The Swedish Defence bill of 2015 demonstrated a rapid change in policy objectives, consequently moving away from an expeditionary force and converging into a territorial defence force. Previous research has attributed and explained the quick shift to the geostrategic unbalance that followed after the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. Yet, major policy changes are often years in the making, indicating that there must be additional explanations to the rapid shift. By applying a modified version of John Kingdon’s (2011) Multiple Streams Framework on the case of Sweden changing its security and defence policy, this thesis examines the policy process that preceded the official policy decision. The thesis provides further explanation to why the rapid policy change occurred by utilising qualitative content analysis. The analysis shows that the new policy was adopted due to several factors: one being the attention brought to several problems pertaining to the previous policy, another one was found in the timing between focusing events and the on-going work process of the Swedish defence commission, and lastly, strong actors within the policy field were in favour of a change in policy. The thesis concludes that the presence of several factors within the processes of politics, policy and problems enabled the rapid policy change.

This essay is an analysis of the Swedish crisis management, as a policy subsystem using the Advocacy Coalition Framework. By applying a Causal Process Tracing method, the main issues of division within the policy subsystem will be examined, and the effects of the 2004 South East Asian tsunami as an incitement of policy change. The major finding is that the reforms that followed the tsunami investigations, to a large extent were planned prior to the tragic event, the main changes seem to have been halted by the 2006 election and change of Office. The cross-party coalitions that were found have theoretical implications for the ACF research.