Currently, there is little research on other countries' defence policies in Swedish. This essay will hopefully provide you with an interest in examining other countries' defence policies. The focus will be on Finland, Sweden's neighbour. Considering that Finland and Sweden are both members of the Nordic Council and strive for prosperity in the Nordic region, we should know more about our neighbours. Finnish defence policy reports are published every four or five years. This essay contains two of those reports from 2001 and 2017. The purpose of this essay is to find similarities and differences between the reports, but also to relate the reports to the theories, realism and liberalism. The theoretical analysis examines four different subjects where realism and liberalism will be discussed: International cooperation, rearmament, disarmament, and threat.  This analysis showed that Finland shows a lot of differences between the two reports. There are differences between all the subjects that are observed and the way the reports are written differs as well. The theories also shift a lot between the reports and that is concluded in the essay's conclusion. Suggestions about future research are included in the essay's discussion.

I denna uppsats undersöks förändringarna i Sveriges och Finlands försvarsekonomi i relationtill respektive lands säkerhetspolitiska doktrin under perioden 1989–2009, i syfte att analyserahur dessa samvarierar. Uppsatsen bidrar till ekonomisk-historisk forskning med en empirisktgrundad diskussion om hur försvar, hotbild och tillförda ekonomiska resurser relaterar tillvarandra. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att Sveriges försvarsdoktrin inte följs av enkoherent försvarsekonomi. Sverige kombinerar en realistisk försvarsdoktrin med en liberalförsvarsekonomi, och Finland gör tvärtom. Relationen mellan försvarsvarsekonomi ochförsvarsdoktrin är ett resultat av många komplexa processer. / This thesis treats the complex relationship between defence expenditures, defence doctrinein relation to the internal and external politics of a nation. The subject of the thesis is Sweden’sdefence policy and its defence expenditures compared to those of Finland during the turbulentyears between 1989 and 2009. The empirical part of the thesis is based on defence expendituresand the official statements made by both Finland’s and Sweden’s governments respectively.This thesis shows that both Sweden’s and Finland’s defence doctrine during the analysed periodis inconsistent with the development of the country’s defence expenditures. The politicallydecided defence expenditures are not consistent with the defence doctrine.