The purpose of this study is to understand how political parties behave and why they take the positions and make the decisions that they regarding a certain policy. The study examines three Swedish political parties, the Christian Democrats, the Liberals and the Centre party position or views on parochial schools (religious private schools). In order to understand these party's actions, an analysis with the help of two theories, the rational perspective-based Policy, Office or Votes and New institutional theory, whereby party's action are governed by the norms their norms (ideology). In my findings I found that all the parties acted the way they did to obtain Policy, Office or Votes. The New institutional theory also gave explanations that the Christian Democrats acted in accordance with their ideology while the other two parties did not.