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The purpose of this paper is to analyse Poland's Eastern Dimension (ED) proposal as seen from the marginality theoretical background. The basic argument is that the ED stands out as a discursive battlefield for different representations of Poland and of Europe's margins. In devising its marginality strategy, Poland has learned from Finland about the ability of a state at the edge of the European Union to have an impact on the whole. However, Poland is torn between sovereign and post-sovereign discourses of space and identity; the tensions between them explain why the ED remains vague. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to the larger projects of the Single Market and Economic and Monetary Union, cohesion policy has often been ascribed a secondary role. Considered as a side payment from the richer to the poorer member states, it has been reduced to the political margins of European integration. In this paper, we set out to question this interpretation by placing the `cohesion issue' in a broader socio-economic and political context. It is the main claim that cohesion policy forms part of a contest between competing political projects at the European level, and as such has played a crucial role in the renewed integration wave from the mid-1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using discursive institutionalism as an analytical framework, this article addresses how national actors build, coordinate and communicate discourses on EU defence policy (CSDP) at home. The empirical analysis is based on a comparative study of substantive and interactive discourses in France and Ireland, two contrasted cases. It demonstrates that France and Ireland frame and interpret elements of CSDP that best fit their needs, use them to promote their defence agenda in a legitimate and ‘European’ way and present CSDP as a natural continuation of their preferences. These defence agendas revolve around the preservation of France’s exceptionalism and Ireland’s neutrality. Discursive institutionalism, which methodologically sheds light on agents and institutional contexts, helps to understand the dynamics of constructive ambiguity, a discursive strategy often applied to CSDP and illustrated by these two cases. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The European refugee crisis has been communicated visually through images such as those of Alan Kurdi lying dead on the beach, by body bags on the harbor front of Lampedusa, by people walking through Europe and by border guards and fences. This article examines the broader visual environment within which EU policy-making took place from October 2013 to October 2015. It identifies 'tragedy' as the key term used by the EU to explain its actions and decisions and points out that discourses of humanitarianism and border control were both in place. The article provides a theoretical account of how humanitarianism and border control might be visualized by news photography. Adopting a multi-method design and analyzing a dataset of more than 1000 photos, the article presents a visual discourse analysis of five generic iconic motifs and a quantitative visual content analysis of shifts and continuity across four moments in time. The article connects these visual analyses to the policies and discourses of the EU holding that the ambiguity of the EU's discourse was mirrored by the wider visual environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the intersections between the visual, spatial and material and considers how these interactions capture the border politics of everyday 'banal' objects. We do this by looking at some of the objects and things that constitute the 'Balkan Route' through Europe: posters, signs, directions, notices, flyers and maps produced by state authorities and volunteer-led aid networks. We use objects to reflect more broadly on how seemingly banal and everyday things become incorporated into the political work of states and become constitutive of fluid borders. We argue that everyday objects become visualisations of states and authorities, and help to make and regulate physical spaces. We show how each visual object encountered along the route gives us a broader insight into the macropolitics of European border regimes, specifically the effects of 'closed borders' and the criminalisation of aid networks. The article pushes forward the 'aesthetic turn' debate in international relations by bringing in insights from political geography and materialism, and suggests that a walking methodology can be a productive way of encountering the visual and understanding how its physical location creates political effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Referring to Kant’s ‘Perpetual Peace’, research on the democratic peace is based on the assumption that citizens’ preferences are fully and directly transferred into actual security policy by democratic leaders. However, democratic responsiveness in foreign politics is a more complex issue. Parliaments are usually key institutions with regard to ensuring responsiveness of democratic leaders both by authorizing political decisions and by monitoring executive policy-making and implementation. However, in several democracies military security policy-making is understood as part of an ‘executive prerogative’. This article examines the role of parliaments in providing for democratic responsiveness of security policy-making. We test the hypothesis that, depending on the extent of their ‘war powers’, parliaments do effectively limit the scope of executive security policy if and when public opinion strongly opposes military action. The decision-making of 25 European democracies on military participation in the 2003 Iraq War serves as a test. Testing the hypothesis we find that countries with strong parliamentary war powers tended to be significantly less involved in the military intervention against Iraq. However, several puzzles of a theory of ‘parliamentary peace’ remain to be addressed by future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Nothing is more important to Europe’s future as a security actor than supplying its armed forces with modern weaponry. Because individual states lack the research and development budgets and scale economies to remain autarkic, the survival of Europe’s defence-industrial base depends on international cooperation. As in other areas of international affairs, the ability of states to cooperate ‘under anarchy’ is inextricably tied to the existence of international institutions. However, the nature of arms production renders the design of institutions particularly challenging. Problems lie in both the multiplicity of potential cooperative outcomes and the variety of policy tools available. Ultimately, the choice of policies and policy tools can generate friction between the key groups of actors involved in defence-industrial policymaking. This study systematically explores how variations in the structure of international armaments institutions have shaped both the influence of different groups of actors and the nature of collaborative weapons projects. To preview my conclusions, three broad trends can be observed in the evolution of armaments institutions. These are as follows: (1) the gradual incorporation of a larger number of actors into the arms cooperation process; (2) the incremental exclusion of military professionals from armaments institutions; and (3) the growing influence of corporate actors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Fifteen years ago we presented an agenda for crisis management research and training in Europe, here that article is revisited through a comprehensive review of social science scholarship in the field. Both the discourses on risk and crisis ‘management’ and on crisis ‘politics’ are surveyed in an effort to show the connect between knowledge and policy agendas for capacity building. Priority areas for European research are identified and discussed. The vital roles of research-based education and experience-based training to foster enhanced crisis management practices are noted. Independent yet policy-focused centres of crisis management scholarship are encouraged and needed. These should be linked through a transnational network to support a common ‘rapid reflection’ force in service of European leadership, when it matters the most. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article offers an historical examination of the evolution of the practice of representing international actors as ‘powers’, and the classification of them as different kinds of ‘power’. It argues that the practice emerged in parallel with the use of the language of sovereign states, and points to the importance of the body of journalistic literature on the ‘present state of Europe’, to the development of the usage of the term ‘powers’ and associated ideas about ‘interests’ and ‘pretentions’, which it contrasts with the tendency within the body of juristic literature to focus on the ‘rights’ of ‘sovereigns’. It also charts the contrary move in the discourse of powers towards a grading of different classes, whereas the tendency within the discourse of sovereigns was more towards equality, although the article also notes parallel elements of hierarchy within equality. The article concludes by asking how the ‘normative power Europe’ thesis fits with, but in some cases also departs from, these representational practices. For example, the idea is often used to convey the unique, sui generis nature of the EU’s identity as an international actor, whereas the normal tendency within the discourse of powers is towards more generic and class-oriented forms of identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article engages in the debate on (the study of) regionalism in providing an overview of the nexus between European Studies (ES) and (New) Regionalism (NR). While the immediate purpose for doing so is to set the stage for the future debate on regional dynamics, this exploration can also be perceived as a case study into (the plurality of forms of) inter/intra-disciplinary dialogue demonstrating the necessity of engaging in ‘dialogues about dialogues’. The article starts by developing a new typology of four different ideal-typical notions of dialogue: hierarchical, reflexive, transformative and eristic models of dialogue. Each of these models is then used to examine different ways of answering questions about why a dialogue between ES/NR should be of interest or not; what ES has to offer; what the coveted impact of such a dialogue is supposed to be; and, finally, which promises and pitfalls such a conversation holds. In this fashion, the stage for future debate addressing regional integration is outlined. It is concluded that these futures look bleak, however, especially because ES and NR no longer appear as each other’s ideal partner-in-dialogue and the relationship is likely to come to an end and hence await its own funeral. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The transition from neutrality to post-neutrality has been debated by constructivists and rationalists alike as a seemingly logical and unproblematic move: the end of the Cold War and the widening of the security agenda in a globalizing world have meant that a state-centric approach to security is no longer viable or desirable. The former neutrals are subsequently reconfiguring their security policies to reflect this development and contributing to European and NATO security initiatives, and at the same time contributing their own unique ‘soft security’ experiences and practices. This article aims to problematize this seemingly smooth move from neutrality to post-neutrality by examining the discourses deployed to facilitate this change. Arguing that there is a politics of post-neutrality at work, it draws attention to how identity is being reconstituted in the process of European integration and identity-formation, and how discourses on changing forms of security cooperation are facilitating the discursive dissemination of an inevitable logic that neutrality in any form will eventually be abandoned. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the content of concepts of neutrality articulated in elite and public discourses in the context of the development of the European Union’s (EU) Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). In parallel with security and defence policy developments in successive EU treaties, many argue that the meaning of neutrality has been re-conceptualized by elites in EU ‘neutral’ member states (specifically, Austria, Finland, Ireland and Sweden) to the point of irrelevance and inevitable demise. Others argue that the concept of ‘military’ neutrality, as it is termed by elites in Ireland, or ‘military non-alignment’, as it is termed by elites in Austria, Sweden and Finland, meaning non-membership of military alliances, is compatible with the CSDP in the Lisbon Treaty. An investigation of these paradoxical discursive claims as to the status of neutrality yields findings of a divergence in public ‘active’ and elite ‘military’ concepts of neutrality that embodies competing foreign policy agendas. These competing, value-laden, concepts reflect tensions between, on the one hand, the cultural influences of a domestic constituency holding strong national identities and role-conceptions informed by a postcolonial or anti-imperialist legacy and, on the other hand, elite socialization influences of ‘global actor’ and common defence-supported identity ambitions encountered at the EU level that can induce discursively subtle yet materially significant shifts in neutral state foreign policy. The article concludes with an analysis of the compatibility of both ‘military’ neutrality and the ‘active’ concept of neutrality with the CSDP in the Lisbon Treaty and draws conclusions on the future role of neutrality both inside and outside the EU framework. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article approaches ‘neutrality’ as an essentially contested concept and traces its meaning and purpose over centuries-long historical timelines and situated political, societal and security contexts. It distinguishes neutrality from other concepts such as ‘neutralization’ ‘non-belligerency’, ‘non-alignment’, ‘military non-alignment’, ‘military neutrality’ and ‘non-allied’. The article explains the politics of defining neutrality in the current European political and legal landscape and in the context of shifting definitions and practices of war, peace, security and state sovereignty. This episteme-based analysis focuses on changes to neutrality in accordance with the rise and fall of particular empires and international actors over time, and changes to its status linked to the development and reification of particular meta-theoretically-based subfields of International Relations and Political Science, setting the background to this special issue of Cooperation and Conflict. A renewed emphasis on the normative aspects of neutrality (i.e. the role of domestic values, politics, preferences, history and mass publics in foreign policy formulation) is achieved by employing a range of perspectives, characterized by increased pluralism in levels of analysis and theoretical approaches. Through this pluralism, authors engage with (1) the strategic and normative drivers underpinning the norm of neutrality, (2) the potential for neutrals to serve as norm entrepreneurs in the field of peace promotion, (3) the tenuous legal status of elites’ quasi-neutral foreign policy constructions underpinned by tensions between discourses and practices and (4) the discursive strategies underpinning the move from neutral states’ traditional forms of neutrality to what is termed ‘post-neutrality’ in the current politico-legal context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, the concept Normative Europeanization is developed from a synthesis of Normative Power Europe (NPE) and Europeanization. It is argued that NPE has focused too narrowly on the external relations of the European Union (EU), while Europeanization has focused on changes in policy structures. The synthesis developed here overcomes these shortcomings by emphasizing normative internal relations within the EU. Normative Europeanization is defined as a top-down process based on the logic of appropriateness, where states with a close relationship to the EU, i.e. candidate and member states, develop a commitment to a European centre and their normative point of departure is changed. It is argued here that a process of normative Europeanization affects candidate countries and new EU members especially where pro-European norms are diffused through different mechanisms. The theoretical argument is illustrated through a case study on Swedish foreign policy reorientation during the 1990s. The empirical analysis is structured around two ideal types: internationalist foreign policy and normatively Europeanized foreign policy. Based on this analysis, it is concluded that Swedish foreign policy has undergone strong normative Europeanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explore the relationship between 'value' and 'security' in the conceptualization of European construction and its transformation in recent years through the anti-terror effort. I suggest that the landscape of human values, and the way it is correlated with security, is discontinuous and fragmented. In the post-Madrid/London era, variations in cultures of law enforcement, border control, intelligence and diplomacy, and, not least, new cultures of fear and prudence, render this landscape increasingly complex. The value-laden nature of security and insecurity has contributed to a fragmented evolution in European approaches to the challenge of security. The politics of harmonization and standardization of European security reveals not a singularity in security, but the contrary, namely multiple securities. I thus develop a counterargument to both realist and social constructivist understandings of values and the role these play in security thinking. I affirm, in a typical constructivist vein, that values matter in the formation of security policy. However, I reverse the typical constructivist position that sees security as the embodiment of ideas, arguing instead that the European self-understanding is itself the product of its own constellation of security and insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'Balkanization' has found entry in the social sciences vocabulary as a metaphor for diversity at best, social and political instability for the most part, and genocidal war at worst. And yet it is precisely the emergence of a variety of national states and the Ottoman Empire's disintegration that are frequently portrayed as processes of 'modernizing' as well as 'naturalizing' the international system of the Balkans and the Middle East. By offering a historical sociological re-construction of early modern Ottoman history up to the Greek Revolt in 1821, I argue in this article that the national secessions were not synonymous with the creation of a 'modern' international system in southeastern Europe. National independence cannot therefore be understood as a functional derivate of an expanding European Modernity mediated through global capitalism or geopolitical competition. Rather, the various secessions were the result of a series of conservative reactions to the modernization efforts of the Ottoman central administration. National state formation and Ottoman disintegration, on the one hand, and capitalist development and modern sovereignty on the other, have thus to be seen rather as having historically and socially distinct origins than as representing two sides of the same coin of a totalizing form of European international modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on critical security studies in Europe. Critical security studies have made an impact on debates about security in international relations theory since the mid-1990s. It discusses the concept of security as an object of reflection rather than a given, critical approaches have problematized the dominant military and statist knowledge of security. Moreover, the study was given to denote a range of various approaches that had little in common other than a shared dissatisfaction with the orthodoxy of traditional security studies.

The emergence of the modern state and the European states system limned the inside of a state different from its outside. Inside the state, peace and progress could be furthered by means of disciplinary power, while outside the state, anarchy reigned. Academic disciplines such as political theory, International Relations and International History treat this divide as foundational, and so the knowledge they produce contributes to its reproduction. The article traces the emergence of the divide where Norway and Denmark are concerned through a reading of the concept of 'realm' (rike), and asks when Norway evolved a foreign policy (as distinct from a non-discriminating foreign/domestic one). There are two extant views. A legal view starts from sovereignty and fixes the date at 1905, whereas a nationalistic view popular with historians treats it as originary to the political entity of Norway, which means that it may be dated back some thousand years or so. Treating discriminating institutions such as foreign ministries as preconditions for the existence of a permanent divide between inside and outside, the article suggests the end of the eighteenth century. One may speculate that the firming of the divide is related to the rise of nationalism, in which case it is not surprising that the two phenomena fade concurrently. Since Nordic cooperation stood out as a special phenomenon in international relations because of the particular way in which it handled the domestic/foreign divide, Nordic cooperation will lose its role as special in the degree to which the domestic/foreign divide becomes less foundational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the idea of brands to debates about Nordic models and identity. Understanding brands to be more strategic and stable than identities, the article shows how a Nordic brand was marketed during the Cold War, but has since been challenged and undermined by a number of pressures. Central to the Nordic brand have been ideas of Nordic 'exceptionalism' — of the Nordics as being different from or better than the norm — and of the Nordic experience, norms and values as a model to be copied by others. In the post-Cold War period, key aspects of the Nordic brand have been challenged. On the one hand, elements of the Nordic elite appear to have forsaken the brand. On the other, broader recognition of a distinct Nordic brand is being undermined with the melding of Nordic with European practices and processes. The article concludes by asking whether the decline of the Nordic brand matters and further explores the link between Nordicity as a brand and as an identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relations between Russia and the Baltic States - the weakest link in the Baltic Rim - have significantly improved since 2000. One of the explanations for this improvement is the fact that in contemporary Russian political discourse national identity is desecuritized. The role of the Baltic states has radically changed: they are no longer considered as an embodiment of the `false', anti-Russian Europe. However, despite the desecuritization of national identity, security as the model of structuring and governing the `external' world still dominates political discourse. The preponderance of the war against terrorism as discursive articulation, as well as the modernist nature of President Putin's political project, leads to the marginalization of the Baltic Sea area on the political agenda. Some new departures in Russia's policy as regards the Baltic Sea area are possible, however, once Russia has gone through its election campaign, and the enlargements of NATO and the EU are complete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is argued in this article that after the EU and NATO shift of attention towards eastern Europe, Arctic Europe is again at a turning point behind which a remarginalization and a silent remilitarization (which is often advanced in terms of environmental protection) loom. After a decade during which time the region enjoyed considerable international attention other than military, it is now facing the possibility of a loss in attention resulting from both the Northern Dimension's development towards, or replacement by, an Eastern Dimension and the decrease in US interest in northern Europe. Yet, marginalization may also be seen as a possibility for the Arctic to regain its own political subjectivity which, resuming lines of thought introduced in the early 1990s, may be understood in terms of a universal Arctic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the issue of the relationship between security- speak and regional cooperation in Northern Europe. In the post-Cold War period, it is argued, regional cooperation has been driven by a mixture of realist- and liberalist-based security discourses. While realism results in cooperation through othering, liberalism rather promotes cooperation through inclusion. On the whole, security has been a unifying theme, not a divisive one. European Union and NATO enlargements, however, are undermining the security bases of regional cooperation. The article asks the question of what will happen to regional cooperation if security is removed from the frame. Will regional cooperation wither away as a political project? Or will attempts at re-securitization be made to rejuvenate regional cooperation? Either way there are apparently difficulties in thinking of regional cooperation without relying on security for motivation and justification. Through a revisionist account of Nordic cooperation that challenges the idea that Norden is a security community par excellence and is rather driven by asecurity concerns, a way out of the security-cooperation dilemma is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dual enlargements of the EU and NATO have been widely proclaimed as the end of one era and the beginning of a new one. This 'endism' has been visible, for example, in the debate on the future of the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS). According to this line of thinking, the CBSS should be strengthened, provided with proper think-tank functions and furnished with sufficient powers to take decisions in matters crucial for the future of the region. Instead of undermining its position, it should be overhauled and provided with increased competence. So, in which direction do proclamations of 'endism', change and transformation point, and can shifts even be identified in the first place? In other words, are the constitutive debates still firmly anchored in the past? Or is there a breach discernible in the sense that the key regional agendas are now increasingly dominated by a new set of issues, such as of assuring oneself a prominent position within the Europe that is now unfolding? The prevailing pattern appears, in general, to be rather mixed. On the one hand there are clear shifts to be traced, especially in that questions of the 'future' and of how to adapt to the post-enlargement situation are becoming increasingly important.

Based on a communicative perspective, this article examines the theoretical possibility of a two-fold change in European security (in the referent object of security and in the understanding and practice of the best means of achieving security). The approach suggested should be considered supplementary to the rational choice perspective, and at the same time a contribution to a strengthening of the existing `widening' literature on security. It is argued that the concepts of communicative rationality and deliberation can contribute to this in two ways: first, by establishing alternative and more precise micro-foundations to those provided in the rational choice perspective; second, by providing a critical standard that allows us to escape the normative ambiguity in security studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to explore globalization and European integration and the link between the two developments from a realist perspective. I demonstrate how realists have engaged in analyses of globalization and European integration but have so far failed to pro-vide a link between the two developments. I argue that realists can con-vincingly provide such a link by utilizing the perspective's often neglected process variables: socialization, competition and interaction capacity. Using these variables, I demonstrate how the dynamics of power politics perfectly consistent with realism may result in an inter-national system characterized by actors and processes incompatible with realist predictions. The article is a contribution to the ongoing debate on the applicability of international relations theory to globalization and European integration and to the contemporary debate between realists and their critics on the development of the realist research programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As in 1994 on the question of European Union (EU) membership, there is a split between transnational sector unions supporting European Monetary Union (EMU) and national production sector unions rejecting it. Interestingly, however, transnational production sector unions, as well as trade union confederations, no longer combine their support for membership with a strong emphasis on Europe-wide cooperation and the demand for further development of the Social Dimension. A neo-Gramscian perspective amended with a strategic-relational approach to the state is used for the analysis. While the split in the labour movement on EMU can be explained through a reference to the impact of globalization, the renewed focus of transnational labour on the Swedish form of state is due to the re-strengthened cooperation with capital at the national level and a strong economic performance of Sweden in the late 1990s as well as in 2000 and 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I draw on the later work of Michel Foucault to elaborate a governmentality framework for the study of international governmental organizations (IGOs). The main `value added' of the proposed framework is that it brings into focus the micro-domain of power relations, thereby highlighting what mainline 100 studies fail to thematize. IGOs exercise a molecular form of power that evades and undermines the material, juridical and diplomatic limitations on their influence. They are important sites in the non-sovereign, microphysical workings of power that shape territorialized populations in unspectacular ways. In short, I argue that our understanding of IGOs remains incomplete if we do not pay attention to the effects of domination generated by their everyday governance tasks and good works. I develop this argument through a brief engagement with an innovative strand of 100 studies: research on international socialization, which is empirically illustrated through a brief exploration of the induction by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe of post-socialist countries into its embryonic security community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with accession negotiations, integration into the European Union (EU) has become a central dimension of Estonian politics, creating new institutional practices and shaping domestic political processes. This article explores how the positions of and relations between the Estonian government, civil servants, parliament and civil society have been constructed in the course of preparations for EU member-ship, and discusses the findings from the viewpoint of democratic politics. With the help of different concepts of discursive power, it is highlighted that although parliament and civil society have acquired increasing power in the discourses of integration and there have been attempts to increase their involvement, power over these discourses is still predominantly exercised by civil servants and the government. This reflects the tensions built into the logic of integration that, on the one hand, is dominated by the principles of speed, efficiency, expertise and inevitability, but on the other has placed increasing emphasis on the democratic aspect. Altogether, integration tends to limit democracy to a minimal model, reinforcing some general weaknesses of democracy that are common in the post-communist countries, and intertwining these with the technocratic, elite-centred tradition of the EU that is being adopted by the applicant states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the perspective offered by the book "The Nordic States and European Unity," by Christine Ingebritsen, on the Nordic European integration policies in the 1990s. The book focuses on the variation in degree of integration with the rest of Europe. She argues that the source of the variation is the sectoral composition of the regional economies of Europe.

Problems of European integration and governance are increasingly analysed from a discursive perspective. This article reviews the merits of such an approach. Two analytical strands, the Copenhagen and the Governance School, are discussed in depth, both of which in their own ways look at the possibility of legitimately articulating a particular conception of Europe (and governance). Out of this discussion, and taking on board the ideas of German 'radical constructivists' as well as discourse analysts Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the article develops the analytical concept of 'discursive nodal points'. This concept helps in addressing the problems of the status of European policy in relation to discourse, the national focus in many discourse analyses, and the limitations of conceptualizing change. Throughout the article, this theoretical and methodological discussion is illustrated with examples taken from an analysis of British European policy since World War II. It is argued that a discursive nodal point approach can contribute significantly to our understanding of the multiple positions within the British debate and of the changes within the dominant conceptions of European governance over time, as well as assist us in a critical assessment of these conceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]