Sweden has a long tradition of participation in different kinds of peacekeeping missions. During the Cold War, Sweden’s troop contributions were exclusively focused on UN operations, but in the early 1990s Sweden’s official troop contribution policy changed from an “only under the UN flag” position to one of “only under UN Security Council mandate”. It is fair to say that Sweden’s foreign policy has undergone fundamental changes and the country has been contributing military forces to both EU and NATO missions for quite some time. Swedish foreign policy debate has largely been characterized by a sense of political unity or consensus. Despite this, there have been occasions when the political parties have been in disagreement. There are studies that confirm that the level of conflict in the foreign policy debate has increased over time. Political and ideological disagreements do exist and the political landscape has changed during the last 10 years. These changes should also have an impact on foreign policy decisions. The aim of this study is to investigate the political decision making process regarding Swedish military international missions. It will examine the political unity in the decisions concerning eight different cases; Kosovo (1999-2010), Congo (2003) , Liberia (2003-2006), Afghanistan (2004-2014), Chad (2007), Somalia (2009-2017), Libya (2011) and Mali (2015 à).  The focus for the study will be the political unity regarding the decision process within Parliament and, more specifically, the work of the combined Foreign affairs and Defence committee, and the debates in Parliament. The empirical analysis reveals that the rate of political controversy has increased. However, there is still a great sense of unity and broad agreement among the political parties on the main question regarding troop contributions.  In many cases any conflict and debate concern side issues such as timings, personnel and finance. The two main parties, the Social Democrats and the Moderate Party, are generally in agreement. They also conduct negotiations before a proposition becomes official, which leads to less conflict in the subsequent debate. The study also reveals a higher level of opposition from the Left party and from the Sweden Democrats. Some of their opposition can have ideological explanations. The Left party is mainly critical about participation in NATO missions.

Since the year of 2010, when the Swedish military made a transition from a conscript to a voluntary force, numerous people from the Swedish defence force have participated in international missions. This study seeks to understand the motivation and sacrifice behind the choice to travel abroad to countries like Afghanistan and Mali to preserve peace. This is being done through the theory of Helle Hein’s four motivational profiles, namely The Prima donna, The Performance Addict, The Pragmatist, and The Pay Check Worker. The empirical data consists of answers from 131 respondents to a survey sent to soldiers on duty in Mali (July 2016) and 3 semi-structured interviews with soldiers who have returned home. The result of the study is presented through various diagrams and show that the motivational factors of The Performance Addict overshadows the others. Furthermore is the theory’s relationship between motivational profile and level of sacrifice confirmed, even though it should be interpreted with some caution. / Sedan år 2010, när svenska försvaret gick i från ett värnplikts- till ett yrkesförsvar, har flera tusen svenska soldater deltagit i internationella insatser. Den här studien undersöker motivationsfaktorer och uppoffring hos de som väljer att åka till länder som Afghanistan och Mali för att bevara freden. Det sker genom Helle Heins fyra motivationsprofiler, nämligen Primadonnan, Prestationsjägaren, Pragmatikern och Löntagaren. Den empiriska datan består av svar från 131 respondenter från styrkan i Mali (juli 2016) samt 3 semi-strukturerade intervjuer med soldater som har återvänt hem. Resultatet av studien presenteras genom olika diagram och visar att motivationsfaktorerna hos Prestationsjägaren dominerar. Vidare bekräftas teorins samband mellan motivationsprofil och grad av uppoffring, även om det resultatet ska tolkas med viss försiktighet.