This book explains what ‘small’ states are and explores their current security challenges, in general terms and through specific examples. It reflects the shift from traditional security definitions emphasizing defence and armaments, to new security concerns such as economic, societal and environmental security where institutional cooperation looms larger. These complex issues, linked with traditional power relations and new types of actors, need to be tackled with due regard to democracy and good governance. Key policy challenges for small states are examined and applied in the regional case studies. The book deals mainly with the current experience and recent past of such states but also offers insights for their future policies. Although many of the states covered are European, the study also includes African, Caribbean and Asian small states. Their particular interest and relevance is outlined, as is the connection between their security challenges and their smallness. Policy lessons for other states are then sought. The book is the first in-depth, multi-continent study of security as an aspect of small state governance today. It is novel in placing the security dilemmas of small states in the context of wider ideas on international and institutional change, and in dealing with non-European states and regions.

This book raises the question of the long-term security of the small state. It asks specifically how that quandary manifests itself in Europe after 1989. The overall argument is that small states are becoming increasingly prominent - to some extent also problematic - actors in post-Cold War Europe politics. This is partly a consequence of the diminished ambition, even bordering on reluctance, of great powers to assert their will. Partly it is the consequence of a confluence of other factors: there used to be a loose, tacit consensus on the respective roles of great powers and smaller states. That is no longer so. The transition from an actively supervised bipolar system to a nearly non-polar international system has been a slippery slope. It is as yet far from clear what the final outcome will be. The collapse of Yugoslavia and of the Soviet Union demonstrate the intractability of issues involving small states, in particular as those issues concern secession, independence and physical survival. The experience of the states liberated by the dissolution of communist power in Eastern Europe also demonstrates the hard lessons of survivability in economic terms. Indeed, the irony is that the answer to both the security problem and the economic dependence of small states is now widely perceived in these states themselves as being dependent on their participation in integration and at least the partial relinquishing of sovereignty.

The effects of recent institutional change within the European Union on small states have often been overlooked. This book offers an accessible, coherent and informative analysis of contemporary and future foreign policy challenges facing small states in Europe. Leading experts analyze the experiences of a number of small states including the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Iceland, Austria and Switzerland. Each account, written to a common template, explores the challenges and opportunities faced by each state as a consequence of EU integration, and how their behaviour regarding EU integration has been characterized. In particular, the contributors emphasize the importance of power politics, institutional dynamics and lessons of the past. Innovative and sophisticated, the study draws on the relational understanding of small states to emphasize the implications of institutional change at the European level for the smaller states and to explain how the foreign and European policies of small states in the region are affected by the European Union.

This book explains what ‘small’ states are and explores their current security challenges, in general terms and through specific examples. It reflects the shift from traditional security definitions emphasizing defence and armaments, to new security concerns such as economic, societal and environmental security where institutional cooperation looms larger. These complex issues, linked with traditional power relations and new types of actors, need to be tackled with due regard to democracy and good governance. Key policy challenges for small states are examined and applied in the regional case studies. The book deals mainly with the current experience and recent past of such states but also offers insights for their future policies. Although many of the states covered are European, the study also includes African, Caribbean and Asian small states. Their particular interest and relevance is outlined, as is the connection between their security challenges and their smallness. Policy lessons for other states are then sought. The book is the first in-depth, multi-continent study of security as an aspect of small state governance today. It is novel in placing the security dilemmas of small states in the context of wider ideas on international and institutional change, and in dealing with non-European states and regions.

Comprehensive and timely, this Handbook identifies the key characteristics, challenges and opportunities involved in the politics of small states across the globe today. Acknowledging the historical legacies behind these states, the chapters unpack the costs and benefits of different political models for small states.

Small States in and outside the European Union offers a broad overview of the small states problematic in Europe. It touches upon definition issues, history, security policy, neutrality, EU institutional aspects and also includes contributors from Central and Eastern European countries. It presents a thorough analysis of different scenarios for EU institutional reform and their repercussions on the influence of small member states. The comparative results are visualized in tables. The work contains several contributions from practitioners who give insight into policy games and issues of national sensitivity not usually covered by purely scholarly publications. The European environment has changed dramatically through the processes of regional integration and rising interdependence. Relations between European states both inside and outside the EU are governed as never before by rules, norms, and fixed procedures. The book investigates the consequences of these developments on the foreign and security policy of small states. Academics and professionals from Austria, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Sweden, and Switzerland, as well as from the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, elaborate on these issues. Institutional regulations and traditional power politics as well as the foreign and security policy traditions of the states concerned, including the question of neutrality, are investigated. In addition, the book identifies the main interests of small states in today's Europe and offers an overview of different strategies these states apply in the realm of foreign and security policy. The book is interesting for the case studies it offers as well as for the reflections it contains regarding fundamental questions of the essence of statehood in today's Europe.