6 research outputs found
From Reluctancy to activity. Finland's way to the Nordic family during 1920's and 1930's
Why were the Cyprus camps for Jewish detainees not dissolved immediately after the independence of Israel?
âNeutrality: A really dead concept?â A reprise
This article approaches âneutralityâ 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 âneutralizationâ ânon-belligerencyâ, ânon-alignmentâ, âmilitary non-alignmentâ, âmilitary neutralityâ and ânon-alliedâ. 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 elitesâ quasi-neutral foreign policy constructions underpinned by tensions between discourses and practices and (4) the discursive strategies underpinning the move from neutral statesâ traditional forms of neutrality to what is termed âpost-neutralityâ in the current politico-legal context