Higher Seminar in Statecraft and Strategic Communication | Johan Wennström

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Welcome to the Higher Seminar organized by the Center of Statecraft and Strategic Communication. The seminar speaker is Johan Wennström (Research Institute of Industrial Economics) who will present his research project "The Role of Business and Labor in Total Defense".

This study examines how during the Cold War, the Swedish Employers' Association (SAF) and the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) came together to protect Sweden and strengthen its total defense in the event of an invasion. At the heart of their cooperation was an armed civil resistance movement.

The aim of the project is to chart the resistance movement and ask, for instance, how developed it was and which the primary tasks of the organization were. The second purpose is to ask what the parties on the Swedish labor market and today’s total defense may learn from the cooperation between business and labor during the Cold War.

The research is based on oral recollections as well as written accounts in private and public archives.

Johan Wennström received his Ph.D. in Political Science in February 2019 from Linköping University. The title of his dissertation is Interpreting Policy Convergence Between the Left and the Right: Essays on Education and Immigration. His research focus is on the moral foundations of policymaking. He is particularly interested in education and migration policy. He has previously worked as a political adviser for the Swedish government and as an editorial writer in Svenska Dagbladet, where he is presently a regular contributor to the culture pages.