Civil–Military Control over the Swedish Military Profession

Abstract

Civil–military relations and the autonomy of the military profession in Sweden have varied over time depending on the perceived level of external threats. In this article, we set out to conduct an analysis of Swedish civil–military relations over a period of more than twenty-five years from 1984 to 2011. Our analysis is made from the perspective of civil–military control of (1) the military officer rank system and (2) the professional officer education system, for all three services. The analysis is based on Samuel Huntington’s and Morris Janowitz’s theoretical discussion of “objective” and “subjective” civilian control over the military and will give answers on how the Swedish armed forces have been effected by objective and subjective civilian control during the late Cold War era and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The findings of this study confirm the assumption that civil–military relations vary over time because of perceived external threats but also because of new threats, new tasks, and increased globalization and cooperation in multinational international operations.