Introduction
The current global security environment is often described as the most unstable it has been since the end of the Second World War. Russia’s aggression in Georgia in 2008, the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 have profoundly disrupted the European security order and intensified global insecurity in Sweden’s immediate neighborhood. In response, Sweden applied for membership of NATO in May 2022, a historic departure from more than two centuries of military non-alignment and a decisive transformation of its national defense policy. Signs of this strategic realignment were visible long before 2022, however. In 2015, the Swedish government decided to re-establish a military presence on Gotland, a decade after the decommissioning of P18 – the Gotland Regiment. P18’s reinstatement in January 2018 marked a renewed emphasis on national territorial defense; since then, additional regiments have been reopened and the concept of total defense revivified, signaling a broader turn from post-Cold War downsizing toward rearmament.
The island of Gotland holds a unique position in the security of Sweden and the wider region. During the Cold War, it hosted four regiments, approximately 25,000 wartime positions, and about 1,500 Home Guard soldiers (Efron, 2015; Värjö, 2016). Its location in the middle of the Baltic Sea has long been regarded as strategically crucial for air and sea control, intelligence operations, and regional deterrence. The 2004 Defense Bill deprioritized geography and assessed a military attack on Sweden as unlikely, thereby paving the way for the regiment’s closure in 2005. When P18 was re-established in 2018, the earlier decision was described by then-Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist as a “mistake” (Larsson, 2018, my translation). The closure, re-establishment, and subsequent expansion of P18 thus illustrate how shifting threat assessments and political priorities materialize in organizational change, while also revealing broader tensions in Swedish defense transformation under intensifying geopolitical pressure.
The purpose of this study is to critically examine how problem representations in Swedish defense policy have shaped the decommissioning, re-establishment, and subsequent expansion of P18, and to analyze the effects these representations have produced for governance, resource allocation, and capability development within the Swedish Armed Forces. Rather than treating defense reform as a linear or reactive process, the study conceptualizes it as a discursively mediated transformation in which policy framings construct particular understandings of threats, resources, and organizational priorities. By combining an empirical case study with Carol Bacchi’s (2009) “What’s the Problem Represented to Be?” (WPR) approach, the article examines how political discourse defines what counts as a “problem” in defense policy, which solutions become legitimate, and which alternatives are rendered invisible.
Theoretically, the study contributes to research on defense transformation and organizational change by integrating Bacchi’s (2009) discourse-oriented framework with two concepts set out by Alvinius, Holmberg, and Larsson (2018): organizational anorexia (a state of institutional depletion following long-term downsizing, where austerity measures, staff reductions, and managerial efficiency discourses lead to an erosion of organizational resilience and professional competence) and destructive growth (rapid and uneven expansion driven by political urgency and external pressure, often without sufficient time or resources to rebuild lost structures and knowledge). This synthesis allows for a more nuanced understanding of how defense organizations oscillate between phases of contraction and expansion, revealing that phases of scarcity and growth are not sequential but, rather, coexist as mutually reinforcing conditions. Through this perspective, the study argues that capability gaps, governance challenges, and institutional tensions arise not only from material constraints or external threats but from the internal logics of policy discourse itself. In this way, the analysis advances theoretical discussions of how discursive constructions of security and efficiency become embedded in organizational practices, shaping both the direction and the pace of military reform.
Methodologically, the analysis uses the WPR framework as the primary analytical tool and applies qualitative discourse analysis to a corpus of Swedish defense policy documents produced between 2004 and 2023. Municipal reports, audit reviews, and media articles are used as complementary sources to trace how policy framings are translated into organizational practice. By linking discursive constructions of security, efficiency, and capability to concrete organizational outcomes, the study addresses a critical gap in the understanding of how Swedish defense transformation is shaped by both external threats and the internal logic of policy discourse.
Accordingly, the research is guided by the following questions: “How have problem representations in Swedish defense policy shaped the decisions and processes surrounding the decommissioning, re-establishment, and subsequent expansion of P18, and how do these processes reflect the coexistence of organizational anorexia and destructive growth within the Swedish Armed Forces?”
The remainder of the article situates this inquiry within the literature on defense transformation and organizational change, presents the analytical framework and data, and analyzes the findings across the three policy discourses of threat construction, economic rationality, and capability governance. Finally, it concludes with a discussion of how the case of P18 illuminates the complex coexistence of contraction and expansion in contemporary military reform.
Literature Review and Theoretical Framework
Research on post-Cold War defense transformation in Europe shows that armed forces have undergone alternating phases of contraction and expansion shaped by changing security environments and political priorities. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the downsizing of European militaries was often framed as “demilitarization” or “normalization,” through which military institutions were restructured to resemble civilian public organizations (Holmberg, 2015; Hedlund, 2019; Norheim-Martinsen, 2016). This period, influenced by peace dividends and managerial reform trends such as new public management (NPM), reduced defense budgets, abolished conscription in several countries, and encouraged the transfer of officers to civilian employment. In Sweden, these reforms resulted in substantial personnel reductions, redefined professional identities, and a diminished focus on territorial defense (Holmberg & Alvinius, 2019; Matlary, 2009). Such reforms can also be understood through Jacobsen’s (2019) concept of planned organizational change, in which top-level decision-makers initiate proactive transformation from an economic stance – a type of efficiency-oriented logic.
From the mid-2010s onward, however, the deteriorating security environment, particularly following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, triggered a renewed emphasis on national defense. The return to a strategy of total defense across the Nordic region, in which civilian and military capabilities are combined under unified security frameworks, exemplifies this shift (Rongved, 2025). For the Swedish Armed Forces, this transition from demilitarization to rearmament has been accompanied by intensified organizational and cultural challenges. Studies highlight how resource constraints, uneven capability development, and political expectations of rapid expansion have created tensions within the organization (Hedlund, 2019; Holmberg & Alvinius, 2019; Alvinius et al., 2020).
Within this context, Alvinius and colleagues (2018, 2020) introduced the concepts of “organizational anorexia” and “destructive growth” to capture the paradoxical dynamics of military transformation. When defense organizations shift abruptly from contraction to expansion, the underlying logic of scarcity persists, producing governance gaps, workload overload, and cultural fragmentation (Alvinius et al., 2018; Holmberg & Alvinius, 2019).
Recent research has further explored how such processes are discursively legitimized through shifting policy narratives of threat, efficiency, and responsibility. Notaker (2023) and Matlary (2009) show how European (and particularly Nordic) defense policies increasingly merge security rationales with economic and managerial logics, presenting rearmament not only as a strategic imperative but as a process of efficiency, performance optimization, and institutional modernization. This interdependence between security and market rationalities complicates the relationship between political discourse and organizational practice, a tension particularly visible in Sweden’s rearmament following two decades of demilitarization.
It is in this context that this study draws on the WPR approach to examine how such transformations are constructed and legitimized through policy discourse. WPR provides an analytical framework for interrogating how political decisions define problems, the assumptions underpinning these definitions, and which alternatives are silenced. Rather than assuming that defense policy responds to pre-existing threats, the WPR approach conceptualizes policy itself as productive as it constructs certain representations of security, risk, and capability that in turn shape organizational change.
By combining Bacchi’s (2009) discourse-analytical lens with Alvinius and colleagues’ (2018, 2020) conceptualization of organizational anorexia and destructive growth, this study advances theoretical understanding in two ways. First, it situates military transformation within the interplay of discursive and organizational dynamics, showing how problem representations in policy both reflect and reproduce the material conditions of scarcity and expansion; second, it conceptualizes the Swedish Armed Forces not as an organization moving linearly from decline to renewal, but as navigating the simultaneous presence of reduction and growth. This theoretical integration enables a critical examination of how the closure, re-establishment, and continuing development of P18 embody these tensions, illustrating how policy discourse shapes both strategic direction and the lived organizational realities of defense reform.
Method
This study employs discourse analysis, a qualitative method with an interpretative orientation grounded in the social sciences. Discourse analysis focuses on how language shapes social phenomena and how the formulation of problems in political contexts influences collective understanding (Beckman, 2005; Bergström & Ekström, 2018; Jacobsen, 2017). Given that power and representation are central to defense policy, this approach is particularly suitable for understanding how the Swedish Armed forces have evolved organizationally.
The specific analytical tool applied, WPR, is rooted in the conception of power set out by the French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault. WPR treats policies not simply as solutions to predefined problems but as discursive practices that constitute problems through their articulation. This perspective enables researchers to interrogate the assumptions, silences, and effects embedded in policy texts (Bacchi, 2009; Bergström & Ekström, 2018). The approach is flexible, iterative, and abductive, moving between theory and empirical material in ways that allow both theoretical refinement and context-sensitive analysis (Bacchi, 2009). These characteristics make WPR particularly suitable here, especially given the absence of prior research critically examining how the Swedish Armed Forces’ rearmament (and specifically the closure, re-establishment, and expansion of P18) has been problematized in Swedish defense policy.
Bacchi (2009, pp. xxi, 2–19) outlines six guiding questions, listed below. The method does not require using all six; they are closely interconnected and should be adapted to the case.
How is the “problem” represented in a specific policy?
What assumptions underlie this representation?
How has this representation emerged?
What is left unproblematic or silenced?
What effects are produced by this representation?
How and where is the representation disseminated and defended?
Since the questions are designed to be adapted rather than applied mechanically, this study uses three. Question one has been reformulated in a two-phase approach to capture both the decommissioning and subsequent growth of P18, while also implicitly addressing elements of questions two and three. Question four (“What is left unproblematic?”) and question five (“What are the effects produced?”) are included to uncover silences, tensions and consequences in the policy discourse. Question six is excluded, as the Swedish Armed Forces is in an ongoing expansion phase and no fully stabilized narrative has yet formed. Together, these questions form the analytical foundation for the study’s research aim: to examine how problem representations in Swedish defense policy have shaped the decisions and processes surrounding the decommissioning, re-establishment and growth of P18, and how these processes reflect the coexistence of organizational anorexia and destructive growth within the Swedish Armed Forces.
Scope, Empirical Material, and Analysis
The study is delimited to P18 and focuses solely on one of the three domains of the Swedish Armed Forces – the Army. The final decision to decommission P18 was made in 2004 and the process itself begun in 2005, defining the first period of analysis as 2004–2005. The second period covers 2017 to 2025, encompassing the proposal to re-establish the regiment and the post-ratification phase of Sweden’s NATO application.
The empirical material consists of openly available sources, including policy documents, government and audit reports, municipal analyses, and media articles. These sources were selected through web made searches due to their direct relevance to the policy decisions and public debates surrounding Gotland’s military re-establishment. While several documents from both the Government and the Swedish Armed Forces address the closure and subsequent expansion of the P18, no single policy dedicated exclusively to Gotland was identified. Consequently, the empirical base comprises materials that address the Swedish Armed Forces both in general terms and specifically in relation to Gotland, ensuring sufficient empirical breadth to answer the research questions (Bergström & Ekström, 2018).
Search terms used in Google included Försvarsmakten på Gotland (“Swedish Armed Forces on Gotland”), P18 nedläggning (“P18 decommissioning”), Försvarsmakten återetablering Gotland (“Swedish Armed Forces re-establishment Gotland”), nyheter Gotlands regemente (“news Gotland Regiment”), and nedläggning Försvarsmakten Gotland (“Swedish Armed Forces decommissioning of Gotland”).
To clarify the empirical composition, the following primary sources included in the analysis are listed below:
Government of Sweden. (2004a). Defense Bill 2004 (Gov. Bill 2004/05:5).
Government of Sweden. (2004b). Defense Bill 2004 (Gov. Bill 2004/05:43).
Gotland Municipality. (2004). Samhällelig konsekvensanalys kring nedläggningen av P18 [Social impact analysis of the decommissioning of P18]. Gotland Municipality.
Government of Sweden. (2017). Budget Bill 2018 (Gov. Bill 2017/18:1).
Swedish National Audit Office. (2021). Building national defense capability: The state’s work to strengthen the army forces (Swedish National Audit Office, 2021).
Swedish National Audit Office. (2022). Expansion without priority: Personnel supply of continuously serving NCOs, soldiers, and sailors (Swedish National Audit Office, 2022, p. 33).
County Administrative Board of Gotland. (2022). Total defense for a stronger Gotland: Final report on the government’s assignment to the Swedish Armed Forces and the County Administrative Board of Gotland. County Administrative Board of Gotland.
Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces. (2023). Military advice to the government 2023. Swedish Armed Forces.
The analysis was conducted iteratively, moving between policy documents, secondary sources, and theoretical concepts. This abductive approach facilitated the identification of implicit problem representations and their consequences, contributing simultaneously to theory-building within the context of Swedish defense policy.
The WPR approach requires both contextual understanding and interpretive flexibility (Bacchi, 2009; Bergström & Ekström, 2018), and the analysis followed these principles to trace how policy discourse constructed, legitimized, and silenced particular problem formulations. All selected materials were read multiple times and coded according to the study’s guiding questions. Coding was based on identifying meaning-bearing units and key quotations, which were then organized under each analytical theme (Bergström & Ekström, 2018). Quotations from policy and media discourses were incorporated to enhance transparency and to illustrate how interpretations were derived.
An illustrative example can be found in the Supreme Commander’s Military Advice to the Government (2023), which emphasizes competent personnel and sustainable staffing as critical for the Swedish Armed Forces overall. At the same time, the Swedish Armed Forces “strongly advise against … directives concerning further establishments as well as directives regarding activities in specifically designated locations” (Swedish Armed Forces, 2023, pp. 7–8), citing challenges in maintaining adequate staffing levels. This statement was coded under the category Governance and Capability Gaps in Re-Establishment, exemplifying how political ambitions for organizational expansion collide with practical constraints in capability and governance.
Ethical Considerations
This study relies exclusively on open-source material such as government bills, parliamentary reports, policy documents, and media articles. No classified or sensitive information has been accessed. The focus is on discursive representations in publicly available texts, ensuring that national security concerns are respected.
The manuscript was translated into English from the original Swedish with the assistance of ChatGPT, before review by the SJMS editorial staff. The author maintains full responsibility for its content, structure, and analysis.
Results
The analysis is based on three central findings derived from Bacchi’s (2009) WPR approach: threat assessments as the primary driver of organizational change; the dominance of economic rationales in policy framing; and governance and capability gaps in the re-establishment of P18. Together, these representations demonstrate how political problematizations have structured both the closure and the subsequent re-establishment of P18.
Interpreted through the lens of organizational anorexia and destructive growth (Alvinius et al., 2018, 2020), the findings reveal how these policy driven transformations oscillate between reduction and expansion. Organizational anorexia emerges in the period of downsizing, where austerity measures and efficiency discourses undermine institutional capacity and professional identity, while destructive growth, marked by overstretched resources, fragmented governance, and uneven capability development, characterizes the rapid rearmament phase. The coexistence of these conditions illustrates how defense policy discourses not only justify change but also produce organizational contradictions that challenge sustainable capability-building within the Swedish Armed Forces.
Threat Assessments as the Driver of Organizational Change
One of the most striking findings is how shifting threat perceptions framed both the closure and the re-establishment of P18. In the early 2000s, policymakers constructed the security environment as stable and cooperative. The 2004 Defense Bill stated that “a military attack on Sweden is unlikely for the foreseeable future – at least a decade” (Government of Sweden, 2004a, p. 12, my translation), positioning the traditional invasion threat as obsolete and justifying the restructuring of the Swedish Armed Forces into a lighter, internationally oriented organization. The Baltic Sea region was depicted as a zone of peace and integration, “now characterized by calm, stability, and close cooperation in ways that were previously impossible. … Tensions in our immediate area have dramatically decreased” (Government of Sweden, 2004a, p. 18, my translation).
This framing exemplifies Bacchi’s (2009) argument that policies do not simply respond to problems but constitute them. By portraying the Baltic Sea as cooperative rather than contested, territorial defense on Gotland appeared unnecessary, rendering the closure of P18 rational.
The portrayal of Russia reinforces this logic. The government emphasized that “under President Putin’s leadership, Russia continues its foreign policy orientation towards Western Europe and the United States, primarily to promote economic development in Russia” (Government of Sweden, 2004a, p. 19, my translation). Russia was thus constructed as an economic partner rather than a military threat, supporting the decision to decommission the regiment. In Jacobsen’s (2019) terms, this reflects proactive, top-down organizational change justified by anticipated stability.
By contrast, the re-establishment of P18 in 2018 rested on a markedly different threat representation. The government referred to a deteriorating security situation, assessing “that due to the changed security situation in the region, there is a need for a unified military command on Gotland” (Government of Sweden, 2017, p. 50, my translation). Although the bill did not specify the threat in detail, the shift from stability to insecurity reversed the earlier framing: territorial defense reappeared as necessary.
These contrasting representations demonstrate how Swedish defense policy constructs organizational problems in line with changing security narratives (Bacchi, 2009). In the early 2000s, peace and stability legitimized downsizing and efficiency reforms, contributing to organizational anorexia marked by the erosion of resources, personnel, and institutional resilience. After 2014, renewed insecurity justified expansion, yet this growth unfolded within structures shaped by prior austerity, producing destructive growth in which demands for rapid capability increases exceeded available capacity.
Across both phases, economic and managerial rationalities remained largely unquestioned (Matlary, 2009; Notaker, 2023). The closure and re-establishment of P18 therefore reflect not opposite developments, but a continuous discursive logic reshaping the Swedish Armed Forces under shifting conditions of scarcity and expansion.
The Dominance of Economic Rationales
A second recurring theme is the strong presence of economic reasoning in both closure and re-establishment. Even as external threat assessments shifted, financial arguments remained central in legitimizing decisions. In 2004, the government explicitly linked reform to cost-cutting. In order to streamline the organization, it was decided to dismantle large parts of the Swedish Armed Forces. Several regiments were to be completely disbanded – P18 among them. According to the government’s analysis:
P10 and P18 possess mechanized capability and access to good training and firing ranges as well as necessary workshop resources. Both units are located directly adjacent to their training areas and can move from these fields in formation to their firing ranges. In this respect, P18 has a special position due to its proximity to the Tofta firing range, which allows for tank gun firing. The Government wishes to point out that, in the Defense Resolution of 2000, it was considered that, for reasons of cost and maintenance, no tank training should be conducted on Gotland (Government Bill 1999/2000:30, p. 75). In the Government’s view, this assessment still applies today. Overall, I5, P10, and P18 all have good production conditions, etc. However, the training area of I5 has certain limitations regarding capacity and possibilities for maneuver warfare. When the units are compared with one another, the Government notes that each of them has good conditions individually. However, the Government states that P7 has the best training conditions. According to the Government, it is important to create rational production conditions and a long-term sustainable organizational structure that can meet the demands of the new structure, including operational units and development and expertise resources. The changes are intended, in the long term, to lead to lower operating costs, and the revised basic organization should fit economically within an Armed Forces framework with reduced funding. The orientation of the Armed Forces is changing through the development of a mission-oriented defense. Increasing emphasis is being placed on internationalization. The so-called “new threats” have become increasingly apparent. This perspective, together with the aim of creating a well-balanced basic organization for the entire Armed Forces, leads the Government to conclude that P7 should be retained. In line with this, the Government considers that I5, P10, and P18 should be disbanded. (Government of Sweden, 2004a, p. 164; Government of Sweden, 2004b, pp. 34–35, my translation).
From this, it can be interpreted that the disbandment of P18 was largely motivated by economic reasons, despite the regiment’s “special position.” The disbandment is also seen from a developmental perspective: “The defense reform aims at development. To enable development, a comprehensive reduction of material and personnel is required” (Government of Sweden, 2004a, p. 12, my translation).
This illustrates the efficiency-oriented logic that Jacobsen (2019) identified in framing decommissioning as a necessary rationalization: despite acknowledging P18’s “special position,” the regiment was decommissioned nonetheless, showing how economic arguments overrode strategic considerations. Similarly, the 2017 bill announcing P18’s re-establishment emphasized that the reform could be implemented “within the allocated financial framework” (Government of Sweden, 2017, p. 50, my translation). Thus, even when security concerns drove rearmament, financial constraints continued to dominate the discourse.
This problematization left other dimensions underexplored. The disbandment reflects how defense policy intersects with regional welfare. As the municipality of Gotland (2004) pointed out, the closure of P18 would have significant societal consequences, as the population was projected to decrease by 0.9%, unemployment was expected to rise from 7.2% to 8%, and reduced consumer spending was estimated to result in a loss of SEK 45 million (Gotland Municipality, 2004, pp. 11–12). It further warned of negative effects on welfare provision: “Public sector employment, including schools and healthcare, is estimated to shrink by 14–22 jobs depending on the sector” (Gotland Municipality, 2004, p. 13, my translation).
These anticipated outcomes reveal what Bacchi (2009) calls the silences in problem representations. While policymakers framed closure as a technical efficiency measure, they left the broader social and regional consequences unproblematized.
During re-establishment, a similar pattern emerged. Despite new investments, material constraints quickly became visible. A representative for the Swedish Armed Forces openly admitted that “throwing money at the problem won’t work” (Widegren, 2023a, my translation).
At the Swedish Defense Materiel Administration, a project manager highlighted the practical difficulties: “It was the first new regiment in over 60 years, which posed a challenge since there was no remaining expertise on how to build new regiments… So, we had to start by discussing what a modern regiment should look like” (Försvarets materielverk, 2023, my translation).
These examples demonstrate that while resources were central to the unit’s closure and re-establishment alike, economic rationales often overshadowed long-term organizational realities such as competence, infrastructure, and integration with local society.
Economic reasoning constitutes a continuous logic in both the closure and re-establishment of P18. In the early 2000s, the problem was framed not as insecurity but as a question of efficiency and cost reduction, consistent with broader European demilitarization and managerial reform (Holmberg, 2015; Matlary, 2009). This discursive framing legitimized what we might understand as organizational anorexia: financial considerations outweighed strategic value and regional consequences. When P18 was re-established, security concerns dominated the rhetoric, yet decisions were still required to remain within existing financial frameworks (Government of Sweden, 2017), showing that the scarcity logic of the destructive growth persisted. This produced conditions of destructive growth in terms of rapid expansion without sufficient competence, infrastructure or institutional memory (Alvinius et al. 2020). Following Bacchi (2009), this reveals a key silence in the policy discourse: economic rationales were prioritized while the social and organizational consequences for Gotland and the Swedish Armed Forces remained largely unaddressed.
Governance and Capability Gaps in Re-establishment
The third key finding concerns the governance and capability deficits that accompanied P18’s growth. These gaps highlight the difficulties of reversing decades of downsizing. A persistent problem for the Swedish Armed Forces’ expansion on Gotland since its re-establishment in 2018 is that the expansion phase becomes entangled in bureaucratic processes (Gummesson, 2018). The issue of the Tofta firing range is an illustrative example. When the Gotland regiment was re-established in 2018, only 50% of the Tofta firing range’s area could be utilized, as local politicians believed it could not be justified in terms of public interest (Arvidsson, 2018; Fohlin & Lindvall, 2018; Holmström, 2018).
In the Swedish National Audit Office’s 2021 report, it was observed that the Swedish Armed Forces faced serious obstacles in rebuilding capacity:
During this period, the Armed Forces lost critical competencies related to national defense, and personnel and equipment were tailored primarily for international operations. This posed significant challenges … in implementing the substantial changes required by the parliament’s decision. (Swedish National Audit Office, 2021, my translation)
It concluded that operational development fell short of political expectations, as well as that political governance had not been sufficient either:
The operational capabilities of the army combat units did not develop as expected. … This can be attributed to insufficient resources and a worse-than-expected starting position. … The Armed Forces’ efforts to strengthen army units lacked efficiency in planning, analysis, governance, and implementation. (Swedish National Audit Office, 2021, my translation)
A follow up report by the same instance in 2022 reinforced this assessment:
The Swedish Armed Forces’ needs and strategic goals are not necessarily financially feasible. They also do not always take the needs and capabilities of organizational units fully into account. … The budget appears to have more influence than the strategic goals. The multiple steps in the planning process and the development of various personnel figures create ambiguity and misunderstanding. (Swedish National Audit Office, 2022, p. 33, my translation)
These findings resonate with Jacobsen’s (2019) view that planned change driven by central policymakers often encounters resistance and implementation gaps when resources, structures, and organizational culture are not aligned.
Investments in P18 increased even further in April 2022, when the government announced that SEK 1.6 billion would be allocated to the expansion of P18 (Almqvist, 2022; Gelin, 2022; Olsson, 2022; Wallberg, 2022). However, just over a year later, in December 2023, it was announced that despite this financial contribution the regiment would nevertheless be required to reduce its expenditure (Nilsson, 2023). Sweden’s support for Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia, sharply increased prices for defense materiel in the context of the deteriorating international situation the heightened threat level had contributed to the necessity of the regiment making savings, even though the government had provided nearly SEK 2 billion. Consequentially, certain activities at P18 could not be carried out according to the planned schedule (Nilsson, 2023).
These problems persisted into 2025, with P18 reporting a sharply growing need for firing ranges. While several training grounds are being considered for reactivation, expansion efforts are constrained by the necessity of environmental permit constraints and mixed local reactions (Holmgren, 2025).
In this analysis, both the phenomena of organizational anorexia and destructive growth within the Swedish Armed Forces are examined. While the study follows Alvinius and colleagues (2018) in the definition of these terms, the analysis suggests that the two processes occur parallel, contradicting the understanding of the former preceding the latter.
The simultaneous development of operational capability and the demands for adaptation – such as the implementation of NATO standards and the transfer of materiel to Ukraine – can be understood as consequences of a predominantly top-down reform process that has struggled to permeate multiple organizational levels (Jacobsen, 2019). Similar difficulties have been identified in the Swedish Armed Forces’ limited capacity to navigate new operational contexts and mounting organizational pressures (Alvinius et al., 2022).
A key issue in the regiment’s expansion is personnel supply. Following its re-establishment and the reintroduction of conscription, recruitment has not kept pace with planned levels, creating additional logistical challenges. Approximately 90 conscripts were stationed at P18 in 2023. The target was a total of 250 by 2025 (Widegren, 2020; 2023a, 2023b, 2023c). In 2025, some 310 conscripts were serving on Gotland, the highest number since 2005. This growth has produced significant infrastructure pressures: the new barracks built the previous year were already too small, while there were too few officers to conduct training (Widegren, 2025).
The 2023 Supreme Commander’s Military Advice identified staff shortages as a nationwide concern and advised against further regional establishments (Swedish Armed Forces, 2023). This assessment appears paradoxical, given that the re-establishment of P18 was partly justified by the expectation that it would enhance recruitment. Previous research suggests that, together, the normalization of the military profession (Hedlund, 2019) and persistent difficulties in managing organizational change (Holmberg & Alvinius, 2019) contribute to enduring recruitment challenges within the Swedish military. Integration with the broader total defense framework, moreover, created further strain. Gotland Municipality (2022) concluded that developing total defense capabilities alongside the regiment’s growth was particularly challenging, as many functions needed to be developed within the Swedish Armed Forces from scratch.
Together, these perspectives reveal how the re-establishment of P18, while politically framed as a straightforward solution to renewed threats, in practice encountered complex governance, planning, and capacity barriers. The re-establishment of P18 exposed significant governance and capability gaps, showing how difficult it is to reverse decades of downsizing. The Swedish National Audit Office (2021, 2022) highlights loss of competence, weak planning and unrealistic political expectations. This aligns with Jacobsen’s (2019) view that top-down reforms fail when resources and organizational structures are not aligned. Despite major investments, financial constraints quickly reappeared, and P18 was asked to cut costs, demonstrating how scarcity persists even during expansion.
In line with Alvinius et al. (2018, 2020), this reflects the simultaneity of organizational anorexia and destructive growth, as the Swedish Armed Forces are expected to expand while nevertheless lacking staff, infrastructure and institutional memory. Recruitment problems, NATO adjustments and total defense demands further illustrate this tension. From a WPR perspective (Bacchi, 2009), policy framed re-establishment as a straightforward solution, while leaving structural limitations largely unproblematized.
Discussion
The purpose of this study has been to examine how problem representations in Swedish defense policy have shaped the closure, re-establishment and subsequent expansion of P18, and how these processes reflect the coexistence of organizational anorexia and destructive growth within the Swedish Armed Forces. Using Bacchi’s (2009) WPR approach, the analysis identified three central findings. First, shifting threat representations structured both the dismantling and revival of P18; second, economic rationales consistently dominated policy framing; third, governance and capability gaps constrained the implementation of rearmament. Together, these findings show that policy did not respond neutrally to external conditions but actively constructed problems in ways that produced organizational contradictions.
Discursively Constructed Threats and Organizational Consequences
The decommissioning of P18 was legitimized by a discourse of geopolitical stability and the absence of military threats in the Baltic Sea region (Government of Sweden, 2004a). In contrast, its re-establishment was justified through a narrative of renewed insecurity following the deteriorating relationship with Russia (Government of Sweden, 2017). This confirms Bacchi’s (2009) argument that policy defines rather than discovers problems. These shifting representations align with Holmberg’s (2015) observation that Swedish defense policy alternates between demilitarization and rearmament depending on how threats are politically framed. The result was not a linear transition but alternating expectations that destabilized organizational continuity.
Economic Rationality as a Persistent Logic
Despite shifting threat narratives, economic reasoning remained central across both policy periods. Downsizing was justified in terms of cost efficiency, while re-establishment was explicitly conditioned on remaining within existing financial frameworks. This pattern both reflects broader European trends of managerial reform and new public management in defense institutions (Matlary, 2009; Holmberg, 2015) and aligns with the efficiency-oriented logic identified by Jacobsen (2019). Following Alvinius et al. (2018), this period of austerity reflects organizational anorexia – a condition marked by reduced personnel, depleted expertise and a persistent scarcity mindset. Even during rearmament, the endurance of financial constraints meant that destructive growth emerged in terms of expansion without sufficient capacity, competence or infrastructure (Alvinius et al., 2020).
Governance Gaps and Structural Silences
The re-establishment of P18 revealed significant governance and capability deficits. The Swedish National Audit Office (2021, 2022) noted that the Swedish Armed Forces struggled to rebuild competence, plan effectively, and meet political expectations. Recruitment fell short of government targets, and integration with the total defense structure added additional strain. These gaps illustrate Jacobsen’s (2019) insight that top-down change fails when resources, culture and organizational structures are misaligned. From a WPR perspective, these implementation challenges represent silences in terms of dimensions of the problem that policy did not address. Defense policy treated re-establishment as a straightforward solution to insecurity while leaving competence loss, local consequences and institutional fatigue largely unexamined.
Organizational Anorexia and Destructive Growth as Coexisting Conditions
This study makes a key contribution in demonstrating how organizational anorexia and destructive growth occur concurrently rather than sequentially. Even as defense budgets increased, austerity legacies persisted in the form of staff shortages, infrastructural delays and fragmented governance. P18 therefore represents a case where the Swedish Armed Forces were expected to grow while still operating under the logic of scarcity. This finding expands on previous research, which has tended to present these conditions as stages rather than parallel states (Alvinius et al., 2018).
Theoretical Implications and Future research
This study demonstrates that defense policy does not merely direct organizational change: it actively constructs the problems that render such change necessary and legitimate. By combining Carol Bacchi’s (2009) WPR approach with Jacobsen’s (2019) theory of planned organizational change, the analysis shows how discursive problem representations interact with material constraints and organizational responses. It further develops the concepts of organizational anorexia and destructive growth by demonstrating that these dynamics can coexist within the same organization rather than unfolding sequentially. This nuance extends existing research and underscores how legacies of downsizing continue to structure military institutions even during periods of expansion.
Beyond organizational dynamics, the findings point to significant societal implications. The closure of P18 weakened Gotland’s population base, labor market, and crisis resilience (Gotland Municipality, 2004), while its re-establishment generated new tensions between military expansion, local infrastructure capacity, and civilian needs. These developments reinforce prior research on shifting civil–military relations (Hedlund, 2019), yet such consequences were largely absent from national policy discourse – reflecting what Bacchi (2009) conceptualizes as silences in problem representations.
Future research should extend these insights through qualitative interviews or ethnographic inquiry to capture how personnel experience the simultaneous pressures of scarcity and expansion. In light of Sweden’s recent accession to NATO, further studies should also examine how integration into the alliance reshapes problem representations, governance arrangements, and organizational identity. Comparative analyses of other re-established regiments or Nordic defense reforms would help determine whether the coexistence of organizational anorexia and destructive growth is specific to P18 or indicative of a broader pattern in contemporary military transformation.
Competing Interests
The author has no competing interests to declare.