Planeringsforskningens genombrott : Försvarets forskningsanstalt och det globala kalla krigets planeringsexperter

Sammanfattning: This dissertation highlights the impact of Swedish defense research in Cold War Sweden, with an emphasis on the impact of planning experts from the Swedish Defense Research Establishment (Försvarets forskningsanstalt, FOA). FOA was established as a research institute for applied military science in 1945. In pursuit of the aim to highlight the impact of this institution, the dissertation explains two related phenomena. First, it explains why FOA started to use and develop new planning technologies. Second, it explains the impact of planning research from the defense sector on a larger community in Cold War Sweden. Methods and theories from STS-scholarship guide the research process in this dissertation. The study is inspired by the tendency in STS-scholarship to “follow the actors”. Using previously classified sources and correspondence between researchers at FOA and their American counterparts, primarily from RAND Corporation in California, this study traces the circulation of planning technologies within a transnational network of experts. Concepts, well known in STS-scholarship, such as boundary-work, co-production and transnational circulation of knowledge helps to interpret the influence of FOA. The influence of planning experts from FOA can be described as a knowledge breakthrough for planning technologies that circulated in the defense community for a long time. This dissertation shows that two factors can explain FOA's contribution to this knowledge breakthrough. First, FOA's position in the Swedish administration provided a forum to develop close relationships between researchers and military personnel. Since FOA was not guided by a research council, the agency had the opportunity to introduce, translate and develop intellectual technologies from abroad. The second factor that explains FOA's contribution was the agency's close contacts with RAND Corporation in the United States. These results demonstrate a need to reinterpret certain aspects of Swedish historiography. Above all, this applies to how previous scholarship has described Swedish defense research, the national research policy and the changes that took place in Swedish public administration at the end of the 1960s. In short, these activities were the result of co-production between planning experts from FOA and the military.