Utgör GATS ett hot mot folkbiblioteket? En idé- och ideologianalys av den svenska debatten.
In 1995, the World Trade Organization WTO was established. Today WTO has nearly 150 member countries, accounting for over 97 percent of the world trade. WTO has a number of agreements and one of them is the General Agreement on Trade in Services GATS. GATS control the service sector, and the public library is a small part of this sector. The purpose of this study is to examine the Swedish debate about GATSs possibility to affect the public library. In this study the debaters and the content of the debate are introduced. The majority of the debaters the critics consider that GATS is a threat to the public libraries but a minority of the debaters the advocates claim that there is no such threat. The critics mean that there is a risk that GATS is leads to privatisation of the public library and if that happens, the democratic function of the library will be destroyed. The advocates are convinced that publicly provided services aren't included in the agreement and that means that the library isn't going to be affected. In this study I also analyse which ideology the debaters consider to be behind GATS. The critics connect GATS with neo- liberalism while the advocates connect the agreement with reform socialism. In the discussion chapter the relationship between neo-liberalism and the ideological identity of the public library is examined.