The Party Truce - A Social Drama with Ritual Elements

Abstract

A recurring phenomenon in Swedish domestic politics is the party truce (“borgfreden”), when political parties, against the background of a national crisis – e.g. war, the outbreak of a pandemic, or the murder of a politician – temporarily cancel all political controversies and gather behind a united front. The party truce is rhetorically interesting since it compels politicians to adjust their political personas, and partly redefines the norms of political communication, while at the same time political conflict remains an undercurrent. Through the combination of political consensus culture, the role-taking of politicians, and the latency of political conflict, the party truce can be understood as a social drama containing ritual elements, where the communicative strategies of politicians become especially interesting. In the following article, a few examples are given of how Swedish political rhetoric has been shaped during periods of truces from the outbreak of World War I until today. One important conclusion is that the party truce can be understood as a process of ritual victimization, one of whose functions is to maintain the dimension of conflict in domestic politics.