Vad styr ledaren? : Om beslutsfattare och policyförändring i säkerhetspolitiska kriser

Sammanfattning: This thesis concerns the two-part question, “By what are leaders guided and by what means do leaders guide, when the direction of central decisions is to be determined?”. The dependent variable is the direction of the final, centrally-made decision which is related to the current policy. The direction has six possible outcomes that are grouped into ‘no or modest change’ and ‘substantial change’.Such policy change was studied during two Swedish security policy crises, one defence policy crisis (the submarine crisis of 1981) and a financial crisis (the currency and bank crisis of 1992). During these two crises, 36 central decisions were made. Central decisions are ones made during the two crises in view of the problems or dilemmas that concerned decision-makers the most and that took the most time and/or attention. The decision-makers who made these decisions held strategic positions in the parliament and the government, in the government offices and agencies. The actual decision-making unit is studied, which can be formal or informal, and consist either of a single individual or of a group of individuals. The leader is the decision-maker who had the highest formal position in the decision-making unit at the time of each decision situation.The thesis has a hypothesis-generating approach and both qualitative and semi-quantitative analysis methods are used to clarify the relation between the direction of central decisions and the three categories of explanatory variables that have been identified: problem interpretation under pressure, actual influence and guidance of the interaction.The results show that leaders are guided towards substantial change by their interpretations of the problem which under average pressure are based on factors that can be traced back to the specific decision-making situation. Leaders are also guided towards no or marginal change by way of their interpretations, however, under low and high pressure the interpretation is based on known parameters. The analysis also shows that leaders guide towards substantial change by way of a high degree of actual and formal influence, and a high degree of guidance of the interaction. However, the leader guides towards no or modest change by way of high formal influence and a guidance of the interaction that is low or average.