The purpose of this study is to examine how knowledge is constructed in the current Swedish legislative process regarding the Tidö government's proposal of lowering the criminal age of responsibility. By analyzing how different discourses, positionings and expert knowledge is utilized by social actors in the legislative process, this study explores the efforts of legitimizing knowledge and the collective subject reality of the right-leaning politicians, interest organisations, the experts, the governmental reports investigator and the council of legislation. This is done by using the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD) research program to examine the referral responses concerning the official governmental report and the referrals for the proposal referred to the Council on Legislation for consideration. Further, the empirical material also consists of a commentary article from the leaders of the Tidö parties, the official governmental report, the governmental bill, motions and an interpellation from politicians in the Swedish Riksdag and press briefings held by the representatives from the Tidö parties, all regarding the lowering age of criminal responsibility.  

The findings demonstrate how symbolic tactics are used, and by whom, to legitimize the subjective reality of the collective speaker. Normative statements, articulations of conventional knowledge and knowledge claims are leveraged by the social actors to deauthorize their discursive counterparts statements and positions. By focusing not only on the actions of the government, this study shows how these tactics are not limited to an authoritative speaker and instead are utilized by all involved actors, in different ways.