Bankkrisen, medierna och politiken. Offentliga tolkningar och reaktioner på 90-talets bankkris The Swedish Banking Crisis, the Media and Policy. Public Interpretations and Reactions to the Banking Crisis in the 1990s

Sammanfattning: This dissertation is a case srudy of the Swedish banking crisis in the early 1990s. It also treats general theoretical questions of the relation berween the economy and society. The aim of the srudy is ro give an account of interpretations of the banking crisis in public discourse, and of the societal attempts to steer the credit market by way of public opinion, political-administrative and legal means. The dissertation is divided inro rwo parts, corresponding ro the rwo aims. The focus of the first part is on interpretive disagreements over crisis-definitions, causal explanations and policy-packages. The account is based on a compurer-aided qualitative analysis of342 edirorials/articles published during 1990-1995, supplemented with secondary sources. The main conclusion is that five competing interpretive packages dominated the public debate. In the beginning the scope of the crisis and the critique against the banks were rejected in a downgradingpackage and a defencepackage, advocated by the aurhorities, experts and the banks. These packages were later replaced by a market-critical fairness/ moralpackage and rwo variants of a market-advocating efficiency/functionalpackage. Advocates of the former were acrors from the politicalleft, framing problems, causal eXplanations, and policy recommendations in resonance with traditional social democratic policy and radical political economy. Behind the larrer srood the political centre-right politicians/ edirors, the banks, and economists, framing their interpretations in resonance with neoclassical economics and political neoliberalism. The focus of the second part is on the reactions ro the crisis among the public and the cusromers, and within the administrative, legal and political systems. The analysis is based on media documents, survey data, official reports and commirree reports from the Swedish parliament. In conclusion, the reactions in the political system corresponded to the antagonisms of the debate, with the centre-right parties advocating a pro-market policy in conflict with a more interventionist stance from the radicalleft and green parties, and with the social democrats in the middle. The public reaction comprised a loss of confidence and an increase in consumer organisation, and the media representations of public opinion were articulated mainly through the market-critical stance with strong political and moral indignation due ro a lack of adequate administrative and legal sanctions against the banks. The analysis also confirmed that the legal processes met with considerable difficulties, which gave rise ro "legal-offensive" claims from politicians and aurhorities. These were met, however, by more "defensive" claims from the official commission investigating the legal framework of the credit market, advocating a system of enforced and supervised self-regulation. A central conclusion was that the conflicts concerned not only the political dimension leftright, but also the opposition berween system-inregrative functional perspectives and those represenring claims based on the social-integrative principles of the "life world" (morals and solidarity).