This clear and engaging text offers a sustained appraisal of Scandinavia's foreign policy and role in the global economy in the post-Cold War period. In an era when good citizenship in the global community has become a diplomatic priority for many states, Christine Ingebritsen argues that Scandinavia has both the legitimacy and the domestic political attributes to be an important international player. She examines how social innovators such as Sweden and Finland seek to influence European integration and how Norway has cultivated a unique and innovative niche in its foreign relations. Scandinavia, she convincingly shows, has become a 'norm entrepreneur, ' exercising its influence abroad through moral leadership-from sponsoring the Nobel Prize and participating in global peacekeeping efforts to providing generous foreign aid and monitoring human rights abuses in the international community. Demonstrating how Scandinavia has made its model of the good society viable on a global scale, this text offers a fascinating case of small-state success and individuality in an increasingly globalized world

This fully revised and updated second edition of Scandinavian Politics Today describes, analyzes and compares the contemporary politics and international relations of the five nation-states of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and the three Home Rule territories of Greenland, Faeroes and Åland that together make up the Nordic region. Thirteen chapters cover Scandinavia past and present; parties in developmental perspective, the Scandinavian party system model, the Nordic model of government, the Nordic welfare model, legislative-executive relations in the region, the changing security environment and the transition from Cold War "security threats" to the "security challenges" of today, and a concluding chapter that looks at regional co-operation, Nordic involvement in the ‘European project’ and the Nordic states as "moral superpowers." The book will be of interest not only to students of Scandinavia, but to those wishing to view Scandinavian politics and policy-making in a wider comparative perspective.

Analyses the political, economic & social challenges facing the industrial democracies of Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland & Sweden. This study emphasizes how global & European developments have affected democratic policymaking in areas such as social welfare policy, employment policy, & social change.

The political structures of the Scandinavian nations have long stood as models for government and public policy. This comprehensive study examines how that “Nordic model” of government developed, as well as its far-reaching influence. Respected Scandinavian historian Mary Hilson surveys the political bureaucracies of the five Nordic countries—Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden—and traces their historical influences and the ways they have changed, individually and as a group, over time. The book investigates issues such as economic development, foreign policy, politics, government, and the welfare state, and it also explores prevailing cultural perceptions of Scandinavia in the twentieth century. Hilson then turns to the future of the Nordic region as a unified whole within Europe as well as in the world, and considers the re-emergence of the Baltic Sea as a pivotal region on the global stage. The Nordic Model offers an incisive assessment of Scandinavia yesterday and today, making this an essential text for students and scholars of political science, European history, and Scandinavian studies.

With its focus on the popular television genre of Nordic noir, this book examines subtle and explicit manifestations of geopolitics in crime series from Scandinavia and Finland, as well as the impact of such programmes on how northern Europe is viewed around the world. Drawing on a diverse set of literature, from screen studies to critical International Relations, Geopolitics, Northern Europe, and Nordic Noir addresses the fraught geopolitical content of Nordic television series, as well as how Nordic noir as a genre travels the globe. With empirical chapters focusing on the interlinked concepts of the body, the border, and the nation-state, this book interrogates the various ways in which northern European states grapple with challenges wrought by globalisation, neoliberalism, and climate change. Reflecting the current global fascination with all things Nordic, this text examines the light and dark sides of the region as seen through the television screen, demonstrating that series such as Occupied, Trapped, and The Bridge have much to teach us about world politics. This book will be of interest to those interested in geopolitics, national identity, and the politics of popular culture in: Scandinavian studies, media/screen studies, IR/political science, human/cultural geography, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, and communication.

Survey of the changing position of all four Nordic states in twentieth-century international relations.

This study is among the first works in English to comprehensively address the Scandinavian First World War experience in the larger international context of the war. It surveys the complex relationship between the belligerent great powers and Northern Europe's neutral small states in times of crisis and war. The book's overreaching rationale draws upon three underlying conceptual fields: neutrality and international law, hegemony and great power politics as well as diplomacy and policy-making of small states in the international arena. From a variety of angles, it examines the question of how neutrality was understood and perceived, negotiated and dealt with both among the Scandinavian states and the belligerent major powers, especially Britain, Germany and Russia. For a long time, the experience of neutral countries during the First World War was seen as marginal, and was overshadowed by the experiences of occupation and collaboration brought about by the Second World War. In this book, Jonas demonstrates how this perception has changed, with neutrality becoming an integral part of the multiple narratives of the First World War. It is an important contribution to the international history of the First World War, cultural-historically influenced approaches to diplomatic history and the growing area of neutrality studies.

The Routledge Handbook of Scandinavian Politics is a comprehensive overview of Scandinavian politics provided by leading experts in the field and covering the polity, the politics and the policy of Scandinavia. Coherently structured with a multi-level thematic approach, it explains and details Scandinavian politics today through a series of cutting-edge chapters. It will be a key reference point both for advanced-level students developing knowledge about the subject, as well as researchers producing new material in the area and beyond. It brings geographical scope and depth, with comparative chapters contributed by experts across the region. Methodologically and theoretically pluralistic, the handbook is in itself a reflection of the field of political science in Scandinavia and the diversity of the issues covered in the volume. The Routledge Handbook of Scandinavian Politics will be an essential reference for scholars, students, researchers and practitioners interested and working in the fields of Scandinavian politics, European politics, comparative politics and international relations.

The 'Age of Revolution' is a term seldom used in Scandinavian historiography, despite the fact that Scandinavia was far from untouched by the late eighteenth-century revolutions in Europe and America. Presenting the latest research on political culture in Scandinavia, this volume with twenty-seven contributions focuses on four key aspects: the crisis of monarchy; the transformation in political debate; the emerging influence of commercial interest in politics; and the shifting boundaries of political participation. Generously illustrated throughout, this book will introduce non-Scandinavian readers to developments in the Nordic countries during the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth-centuries and both complement and challenge research into the political cultures of Europe and America.

This book takes a comprehensive approach to security in the Nordic-Baltic region, studying how this region is affected by developments in the international system. The advent of the new millennium coincided with the return of the High North to the world stage. A number of factors have contributed to the increased international interest for the northern part of Europe: climate change resulting in ice melting in Greenland and the Arctic, and new resources and shipping routes opening up across the polar basin foremost among them. The world is no longer "unipolar" and not yet "multipolar," but perhaps "post-unipolar", indicating a period of flux and of declining US unipolar hegemony. Drawing together contributions from key thinkers in the field, Northern Security and Global Politics explores how this situation has affected the Nordic-Baltic area by addressing two broad sets of questions. First, it examines what impact declining unipolarity - with a geopolitical shift to Asia, a reduced role for Europe in United States policy, and a more assertive Russia - will have on regional Nordic-Baltic security. Second, it takes a closer look at how the regional actors respond to these changes in their strategic environment. This book will be of much interest to students of Nordic and Baltic politics, international security, foreign policy and IR.