Pernille Rieker

Power, Principles and Procedures. French Foreign Policy towards the USA (2001-2003)

Power, Principles and Procedures : Reinterpreting French foreign policy towards the USA (2001-2003)

French foreign policy towards the US is often understood as particularly confrontational and based on traditional power politics, or a wish to re-establish “la grandeur de la France”. This article aims at investigating the validity of this widely held view. It further seeks to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the French positions by studying the arguments used by the French political leadership and the implications of the Iraq conflict for bilateral cooperation at lower levels. This study questions the common assumption of IR theory that national identities and/or interests are fixed and independent of structural factors such as international norms and values. It also questions the value of focusing exclusively on diplomatic or “top-level” bilateral relations, without looking at “low-level” or practical bilateral cooperation and/or conflicts.

EU Security Policy: Contrasting Rationalism and Social Constructivism

There are two very different stories that can be told about EU security policy during 2003. On the one hand, some argue that the deep division among important EU countries in relation to the Iraq war is a final confirmation of the absence of an EU security policy. On the other hand, some argue that the last year has been a year of considerable intensity in relation to EU security policy – despite the fact that EU cannot yet be characterised as a unitary actor. One of the reasons for these very different stories is that they are based on fundamentally different ideas and theories about the basic mechanisms in international relations. In this paper Pernille Rieker will contrast how two different approaches, namely Rationalistism and Social constructivism would analyse EU security policy. The paper starts with a short presentation of the meta-theoretical foundation of these approaches. The second part discusses how each of them views the conditions for multilateral cooperation and security. In the third part these perspectives on EU security policy will be discussed and some empirical data that support each of them will be presented. Finally, the paper ends on a discussion concerning whether these approaches must be seen as being alternative or complementary approaches.

L’élargissement de l’Union Européenne – Une perspective Norvégienne

Europeanisation of Nordic Security? The EU and the Changing Security Identities of the Nordic states”. Cooperation and Conflict

En annerledes supermakt? Sikkerhets- og forsvarspolitikken i EU

”EUs kamp mot terrorisme”. Internasjonal Politikk

From territorial defence to comprehensive security? European integration and the changing Norwegian and Swedish security identities

This paper analyses the relationship between the European integration process and the recent changes in the Norwegian and the Swedish national security identities. The aim of the paper is to compare developments in the Norwegian and the Swedish security identities in the 1990s and to evaluate the extent and scope of Europeanisation in the two cases. The fact that both Norway and Sweden had very traditional security discourses at the beginning of the 1990s and that it is possible to detect shifts away from this traditionalism in parallel with the development towards a European security dimension should prove that a Europeanisation has indeed occurred. While several researchers have studied the influence of the EU on national institutions and policies, less attention has been given to the Europeanisation of national security identities. This paper is therefore an attempt to fill this gap. The fact that Sweden has become a member of the EU while Norway has not also makes these two countries good cases for examining the extent and scope of their respective Europeanisation.