Samenvatting

Since Sweden joined the European Union in 1995, the nature of its political decisionmaking
processes have changed. Instead of creating laws purely based on the mandate
of Swedish citizens, a portion of Sweden’s national legislation is now created taking the
input of the 27 other EU Member States into account. Undoubtedly, this has changed the
amount of influence Swedish voters have on Swedish national legislation.
Using data produced from desk research of print and online literature, this dissertation
attempted to determine how Sweden’s accession to the EU has affected the amount of
influence its voters have on national legislation. For the sake of brevity, focus was placed
on the EU’s main institutions and the legislative processes at the national and European
level.
Large methodological challenges were encountered in identifying practical influence,
partially due to the limitations of the relevant pre-existing research, which meant that a
sufficiently precise and complete answer about the change in voters’ influence could not
be given. However, it became clear that at least 30% of Swedish national legislation is
now directly affected by EU decisions, and that the link between voters and this portion of
national legislation is less direct than with purely national legislation. Out of the several
methods of voter influence that are available, national elections are the most effective
method for both types of legislation.
Overall, Sweden’s EU accession has decreased the accountability of decision-makers by
making their link to the voters less direct, while voters’ understanding of their own
influence has been made smaller because of the failure of the Swedish media and
political parties to explain EU decision-making. As a result, the conditions for voter
influence have deteriorated. However, without further research, it is not possible to
determine whether voter influence itself has also deteriorated.