The main purpose of this thesis was to analyze how Swedish political parties describe and frame Swedish foreign and security policy in the parliament debates from year 2015- 2017. The aim of the thesis was therefore to understand and concretize ideas politicians hold on the question of the Swedish non- military alignment policy. By extracting ideas from theories of international relations; realism, liberalism, constructivism and feminism the Swedish parties are being analyzed according to worldview, view of international actors, security issues and goals to achieve by the Swedish state in foreign policy matters. The analyze shows that politicians that had a realist view of foreign matters was in general more pessimistically oriented. Politicians with a liberal view was a bit more positively oriented towards both the world and also towards international cooperation. The politicians within liberal views also promoted a Swedish membership in NATO. Politicians with a constructivist and feminist view on foreign policy matters had a more optimistic view towards the world but also the states and organizations in it. They also promoted non- violence tools, diplomacy and negotiations above a NATO membership to secure the Swedish state, its people and interests. The second aim of the thesis was to discuss whether the Swedish military non- alignment policy is currently moving towards a change or reevaluation based on the behavior by the Swedish government. This raises questions about whether a foreign policy only exists in terms of words or also in terms of actions made by politicians as well.

It remains one of the saddest ironies in the history of conflict in the twentieth century that Yugoslavia, of all those communist states of Eastern Europe which transformed in its penultimate decade, was the one that had demonstrated the greatest degree of liberalization in its social, political, and economic structure and development, yet was the one that disintegrated amid the greatest violence and loss of life.