship between central problem formulations and proposed solutions in the commissioned investigations from 1988-2019 and the theories of paradigmatic tendencies during the same period is rather weak, considering that characteristic features of chronologically relevant paradigm periods in both Cook's and Ridener's theories do not correspond clearly with the source material. The results thus demonstrate that the explanatory value of the theories can be questioned.