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conscripted. Before, the principle was that Sweden’s defence capability was a function of the willingness in society to defend the country. Now, the defence capability is instead a function of whether the Armed Forces can recruit the most qualified and interested individuals in society.
These adjustments enforce the belief that it is possible to reduce the conscripted cohort without offsetting the goal of recruiting to the expeditionary units. That displacement followed conversion is visible by looking at the enlistment statistics, and especially at the share of servicemen who are tested and later enlisted. It falls from 51 percent in 1998, the year when Sydow first formalised his belief in conversion, to 24 percent in 2006, when the SAP loses the election to the centre-right alliance (NSA 1998; 2006). Although this reduction is staggering, it was met with a belief that Armed Forces would become more efficient and could do more with less.
Table 6.2 shows how military service between 1990 and 2009 shifts in its institutional logic. It should be observed that most of the policies that account for the 2009 outcome were put in place already in 2001, by the SAP-government.
Table 6.2: From institutional to occupational, 1990 to 2009
1990-2000 Yes No
Duty x
Universal x
Penalty x
Territorial x
Recruitment x
Incentives x
Advertisement x
Contracts x
Expeditionary x
2001-2009
Duty x
Universal x
Penalty x
Territorial x
Recruitment x
Incentives x
Advertisement x
Contracts x
Expeditionary x
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Displacement is largely a consequence of the 2001 bill because it re-moved the formal rules of military service. This raises the question on what kind of rules that institutions need in order to survice: formal or informal? Although I have argued earlier that formal rules (and policies) create norms, and that these norms are important in keeping the institution normative in the real sense of the term, it should at this point also be stressed that some institutions, such as military ser-vice, depend equally on formal and informal rules in order to thrive and survive (Helmke & Levitsky 2004). The institutionalisation of military service rested on equal presence of formal and informal rules. Rounding up citizens, putting them in uniform and coercing them by laws was a clear example of formal rules at play. These afforded the “formal” frame-work of military service and stipulated the conditions for “membership”
in the institution. Formal rules were however not what enabled the effective functioning of the institution. This was the work of informal rules. Indeed, it can be argued that formal schemes typically pray on informal rules. The institutionalisation of military service during the 1900s demonstrated a high sensitivity to this condition. Without build-ing a logic of appropriateness it would have been difficult to successfully put a universal duty into play. At the same time, the long-term sur-vival of informal rules are contingent on the presence of formal rules, since they serve as reference points for the informal rules. They create the structure of the institution, open the possibility for introducing new members, determining inclusion and exclusion, passing it on to the next generation and keeping the informal rules alive over time. It is against this background that the absence and relaxation of the formal rules from 2001 and onward becomes problematic.
An important aspect to note in the final years of the reform is that both the SAP and the Moderate Party are internally divided, and pos-sibly confused, on what it wants in both organisational design and in organisational purpose. In terms of organisational design there are dif-ferent views in the SAP as well as the Moderate Party, and equally in terms of organisational purpose there are split views within both parties. It is possible to argue that the disruptive period of the 1990s are still present in a sense in the phase of displacement, as the real costs of the reform are being materialised. One backdrop of this was, as the Supreme Commander in 2009 put it, that the swap was premature, be-cause the old system with military service had crumbled, but the new system was far from rooted in society. What Sweden in a sense was do-ing with the swap was to instal a recruitment policy with no firm social support in society, which further down the line would make it difficult to recruit soldiers (given the absence of a supportive institution, either occupational or institutional).
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Why was not displacement prevented? During this period, the ar-guments by the SAP remained the same as in the previous years, when it argued in favour of conversion. In a series of blame avoidance at-tempts the new measures were argued as necessary to preserve military service in the sense that they would prevent a development toward a professional army. Above all, however, displacement is facilitated by the internal changes in the Moderate Party that began in 2003. Until 2003, the Moderate Party rejected the SAP’s defence policies, and espe-cially its defence reductions and priority to expeditionary missions. In 2003, however, and as a part of a reinvention of the party, it begins a strategic adjustment where it disassociates itself from territorial defence (Realism) and from viewing the Armed Forces as a special interest, at the same time as it elevates its reputation on producing an efficient and output oriented Armed Forces and adopts, or “steals”, the SAP’s focus on expeditionary missions (New Wars). As with the substantial policy changes in the SAP, the Moderate Party perceived itself to afford these changes because of its reputation in defending a strong territorial defence (although it did so less successfully than the SAP). With this change, both the SAP and the Moderate Party are in agreement on the basics of Sweden’s future defence policy. The Moderate Party not only disassociates itself from issue-reputations, it also elevates its reputation for ensuring an efficient and functional Armed Forces. This leads them to examine how the conscripted army could/should be replaced by a pro-fessional army that is objectively speaking better suited to the Armed Forces’ new organisational purpose. This was a natural development given the order of things in 2006. The purpose of the Armed Forces had changed, the conversion strategy had failed, and the party did not hold an ideologically defined relation to military service the way the SAP held. If a professional army was what the Armed Forces needed, the Moderate Party would not stand in its way by holding on to military service for “romanticist” reasons. Finally, arguing for an alternative to the conscripted army was no longer controversial in 2007 to 2009. As a consequence of the SAP’s reforms, the assessment by the Moderate Party was that Sweden in reality no longer had “military service”, as conventionally understood. With the SAP’s substantial changes and cultivation of new norms, the taboo on a professional army had disap-peared, thus taking away the accountability problems that otherwise would have prevented a ruling party from reversing an issue-reputation
“owned” by another party.
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