As pointed out by the political scientist Josef Uscinski conspiracy theories are about power, who has power and what they do with it when no one sees (Uscinski 2019, 48). Political scientists paid scant attention to conspiracy theories for a long time, though, due to the disciplinary focus on rational choice theory making it hard to accept voters as non-rational actors (Butter and Knight 2019, 37). This has changed in recent years though, to the extent that conspiracy theories can be called a fashionable subject for research, akin to populism and right-wing radicalism. The research has been inspired by empirical developments in the US (especially the presidency of Donald Trump 2016-2020) and US research methods and approaches often dominate, for instance when it comes to operationalizing and measurement of conspiracy theories. This paper does two things. First, it seeks to give an overview of what we know about conspiracy theories in the national context of Sweden and internationally, based on a bibliometric and thematic analysis of 1100 abstracts. Secondly, the paper uses a political science perspective to discuss a pilot project to translate and use the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale (Brotherton et al 2013) at Halmstad University. Specific focus is put on connotations to the term “government” and how translation may impact answers in Swedish.