Varieties of neutrality
| Author | Jessica L. Beyer,Stephanie C. Hofmann |
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0010836711416956 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
416956CAC46310.1177/0010836711416956Beyer and HofmannCooperation and Conflict
Article
Cooperation and Conflict
46(3) 285 –311
Varieties of neutrality:
© The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
Norm revision and decline
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836711416956
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Jessica L. Beyer and Stephanie C. Hofmann
Abstract
With the end of the Cold War, the neutral countries of Austria, Finland, Ireland and Sweden
have grappled with the question of what their neutrality means in relation to membership in the
European Union’s (EU) Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Partnership for Peace (PfP). The concept of neutrality has
continued to inform the foreign and security policies of these four neutral EU members to varying
degrees, but what explains these ‘varieties of neutrality’ and what does neutrality mean in relation
to membership in the EU’s CSDP and NATO’s PfP? In this article, the primary focus is on neutrality
as a norm. Understanding neutrality as a norm helps clarify how neutrality becomes embedded in
national identity, what it shows about the interactions between domestic belief systems and
international security conditions over time, and how the definition of a norm can be revised to
allow for desired policy choices. To this end, the article asserts that there are four interrelated
factors key to explaining how and why each state modified its interpretation of neutrality vis-à-
vis international military institutions such as NATO, and the CSDP: the reason for and timing of
institutionalizing neutrality (coerced or voluntary), the form of institutionalization (de jure or
de facto), political elite opinion and public opinion/belief.
Keywords
EU, NATO, neutrality, norm revision, small states
Introduction
With the end of the Cold War, the neutral countries of Austria, Finland, Ireland and
Sweden have grappled with the question of what their neutrality1 means in relation to
membership in the European Union’s (EU) Common Security and Defence Policy
(CSDP)2 and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Partnership for Peace (PfP).
Their participation in military planning, training and crisis management operations as part
of CSDP and PfP appears to contradict neutrality (Bailes et al., 2006; Ferreira-Perriera,
2007; Forsberg and Vaahtoranta, 2001; Herolf, 1999; Munro, 2005; Sivonen, 2001).
Corresponding author:
Jessica L. Beyer, Department of Political Science, University of Washington, P.O. Box 353530, Seattle, WA
98195, USA
Email: jlbeyer@u.washington.edu
286
Cooperation and Conflict 46(3)
However, simultaneously, the concept of neutrality has continued to inform the foreign
and security policies of these four militarily non-aligned EU members to varying degrees,
suggesting that neutrality as a norm holds greater weight beyond strategic policy (Bergman
and Peterson, 2006; Miles, 1995, 2000; Möller and Bjereld, 2010; cf. Tiilikainen, 2006).
What explains these ‘varieties of neutrality?’ And what does neutrality mean in relation to
membership in the EU’s CSDP and the NATO’s PfP? In this article, the primary focus is
on neutrality as a norm. Understanding neutrality as a norm helps to clarify how neutrality
becomes embedded in national perceptions of identity, what it shows about the interac-
tions between domestic belief systems and international security conditions over time,
and how the definition of a norm can be revised to allow for desired policy choices.
Checkel’s definition of norms as ‘collective understandings that make behavioural claims
on actors’ (1998: 326–7) is followed.
To this end, it is asserted that there are four interrelated factors key to explaining how
and why each state modified its interpretation of neutrality vis-à-vis international mili-
tary institutions such as NATO and CSDP: the reason for and timing of institutionalizing
neutrality (coerced or voluntary), the form of institutionalization (de jure or de facto),
political elite opinion and public opinion. The article’s contribution to the special issue
are the insights it presents drawing on constructivist as well as realist scholarship, while,
at the same time, studying norms comparatively (across countries). It is argued that neu-
trality changed most in Finland and Austria, where the norm was introduced under USSR
pressure, essentially imposed from the outside (what we call coercion) and was very
broadly defined. Alternately, it is argued that neutrality has changed the least in Ireland
and Sweden where it was adopted voluntarily and was more narrowly defined from the
beginning. However, this article suggests that, in all cases, the norm of neutrality retained
influence on choices about foreign and security policy.
The article draws on existing primary and secondary literature to generate illustrative
cases and attempts to provide theoretical propositions about norm revision and decline.
By considering both domestic–international and ideational–rational variables, the article
seeks to answer the call to gain greater analytical leverage by combining the variables of
different theoretical traditions, rather than separating them (Fearon and Wendt, 2002; Sil
and Katzenstein, 2010). The norm of neutrality serves as an excellent case for testing
theory about norm revision and decline because: (a) neutrality illuminates the interactions
between domestic belief systems and international security conditions and (b) over time,
the four countries revised their respective understandings of neutrality towards military
non-alignment (see Agius and Devine, [this issue]), making their foreign and security
policies compatible with involvement in CSDP and PfP.
Focusing on Austria, Finland, Ireland and Sweden, the analysis examines the start
of the norm initiation in all cases, but the central focus of the article is directed at the
post-war period until 2008. The primary argument is developed in four sections. First,
alternative explanations are articulated explaining the behaviour of these four states.
Second, the article discusses constructivist arguments and definitions of norms and
develops a theory of norm revision and decline. Third, the four cases are examined
through that theoretical lens. Finally, conclusions relating to the state of neutrality today
are presented.
Beyer and Hofmann
287
The international and domestic levels: Power and
national identity
This analysis is situated in the broader literature on small states in International Relations
(IR) and draws insights from realist and constructivist approaches, as both offer leverage
in explaining varying practices of the norm of neutrality in Austria, Finland, Ireland and
Sweden. While the majority of small-state studies turned from a focus on the realist vari-
able of the structure of the international system in the 1980s (Neumann and Gstöhl,
2006: 16), most work on small states recognizes that they are more vulnerable than large
states (Ahnlid, 1992; Baker Fox, 1959; Barston, 1973; Hey, 2003; Lindell and Persson,
1986; Liska, 1957; Paterson, 1969; Vital, 1967)3 even when discussing the unexpected
capacity of small states in the international system (Duursma, 1996; Goetschel, 1998;
Handel, 1985; Ingebritsen, 1998, 2006; Katzenstein, 1985; Krasner, 1981; Risse-Kappen,
1995).4 Although there has been some debate in the literature about whether all small-state
responses to the international system were similar or not, such as East’s large-N study
of small-state foreign policy (1973) (Duval and Thompson, 1980; Harbert, 1976), as
Neumann and Gstöhl assert in their careful tracing of the evolution of small-state litera-
ture, the majority of IR studies focus on large states, even though the majority of countries
in the world are, by most definitions, small (2006: 20). The skew towards studying large
states in IR literature could be seen as an unexamined realist bias that power and the dis-
tribution of power explain international outcomes and behaviour, relegating small-state
study in IR to the assumption, in line with Thucydides, that small states do what they must
while large states do what they will in the international system.5 The preoccupation with
large states crosses theoretical paradigms.
As Neumann and Gstöhl put forth in their typology of the evolution of small-state
studies (2006: 16), in the earliest wave of small-state literature (1950s–1970s), small-
state behaviour was frequently considered within the realist framework, even in studies
attempting to understand how international institutions such as the United Nations might
grant small states new power (Krasner, 1981; Plischke, 1977; or, in a post-Cold War
context, Hong, 1995). In such work, in line with the realist rubric, small states are
assumed to be ‘price-takers’ in the international system (Ingebritsen, 2006: 287), their
choices determined by each state’s relative power position and the structure of the inter-
national system (e.g. bipolar), which is reasoned to extend to all aspects of their foreign
and domestic policy (Ingebritsen et al., 2006; Waltz, 1979). Realists posit that the smaller
and weaker the state, the more likely it is to be a price-taker in international security,
regardless of its understanding of appropriate behaviour and the normative context sur-
rounding it.
Within the realist framework, neutrality is seen as one of two...
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