In the beginning of April 2011, the Swedish parliament decided to participate in the NATO-led intervention in Libya. The purpose of the intervention was to maintain a no-fly zone, protect civilians and to create an arms embargo. The aim of this thesis is to describe how the Swedish participation was motivated by the Swedish decision-makers in the parliament. It also aims at exploring the possible motives behind the decision to participate, through different theoretical perspectives such as realism, liberalism and constructivism. This was done with an idea analysis where motivations and motives were searched for primarily in the government proposition and the parliament debate concerning the participation. Other sources that were used to explore possible motives were the Swedish department of defense, previous research and newspapers. My findings shows that the Swedish decision to participate in the Libya-intervention was mainly motivated with liberal ideas. They also show that the motives could be many, but the most probable were the liberal ones which likely can be traced to the Swedish national identity.