Stuck in Security: A WPR Analysis of Policy and Practice in Swedish International Cooperation Against Organised Crime

Sweden, often regarded as resistant to the global trend toward increasing transnational organised crime, has, over the past decade, experienced a rise in criminal networks, drug trafficking and related violence. Despite being an outlier case, the Swedish response seems to follow the same traditional security logics as have been applied since organised crime gained international attention in the 1980s, with little success. To examine this tension, focusing on the international dimension of organised crime, this thesis critically investigates how Swedish policy against organised crime is discursively constructed and how these constructions shape international cooperation on the issue. Building on poststructuralist understandings of policy, this thesis examines how organised crime is constructed as a problem, what solutions are proposed, and what perspectives are excluded. By analysing the discourse and how policy is implemented at the Government Offices, this thesis illustrates how the perception of what is viable measures differ depending on your understanding of the problem addressed by the policy. Proposing an alternative approach to traditional security perspectives for analysing transnational organised crime, this thesis utilises a combination of the poststructural What is the Problem Represented to be approach, Global Political Economy and Putnam’s two-level game theory to analyse and explain how discourse shapes how and with whom Sweden cooperates internationally. This combination of theories finds that Swedish policy against organised crime frames the issue as an existential threat through a national security discourse. Security measures are prioritised, and the global political and economic structures that shape organised crime and Sweden’s response to it are overlooked. The Swedish Government thus prioritises law enforcement and judicial cooperation, mainly through the EU and marginalises cooperation with regions such as Latin America.