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The Nordic Countries and the European Union
In European policy-making, the Nordic countries are often viewed as a relatively coherent bloc; in international and European affairs the Nordic position has traditionally been conditioned on being different from and better than Europe. This book offers a coherent, original and systematic comparative analysis of the relationship between the Nordic countries and the European Union over the past two decades. It looks at the historical frame, institutions and policy areas, addressing both traditional EU areas such as agriculture and more nascent areas affecting the domestic and foreign policies of the Nordic countries. In doing so, it examines how the Nordic approach to European policy-making h...
Contesting Nordicness
The terms ‘Nordic’ and ‘Scandinavian’ are widely used to refer to the politics, society and culture of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. But why have people felt the need to frame things as Nordic and why has the adjective Nordic become so prominent? This book adopts a rhetorical approach, analysing the speech acts which have shaped the meanings of the term. What do the different terms Nordic and Scandinavian have in common, and how have the uses of these terms changed in different historical periods? What accounts for the apparent upsurge in uses of the rhetoric of Nordicness in the 2010s? Drawing on eight case studies of the uses of Nordic and Scandinavian from the nine...
The Oxford Handbook of Danish Politics
The Oxford Handbook of Danish Politics provides the most comprehensive and thorough English language book on Danish politics ever written. It features chapters by 50 leading experts who have contributed extensively to the field they write about. Why is Denmark an interesting topic for a Handbook? In some respects, Danish political institutions and political life are very similar to that of other small, North European countries such as the other Scandinavian countries and Netherland. However, in other respects, Danish politics is interesting in its own right. For instance, Denmark has a world record in minority governments. According to standard scholarly knowledge, this should result in unst...
The Routledge Handbook of Scandinavian Politics
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.
Public Management in Times of Austerity
Since 2008, the world has experienced an enormous decrease of wealth. By many measures the impact of the crisis was severe. The fall in GDP, the collapse of world trade, the rise in unemployment, and the credit slump reached bigger proportions than in any other crisis since World War II. Although the economic figures seem to improve in some countries, the crisis continues being a challenging issue and is said to be one of the most important problems governments face today. The crisis has put public finances under ever increasing pressure, and governments have responded through austerity measures such as new fiscal rules and budgeting procedures and cutbacks of public spending. Public Managem...
Waging War and Making Peace
The history of Europe is marked not only by violence and division but also by efforts to reduce the destructiveness of war. In this volume, the authors explore the meaning of ‘Europe’ within war and peace discourses from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. They examine imagined wars, the post-1815 security order, the portrayal of Russian and Muslim 'Others,' double standards in international law, pacifist rhetoric, and the role of ‘Europe’ in war propaganda and resistance movements. The authors demonstrate how both war and peace practices have shaped the concept of ‘Europe’ over time.
Market Expansion and Social Dumping in Europe
The term ‘social dumping’ regularly appears in public debates and in policymaking circles. However, due to its ambiguity it is used in a manner that is convenient for individual discourse participants, thus opening the door for misconceptions and ill-grounded accusations. This book systematically examines social dumping in the context of the European integration process. It defines social dumping as the practice, undertaken by self-interested market participants, of undermining or evading existing social regulations with the aim of gaining a competitive advantage. It also shows how the two major EU integration projects the creation of the Internal Market, and EU enlargement to the east a...
Nordic States and European Integration
This book provides the first lengthy study of awkward states/partners in regional integration. Is awkwardness a characteristic of states in many global regions, or is it reducible to the particular case of the United Kingdom in European integration? The authors assess how far the concept of ‘awkwardness’ can travel, and apply it to the cases of the Nordic States’ involvement in and with the European Union - Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Iceland and Norway. The renewed interest in the Nordic region is in part thanks to recent events in the on-going crisis of European integration, and particular its member states’ response to the refugee question, which appears to be undermining years of intra-regional solidarity even between the Nordic countries. The security dimension of the region further broadens the book’s readership beyond Nordic Politics specialists to IR scholars, as the Nordic countries share borders with Russia and are key players in the Baltic Sea Strategy seeking to involve Russia in looser forms of regional cooperation.
Reframing the Buffer State in Contemporary International Relations
This book explores buffer states' agency beyond being highly interactive spaces for the competing strategic and security interests of larger powers. Analyzing 21 political events, the author offers a new conceptual framework for the buffer state, which emphasizes strategic utility and agency. Applying this to the case study of Nepal as a buffer state between India and China, he offers a systematic analysis of Sino-Indian interests in the wider region, and Nepal’s interactions with and reactions to them, and argues that the buffer state in contemporary international relations is characterized by intense competitive overtures from its contending neighboring states. However, the buffer state ...
Governing Locally
India and other countries chose a decentralised mode of delivering public services through elected local governments for increasing public welfare. However, great expectations of effective services, increased accountability and people's participation were widely belied in practice. Based on field research in cities of Gujarat, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, the book is a detailed examination of how state and local governments function and why decentralisation outcomes vary considerably. It locates the primary reason in governance practices that compromised autonomy and capacity of urban local governments. The book demonstrates that despite a constitutional mandate for decentralised governance, policy implementation got derailed in processes threading through laws, rules, and administrative actions. It shows how habitual practices create hidden institutional rigidities that thwart policy moves despite good intentions and democratic legitimacy. The book also discusses how to navigate policy to skirt hidden threats to successful implementation.
