Political Socialization Studies in Scandinavia

Abstract

From the middle of the 1960s to the middle of the 1970s there was great interest in the field of political socialization in Scandinavia as well as elsewhere in the international political science community. After this period of rapid advance, the interest in the subject stalled considerably. Instead of directly trying to explain why, this paper presents (1) a brief sketch of approach developments and (2) an illustration of the fruitfulness of political socialization research by analysing some new empirical data on children's and adults' reactions in connection with the assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. Following the murder of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, Professor Roberta S. Sigel carried out a study of children's reactions to the President's death. Despite that there are more than 20 years between the two assassinations, and that Swedish and US cultures differ greatly, the results from the two cases resemble each other in several respects.

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