Abstract
Based on the general topic of this thesis and the analysis carried out, following formulation of the problem has been made:
“Is it power, rather than plans and professional assessment, which constitutes the center of decision making, when Denmark deploys military units into international operations?”
The thesis is focusing on the technical rational and functionalistic perspective. Those principals the armed forces traditionally is founding its actions on, namely rational arguments in the form of facts, herein timely, professional analyses and assessments.
The overall aim is to investigate which factors influences – in this actual single case study – the decision making in a way so that military recommendations not always are followed unconditionally. From this perspective it is analyzed what is influencing a decision on the political strategic level – all the way from the consideration of a specific case when presented by the lower level Operational Headquarters to the Joint Forces Command headquarters and the Ministry of Defense, towards a final consideration – debate in the Parliament.
The analyses demonstrate a need for acceptance of a certain presence of process related influence relations in the decision making within the Danish Armed Forces – both so called emergent strategies, opinion strategies and power strategies.