Through a discourse analysis of French and Swedish legislative debates from 1968 to 2017, the author of this article examines how actors challenge and reinforce dominant ideas about the link between nationality and political rights. The author argues that the broader political culture influences which discursive strategies – or ‘frames’ – are more likely to structure parliamentary debates in different national contexts. However, the analysis also shows that legislators sometimes develop new discursive frames in which they reinterpret dominant norms to make them consistent with their views. Through this incremental process of reinterpretation and reformulation of dominant ideas, debates over non-citizen voting rights have chipped away at the link between nationality and political rights. These findings suggest that initiatives to enfranchise non-citizens trigger lower levels of conflict when they can be framed as a policy tool for immigrant integration rather than as a matter of popular sovereignty.

Agustín Goenaga, Defending Popular Sovereignty: Discursive Conflict in French and Swedish Parliamentary Debates on Immigrant Voting Rights (1968-2017), Citizenship Studies, 2019.