SWEDISH REACTION TO THE ASSASSINATION OF THE SWEDISH PRIME-MINISTER PALME,OLOF

Sweden's Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot dead, on a street in centr al Stockholm, on his way home from the cinema late in the evening of 2 8 February 1986. The Swedish public reacted with grief and horror. The emotional reactions to Prime Minister Palme's assassination were grea ter than expected. However, placed in an international context they ar e, nevertheless, relatively weak. In the analysis, the situation six a nd four years after the assassination will be compared with the situat ion three weeks after the event. The focus is on: what role, if any, t he assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme has played in the way in which Swedes and immigrants express their views on a number of import ant issues related to the murder and what effect, if any, it might hav e on the Swedish political culture and on the trust of the Swedes in t he political and judicial system. The final argument that can be prese nted from this study of the connection between exposure to a dramatic event, such as the murder of a prime minister, and children's and adul ts' political values, is that the emotional effect of the assassinatio n fades away fairly quickly and is replaced by a much more vague and u nclear structural effect related to the total impact of the assassinat ion seen as a dramatic event of national importance. This kind of stru ctural effect on the political culture in a country can never be clear ly described and analysed for the simple reason that an effect of this magnitude is almost impossible to control and isolate from other expe riences.