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This thesis is about the conflict between participation and bureaucracy. This conflict is illustrated by a case study within the Swedish Armed Forces under the activity that preceded the 1996 Resolution on Defence. More closely it focuses on the decision-making process that led to the Swedish Armed Forces report that were handed over to the Government in March 1996. In this decision-making process the Supreme Commander tried different ways to create participation among all the high- ranking officers, from local up to Headquarters level, to make them participate in the process.

The thesis answers the question if it is possible to create participation in a bureau­cratic organisation such as the Swedish Armed Forces, and the conclusion that I draw is that participation is hard to establish. First there is a conflict within the bureaucratic form itself, since a bureaucracy implies a diversification of assignments and responsibilities in different functions and at different levels in a hierarchy. Every level has its own task to fulfil and this states how reality is to be understood. In the Swedish Armed Forces the bureaucratic structure is reinforced by the fact that the officer is promoted to a higher rank after his or her military training. Both the bureaucratic structure and the military training will lead to a differentiation between individuals, and they will be placed in different skills and status levels within the organisation. Besides this, individuals will gather information mostly from their own level, which will further fortify the difference between the levels. Furthermore there are also individual factors connected to the bureaucratic structure that have shown to complicate participation. For example individuals choose not to participate since they experience that they lack necessary competens for the task, that they do not have time, that they have not been consulted or that they consider the task to be solved at a higher level.

So even if the military decision-making model encourages and advocates partici­pation, there is a big difficulty to break the bureaucratic design. Leaders often show inability to go from a bureaucratic leadership style to a democratic one. At the same time the subordinate support their leaders when they act as a traditional leader.