Small States in Europe: Challenges and Opportunities - Hardcover

Steinmetz, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0754677826 ISBN 13: 9780754677826

Publisher: Routledge, 2010

Synopsis

The effects of recent institutional change within the European Union on small states have often been overlooked. This book offers an accessible, coherent and informative analysis of contemporary and future foreign policy challenges facing small states in Europe. Leading experts analyze the experiences of a number of small states including the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Iceland, Austria and Switzerland. Each account, written to a common template, explores the challenges and opportunities faced by each state as a consequence of EU integration, and how their behaviour regarding EU integration has been characterized. In particular, the contributors emphasize the importance of power politics, institutional dynamics and lessons of the past. Innovative and sophisticated, the study draws on the relational understanding of small states to emphasize the implications of institutional change at the European level for the smaller states and to explain how the foreign and European policies of small states in the region are affected by the European Union.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert Steinmetz, is a Press Secretary, Personal Assistant to the Minister, General Secretariat, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Luxembourg and Anders Wivel, is an Associate Professor, PhD, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Review:

'The ongoing transformation of the international political and economic order shows that small countries can be both victors and losers. This important volume tells how and why this happens.' Raimo Varynen, Director, The Finnish Institute of International Affairs 'Overall, the text has a number of significant strengths. The first is that it adds in some innovative ways to a growing body of literature on small states. Second, it has gathered a collection of contributors with a deep appreciation of both the practical realities of small states in the contemporary European environment and the analytical pitfalls of engaging in 'small state studies'. Third, the text offers a broad palette of small state experience from the microstates of Cyprus and Luxembourg to the intermediate-sized Netherlands.' Acta Politica

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0754677826
• ISBN 13: 9780754677826
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248
• Editor: Wivel Anders