The politics of the market and the return of Swedish total defence

Abstract In 2015, the Swedish government resumed a coordinated ‘total defence’ planning. While such changes have been much analysed, the establishment of a ‘market’ for total defence remains underexamined. Drawing on an institutional approach and focusing on the market as a strategic action field, we examine defence markets as politics to better understand recent transformations of Swedish defence. We deductively and thematically compare two moments of transformation – the end of the Cold War and the 2015 shift back to total defence – through the analysis of key government documents and inquiries, business group reports, and press releases. The comparison demonstrates the importance of state–firm relations in the institutionalisation of defence markets, especially emphasising the different forms of settlement of the defence market field. The article provides a synthesis of the sociology of markets and the marketisation of defence, which will help improve our understanding of state–market relations and the role of business in the development of ‘whole-of-society’ models and in defence transformation more broadly.