När EU togs till folkhemsförsvaret - Översättningen av europeiska normer till Försvarsmakten

The Swedish Armed Forces have gone through a remarkable change. From being an organisation built on the notion of countering a Soviet invasion it has evolved to focusing on small, multilateral rapid reaction capabilities to be used within the framework of the European security and defence policy, ESDP. This thesis regards the change as a process of Europeanisation. Drawing from sociological and historical institutionalism, it is shown that the Swedish Armed Forces in the post-cold war context was path dependent and unwilling to redefine its historical raison d?être. The origin of the ESDP Europeanised the national defence policy, whereas the bureaucracy was still unwilling to translate the new structural norms. By 2003, however, the EU went operational and the Swedish military leadership began to translate the now formalized European norms in what is regarded as a critical juncture. The main findings are that a need to reform the organisation and the search for a new raison d?être are the driving forces behind the Europeanisation, and that the change to a large extent can be assigned to agency, that is, the military leadership