Spänningen mellan demokrati och säkerhet : - vid bildande av Myndigheten för Psykologiskt försvar

Sammanfattning

The purpose of the essay is to analyse tensions between liberal democratic values and security and see how these tensions were handled in the process when the Swedish Psychological defence agency was created. Three research questions were formulated. These were: 1. What central themes are recurring in the consultation responses in the creation of Psychological defence agency? 2. Have the central themes been taken care of, and if they were, in what way? 3. How does the agency’s final regulation differ from the presented draft for consultation in the parts affected by identified themes? The research was done by examining the consultation responses in the referral process with qualitative method. Five themes were identified where tensions between liberal democratic values and security were present. These were 1) whether the agency should be established or not 2) remarks asking for a more precise definition of the concept of information influence 3) notes on poorly defined new task of reporting incidents regarding information influence for many of the government agencies 4) the new agency’s proposed task of helping media outlets in handling information influence and 5) whether the new agency should be able to direct signals intelligence. The analysis shows that the establishment of a new government agency leads to (re)negotiation of tasks between agencies, but also that new tasks are assigned to the new agency. In this process some of the questions that the agency is supposed to handle are securitized, they become part of the bureaucratic apparatus. The analysis also shows that not all suggestions became polity, for instance the new agency did not get the right to direct signals intelligence. This was after critique from consultation respondents. Other remarks were not taken care of, for instance the wish of precision of the concept of information influence was not in place when the agency started.