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12 The changing security environment of the Nordic region: from Cold War ‘security threats’ to the ‘security challenges’ of today Given our geographical location, the three main security challenges for Finland today are Russia, Russia and Russia – and not only for Finland…. (Häkämies 2007) ‘All four [mainland Nordic] states, culturally Western and ideologically democratic, found themselves because of their geographical location on the strategic and cultural frontier between the superpowers and their nascent blocs as these were formed in the immediate post
This book analyses the contemporary politics of the nation states of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and the Home Rule territories of Greenland, Faeroes and Åland that together make up the Nordic region. It covers Scandinavia past and present, parties in developmental perspective, the Scandinavian party system model, the Nordic model of government, the Nordic welfare model, legislative-executive relations in the region, and the changing security environment. The Nordic states have a shared history, common linguistic bonds and a common state Lutheran religion. Of the six Scandinavian languages, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are mutually intelligible, whilst Swedish is an official national language in Finland. Turning to a brief overview of nation-building and state-building in the Nordic region, an obvious distinction can be drawn between those 'stateless nations' which went on to achieve statehood and the territories that have not achieved independence. The book presents a brief chronology of events in Norden up to 1922, when Åland achieved autonomy. In Sweden the historic phase of party-building produced a basic two-plus-three configuration and a party system based on five 'isms': communism, social democracy, agrarianism, liberalism and conservatism. By 1930 there was a bifurcated parliamentary left and a fragmented nonsocialist bloc consisting of essentially town-based Liberal and Conservative parties and a farmer-based Agrarian Party. Whilst acknowledging the limitations inherent in the periodisation of party system change, the book focuses on the extent of party system change since the 'earthquake elections' of 1970-73.
the humorous side of things! This chapter, however, is not about eagles, still less hens; rather, it focuses on a particular swan – the eight-quilled swan of Nordic co-operation depicted in the logo of the Nordic Council and representing the five nation states of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and the three Home Rule territories of the Faeroes, Greenland and Åland. It offers a broad introduction to the (changing) geo-politics of the Nordic region and views co-operation and, more frequently in an historical light, conflict between the member states in
of knowledge, Nordic Gothic traces Gothic fiction in the Nordic region from its beginnings in the nineteenth century, with a main focus on the development of Gothic from the 1990s onwards in literature, film, TV series and electronic games. This volume thus aims to give an overview of contemporary Nordic Gothic fiction, to provide a number of case studies and in-depth analyses of individual narratives and productions, and to study these narratives and productions in relation to transnational developments and cross-fertilisations. The intention is to create an
11 Nordic government(s): parliamentary, presidential or prime ministerial? It is evident that Finland has been moving closer to the parliamentary states of Western Europe and that there are hardly any grounds for the epithet ‘semipresidential. (Nousiainen 2001: 108) This chapter focuses on the executive–parties dimension (Lijphart 1999) and in particular on two striking differences in the nature of the political executive across the Nordic region. First, there is the contrast, in Lijphart’s terms, between the executive–legislative balance systems of the
Espen J. Aarseth termed ‘ergodic literature’, and games. 2 This chapter maps and analyses new Gothic media developed in the Nordic region. Before the discussion of the actual media, the chapter considers what the notion ‘new media’ entails and what the concepts ‘Gothic’ and ‘Nordic’ actually mean when the focus is new media rather than literature or cinema. An analysis follows of four of the more important and widely disseminated games and a consideration
participation of citizens’ (see Helsingin Sanomat, 1 May 2008). Citizens, he concluded, should reclaim parties from the political leaders and elite of special advisers and political secretaries who run them. Wallgren’s critique of political parties pointed to a democratic paradox in the Nordic region as a whole. On the one hand, the traditional agencies of collective mobilisation – the basic linkage structures between state and society – have eroded in recent years. There has, in short, been a decline in both membership of, and identification with, political parties and a
2 Nation-building and state-building, 1809–1944 She did not love her country, only her plot and shack, A few yards of the stream, and the lava, rough and black. (Guðmundur Friðjónsson, ‘The widow by the stream’, cited in Karlsson 1995: 36) The aim of this chapter is to provide a brief but necessary historical background to the emergence of the present arrangement of five nation states and three Home Rule territories in the Nordic region. It proposes to do so in a comparative and thematic fashion, organising the material around the twin concepts of nation
(1967) analyse in a developmental perspective the nature and evolution of the cleavage structure underpinning the emergence by about 1930 of the basic West European party systems. This third chapter opens with a brief presentation of the Lipset and Rokkan framework and proceeds to ask: how relevant is their model of the building of party systems in Europe to the Scandinavian experience? How useful is it to an understanding of the structuring of the modern party families and the configuration of the party systems that had evolved in the Nordic region by the end of the
unspoken reaction of the British team. Try telling that to the lads back home, they thought to themselves. The first part of this chapter explores the building of Sweden’s reputation as a successful small democracy. The second seeks to identify the main 152 The Nordic model c haracteristics of the ‘Swedish model’ in its heyday in the 1960s. The third section considers the extent of the deviation from the model elsewhere in the Nordic region. Finally, it is asked whether the model has become little more than a receding memory. In the following discussion, a