Societal security and threats to democracy

In 2002, 13 countries around the world were classified as autocratizing, while in 2022 the figure had reached 42. This implies that threats to democracy is one of the most urgent societal security issues in democracies.

Indeed, in Sweden, there has been a remarkable increase in media references to threats to democracy since 2000 and following the 2022 election, scholars debated the risk of autocratization.

Such debates suggest that the process through which potential threats are either accepted as actual threats or dismissed is political and characterized by epistemic uncertainty.

This project’s main research question is: How do actors involved in societal debates over threats to democracy determine whether particular acts or actors constitute threats to democracy, given the political and uncertain character of this endeavor?

In the project’s first phase, we will analyze the Swedish debate over threats to democracy, to establish how specific issues come to be accepted as threats while others do not. In the second phase, we will analyze what extraordinary measures are adopted to deal with threats.

In the third phase, we will conduct semi-structured interviews with actors who have analyzed and debated threats to democracy in Sweden, such as researchers, journalists, politicians and security professionals.

The purpose of the interviews is to establish how these actors deal with epistemic uncertainty and determine whether specific acts or actors are indeed threats to democracy.