The idea of European unity, which the Nordic states have historically resisted, has recently become the foremost concern of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Finland. Christine Ingebritsen provides a timely analysis of Nordic economic and security policies in the wake of the vast transformation of regional politics between 1985 and 1995. The Nordic States and European Unity addresses two central questions: Why did all five Nordic states trade autonomy for integration after 1985? And why do some follow the British pattern, resisting supranationalism, while others prefer the German strategy of embedding their policies in a common European project?Through extensive interviews with representatives of trade unions, government ministries, parliamentary committees, social movements, and military and industrial organizations, Ingebritsen charts adjustments to the idea of a regional system of governance. She highlights crucial differences among these nations as they seek to protect their borders against new security threats. In particular, Ingebritsen shows how the political influence of leading sectors affects each state's capacity to pursue an integrationist policy. Economic sectors are not uniformly affected by European policy coordination, and the experience of the Nordic states demonstrates this difference. Her work shifts the focus of political economics away from enduring, domestic institutions toward an understanding of institutions as sectoral and transnational.

The idea of European unity, which the Nordic states have historically resisted, has recently become the foremost concern of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Finland. Christine Ingebritsen provides a timely analysis of Nordic economic and security policies in the wake of the vast transformation of regional politics between 1985 and 1995. The Nordic States and European Unity addresses two central questions: Why did all five Nordic states trade autonomy for integration after 1985? And why do some follow the British pattern, resisting supranationalism, while others prefer the German strategy of embedding their policies in a common European project?Through extensive interviews with representatives of trade unions, government ministries, parliamentary committees, social movements, and military and industrial organizations, Ingebritsen charts adjustments to the idea of a regional system of governance. She highlights crucial differences among these nations as they seek to protect their borders against new security threats. In particular, Ingebritsen shows how the political influence of leading sectors affects each state's capacity to pursue an integrationist policy. Economic sectors are not uniformly affected by European policy coordination, and the experience of the Nordic states demonstrates this difference. Her work shifts the focus of political economics away from enduring, domestic institutions toward an understanding of institutions as sectoral and transnational.

This book provides the first lengthy study of awkward states/partners in regional integration. Is awkwardness a characteristic of states in many global regions, or is it reducible to the particular case of the United Kingdom in European integration? The authors assess how far the concept of ‘awkwardness’ can travel, and apply it to the cases of the Nordic States’ involvement in and with the European Union - Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Iceland and Norway. The renewed interest in the Nordic region is in part thanks to recent events in the on-going crisis of European integration, and particular its member states’ response to the refugee question, which appears to be undermining years of intra-regional solidarity even between the Nordic countries. The security dimension of the region further broadens the book’s readership beyond Nordic Politics specialists to IR scholars, as the Nordic countries share borders with Russia and are key players in the Baltic Sea Strategy seeking to involve Russia in looser forms of regional cooperation.

In 1999 the EU decided to develop its own military capacities for crisis management. This book brings together a group of experts to examine the consequences of this decision on Nordic policy establishments, as well as to shed new light on the defence and security issues that matter for Europe as a whole.

This book examines the question of European unity, from 1918 to 1939. It focuses on the diversity of the various ideas and images of unity, illustrating how seriously they were taken by political actors at the time, and on the complex interplay of ideology and interest which shaped the idea and reality of Europe in this turbulent period. European Unity in Context takes an interdisciplinary approach to the question of Europe, incorporating the perspectives of historians, social scientists and literary specialists and thus offers valuable insights for students and scholars in history, politics, and literature alike.

Analysing some 30 policy decisions across three countries and five decades, Sieglinde Gstohl considers why some countries continue to be 'reluctant Europeans' and offers insights into the problems associated with integration in an enlarging EU.

Why have the states of Europe agreed to create an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and a single European currency? What will decide the fate of this bold project? This book explains why monetary integration has deepened in Europe from the Bretton Woods era to the present day. McNamara argues that the development of a neoliberal economic policy consensus among European leaders in the years after the first oil crisis was crucial to stability in the European Monetary System and progress towards EMU. She identifies two factors, rising capital mobility and changing ideas about the government's proper role in monetary policymaking, as critical to the neoliberal consensus but warns that unresolved social tensions in this consensus may provoke a political backlash against EMU and its neoliberal reforms.McNamara's findings are relevant not only to European monetary integration, but to more general questions about the effects of international capital flows on states. Although this book delineates a range of constraints created by economic interdependence, McNamara rejects the notion that international market forces simply dictate government policy choice. She demonstrates that the process of neoliberal policy change is a historically dependent one, shaped by policymakers' shared beliefs and interpretations of their experiences in the global economy.