The Discretion of Swedish Naval Commanders 2006-2020

Abstract: This descriptive case study builds on Johnsson’s (2017) The Strategic Colonels. It aims to further the understanding of the military as a political actor by studying the discretion of naval commanders. It mainly contributes by adding a naval perspective to the research on policy implementation.The study is based on Lipsky’s (2010) theory of policy implementation and supplemented with Adler’s (2001) theory of governance, which is used to include the moral dimension of discretion emphasised by Burk (2009). The study uses public documents and in-depth interviews to examine the discretion of Swedish naval commanders during the ongoing national sea surveillance operation and the contributionsto the UNIFIL and the EUNAVFOR-S.The study partly confirms the result of Johnsson (2017) by showing that naval commanders had greater discretion during international operations than during national operations. Nationally, however, naval commanders had greater discretion than expected. In addition, the study shows that moral factors limit discretion both nationally and internationally, which implies that there are previously underestimated obstacles and opportunities for policy implementation.