Reluctant reformers: the economic roots of military change in Norway, 1990–2015.

The Norwegian Armed Forces has seen extensive reforms since the early 1990s. It has been changed from a large, conscription-based, reservist-dominated territorial Defense force to a smaller, more proficient, and flexible force. However, this process has been far from linear, and to this day the Norwegian Armed Forces retains significant elements of its organizational and cultural cold war heritage. We argue that national security concerns, domestic politics and financial constraints have played the main role in shaping the reform of the Armed Forces. This argument gives an alternative to explanations offered by previous research, which has tended to emphasize the role played by international influences, such as the NATO operations in the Balkans and Afghanistan, as well as NATO and US reform initiatives. While external factors undoubtedly have shaped the direction and tempo of the reforms, our findings point to long-standing structural and financial imbalances as the key explanation of the current structure of the Norwegian Armed Forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]