The successful maintenance of peace since 1814 made neutrality a widely popular doctrine in Sweden. Rather than a security policy in the strict sense, it has become a cornerstone of Swedish national identity. Yet, in the past decade the neutrality tradition has been called into question. What is meant by neutrality? Has Sweden ever been neutral? This book analyses the emergence, institutionalisation and reassessment of neutrality, of the notion of peace as a national good, from the sixteenth century to the present debate on NATO membership.

The successful maintenance of peace since 1814 made neutrality a widely popular doctrine in Sweden. Rather than a security policy in the strict sense, it has become a cornerstone of Swedish national identity. Yet, in the past decade the neutrality tradition has been called into question. This book analyzes the emergence, institutionalization, and reassessment of neutrality, of the notion of peace as a national good, from the 16th century to the present debate on NATO membership.

The Handbook provides a broad introduction to Swedish politics, and how Sweden's political system and policies have evolved over the past few decades.

The end of the Cold War and the ‘War on Terror’ has signalled a shift in the security policies of all states. It has also led to the reconsideration of the policy of neutrality, and what being neutral means in the present age. This book examines the conceptualisation of neutrality from the Peloponnesian War to today, uncovering how neutrality has been a neglected and misunderstood subject in International Relations (IR) theory and politics. By rethinking neutrality through constructivism, this book argues that neutrality is intrinsically linked to identity. Using Sweden as a case study, it links identity, sovereignty, internationalism and solidarity to the debates about Swedish neutrality today and how neutrality has been central to Swedish identity and its worldview. It also examines the challenges to Swedish neutrality and neutrality broadly, in terms of European integration, globalisation, the decline of the state and sovereignty, and new threats to security, such as international terrorism, arguing that the norms and values of neutrality can be reworked to contribute to a more cosmopolitan international order.

Since 1814 Sweden has avoided involvement in armed conflicts and carried out policies of non-alignment in peacetime and neutrality during war. Even though the Swedish government often describes Sweden as a ‘nation of peace’, in 2004 the 200-year anniversary of that peace passed by with barely any attention. Despite its extraordinary longevity, research about the Swedish experience of enduring peace is underdeveloped. 200 Years of Peace places this long period of peace in broader academic and public discussions surrounding claimed Swedish exceptionality as it is represented in the nation’s social policies, expansive welfare state, eugenics, gender equality programs, and peace.

This book presents the legal and political factors determining international relations, including the processes of integration in all their complexity. The overall structure of the book, together with the composition of its separate chapters, allows for some general assumptions, identifying the main tendencies and placing them in a contemporary social context as well as establishing their relations with the practices of today. The content is a compendium of basic information and data related to the international processes which occur within specific formal, legal and political frames. The book is divided into five parts featuring not only deep historical context but most of all presenting current information and analyses of the last few years. Presented against the background and within the context of the Kingdom of Sweden’s political system and its international environment, the book brings into the foreground issues of particular importance for Sweden’s continuing European integration process and describes its response to the developments in the international situation.

This book explores the factors that account for military neutrality as a security strategy for small states. Through comparing the cases of Serbia and Sweden, who have both come to define their security policies in identicial terms of military neutrality/non-alignment, the book introduces a novel conceptual framework that is built against existing knowledge found in the small states and military neutrality literature. Drawing on different theoretical frameworks, the model explains why certain small states choose to stay outside of military alliances in the twenty-first century. The author then applies the new model to the two selected case studies.