Regional Cooperation and International Organizations

Norbert Götz, Heidi Haggrén

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781134045952
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

This book explores the roles of national actors within international organizations, with particular emphasis on the collaborative approach adopted by Nordic governments and associations.

Analyzing Nordic regional cooperation within international organizations, this volume seeks to shed light on the politics of alignment and distinct macro-regional identity-building in international arenas. Exploring the middle ground between the national and the international, contributors discuss how Nordic governments and associations have successfully created and used the image of a distinct group within the international system and where they have failed. Presenting a richer picture of international and transnational relations, the volume's features include:

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• a key focus on the 'Nordic model' with its schism in regard to the EU

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• studies on cooperation between governments and within civil society, including trade unions and anti-EU movements

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• contributions from Nordic and international experts highly respected in their fields

Seeking to move beyond neo-realist and cosmopolitan approaches in international studies, Regional Cooperation and International Organizations will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, regionalism, Nordic studies, and Transnationalism.

1 Introduction

Transnational Nordic alignment in stormy waters

Norbert Götz and Heidi Haggrén

DOI: 10.4324/9780203884133-1

Scholars interested in Nordic studies have long suffered from a theoretical and conceptual underdevelopment of the issue of regional alignment in international arenas. Because of this void, an essentially ‘Scandinavianist’ understanding of Nordic commonalities has been provided ample opportunity to flourish.¹ For example, in an article on Nordic cooperation in international fora, published a few years ago, former cabinet minister and then chairman of the Danish Norden Association, Knud Enggaard, argued for extending Nordic collaboration to include the Baltic states and possibly Poland. However, his closing sentence made it unmistakably clear: ‘We need to have friends outside Norden, but the family is Nordic’ (2002a: 423). A similar expression of this idea is found in the common Nordic ‘millennial cultural heritage’ and the imagery of a ‘Nordic house with a Baltic Sea veranda’ (Sundelius and Wiklund 2000a: 338, 334). Scholars from the Nordic countries have become major contributors to the late regional perspective or ‘spatial turn’ in social sciences and humanities (e.g. Wæver 1992a; Neumann 1994; Joenniemi 1997; Sørensen and Stråth 1997; Hettne 1999), both for the unavoidable caveat against traditional ‘collaborative’ Nordic nationalism (Wæver 1992b: 143; see also Petersen 1977: 271) and the recasting of macro-alignment structures in the Baltic Sea area after the end of the Cold War.

This book — a collaboration of historians, political scientists, and international civil servants within a framework provided by the research network ‘The History of Nordic Cooperation: Proclamations, Programs and Practices’, coordinated at the Centre for Nordic Studies at the University of Helsinki — is to be seen in the above-mentioned context of reframing the seemingly natural categories ‘space’ and ‘region’ as historically contingent and ultimately political. However, by providing a variety of case studies on Nordic collaboration in larger intergovernmental and transnational organizations, this book shifts the focus from region-building by means of organizations such as the Nordic Council or the various instruments of Baltic Sea cooperation (e.g. Wendt 1981; Enggaard 2002b; Hovmand 2002; Williams 2007) to concerted Nordic action in more comprehensive organizations, contexts in which Nordic alignment is permanently challenged and subject to renegotiation.

Thus, we study Nordic politics of interest and identity not in the tranquil harbours of thereto affiliated organizations, but in the rough seas of clashes between different cultures and civilizations, where this politics has to deal with great powers acting as the major stakeholders and as claimants of support. It is here that the seagoing capability of the ‘Viking ship’ is ultimately put to the test, not in the safety of conversant home waters. This said, we are aware of the many pretentious Nordic vessels that have sunk on the very occasion of departure for their maiden voyage. The world-famous Vasa Museum, which displays the carefully preserved wooden ship that sank in Stockholm harbour in the seventeenth century because its overloaded superstructure was not suited for a humble hull, could easily be complemented by an exhibition on Nordic projects that went aground in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (see Landqvist 1982; Hecker-Stampehl 2004).

The claim has been made — despite a history of numerous stranded expectations — that the Nordic sphere progressed in the minds of the respective peoples from a ‘near abroad’ in the post-war period to a ‘natural part of the home port’ and that ‘from here one can conjointly initiate campaigns of conquest into the European, new near abroad, and out in global adventures’ (Sundelius and Wiklund 2000a: 335). The contributions in this volume do not supply evidence for such a proposition. Rather, the studies presented here seem to support the hypothesis that the era of international tensions, 1933–1989, was particularly supportive of Nordic affiliation (Malmborg 1998: 92), with some qualifications in regard to the Second World War and diverging security policy arrangements in the Cold War.

This does not imply that the Nordic project is dead, but rather that it has lost some of its seeming self-evidence and that it is therefore in need of politicization and movement if it is to remain a factor over and above isolated and arbitrary sectoral coordination. In this context, the near absence of infrastructure for scholarly reflection on Nordic experiences and utopias and the apparent disinterest of ‘Nordocrats’² and all-Nordic institutions in critical and continuous discourse (Stenius 2008) is a sign that the vigour for reinventing Norden in the twenty-first century might be lacking. If the prediction that the Nordic identity will fade soon after the generation of politicians and civil servants socialized some thirty or forty years ago retires is proved true (Andersson 2001: 268), the result will be more than simply a consequence of ‘objective’ changes in the international environment. More importantly, it will evidence the failure of that generation to stimulate, engage, and carry on what Pauli Kettunen has identified as the long-time key to success of the ‘Nordic model’ in the social sphere: the self-reflective and self-transformative principle of immanent critique of society (1999: 119).

The space of regional cooperation

Generally speaking, the past two decades have seen a renaissance of regional thought and regional forces (Katzenstein 1996: 123), not least in the wake of constructivist theorizing in international studies. However, regions are not yet well understood in theoretical terms (Engelen 2006: 63).

An essential distinction, corresponding to the one above between region-building organizations and regional concertation in wider contexts, has been suggested by Ernst B. Haas. He differentiated between the related concepts ‘regional integration’ and ‘regional cooperation’. In its original fashion, this distinction presupposed a solely statist perspective. Regional integration ultimately blurred the boundaries of nation states and international organizations in that it implied losses of sovereignty by non-coercive means (Haas 1970: 608). Here, we operate with a less demanding assumption on sovereignty that allows us to include private associations: We see regional integration simply as collaboration within the framework of regional governmental or private organizations and its commonly applied policy outcome. Examples of this structural understanding of regional integration are the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Nordic Society for the History of Ideas. This concept is to be seen in contrast to regional cooperation, which, according to Haas, ‘is a vague term covering any interstate activity with less than universal participation designed to meet some commonly experienced need’ (ibid.: 611). Perhaps most important here is that regional cooperation is a concept related to agency. In our view, a statist perspective should not be regarded as self-evident when we talk of regional cooperation — the exclusion of private associations in this connection is counter-intuitive in the light of the current rise of notions such as ‘network society’ and ‘global civil society’. Thus, as a matter of course, we include transnational activity in our concept of regional cooperation.³ Examples of regional cooperation in this sense are Nordic cooperation in the United Nations (UN) and Nordic trade union cooperation within the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).

The book at hand does not represent an attempt to fill the existing theoretical gap in regard to regionalism in international relations. Rather, it aims to provide manifold empirical observations on aspects of regionalism that we believe need highlighting in order to establish a more adequate understanding of the middle ground between nation states on the one hand and comprehensive continental or global organizations on the other hand. Thereby, the focus on one example — the Nordic one — allows for insight into shifting historical and sectoral patterns and the need to problematize particular regions as such. At present, inter-regional comparisons, unless assuming a micro-perspective, would presuppose much more empirical and theoretical knowledge than is available. The theoretical contribution of this book consists of a meta-reflection inspired by the chapters on past and present Nordic alignment in wider multilateral contexts. In the Epilogue it is suggested that the international sphere be theoretically strengthened as opposed to the national by supplementing the well-established concept of the ‘Westphalian system’ (of sovereign nation states) with the concept of the ‘Alpine system’ (of transnational interdependence and organization). Only a bipolar theoretical framework that is equally aware of the legacy of the nation state and international society can open an adequate theoretical space for regional clusters as important devices for strengthening the international position of interdependent, like-minded and geopolitically attached actors of both governmental and private provenance.

Generally speaking, in contrast to the more easily researched topic of regional integration, remarkably little has been published about the agency of private actors and national governments in transnational and international organizations — let alone about their regional caucusing strategies. In international studies, processes of interest aggregation on the intermediary level between national governmental or private units and larger international organizations remain by and large a black box (for notable exceptions see: Hovet 1960; Sauvant 1981; Simonian 1985; Schumacher 2000). The concept of ‘intersecting multilateralisms’, proposed in a recent contribution to the discussion of this topic, gives a good idea of the complex configuration inside that box and thereby possibly also of the reasons why scholars have been reluctant to study it (Laatikainen and Smith 2006). Given multilevel cases, such as Nordic cooperation in regard to the European Union’s policy at the United Nations (Osvald 1998: 368), the image of nesting dolls, neatly tucked inside one another, would be another convincing suggestion.

As we see it, the blind spot in regard to regionalism is an artefact of theoretical idiosyncrasies rather than the consequence of lacking significance. The approach most popular among political scientists and historians — the one that succeeded in getting its self-description recognized as ‘realist’ in the discourse at large — has cultivated the nation state as its obvious darling, and in particular as the powerful nation state that is not dependent on concertation with others. According to this view, popular among scholars from the United States in particular, the world at large resembles the Wild West, including its prevailing anarchy and a self-appointed sheriff at best. In such a context, common decision-making fails to work in critical situations — international organizations seem largely irrelevant and, if anything, disturbing units that might just as well be ignored. In contrast, international organizations and regimes are idealized by adherents of an antithetical, less well-branded school with cosmopolitan affinity. Somewhat paradoxically, this view sees the world at large as ultimately resembling the nation state. However, at the same time, the nation state proper is seen as an idée reçue that ought to give way to the international machinery that adherents of this approach so like to describe in their works.

These schools, with their focus on power politics on the one hand and functional interdependence and international law on the other, have produced an overwhelming abundance of literature on either nation states in international relations or international organizations and global policy problems. However, these two different strands of discourse remain largely unconnected. The disinterest of ‘realists’ in international organizations and that of cosmopolitans in nation states proper has resulted in fragmented and determinate insights that mirror specific theoretical domiciles rather than the problem structure of the empirical field. Therefore, a closer look at what lies in between nations and international organizations — namely, regions — not only adds on to existing knowledge in other fields, but forces us to rethink those meta-categories themselves.

Nordic and European collaboration

This volume sets the focus on regional cooperation of Nordic governments and private actors in universal organizations and larger regional organizations. As yet, the overall tradition of Nordic cooperation has been studied to a surprisingly minimal extent (Østergård 1994: 313; Olsen and Sverdrup 1999: 8). The only other book with a topic similar to this one is Norden på Världsarenan (Norden in the World Arena), edited by Åke Landqvist some forty years ago (1968). Despite its popular character this was a useful book — but it is outdated, limited to the intergovernmental sphere, and somewhat biased by its ‘Scandinavianist’ perspective. At a time when outside observers analyzed the Nordic integration project as showing clear signs of stagnation (Etzioni 1965: 185, 228, 305), the contributors to Landqvist’s book still shared the impression of an ever closer Nordic union (Landqvist et al. 1968: 11). When these authors formally declared ‘their positive basic attitude towards the value and significance of Norden as an entity for internal and international cooperation’ (ibid.: 14), they expressed a sentiment that resonates among the contributors to the present volume. However, when tallying priorities and when a sympathetic attitude towards Norden is to be weighed against, for example, national, Baltic, or European concerns, we are a group of scholars representing a variety of perspectives. Moreover, we are of mixed Nordic and external extraction and write for an international audience of students and colleagues interested in the driving forces, varieties and limits of cooperation, not a sort of technical manual or means of popular education in one of the concerned countries. Thus, our most significant commonality is the critical perspective from which we analyse Nordic cooperation for better or for worse. Adherents to the myth of Nordic ideality — not exactly a rarity among ‘critical’ scholars in the world — might betimes find our sober perspective disturbing.

As far as the government sphere is concerned, Nordic collaboration is foreseen by the ‘Helsinki Treaty’ on cooperation between Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. When this agreement was adopted in 1962, article 30 stipulated ‘The Contracting Parties should, whenever possible and appropriate, hold joint consultations on matters of common interest which are dealt with by international organizations and at international conferences’ (Helsinki Treaty I 1970: 22–23). In 1993, after the course had been set for the enlargement of the European Union (EU) by several Nordic countries, this provision was brought to the fore and promoted to article 1. It then stipulated ‘The Contracting Parties should hold joint consultations on matters of common interest which are dealt with by European and other international organizations and conferences' (Helsinki Treaty II 2000: 18–19). Patently, apart from being made more straightforward, the change in terminology reflects the increasing significance of Europe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowlegements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: transnational Nordic alignment in stormy waters
• PART I The development of Nordic cooperation in world affairs
• PART II Nordic cooperation in given policy fields
• PART III Nordic cooperation in a European context
• PART IV Nordic private cooperation in European and world affairs
• Epilogue: the ‘Alpine System’: creating space for regional cooperation
• Index