Swedish Institute of International Affairs

The U.S. has long been one of Sweden’s most significant partners and allies. Until recently, Sweden had effectively relied on U.S. support for its national defence instead of seeking NATO membership, a strategy exemplified by the ‘Hultqvist Doctrine’. However, in light of global shifts such as the first Trump presidency and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Sweden reevaluated its defence strategy, ultimately joining the alliance in March 2024. A second Trump term will have significant effects on Swedish and European security, as it risks weakening NATO and straining EU-U.S. relations. In response, policy recommendations include increasing the EU’s military and financial support to Ukraine, strengthening the EU’s China strategy and involving the U.S. in European defence initiatives.

Movements based on conspiracy theories and a fundamental rejection of liberal values are on the rise in traditionally democratic societies and those with authoritarian legacies. This article develops a theoretical approach that treats non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that generate and spread disinformation on international critical events as black knight NGOs and draws attention to their role online. We ask: whether and, if so, how disinformation by black knight NGOs spreads and what factors may facilitate this process? Empirically, we build on a case of a Swedish NGO, Swedish Doctors for Human Rights, in the context of the Syrian Civil War using X (formerly, Twitter) data from 2015 to 2019. We show that black knight NGOs can be damaging during critical events when information is scarce and uncertainty prevails. Additionally, they may affect the information ecosystem through two distinct mechanisms of legitimation: claiming authority in a particular subject and utilising legitimacy attributes, that is, appealing to authoritative figures and social roles conducive to forming a positive attitude towards the disinformation they provide. The findings contribute to the literature on non-state actors and their role in international disinformation. ARTICLE HISTORY

This study explores the manifestations of riskification in climate change adaptation (CCA) across four European cities, examining the roles of actors, discourses, and tools. Through comparative analysis, it aims to delineate local riskification, identifying similarities and differences among the cases. Three intervening factors – ideational frameworks, organization of government, and actor networks – are assessed to comprehend the amplification or deceleration of riskification processes locally. Findings reveal that ideational frameworks shape responses to climate change challenges within each case, while government organization influences CCA strategies and funding mechanisms. Actor networks play a pivotal role in shaping CCA efforts, including measurement, modeling, and monitoring. Despite commonalities, the analysis revealed that the intervening factors are further conditioned in each specific case, albeit in different ways, by aspects not initially considered: the influence of risk culture, risk memory, and technocratic governance in local CCA in each situation. These nuances produce variations of riskification that are locally distinct but equally depoliticize climate change risks, overshadowing broader societal implications and impeding transformative approaches. In particular, the dominance of riskified CCA approaches with technocratic characteristics and limited urgency may hinder innovative strategies required for addressing complex CCA challenges.

Western actors are no longer the primary donors in developing countries. Authoritarian countries like China, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Russia are increasingly present in every low and middle-income country, competing for geopolitical influence. This paper seeks to understand how the characteristics of donor countries shape citizens’ approval of their local politicians and foreign donors. The article argues that transparency in the aid project affects citizens’ perceptions of corruption, while the donor’s regime—whether democratic or authoritarian—signals to citizens whether they can voice their criticism. I employ an experimental approach on a sample of 2500 respondents in Serbia, a middle-income country in Europe that receives substantial foreign assistance from both democratic and authoritarian donors. The paper contributes by discerning and testing key theoretical mechanisms related to donor attributes rather than the donor country. The results show that citizens like transparent donors the most because they are the least likely to make corruption worse. On the other hand, citizens perceive that cooperation with democratic donors will not improve local elites’ accountability toward citizens. Yet, cooperation with authoritarian donors will further deteriorate political elites’ responsiveness toward citizens. Cooperation with authoritarian donors can, thus, decrease support for local political elites.

From the early modern period onwards, European dynasties sought to expand their power in South and Southeast Asia, establishing localised institutions that incorporated both European models and precolonial Asian practices. Studies on local resistance to imposed bureaucratisation overlook how locals navigated the bureaucracy for societal or political change. In this special issue, historians of colonial India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia investigate how knowledge products of European bureaucracies provided unintended opportunities for local agents to navigate the imperial state, and moreover to alter said knowledge products or bureaucracies. The authors critically engage with the concept of the “looping effect,” coined by the late Canadian philosopher of science Ian Hacking, to describe a process where administrative practices led to social mobilisation in colonial contexts.

Several studies have shown how a system of social classifications influenced the bureaucracy of British India when dealing with Indian society on a day-to-day basis. We know less, however, about how representatives of Indian society engaged such classifications and the information accompanying it to advance their own political agendas. This article examines how the classification of “minorities,” along with data connected to it, impacted discourse of Indian political actors in the early 1930s. The article presents a novel method to analyse first-person speech for themes and information content. It then applies the method to interventions by Indian delegates to the Sub-committee on Minorities of the India Round Table Conference, held in London, 1930–2. The article places the empirical investigation within a conceptual frame inspired by Ian Hacking's “looping effect.” Hacking attempts to capture how those classified negotiate imposed designations to advance agendas beneficial to themselves. The following study shows how Indian delegates engaged minority classification in a variety of ways in their political argumentation. The study also shows how information related to the minority classification was “looped” in speech by Indian actors to advance political claims and consolidate identities.

Why are some refugee groups more welcomed than others? This study explores the nuanced dynamics underlying host community members’ (HCMs) differential reception of refugee groups, delving into the intersectionality of cultural similarity and perceived ‘otherness’. While extant literature predominantly examines demographic factors as pivotal in shaping HCMs’ attitudes towards refugees, the focus has primarily been on Western contexts, where differences and ‘otherness’ are more discernible. However, this research extends the inquiry to culturally analogous HCMs and refugee groups, specifically the Bulgarian-Turks and Syrians, who sought refuge in Bursa, Turkey, during disparate timeframes (late 1980s and mid-2010s, respectively). Thus, I argue that, when there are elements in common with both refugee groups, HCMs focus on the differences to create and justify gradual otherness within different refugee groups. By conducting interviews with HCMs, this study aims to elucidate how perceptions of ‘otherness’ manifest when shared cultural elements exist between HCMs and refugees, which will be crucial for the studies that focus on the South-South forced migration.

Using a securitization lens, this article explores the climate adaptation discourse and its impact on the making and implementation of adaptation strategies in Sweden. The main goal is to discern whether climate change is understood and addressed as a security issue within Swedish climate adaptation policy, examining its practical implications from national to local levels. We scrutinize the discourses employed to frame climate adaptation and assess whether these align with threatification, riskification, or normal politics. We explore the actors and tools involved in creating this framing. Our findings reveal examples of threat‐ and risk‐oriented securitizations of climate adaptation strategy; however, most evidence highlights discourses and practices associated with normal politics across governance levels. Nationally, climate adaptation is managed akin to any other policy domain. Prioritization of adaptation goals takes place through centralized decision‐making, then monitored through accountability mechanisms spanning national, subregional, and local levels. The national government maintains financial and monitoring control throughout this chain. Municipalities possess significant autonomy in determining the means and methods to achieve adaptation objectives. This indicates that some securitization, but mainly normal policymaking, describes climate change adaption in Sweden ‐ an outcome strongly influenced by organizational fragmentation, scarce resources, and a pronounced role for experts.

Does the presence of autocratic donors alter citizens' perceptions of democracy? The paper argues that the presence of autocratic donors can alter citizens' views of donors' influence and support for democracy. The study analyses, on the donor side Chinese development assistance from AidData, one of the largest autocratic donors worldwide and, on the recipient side, Serbia—a middle‐income country where both Western and non‐traditional donors are heavily involved with aid projects. The findings suggest that in the presence of higher levels of aid from autocratic donors, citizens who uphold a very positive view of donors' political influence are the least likely to support democracy. The article proposes two main mechanisms: the attribution processes of aid and the instrumentalization of foreign aid by elites. The analysis employs a mixed‐method approach, combining mixed‐ordered probit regression of aid and municipal‐level survey data with insights from 16 interviews with experts on Serbia who have direct experience with aid initiatives or research. The study contributes to advancing our understanding of the impact of autocratic donors on citizens' support for democracy.

Policy Highlights To achieve the recommendation stated in the chapter title, we propose the following: Stakeholders can be better engaged in energy efficiency decisions through the use of multicriteria models. Decision-makers should present trade-offs, such as cost and emissions, and combinations of acceptable solutions to various stakeholders such as the public, housing associations, regulatory agencies, and financial institutions. Decision-makers should adopt a user-centred approach to energy efficiency measures by encouraging stakeholder dialogues around decision-support tools (e.g. multicriteria modelling) to improve understanding of costs and benefits of measures. Decision-makers should identify opportunities for consensus building and mindset shifts about the wider benefits of energy efficiency measures by emphasising their social considerations. Using Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) perspectives can strengthen Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) led multicriteria models that visualise trade-offs as well as identify plausible conflicts among stakeholders.

This article analyzes the development of paradiplomatic relations between subnational governments in China and Sweden. The empirical material comprises official documents, media reports, and interviews, and correspondence with local decision makers. Following steady growth in the 1990s and 2000s, the number of paradiplomatic agreements between the two countries declined dramatically at the end of the 2010s. To our knowledge, this extensive “local decoupling” is unprecedented, at least in the history of modern paradiplomacy between Europe and China. The decline can primarily be explained by three interrelated factors: worsening bilateral relations between Sweden and China, growing Swedish concern about the human rights situation in China, and the lack of activity in some of the cooperation projects. Rather than pursuing goals such as peacebuilding and economic benefit, generally described as the main drivers behind local governments’ international activities, several subnational governments in Sweden deemed it appropriate to terminate cooperation with their Chinese counterparts due to other concerns. This development demonstrates the usefulness of a more constructivist perspective of paradiplomacy.

The ‘local’ as a site of peacebuilding and as a subject position has played a significant role in scholarly debates on peacebuilding and international intervention, and increasingly so in work on the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda. Local women are called upon to represent the conflict experience, and localisation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda is becoming part of the rhetoric around implementation. This article examines the impacts of this focus with reference to peacebuilding and women’s inclusion initiatives in Iraq in locations previously held by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. The article analyses three programmatic case studies situated in Ninewa, a governorate in northern Iraq. The analysis offers a four-part typology of local women participants – local women as peacebuilders, a-political (and a-sectarian), non-elite and intermediary – and uses these types to explore how the participation and presence of local women is constructed within peacebuilding programming. By introducing these types, this article makes visible the practical and conceptual impact of the focus on the ‘local’ on the Women, Peace and Security agenda, its implementation in post-conflict contexts, and on how local women and their contributions are perceived in Women, Peace and Security-focused peacebuilding interventions.

The way in which norms diffuse from the international level and are implemented at the national level has been a key interest of social constructivists in general and norm scholars in particular for many decades. Nonetheless, surprisingly little effort has been made to understand or explain the factors that make norm implementation successful. This article sets out to systematically assess commonly highlighted implementation factors—actors, norm characteristics, and structures—to expand knowledge of whether or how these affect domestic norm implementation. To this end, the article conducts a structured, focused comparison of three cases of norms from the societal security sphere—the transportation of dangerous goods, disaster risk reduction, and cybersecurity—to explore their implementation processes in Sweden. The study explores whether, and if so how, previously suggested key factors are important when implementing global norms at the national level. The comparison concludes that the structure, including the venue for and availability of policy instruments, has been the most decisive factor in the coherent assessment of the three sample cases.

Saudi youth is at the heart of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s vast project to transform Saudi Arabia.

How can the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) be made more effective? This paper argues that in order to make the UNFCCC fit for purpose, there is a need to identify the specific institutional reforms that can create ripple effects to accelerate climate action across governance lev-els and relevant organisations. Longstanding calls to reform the UNFCCC have targeted inefficient procedures with the intent to promote effective outcomes and – after entry into force of the Paris Agreement – to transform the UNFCCC towards holding more implementation-focused deliberations. Despite such calls, UNFCCC reform has been modest, at best. Central to the failure of reform pro-posals are vested interests with conflicts of interest that seek to obstruct cli-mate action. Without addressing these elephants in the room, reform proposals will make modest contributions to overcoming key challenges. It is due time to start retargeting institutional reform from addressing procedural inefficiencies at the UNFCCC towards addressing vested interests. We propose a new research agenda to understand ways to undermine incumbent actors seeking to preserve business as usual and support new entrants that facilitate climate action through green spiralling. A reform process addressing vested interests could improve both procedural efficiency and implementation.

Sweden has traditionally been part of the European Union’s (EU) pro-enlargement camp. This chapter analyses the Swedish stance on enlargement following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It demonstrates both political and public support in Sweden for a larger EU. We can expect Sweden to continue supporting EU enlargement and vigorously advocating for discussions on the rule of law. In conclusion, this chapter argues that Sweden should support treaty reform, aligning it with EU enlargement preparations. Furthermore, the country could endorse a more flexible approach to integrating new members into the Union.