Total defence as multilevel governance: Nordic security in the context of the EU and NATO

Once rooted in the Cold War experience of small and nonaligned European states, total defense has reemerged across Northern and Eastern Europe in response to Russia’s increasingly aggressive behavior. Finland, Norway, and Sweden are at the forefront of this revival, making total defense central to national security and societal resilience. This article examines why these three structurally similar states—facing nearly identical strategic pressures—nonetheless maintain distinct total defense architectures while simultaneously converging around shared functional practices. Using a multilevel governance perspective, the analysis compares the vertical distribution of authority, cross-sectoral civil–military coordination, and the horizontal incorporation of civil society and the private sector, while accounting for the growing influence of the EU and NATO. The findings show persistent administrative divergences: Finland retains a strongly centralized system, Norway emphasizes subsidiarity and layered coordination, and Sweden combines a decentralized administrative tradition with renewed recentralization of national and regional command structures. Yet convergence is driven by shared threat perceptions, intertwined resilience agendas, and expanding transnational coordination. Across the Nordic region, total defense increasingly exhibits decentralization in form but centralization in function; cross-sectoral coordination that falls short of doctrinal ambition; and horizontal inclusion that often masks asymmetries between state and non-state actors. These dynamics point to an emerging Nordic governance pattern—nationally anchored, societally mobilized, and embedded in dense transnational networks—yet shaped as much by its frictions as by its areas of alignment. More broadly, the article demonstrates the value of multilevel governance as an integrative framework for contemporary total defense and international security studies.