THE POLITICS OF FOREIGN POLICY CHANGE

The 1990s has been characterized by profound changes in world affairs. While numerous states have chosen to redirect their foreign policy orientations, political scientists have been slow to study how such processes take place. Drawing on the limited earlier research that does exist in this field, this study presents an alternative explanatory model of foreign policy change, arguing that a new policy is adopted when changes in fundamental structural conditions coincide with strategic political agency, and a crisis of some kind. The model is applied to the Swedish government’s decision in October 1990 to restructure its relationship to the West European integra-tion process and advocate an application for EC membership. As such it constitutes the first in-depth study of what is perhaps the most important political decision in Swedish postwar history. The author provides a thorough examination of the prevailing political and economic conditions, as well as an insightful analysis of the government’s internal decision-making process, emphasizing in particular the strategic behavior of Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson