Civilian control over military forces is a prerequisite within democracies in the study of civil-military relations. This requirement extends to military intelligence, as they are a part of the military. However, this relationship needs to balance secrecy with transparency concerns, a relationship which can prove difficult. In Sweden during the 1970’s, this discussion came to a fore when the intelligence organisation IB was revealed to the public. This sparked an ongoing debate within the academic community regarding the limits of intelligence organisations authority, their need for secrecy and the government’s ability to control them. This thesis aims to investigate IB and the government’s control over it during 1965-1973, the years it operated as the sole military intelligence organisation in Sweden. With perspectives derived from Peter Gills thoughts on intelligence control and oversight, this thesis examines the mechanism of intelligence control and inquiry that were present in Sweden during the relevant timeframe. The findings are then judged with Gill’s concepts as a framework, in order to evaluate IB´s role as an intelligence organisation within a liberal democracy. These findings will thereafter be compared with the image of IB as presented by leading contemporary politicians and intelligence commanders, in order to give nuance to the findings. The thesis will show, with support of the theory and methodology, that IB can’t be described as a national intelligence agency, but as a political police. Its lack of transparency, secret existence and politicly motivated goals are the main reasons for this result. The absence of key mechanism of control as described by Gill, made it impossible for the organisation to be controlled, with some reservations for the ruling party’s ability to do so. It also contextualises these findings with the presented opinions of the contemporary actors. These results shed new light on intelligence accountability during the cold war in Sweden. It also reaffirms previous findings on IB with the use of new perspectives. The Thesis provides another lens to view Swedish intelligence history through and contributes to that field of history.

Civilian control over military organizations is a central aspect of democratic states, but is complicated by an inherent pursuit of freedom and autonomy among military organizations. The relationship between civilian government and the military organization is also affected by external factors, such as, military threats to the state in the form of war or threat of war. The effects of military threats on civil-military relations has, primarily, been demonstrated in states at war or undergoing democratization, and raises the question as to how changes in threats affect the civil-military relations of a democratic state in peace as well as how these changes can be investigated.  This study aims to investigate, from a structural as well as actor perspective, how changes in external threats to Sweden as a well-established democracy at peace affect its civil-military relations. The study combines two theories of civil-military relations to analyse Swedish civil-military relations. By combining an analysis of government policy documents with narrative analysis of media reporting, the narrative of Swedish civil-military relations is compared with the state's perception of its external military threats. From the results of the study it is concluded that lower degrees of threat entail a narrative of disagreement, while increased threats lead to a narrative of increased conformity. Furthermore, narrative analysis of media reporting appears to be an important complement to other methods for the study of civil-military relations.