Book Review Essay: Constructing Nordic Internationalism
| Author | Marjo Koivisto |
| Published date | 01 September 2007 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836707079937 |
| Date | 01 September 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
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BOOK REVIEW ESSAY
Constructing Nordic Internationalism
MARJO KOIVISTO
• Christine Agius, The Social Construction of Swedish Neutrality: Challenges
to Swedish Identity and Sovereignty. Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2006, 253 pp. ISBN 0-7190-7152-6.
•
Pernille Rieker, Europeanization of National Security Identity:The EU and
the Changing Security Identities of the Nordic States. London: Routledge,
2006, 226 pp. ISBN 0-415-38022-7.
•
Christine Ingebritsen, Scandinavia in World Politics. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006, 127 pp. ISBN 0-7425-0966-4.
Within Norden, it is a common assumption amounting to a social fact that it is
a ‘win in the lottery’ to have been born in a social democratic Nordic welfare
state. The changes at the end of the Cold War seem to have challenged this
presumption, providing a historic moment of renegotiation that all three
books under review take as a turning point for the Nordic states. Globalization
and European integration challenged the universal welfare capitalism of the
states in these societies, and as all of these new books show, to Europeanize or
not to Europeanize was one of the questions faced, as was who or what to rely
on for security.
In addition to its important insights for the study of ‘neutrality’ in Inter-
national Relations (IR), Agius’s The Social Construction of Swedish Neu-
trality stands out as socio-historically engaged exposition of the Swedish,
social democratic policy of neutrality. The key argument in this study is that
the hegemonic role of the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) in the
country’s politics and society over the twentieth century underlined the
state’s internationally activist neutrality policy. The social democratic ideology
was well manifested in the concept of folkhem: ‘the vision of a government
as a home that protects the nation’s people as much as a family’s home pro-
tects each of its members’ (p. 75). This notion formed a central part of the
Swedish understanding of the collective self, and it was accepted across the
smorgasbord, not only by the SAP, but also by conservative forces in Swedish
society. Calling it the ‘social construction’ of Swedish neutrality, Agius’s book
makes the important point that Swedish neutrality policies have deep roots
Cooperation and Conflict: Journal of the Nordic International Studies Association
Vol. 42(3): 357–361. © NISA 2007 www.ps.au.dk/NISA
SAGE Publications, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore
www.sagepublications.com
0010-8367. DOI: 10.1177/0010836707079937
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COOPERATION AND CONFLICT 42(3)
in Swedish state formation from the nineteenth to at least the late twentieth
century, and are not merely derivative of Cold War power politics, and as
such not fully explicable by international systemic factors. Similarly, this
work aptly shows how the renegotiation of Swedish neutrality as an issue
cannot help but influence ongoing debates about Swedish...
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