Abstract
The relationship between civilian control over the armed forces and military effectiveness is a central focus in studies of civil-military relations. Both the characteristics of political control and its intensity is thought to affect the maneuverability of the armed forces and their performance. Previous research has suggested that recent reforms, conducted to increase effectiveness of the public administrations in many liberal democracies, has rather led to an increased bureaucratization of the military. This bureaucratization, in turn, is argued to affect negatively the possibility of the military profession, e.g. the officer corps, to exercise its professional judgement in the running of everyday affairs. It is not uncommon to describe this as a 'deprofessionalization' of the armed forces that has detrimental consequences both for the application of military expertise and the social control of individual officers. Yet such conclusions are generally drawn based on a select number of examples and exactly what such a deprofessionalization might entail is for military profession is seldom addressed in any detail. In this paper, I rely on surveys with military officers conducted over the past 25 years to investigate how the past decades of public management reforms in Sweden have affected the Swedish officer corps, both regarding its ability to exercise professional judgement and how it perceives its maneuverability. The conclusions of the study points to a need to update the understanding of professionalism within the armed forces.