Search results for "Nordic cooperation"
showing 6 items of 6 documents
New Alliances in Post-Brexit Europe: Does the New Hanseatic League Revive Nordic Political Cooperation?
2020
As Brexit removes the Nordic countries’ most powerful ally from the EU, what does this imply for their approach to European affairs? The literature on small states within the EU suggests that they can counterbalance limited bargaining capacities by entering two types of alliances: strategic partnerships with bigger member states and institutionalised cooperation on a regional basis. Against this backdrop we ask whether, by significantly raising the costs of non-cooperation for Nordic governments, the Brexit referendum has triggered a revival of Nordic political cooperation. We scrutinise this conjecture by analysing Nordic strategies of coalition-building on EU financial and budgetary polic…
Party Positions on Differentiated European Integration in the Nordic Countries: Growing Together, Growing Apart?
2020
The Nordic countries constitute an interesting laboratory for the study of differentiated European Integration. Even though Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden share some historical, cultural, socio-economic and political characteristics, all those countries have ultimately opted for a different kind of relationship with the EU. Whereas Finland, a member of the Eurozone since its inception in 1999, has been considered to be part of the Union’s ‘inner core’ for quite some time, Iceland and Norway, in contrast, have opted to remain outside the EU albeit closely associated via the European Economic Area Agreement. The variation of relationships has also been reflected in Nordic parti…
Adapting to a Global Health Challenge: Managing Antimicrobial Resistance in the Nordics
2020
This article explores the adaptation of Norway and Sweden to one of the major challenges to global public health, antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Guided by assumptions derived from institutional theory, the article investigates whether, and, if so, how the AMR problem has affected the two Nordic countries’ administrative systems and frameworks for Nordic cooperation. The article builds on selected literature, expert interviews, and public documents. The findings suggest that the international impact on Norway and Sweden’s managerial adaptation to AMR is limited. Instead, adaptation takes place through incremental change within existing structures for disease prevention and control and follo…
Introducing the Study of Nordic Cooperation
2020
To rediscover Nordic cooperation this article develops a ‘conceptual grammar’ that provides general theoretical ‘images’ of cooperation that are systematically applied. Being supplementary analytical constructs, moreover, these images capture great variety and differentiation in Nordic cooperation. Next, this article provides a review of two sets of literature that are of particular relevance to this thematic issue. The first is a broader literature on European integration. The second is studies of Nordic cooperation. The article closes with an overview of the contributions to this thematic issue.
Nordic Cooperation in the Nuclear Safety Sector: High, Low, or Differentiated Integration?
2020
Nordic cooperation has been depicted as eroding due to the increased importance of EU-related cooperation and integration. However, scholars propose that longstanding Nordic networks, grounded in professions and located in the state administration, may prove to be more robust toward external changes. This article discusses this proposal by looking at Nordic cooperation between the national radiation protection and nuclear safety authorities in Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The article maps behavioural perceptions of agency staff based on a dataset of 37 interviews to illustrate if the cooperation between the Nordic authorities is characterized by high integration, low integ…
Public Administration and the Study of Political Order: Towards a Framework for Analysis
2020
The contribution of this study is two-fold: First, it outlines a conceptual framework on political order; and secondly, it offers empirical illustrations on the case of Nordic cooperation. Taken together, the article makes a plea for public administration scholarship in the study of political order. Political order consists of a relatively stable arrangement of institutions that are fairly formalized and institutionalized. A common political order, moreover, entails that relevant institutions: (i) are fairly independent of pre-existing institutions; (ii) are relatively integrated and internally cohesive; and (iii) are reasonably able to influence governance processes within other institutio…